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Lawlight on 08 November 2013
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Shadow1980 said:
Lawlight said:


Nintendo has the advantage of being a purely Japanese developer so they have one more region to sell to. But even then, they are having way less 10M sellers these days.


But Nintendo also had the disadvantage of their home systems never really having much appeal to European audiences until the Wii. The region as a whole was not big on consoles period during the 80s & early 90s, and the PS1 was the first big breakthrough console there. The PS1 and PS2 both had far outsold any other systems, and that's largely due to Europe adding a ton to the worldwide tally. PlayStation was the first truly global console brand. By time the current generation had started in 2005, the PS1 and PS2 had both shipped around 100 million units. The NES was officially in third place in the all-time best sellers list with 62 million sold. Europe is the main reason why they had outsold the NES by such a huge margin. Without Europe, the PS1 would have sold 62 million, while without Europe the NES would have sold over 53 million, and that was a smaller market back then. So, Europe didn't really get on board with Nintendo's console offerings until the Wii (they've always bought their portables in huge quantities, though), whereas the PlayStation brand has had broad appeal in all regions since day one.

As for the Xbox brand, it has the disadvantage of having negligible presence in Japan, plus it's the youngest brand with only two systems to date, the first of which sold only 24 million units (the PS2 utterly dominated, leaving the Xbox and GameCube to fight over the few remaining scraps of market share). Halo 3 became the brand's first and only exclusive to sell over 10 million copies (well, technically so did Kinect Adventures, but it was bundled with the Kinect), and it did so almost entirely through sales in Europe and especially North America, where the 360 is on track to become the second best-selling home system ever in the region.

So, even as a true global brand, Sony only has one series that consistently sells over 10 million copies, that being Gran Turismo. The Xbox brand will likewise only see the Halo series breach 10 million. Reach and Halo 4 might pass that mark by time the 360 goes out of production, and Halo 5 & 6 might hit that mark as well. Nintendo might struggle to get any Wii U titles over 10 million, but they have the advantage of their exclusives typically having a better attach rate than the other brands' exclusives (because people mainly buy Nintendo systems to play Nintendo games). Even with only 33 million units sold, the N64's top exclusives still managed to match or exceed the PS1's exclusives, with Super Mario 64 beating Gran Turismo to be the best-selling title of the fifth generation, and Mario Kart 64, Goldeneye, and Ocarina of Time were the #3, #6, and #8 titles, respectively. Even the GameCube's top exclusives still managed to do fairly decent despite the system only selling 22 million units, though none sold over 10 million (Smash Bros. Melee was the system's best-selling game at 7 million). It's conceivable that Mario Kart 8, Smash Bros., and possibly also SM3DW could hit the 10 million mark (NSMBU will definitely pass the 10M mark, but that's because it's now the pack-in title; we'll never know for sure if it could hit it on its own now, but given its high attach rate it likely could have shown that it had exceedingly strong legs). However, it's not guaranteed, and we're definitely not going to see gargantuas like Mario Kart Wii and New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Ultimately, it's going to come down to how much the Wii U rebounds during the current holiday season and in 2014. If it can at least meet or exceed N64 levels, then we could potentially see some 10+ million sellers. But even if it only gets one, that'll be pretty notable for a system that will certainly end up a distant third in terms of hardware sales.

 

Europe doesn't discriminate against Nintendo hardware though. If it's good, they will buy it. 3DS is selling well there. However, how many great western games actually sell well in Japan?

Nintendo's advantage when it comes to attach rate stems from the lack of 3rd party support. KZ:SF coming out will be competing against BF4, CoD:G, AC:4, NFS:R, Knack, etc. There's just too many games. What will Super Mario 3D World be competing against?