xbone + wii u closing the gap with ps4!

[TheBlackNaruto]

Aielyn said:

Really? What about DS vs PSP?

And the Wii U is doing it right now. Have a look at the Weekly Hardware Comparisons tool, and look at Wii U sales relative to the other two (remove all of the other systems, and look at the time since launch of the PS4 and XBO).

In fact, prior to the end of May, the Wii U had only a total of three weeks of sales higher than 50k that didn't lie between the 27th of October and the 11th of February. Those three weeks were the weeks ending March 23rd and 30th and October 5th, 2013. These correspond to the week of the release of Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate outside of Japan, the week following that (we'll assume this bump came from the MH3U bundle), and the week that Wind Waker HD released. The vast majority of other weeks were around 30k a week.

Since the release of Mario Kart 8, however, the Wii U has had six weeks in a row above 60k a week, with the last three all sustaining sales a little above it (thus demonstrating that it's not still decaying), without any sort of price cut and without any notable other game released within that period. With the exception of that second week for PS4, when it was out of stock in most places, thus depressing sales for that week (resulting in the Wii U outselling the PS4 that week), the PS4 has almost always held a more than 100k lead on Wii U in weekly sales, and has always held a lead of at least 70k... until the end of May. With the release of Mario Kart 8, the furthest that PS4 has gotten ahead of Wii U is 45k, and in that period, the PS4 got Sniper Elite 3, EA Sports UFC, MotoGP 14, Murdered: Soul Suspect, and Watch_Dogs, all of which charted (with EA Sports UFC and Watch_Dogs being games that topped the chart for their respective weeks), while the Wii U got... Mario Kart 8. One game. There were only two other retail releases in the period, How To Train Your Dragon 2 and Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark, neither of which managed to even appear in the top 100 in the week of release.

So basically, with one game, the Wii U doubled its baseline weekly sales, brought it from a point where it was selling far worse than the other consoles to a point where it's matching Xbox One and not that far behind PS4.

What happens when the Wii U now gets Smash Bros, the other highly-anticipated game that has a lot of people planning to get a Wii U (but not getting it until the game is released)? In the meantime, what happens when the ultimate fanservice Zelda title, Hyrule Warriors, gets released? Or Bayonetta 2? Or Fatal Frame 5 in Japan? If one game can have such a significant impact, what happens when high profile Wii U exclusives are released in a shorter period of time?

And for anyone who is thinking of saying something like "When the Mario Kart 8 promotion ends, the sales will drop", I'm going to point out that Nintendo aren't forced to not do anything else until the release of their next game; if a deal like that is what it takes to keep the system selling, they'll introduce more, similar deals. So even if you're right, and the Mario Kart 8 promotion is why sales are staying so high, then all it takes is Nintendo having another such deal.

While all that is true you must also take into account the fact that the XB1 and PS4 are currently outselling the Wii U with higher prices and none of their big titles released as well. And while the impact of MK8 was significant without much 3rp party support the sales will indeed declind maybe not to pre MK8 levels but they will indeed go down because there are not a lot of BIG games coming out like SSB, MK8 etc consistent enough IMO.

So it is definitely an uphill battle because the cards are currently favoring PS4 and XB1 who can still do price cuts and have yet to really release ANY of their BIG releases. But time will tell how things will play out.