| Raze said:
Yup, the 1st party titles will always jab non-owners in the rib cage. Granted, I AM talking LTD here, so when the price drops into a range that people are comfortable with spending in order to play those first party games. Nintendo will still take a loss on the system due to those price drops, when people finally buy one. I don't see this any different than the slow 3DS start, or the slow PS3 start. Took them a while to get momentum. PS4 did everything right this gen, the Wii U had a very soft first 2 years, software wise. Due to that, it got lots of bad press, so it's going to take a while for the general public to shed that impression. If Smash Bros and Zelda are as good as advertised, it'll get the pace moving. With talk of a Star Fox game, and possibly a Metroid game, that should be enough to whet the appetitite of even ex-Nintendo fans, once the price drops into a reasonable range of course. |
Only one Nintendo home console has hit 75m, so first party titles certainly don't always do it. The Wii U has already had a lot of the games that made the Wii such a success. NSMB, Wii Fit, Wii Sports, Mario Kart, Wii Party, Just Dance, etc. If all these once massive franchises lead to the Wii U selling 68k just two weeks after MK8, how will it make it to 75m? On June 14, 2008 the Wii was at 27.7m and selling ~300k (sometimes quite a bit more) a week. So it already had a 21.3m lead over the Wii U in a similar time frame, and was gaining by nearly a quarter of a million per week. That means in a few months the Wii will already have a 26m lead over the Wii U. Which in turn means that the Wii U will need to start matching Wii sales from that point forward to hit 75m. To put that in perspective, a five week period during the 2008 holidays saw the Wii sell more than the Wii U has lifetime.
The comparisons to the 3DS and PS3 were never great, but it is getting ridiculous now. The 3DS turned things around in about 5 months, and was selling considerably better than the Wii U even before the price cut. Only the 2 weeks right before the price cut saw 3DS sales lower than the Wii U 2 weeks after MK8. The PS3 again turned things around more quickly (holiday '07), and was doing better during its "slow start" compared to the Wii U. As of June 14, 2008 the PS3 was 108% higher LTD, and had 352% higher weekly sales. To be fair that was MGS4 launch week, but that is still 133% higher than the MK8 launch week. The PS3 also stayed higher than the MK8 launch week for five more consecutive weeks.
How much do you expect those 4 games to sell? Even if we're optimistic they probably won't be higher than 20m combined. So assuming zero current Wii U owners buy them, and zero people buy more than one game, that means the Wii U would still need to sell 55m on the backs of other games. So far it has managed 6.4m with 1.5 years and quite a few formerly massive franchises.
