When will Wii U pass up GameCube?

[zorg1000]

Soundwave said:

If it was going to outsell/match the GameCube, both Mario 3D World and Mario Kart 8 should've provided much larger boosts. The 3DS started to sell at a reasonably high level after Mario 3D Land and MK7, the Wii U is no where near as close to those levels. 

It's still selling under the GameCube even for the equivalent months of June/July (2003 vs 2014), even though the GameCube had no notable releases during this time. That means the gap between the GameCube and Wii U has *grown* larger even despite MK8 and 3D World. 

Doubling the baseline when your baseline was crap to begin with isn't really impressive.

Nintendo doesn't have many big franchises left. They have Smash Brothers, which also is going to have to compete with the 3DS version and basically they've spent their bigger gun IP.

A more cartoonish style Zelda is not going to move hardware.

To be fair 3DS also recieved a major price cut shortly before those games released, $80 or about 1/3 its original price. On the other hand Wii U has yet to recieve a true price cut, what they did last year was more like adding value to bundles.

Wii U at launch vs Wii U now

8gb/no game-$299 vs 32gb/Mario+Luigi U-$299

32gb/Nintendo Land-$349 vs 32gb/Mario Kart+Remote/Wheel-$329

Basically they Increased the value while cutting $20 off the higher priced sku, or about 5% the original price. On top of the Wii U is still twice the price of Gamecube in the same time frame, starting next month it will be triple the price of Gamecube if Wii U does not recieve a price cut.

Gamecube peaked in its second full year but I think if things go right (a BIG if) Wii U will peak in its third year, 2015. Its baseline in the early months of the year could be up due to Mario Kart/Smash Bros and potentially Amiibo success. Also there are rumors that Nintendo is planning an exclusive each month next year, which probably wont happen but I do believe they can pump out 2 per quarter which can help sales remain steady into the middle part of the year. Finally I think a major price cut will happen in the later part of next year, hopefully to $199 in Sept.

I know alot of Nintendo fans get mocked with the chalkboard and constantly saying "wait for blank" but I firmly believe we cant truly compare Wii U vs Gamecube until next year. Right now im 50/50 on whether Wii U will pass GC, it just depends on how Nintendo executes there strategy next year, if they once again delay games and have long droughts and dont reduce its price then it wont pass it but if they fix those problems then I think it has a fighting chance.