vivster said:
That may very well be but please consider that PS4/X1 currently have a bigger draw than WiiU regardless of the upcoming titles. They have the buzz going for them and the great lineup of games with a broad appeal will only make them stronger. WiiU on the other hand is pretty much lost and buried under the hype of the new consoles that it is actually detrimental to their sales. The great titles definitely will push them to a "normal" level of sales and above but I don't think it can reach PS4/X1 levels of sale. It might beat them in the first weeks of the release of the titles and it might even beat them in the holidays but it just won't be enough to catch up the overall gap. It would be interesting to see if it can actually keep up over the year and I'd like to see it staying ahead of the X1 but as of now I'm just not seeing it happening. The end of spring will tell us more. |
I think you're definitely selling the Wii U short.
First off, the "bigger draw" (I'm assuming that this refers to the fact that they were launched recently) that the X-Box One and PS4 have is fading, and it's going to get even more distant the further we get from the consoles launch dates. While the PS4 is still outselling the Wii U by a longshot, the Wii U has already overtaken the X-Box One in weekly sales. The trend of Wii U outselling the X-Box One may be short lived, it's enough to indicate that the "newness" factor of the two later arrivals to next gen is fading fast. In other words, even if the XB1 reverts back to outselling the Wii U in the long run, it's not going to be by enough to overtake a lead of two million sales by the end of 2014.
Secondly, the Wii U has a large price advantage, particularly over the X-Box One (you could legitimately buy two Wii Us for the price of one XB1), which is certainly enough to make some customers pause before buying either system.
Thirdly, the Wii U's 2014 isn't exactly shabby. I don't want to get into a console war here, but it's got enough titles to appear like a worthwhile investments. Looking at exclusives, Bayo 2, Wii Fit U, X, and the wild card that is Hyrule Warriors are all expected to be released in 2014 along with the trio of SSB, MK8, and DK. I think the console can support itself enough between the big three releases with those titles in order to stretch its lead past 2014.
And lastly, I cannot stress this enough, the Wii U's 2014 lineup is filled with its biggest sellers. Even if the PS4 lineup had a better collection of games, the Wii U's lineup has three sequels to series that routinely sell past 5 million copies per game, and in the case of MK and SSB, it's closer to 10 and 8 million respectively (throwing out the outliar that is MK Wii, which would put things closer to 15 million). On the other hand, while the PS4's lineup certainly has quality titles, it's much more iffy in terms of how previous installments have sold. Infamous Second son, arguably the biggest exclusive in Sony's lineup, averages around a little over 2 million sales per installment. The Witcher has yet to sell over a million on any console, and Dragon Age averages just over a million on Sony consoles. The rest of the major titles are new games, so I guess we'll have to see how they sell, but I'd have some difficulty imagining them pushing consoles.
Obviously, MGS and Destiny will both be heavy hitters, but I'd honestly take Smash Bros and Mario Kart against those two any day.
My point in saying all this is while these are certainly all quality titles, I'm not sure they're quality titles that will sell systems, or at least sell enough systems to make any noticeable difference.
