| Shadow1980 said: It's improbable, perhaps impossible, for the Wii U to catch up with the GC at this point. It could still (barely) breach 20 million, but 25 million is right out. Looking at actual sales figures from the U.S. and Japan (European GC sales are unavailable), by the end of 2003 the GameCube had sold 6.87M in the U.S. and 3.12 million in Japan. As of the end of this past June, the Wii U is sitting at 2.65M in the U.S. and 1.81M in Japan, and assuming my projections pan out its lifetime sales will likely be sitting at between 4 to 4.5 million in the U.S., maybe 2.25 to 2.5M in Japan, and around 9.5M give or take globally. Depending on how quickly its sales taper off after this year (which should be the peak), it could still pass 20 million globally, but it has a snowball's chance in hell of passing the GC. Had it sustained enough momentum after last Christmas, I might say otherwise, but it dropped like a rock again in January. With MK8 & Smash, it may retain better momentum after the coming holiday season, and another price cut could provide a boost (or at least slow the decline), and Zelda and a "proper" 3D star-hunting Mario game could help boost sales temporarily as well, but GC-level sales ain't happening. It's unfortunately, as it's a great system with lots of good games, but Nintendo dropped the ball. Had it gotten better marketing, or had it not had such a terrible drought in the first half of 2013, or if it started off a bit cheaper, or if it had NSMBU as the original pack-in, or any combination of these things, the Wii U might have done better. It had a great launch, and had things gone better I think it could have easily sold somewhere in the 30-40 million unit range. |
So if it has a chance of passing 20m then why the hell can't it sell 1.74m more than 20m. It can.. its easy if its possible to pass 20m. and damn. The GameCube already sold 3.12m in Japan at the end of 2003.. that means in the next 3 years it sold only 880k in Japan
