Why do you think the Wii U will fail, when the 3DS came out of a similar horrible slump and even the Vita has stuck in the fight?

[Mythmaker1]

snowdog said:

Mythmaker1 said:

Because what you're calling "great choices," I call necessary choices. Without the price drop in 2011 and the re-model in 2012, the system wouldn't have taken off. Games helped, certainly, but it was those two business decisions that carried the day, and Nintendo paid a hefty toll for that price drop.

Yet at this point, Nintendo is both unable and unwilling to do the same things. They CANNOT drop the price without losing face, even if they could possibly afford to absorb the losses involved in that decision. And there are no obvious or well-worn criticisms of the console itself to be fixed in a re-model. Without a shift in the hardware element, they are not going to be able to maintain sales long-term, certainly not enough to reach their sales targets unless those change.

As for why the Vita is still in the game, it's because Sony is stubborn, and they've committed their prestige to it. In essence, they're in the same position Nintendo will be in with the Wii U if they don't turn things around or lower their expectations.

Given the usual costs of hardware decreasing after a console has been on the market for around a year I'd say that they could definitely afford to drop the price of the Wii U. They were only making a small loss at launch anyway.

You've also got to take into account the weaker Yen too. Nintendo should be able to drop the price by $50 around October to coincide with the launch of 3D Mario and make a small profit on each unit sold, or at the very least break even.

I too find it very odd that people are writing the console off so early, there's a thread in the Sales sub-forum asking whether the PS4 will outsell the Wii U and One and there's a great deal of people thinking it's going to have around 30m total lifetime sales this generation!!! :Oo

I can't understand the thinking of some people. It's sold over 3m already and imo it should do another 3m between now and November and should do another 4m from November until the end of the year. Those figures should be doable considering that we're going to see Wii Fit U, Pikmin 3, The Wonderful 101, Game & Wario, Wind Waker HD, 3D Mario and Mario Kart 8 all released before the end of the year, plus I suspect one or two surprises that we don't know about yet.

People also seem to be forgetting that both the PS4 and One's components will be on a 28nm process that hasn't fully matured yet, meaning that yields will be low and that the consoles will be supply constrained as a result. Sony and Microsoft will be lucky to have installed userbases over 1.5m at the end of the year, and as much as 2m each is going to be practically impossible. And if that wasn't bad enough you've got to take into account that both are going to be more expensive than the Wii U and that we're in the middle of the worst worldwide recession anyone has seen in donkey's years and that hardly anyone will have any cash going spare going into the New Year.

I wonder if we'll see these gaming media journalists writing about Sony and Microsoft going third party when their current gen consoles don't outsell the Wii U launches aligned..? I think not.

That might actually be enough. If Nintendo is willing to publically eat their words, and if the Yen and production costs come down enough, they can probably break even manufacturing the system; I doubt they could make much of a profit.

And as far as things go, Nintendo sold 3.06 million Wii U systems in  2012. 3 months into 2013, they'd sold 0.39 million. Weekly sales are decaying frightfully fast, and in order to sell 3 million before November, the Wii U would have to sell, on average, 4x as much as it is now, and sel 5x higher than that (20x higher than now) to sell 4 million during the holidays. Games will help, but they won't do that. Wii Fit U should help, but even it can't carry sales that far. More likely, we'll see 1-1.5 million before November, and 2-2.5 during holidays, at best.

And the reason you won't see that happening is because, unlike Nintendo, their business is not based entirely in video games.