PDF said:
Looking at how poorly the WiiU is selling right now and even if it managed to double or tripple its weekly sales it would still be doing terrible. If people think that the WiiU will be ontop in 2014 they must be predicting absolutely atrocious sales for the PS4 and XB1 in 2014. That would be terrible for the industry if true. |
Many of us can take pride in knowing that we are more informed when it comes to video games and the trends of the market compared to, say, your typical generic news site that only forms conclusions based on what is right in front of them. This is why so many analysts (Pachter included, iirc) declared that Nintendo would be lucky to have 15% of the market for the 7th gen back when the Gamecube was out.
Just looking at the WiiU's current sales it may be logical to assume that the console is going to fail, but what about what tomorrow could bring? Nintendo often surprises when their back is against the wall, and of course they are quite aware of how the console is currently tanking, so we can assume that they are (hopefully) taking measures to rectify this. The games industry is their livelihood after all. If we indeed believe that they could right the ship then that doesn't necessarily mean a bad performance from Sony or Microsoft, just a better performance in 2014 from the console with the biggest selling IPs and the lowest price.
However, I do think that people may be a bit surprised as to how the PS4/XB1 are going to fare during most of 2014. They will still have relatively small libraries, most of the games coming to them will be available for three additional platforms (PS3, 360, PC), none of the exclusives announced so far are big name system sellers, and they will both be at their premium price tags during this time. I have no doubt that hardcore Sony and Microsoft fans will jump in just as they did early on for their 7th gen consoles, but the biggest numbers for the PS360 came much later when the prices were cheaper and the libraries more robust.
WiiU could continue to struggle in 2014, but there is a definite possibility that the opposite could prove true. I certainly do think there is a very good chance that it will do more than the 7m you predicted previously.
