PigPen said:
Hedra42 said:
Here are some interesting facts:
Wii U (according to VGC) sold about 3.1 million from end of March 2013 to end of March 2014.
Nintendo are predicting sales of 3.6 million from 1 April to 31 March 2015, and that's with MK8 and SSB.
This doesn't suggest that they're expecting these two games to make an enormous impact generally, (i.e., they're not expecting MK8 to shift millions of consoles)
Looking back at the previous games in the series
For an install base of 33 million, MK64 sold 10 million
For an install base of 22 million, MKDD sold 7 million
For an install base of 100 million, MK Wii sold 34 million
In all three cases, roughly one third of console owners bought Mario Kart, and that Mario Kart was introduced to a lot of casual gamers through the Wii.
It's interesting to note, however, that of all the Wii games, MK Wii is the only Wii game to have exceeded 1 million for the year ended March 2014. 1.27 million to be exact, (source - Nintendo supplementary information doc) which almost matches up with VGC sales of 1.25 million Wiis for the same period. Okay, so that might mean that there are a lot of MKWii bundles still out there, but it doesn't change the fact that for just about every Wii that was sold in the last 12 months, a copy of MKWii was sold too.
What does this tell us? Not much, beyond that MK8 will probably sell roughly between 3 and 3.5 million copies by this time next year (one third of an install base of about 10 million based on Nintendo's hardware predictions.), that Mario Kart is a highly popular game and that it will be the MK8 hardware bundle that entices the casual gamer into buying the Wii U in the end. By how much is anybody's guess, but judging by their prediction, Nintendo don't appear to be putting all their hopes on it.
|
By this time next year? It will sell 3.5 million way before then.
|
I'm hoping that it will, and with the bundle launching at the same time, there's a fair chance that it might.
But based on past performance, where one third of console owners have bought Mario Kart in each of the last three generations, as well as Nintendo's hardware projections for the next 12 months, 3.5 million is a reasonable estimate for MK8 for this time next year. Put another way, I wouldn't expect it to do any less than that.
