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Soundwave on 15 September 2014
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Vena said:
Soundwave said:

They have Mario 3D World, Mario Kart 8, a better main bundle (NSMBU for $299.99), DKC, Rayman, Wii Party U, Zelda: WWHD, etc. this year over last year though ... really they've spent pretty much all their big guns except Smash Brothers, which like Mario Kart 8 will likely be good for a 2 month boost and then they're basically screwed again.

Things like Bayonetta 2 as much I personally would love for it to do well, are not going to do diddly squat for the baseline.

Wii U is just a mediocre selling console, that's all there really is to it.

 


No one should have an illusion of the WiiU doing anything but possibly NGC numbers if that and finishing in a distant third, but what should be obvious is that the system will not have nine month long droughts of gamelessness and baselines to match. It will end up as a system with low sales and a fat library of solid games, probably positive in profits by the end of the generation and with a likely high adoption rate for software. (And it won't single handedly kill the entire Japanese home console market and development ala PS3.)

I think we need to kill this "Wii U is kinda selling like GameCube" fallacy. It's not. It's selling far worse in the US. 

The Wii U's "normal" month equals what would've been considered a terrible month for the GameCube. 

The Wii U has already put up something like 16-17 months of sub-100k sales in North America. It basically only goes over 100k for Nov/Dec each year and for one month with Mario Kart. 

The GameCube had 5 total months under 100k at the same point in its life cycle in North America. But sub-100k is basically the norm for the Wii U even with several of Nintendo's bigger IP (Mario Kart, 2D Mario, 3D Mario, DKC, Wii series, etc.). It will be under 100k again in September even with Hyrule Warriors. 

This is a system that can't even maintain a poor level of sales. 100k in a month would be a bad level of sales for most any hardware (even 3rd place consoles), but for Wii U, 100k in a month outside of Nov/Dec would be considered great, lol. The Wii U is performing badly even by "3rd place console" standards. It's just that some people have set the bar so low for the system that they think it's doing relatively OK when it's not.