Has Nintendo Lost Touch With North America?

[Michael-5]

Yakuzaice said:

Michael-5 said:

What did NDP say for April? May numbers aren't up.

Maybe I am wrong, I am using VGC numbers and I give VGC too much credit.

---

Wii U's market will grow. There was a small flare with Lego City and Monster Hunter, I think Pikmin 3 and the mega hitters like Mario Kart 8 will stabilize Wii U at a higher point.

I agree though, there is no "evidence" that the Wii U will be hyper successful. It's just too early to call, I mean 360 did a lot better then most people predicted because of Kinect.

NSMB for Wii was heavily bundled with the Red Wii. I bought a Red Wii, and I sold NSMB just so I can have a Red Wii. It's not a system pusher, especially when the level designs look so damn similar between NSMB Wii and NSMB U.

Also yes, I read what you said about PS3, but Nintendo isn't Sony, and it's too early to judge Wii U a failure. Like I said above 360 recovered and managed to hold 2nd for almost the whole gen. I'm expecting the Wii U to rebound like the 360, but more extreme, where you're expecting the Wii U to plummet, like the.... actually I can't think of a single console to open up to millions of sales in months, and not do very well.

Wii U already is setting it's own trend. If it fails, it will be the only console to sell 2.5 million units almost instantly, and then crash. I recall consoles like the Dreamcast and Saturn never exploded at launch like Wii U did, but sold consistantly sub-par. If it succeeds, it will have the worst start for a popular console, by far.

---

Let's just agree it's far, far too early to judge Wii U. 3DS is fully debatable though.

I don't think we've gotten the exact number yet for the 3DS, but we know it is less than 130k and greater than 100k.  So best case scenario it's up 4k YoY, worst case it is down 24k for the month of April.  Either way it is down for 2013 so far.

That small flare that they created was still some of the worst sales for a console ever, and sales were worse than ever just a few weeks later in April.  You said the whole market was growing, not just that the Wii U market would grow with new releases.  There is just no indication at the moment that the overall market in NA will grow or that the Wii U will somehow outperform the Wii due to this growth.

Even if half of NSMB's sales were from bundles it was still a massive seller and drove hardware sales in 2009.

The 360's rough launch was more due to supply than a lack of consumer demand.  It did 295k in the US in April 2006.  The Wii U did ~37k in its first April.  They are hardly following the same path.

The Gamecube is outpacing the Wii U in both Japan and the US at this point in their lives.  The Dreamcast actually had a rather good launch in the US, 500k in two weeks.  It probably doesn't quite match the Wii U's performance in the first two months, but that is more a factor of launching in September vs November.  I'd imagine the four month totals are more generous to the Dreamcast.

I agree it is too early to judge conclusively, but saying the Wii U could outsell the Wii makes no sense with the data we currently have.

3DS is down so far YoY, even VGC was tracking 3DS roughly do on par with itself from 2012 for April. So if VGC's May numbers are right, and 3DS is finally up YoY, I expect the system to grow overall this year. Maybe not 20 million annual sales like the DS, but maybe 17 million?

Like I said, early 2012's numbers are unnaturally high because of an $80 price cut. Fall 2012 numbers, even with the 3DS XL releasing, are pretty weak, so with Pokemon and Animal Crossing among other games, it should be easy for 3DS to be up YoY from now on.

There is also the possibility of a redesign, and who knows what a decent XL colour option will do for the 3DS in North America.

---

Oh, if what I typed indicated the whole market is growing, that's my bad. I only think Wii U's and 3DS's markets are growing.

As for NSMB Wii and DS, they were great concepts, and the first new SMB games in a long time, but the Wii U version really does not look that unique. When you look at old SMB games they are all so drastically different. SMB2 had you play as Peach and Toad, and pull veggies out the ground, SMB 3 had a racoon suit, and a frog suit, plus an underwater world and very different scenery, and SMW introduced Yoshi, slopes, among other things. NSMB U was a rushed game Nintendo made for launch, there is nothing unique about this title. It's not up to the same quality as the first 2 NSMB games.

I see NSMB U as a system seller, not the way the game is. If it had unique suits, and unique levels (like a zero G space level or something) then that would be a different story.

----

Wii U could go either way, I think sub-Gamecube is impossible. Dreamcast sold 500k at launch, and what 2 million so so annually for 4 years, and then fell apart? I think Wii U sales will pick up once Pikmin 3, Wonderful 101, Super Luigi U, Mario Kart 8, Wii Fit U, Mario & Sonic at the Winter Games, etc launch.

But you are right, especially with the data we currently have, saying Wii U will outsell Wii makes no sense. I don't think Wii U will outsell Wii, but I do think it will be their second most successful home console ever. I may be horribly wrong on this though, but I hope that I'm not.