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JWeinCom on 30 July 2013
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Vita- 25 million. Honestly, I think that's kind of optimistic. The Vita will not turn things around in the West unless it has a HUGE marketing push and HUGE releases. What does Sony have in store? A Walking Dead bundle? Sony has shown no signs that they really are willing to invest in making the Vita succeed in the West, and it's not like the Vita is going to start selling better by magic.

The remote play feature is interesting, but there are two issues. How well it will work remains to be seen over wifi (where its most useful). It's kind of a niche feature. If you travel alot, or live in two locations (like a divorce kid or someone who stays at their boyfriend/girlfriend's place alot) it could be really cool. Otherwise, it's not incredible useful. In terms of using it like a Wii U Gamepad, that will take off about as well as the Move. If it's not a standard feature, it won't be implemented well. Off screen play is cool, but not something that is incredibly interesting to most people.

Still the Vita has decent support in Japan, and if they could ween the population off of the psp, it could sell about 10-15 million there. As for the West, it's hard to overstate how badly it's bombing here. It hit just over a million last year which is awful considering it launched in february. This year so far it's at about 200K. It was over 500K at this point last year. That means that the Vita very likely won't reach 1 million units in the US this year. Even hitting 1 million in this year in Europe is not a sure thing (at 300K or so this year, and about 600K last year and wound up selling around 1.5K).

Honestly, the situation is just bad, and there doesn't seem to be getting much better. Killzone is not a title to turn thing around, and neither is tear away. Even with a price cut, the Vita is going to struggle in a holiday season where the 3DS and Wii U have amazing and very strong lineups respectively, the PS3 and XBox 360 are still alive and well, and two new consoles are launching. It's hard to imagine many gamers who would be best served by a Vita this holiday season. At the rate the Vita is going I don't see how much longer it will be viable in the US. To even have a chance, the Vita would need a price drop that put it on par with or below the price point of the 3DS XL and a hell of a lineup.

To sum it up, I'm guessing about 15 million lifetime in Japan, about 6 million in Europe, and about 4 million in the US. There could be a few million sales in the rest of the world if the device ever gets cheap enough, but with a lack of support and being harder to hack, I still don't see it catching on as well as the PSP did.

Wii U- 65 million

I think the Wii U easily has what it takes to be the number one home and family console. I also think the popularity that games like NSMB and MKWii gained will pay off in the long run. Games like Smash, Zelda, and Metroid will obviously bring in the Nintendo crowd. Wii Fit U is still going to be a 10million+ seller, and potentially more if Nintendo adds some meaningful new stuff. I don't have much doubt that the Wii U will be far far more successful than the Gamecube, but I don't see the Wii catching fire like the Wii did. It's hard to generate that kind of massive hype after launch (although they did it with the DS) and so far Nintendo hasn't shown any truly mass appeal games. The fact that Nintendo also hasn't created any new mass appeal franchises for the 3DS is worrying.

Unlike the Vita, the Wii U has a strong holiday lineup, and a lot of strong brands and franchises yet to release. It'll have a pretty strong holiday season, and as price goes down and releases come up it'll have respectable numbers. 30 million in the US seems reasonable, as does 20 million in Europe. Japan might see about 5 million, with another 5-7 million in other regions.