Soundwave on 04 May 2013
| Salnax said: The 3DS might be considered a failure, but only if it has a long life. If it is discontinued in 2016 or something, then those are great numbers. For the Wii U, that would be a big flop. The Wii U needs to sell at least 50 million units of hardware lifetime to keep Nintendo relevant in the console sphere. |
Getting to over 50 million hardware units really isn't as easy as people think it is.
There's only really a handful of consoles that have done it -- NES, SNES (close enough), Playstation, PS2, Wii, PS3, and XBox 360.
All of them except for the Wii had exceptional third party support, and the Wii bucked the trend by having the casual/blue ocean craze all to itself for 3-4 years.
I don't think Wii U really has either the same support from the casual market this time around, nor does it have the third party support. You can't strike out in both these areas and expect for 4-5 franchises (Mario, Mario Kart, Smash, Zelda, DKC) to drag the entire platform to 50+ million. Just doesn't work.
