haterstompers on 20 August 2014
| Shadow1980 said: I'm going to have to go with the XBO. Assuming my projections for 2014 are accurate, by the end of the year the Wii U will still be in second place at 9.5 million with the XBO just behind it at 8.5M. With MK8 and Smash, the biggest system-sellers for Nintendo, being 2014 releases, unless the Wii U gets a price cut early next year gives a massive and sustained boost to sales, this will be the peak year for the system. While price cuts do frequently give big boosts to sales, their effects are unpredictable, with them sometimes giving a boost lasting only a couple of months while other times boosting sales for well over a year. The Wii itself is a good case study on the effects of price cuts. 2008 was an amazing year fro the Wii, with Smash and Mario Kart boosting sales earlier in the year to a huge degree. Q2 2008 was its best non-holiday quarter by far, and it still carried enough momentum through the remainder of the year for Q4 to be an astounding holiday quarter, pulling 5 million units in the U.S. The Wii then got its first price cut in September of the following year, which actually helped boost it to its best holiday season ever in the U.S. However, its baseline sales for 2009 prior to the price cut showed clear signs that the system was already peaking, with monthly sales from January through August being lower on average than even those in 2009; Q2 2009 was the first quarter it dropped below one million units sold per quarter in the U.S. The Mario Kart and Smash effects were fizzling out, and there was nothing left to give it further momentum until the price cut. While Q4 2009 was the Wii's best holiday, its sales were sufficiently low from the previous three quarters to where total 2009 sales fell short of 2008 sales. Of course, in 2010 it immediately started trending downwards again. I think we can expect something similar with the Wii U. Unless the price cut is established early enough, I think we'll see monthly sales start to decline YoY no later than Q2 of next year. Mario Kart and Smash won't be able to enhance the baseline for long, so it'll need a price cut to pick up the slack. If the price cut comes sufficiently late in the year, sales in 2015 will almost certainly decline YoY from 2014. Even if it comes early enough, it may at best keep sales roughly flat from this year. So, best-case scenario, the Wii U pulls another 4 million next year. Assuming it's at 9.5M by the end of this year, that'll put it at 13.5 million units sold LTD by the end of 2015. If the XBO is at 8.5M LTD by the end of this year, if the Wii U is at 13.5M LTD by the end of next year the XBO will have to sell 5 million next year just to tie it. This is the XBO's first full calendar year, and I think it's clear that it hasn't peaked yet. It has yet to receive main entries in its biggest IP, nor has it received its first "true" price cut yet. With Halo 5 coming next year, and the likelihood of a price drop to $300 next year, 2015 will likely be its peak year. It will almost certainly get a respectable YoY increase in sales, which if it pulls 5 million this year even only a modest 20% increase will yield 6 million next year, putting its LTD sales at 14.5 million, a million ahead of the Wii U. If it gets a strong 50% YoY boost, that'll put it at 16 million, 2.5M ahead of the Wii U. Unless both Halo 5 and an actual price cut fail to boost sales next year, an extremely unlikely situation, then it is inevitable that the XBO takes second place by the end of next year. Even if it doesn't accomplish that task next year, unlike the Wii U it will still get just as strong third-party support as the PS4, which will give it better legs, and with the Wii U already being well past it peak, 2016 is the absolute latest point by which the XBO will the Wii U. Even though it's falling waaaay short of its predecessor, the XBO still is having a far, far better first year than the Wii U and will almost certainly have a much better peak year next year, and combined with a better launch to boot, the XBO passing the Wii U is essentially a given. |
your wii u end of 2015 numbers are more in line with wii u end of 2014 numbers.
