Has Nintendo Lost Touch With North America?

[Michael-5]

Yakuzaice said:

Michael-5 said:

So many things wrong with what you're saying.

1. 3DS is up YoY in North America by roughly 35% so far. It's selling fine here, and with games like Animal Crossing and Pokemon, and maybe a decent 3DS XL colour (Europe and Japan get better colours), 3DS sales could be as much as 50% higher in 2013 in North America as they were last year.

So, since basically everything you said is wrong or debatable, why would Nintendo be in trouble? Wii U might be having a slow start, but Wii U also set a record for the longest video game drought (4 months). Wii U sales will pick up with software, and even if it doesn't do as well as Wii U, it wil do much much better then N64/GCN/SNES/NES.

Where exactly are you getting that figure?  The 3DS was down in January and February, and only up slightly in March.  Don't think we have gotten concrete April numbers, but at best it is up a few percent.  Most likely it is down.  Even the overtracked VGC numbers show that it is down YoY.  Now granted this is all US sales, but I don't think it is mathematically possible to be down in the US and up 35% in North America.

Shipments in the first quarter of the year were also down 44% YoY.

Setting records for droughts isn't exactly promising for the future of the platform.  That's the same thing that killed the Wii, and that system had the advantage of not needing HD development.  The NES did 34 million in the Americas and you think the Wii U will do "much better"?

1. I track sales on an excel file, and make a thread every quarter. I have 3DS up YoY in North America by about 35% for April/May, but my Q1 excel file needs to be updated since VGC recently had a huge adjustment. I forgot 3DS wasn't doing that amazing, I was being lazy and didn't look up my Q1 file.

I have 3DS as down by about 43% or so for Q1. So right now it's still likely down YoY, but 3DS is tracking a lot better now then it was in January, and has more software coming out which will boost sales. Still, 3DS was doing super well in Q1 of 2012 because of the $80 price cut in 2011, but sales got weaker in fall 2012. 2013 should have a considerable increase in NA and WW 3DS sales as 3DS is now selling better on a weekly basis.

So if 3DS keeps up this pace, it should still perform better in 2013 then it did in 2012, and if Animal Crossing and Pokemon make a big impact on sales (which they should) then 3DS could do a lot better, maybe even sell around 20 million for the year. Worst case, I think 3DS will break 15 million.

2. As for Wii U sales, I think Wii U will sell "much better" then all other Nintendo home consoles except the Wii. Not 100% sure if Wii U will outsell the Wii, it might, it might not, it's too early to tell. However NES sold fairly well, if Wii U sells much less then I think it will, I think worst case it will still outsell the NES, just not by a huge margin.