Putting Wii U sales into perspective

[allenmaher]

This next gen will not look lie the last one. The casuals have new platforms, tablets, smartphones, etc... A new player in hardcore is entering the market with Steambox. The overall console market is shrinking (look at year over year sales numbers). Will nintendo win this time, who knows, they will have a head start in user base which will be significant (7 to 14 million or so) and a larger software library in the short term at least. Sony is offering a nice hardcore machine (with a minimal nod to backward compatibility). I look forward to seeing how MS is going to position themselves this time around (the leaked specs bring their backward compatibility into question as well but we will see when they actually announce).

Improving WiiU sales:

WiiU sales figures are bleak right now but overall have not been bad (still ahead of most console launches). the system is fun, I think it needs two things, system patches to iron out the load times and other annoyances, and games. A lot of systems will be chasing the big AAA titles, and I think that might be a loosing game for nintendo, they would be far better off to pursue a robust indie collection through digital distribution. there is a lot of great content out there that would add to the value of the machine with minimal porting. In addition they need to get the virtual console/wii support implemented and tidied up. Having to launch a wii menu to run them is just not good enough. How about gc/wii titles available for download, that is not a small catalogue of games? Before a price drop (which is likely I think) they should use the same ambassador program that worked with the 3DS. As well I'd like to see a few of sony/steam like online features implemented in miiverse (though I could care less about achievements and trophies).

Prediction for the next gen systems:
All next gen consoles will sell less than the PS3/360/Wii generation. It's a shrinking market with more competitors.