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Mummelmann on 20 February 2014
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torok said:
Mummelmann said:

The PS3 was at 10.3 million lifetime in the same time frame as the Wii U now, and people did call that a flop daily on these very forums, it was also up about 40-50% yoy in Q1 of the second year, despite Q1 the year before seeing the relatively large European launch, this lack of natural growth for the Wii U is worrying and suggests that there quite simply isn't a very large audience for it. In February 2015, some users will point out that; "its been out only two years and three months, it's way too soon to call anything." Everyone seems to agree that the Vita is a massive failure, for reference; it was at about 4.65 million in a similar time frame in its life, about one million behind the Wii U. If someone throws the word "flop" around a bit, it's kind of hard not to agree that it is warranted at this point, especially seeing the sales being more or less flat yoy, the mandatory second year rise appears to be elusive as of yet, and even with a resurgence in spring and near the holidays, it will take quite some time to catch the flop by consensus: the PS Vita, and that tells us something. Besides; as people rightfully did with the PS3 vs PS2, when you view these numbers in context with the predecessor (Wii), it's kind of hard not to resort to the word "flop".


Well, Wii U and Vita are flops. If one of them finds a miracle and sells 60-70M units then we stop calling it a flop. PS3 was a flop, but after 80M+ we can't call it like that anymore. But it isn't a success since it lost market share and let the competitors gain strength. 


The PS3 was a major disappointment, could have been a flop if Sony had made the wrong choices and stayed the course, their aggressive price cuts and massive publisher support was detrimental to their bottom line but paramount to remaining a force on the market to be reckoned with. That's why I can't see any scenario where MS will simply let the One keep on flailing in open water, they will take action just like Sony did in the 7th gen. Nintendo have already taken some action but they have a couple of unique (funnily enough since that's their game) problems today; a terribly aimed product with no real chance of redemption, the one thing that really sets it apart is, by paradox, also the one thing causing them the most harm by far. They have terrible developer support and lack any kind of experience with HD development, causing the vital 1st party titles that need to fill the gaps to be delayed time and time again. They are also losing quite a bit of money which causes two main problems; little to no leverage for significant pricing adjustments and the most overlooked one; they have by far the least return on hardware investments, what they get for the manufacturing cost is less than impressive.
Top that with a management that is deathly afraid of moving away from tradition, small teams and two main platforms to fully support and you have yourself a disaster on hand.

I don't like the word "flop", not one bit, and I tend not to use it. But for expectations, actual grips and the impact of those, overall sales situation, support and future outlooks; it's really, really hard to find any other term that fits the Wii U. I continue to be amazed at those who keep saying that Nintendo are "clearly the ones best fit to lead the industry"; their current presence with a crashing handheld sector and zero understanding of market movements in general and their continued insistence on refusing to adopt standards and tech through the years having bitten them in the proverbial behind in the HD transition, more than ever, quite clearly shows that they are in fact not fit to lead the industry at present.