By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Mummelmann on 07 May 2014
Edit Thread
Seece said:
Mummelmann said:


25 is impossible, agreed, which is why I'm realizing that it's headed for the lower part of the estimate and I won't be shocked to see it fall below either. I still think they can have a fairly good holiday if they cut the price and get the timing right on Smash and some good bundles and they could manage a decent 2015. The question now is probably; will they bother trying? These revisions would point more towards no, but only time will show.

I'm not one for overestimating the Wii U, as should be clear from my time in the UNITY thread and, like I said; I won't be surprised if it falls under 18 million lifetime, continuing the downwards spiral from the NES to the Gamecube in frightening fashion.

You not see the news about them still losing money on WiiU? No way will we see a price cut this year, and even if we did it'd be $50 which IMo would do nothing. Needs to be $100+ to even make a splash.

So yeah, it all rides on Smash, which I don't think has any casual appeal at all. And what Nintendo fan is not going to have a WiiU with Pikmin, Zelda, MK, Donkey Kong ect ect on the system already???


Still losing money? I figured they could possibly start breaking even on hardware sometime in mid 2014 (late Q2), but that was obviously wrong. One of the main problems is incorporating chipsets and parts that are being produced in very low volumes; they'll go down in price a lot slower due to low implementation rates, cost deflation slows to a crawl and you're left with no leverage for pricing strategy.

Smash is also releasing on 3DS, almost half a year before the Wii U, that was another brilliant decision. And almost all the Directs I've seen have had a very heavy emphasis on 3DS, with collection games or VC announcements taking up most of the Wii U's schedule. This is some mess they've gotten themselves into, I think they'll be hard pressed to reach 35 million sold by the end of 2014 at this rate... Perhaps they'll pick up the slack and sell 50 million next year, to meet the prophet's 60 million LTD estimates.