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naruball on 05 June 2014
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padib said:
naruball said:

The way I see it, and I may be wrong, the lack of greater boost suggests that there's no way the wiiu can do even relatively well in Japan at this point. Just like with psvita in the west when great games come out and they sell quite well, but hardware is almost unaffected, it goes to show that people interested in the console are mainly hardcore fans. Everyone else is not willing to get an entire console for just one game, as the console itself is unimpressive to them.

As soon as you get a negative stigma, there's almost no turning back. Ninty avoided this with 3ds, as they reacted quickly to the 3ds' unalarming low sales, but they waited too long to do something about wiiu. Had some of these games lauched earlier and there wasn't so much doom surrounding wiiu, I think it would have had consistently healthy sales. 

It's a reasonable point of view, but the numbers posted by tbone disagree. (the comparative graph comparing MK8 with previous MK entries' first week and lifetime sales)

The fw sales of MK are in line with massive lifetime sales (2 to 4m units), and to sustain those lifetime sales, consoles need to be sold. With a typical attach ratio of 33% (as posted by Michael-5 earlier), we have that 6 to 12m U's should be sold in japan to make sense with the numbers.

So that's why I believe the HW-selling ability of MK will have to be less front-loaded for the U, but it's eventual.

I also could be wrong, but we will keep following the numbers to see what's true.

Yeah, I agree. It's an interesting view and might end up being the case. Though I have no plans to buy a wiiu, I'd like to see it do well, as good games (such as mario kart 8) deserve good sales (hardware too, of course).