Japan Sales 01/06/14 - Mario Kart 8 Week! (>325k SW, 19k HW)

[Michael-5]

Seece said:

Michael-5 said:

Well it was only selling 6k a week last year. Before Mario Kart WiiU was selling 9k a week this year. So 69k would be 23 weeks at that rate. However Mario Kart should perma-boost WiiU weekly sales to maybe 11k? Then it's only 14 weeks to go.

I think WiiU will be up YoY. As for the holidays, WiiU has a lot more to offer this year then last. Last year it was just Super Mario and Pikmin. This year there is Hyrule Warriors, Smash Bros, X (Maybe), SMT x Fire Emblem (maybe) and Bayonetta 2. Plus a lot of people will pick up the system for Mario Kart as well

It was 9k the week before MK, before that it was below WiiU yoy, you need to look back more than 1 week. Also I don't know if you can assume any sort of permanent boost in Japan, sales are too volatile there. If the boost was this weak why are you expecting such a good baseline?

I heard exactly the last thing last holiday for WiiU "Cheaper, more games, will sell better!" it didn't, it sold worse, in every country.

I don't expect WiiU sales to explode, but Mario Kart has always sold with a 33% attach rate on home consoles (10/33 million - N64, 7/21 million - GCN and 33/100 million - Wii). Mario Kart is Nintendo's only real long term sales booster and with the first really good console bundle just releasing, it's a sure things sales will stay up YoY.

As for the holiday arguement, I never said cheaper.......anyway, I don't agree with your logic. WiiU had a huge boom in sales in 2012 because it had a lot of hype as a newly debuted Wii console. For it to sell nearly on par in 2013 after all the bad media, with Super Mario releasing so late and WiiU having so few games, that's amazing.

So now in 2014 that some of the big guns (like Mario Kart and Smash Bros) are releasing, it's going to sell better. Mario Kart is Nintendo's Crown Jewel, it's the game that people will buy a WiiU for. The only other game I could see having a bigger affect is a retail release of a Wii Sports 2.

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Also on a side note, while WiiU is down YoY in Japan, it's up YoY by about 3% Worldwide. This is before Mario Kart, it's pretty much a guarentee that WiiU will be up YoY. The question is when will it be up in Japan.