Wii U price cut hasn't improved sales enough, says retailer

[Alby_da_Wolf]

OdinHades said:

Alby_da_Wolf said:
I don't know if it's the same elsewhere, and I know there are other problems, but a big obstacle for Wii U I noticed is that retailers, at least in my town, do absolutely NOTHING to make their clients realise that it's a new product, not just an expensive version of Wii. During the Xmas season, at my town's MediaWorld Wii U's, instead of having their own distinct pile, occupied a portion of the Wii's pile, why on earth should uninformed customers have thought it wasn't just another Wii? 'Nuff said.

It's not the job of the retailers to inform people about the functionality of Wii U. That is up to Nintendo and they missed the chance to inform consumers by advertising. The current situation can't be blamed on retailers. The Wii U will be placed in the area of video games, that's enoug. Shop space is very valueable, you don't just waste a lot of free space for some new console. Every new console get's only a small chunk right next to its predecessor, that was no different with PS2 and PS3. It was different with Gamecube and Xbox, because their sections got cleared before the new consoles arrived. 

A new smartphone will be placed somewhere in the smartphone section. A new laptop will be placed alongside all those other laptops. And a new vacuum cleaner also doesn'tget a special place. You get the idea. The companies behind those products have to make sure people know about their stuff and acutally want to buy it. With high demand, products will automatically be better placed, as most people will look for it. But if something doesn't sell, it won't get a better spot. It will instead vanish completely. 

You'd be right normally, but even in crammed shelf space you can usually tell where a console ends and the other begins, what I saw was different: PS3, XB360, PSP, PSV, DS, 3DS had each one their own distinct shelf section, plus, for DS and PSP, their own bargain bins and metal wire crates, and for PS3 and XB360 their own distinct pile (PS3 actually had a pile, a shelf section for bundles, two whole shelves reserved to its games and one for PS Move and other peripherals and the biggest demo space, with a 50" 3D TV, PS Move and some 3D glasses). Heck, even some old Wii bundles, like the red Wii, had their own distinct shelf section! Wii U instead was different: they had piled it up in the same pile of Wii, with the Wii U occupying a thin slice on the right. As the best selling competing products had each one their own distinct pile, it was easy for the uninformed user to conclude Wii U was just a new version of the same old Wii. Obviously Ninty has its part of fault in not advertising Wii U well enough, but retailers just made things worse, in a way they didn't with competing products. And it's not an anti-Ninty conspiracy, as DS and 3DS weren't treated this way and 3DS had actually more space than PSV and in a better position.