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Soundwave on 15 September 2014
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Vena said:
Soundwave said:

I really honestly have not seen any indication at least in the US that anything over than the really big Mario games cause any type of bump for the Wii U. 

Even franchises like Donkey Kong Country and Pikmin 3 seemed to cause a nominal blip at best. 

I'm not even sure if you can say the Wii U is a system that sells Nintendo games very well, it basically just sells the main Mario games at an OK attach rate. 

Everything else, even Nintendo is having trouble selling games on this thing or getting any type of even temoprary bump from non-Mario releases. 

While it's a quality machine, from a market POV this is pretty much Nintendo's nightmare console. 


DK/Pikmin are not even remotely on the same league as Zelda or even, to a lesser extent, Metroid. Neither of which are anywhere in league with Mario anything, but they still make sizable bumps because they are mainstream and known titles which can be marketted heavily if done properly and have established mind share. Pikmin and DK are not very commonly known, Pikmin especially is a niche upon niches. Xenoblade has this odd transient state of being a recently established name in communities for "the JRPG experience" and that can also be worked into more than just niche appeal as the generation as a whole has and will continue to lack titles from this genre until DQXI which will likely come well after Xenoblade X. As recent releases like DBefault or even the original Xenoblade, have shown there is a market for JRPGs in the west and Europe, its just not tapped frequently if at all.

Ultimately, for the WiiU, the system is building a bunch of dots on the map that, little by little, interconnect for people. There are a handful of titles come, coming, and coming next year, that are big blips that get bigger returns/sales than normal. Little things like Bayo2 or other niche titles might push a few tens of thousands of people over the ledge and then open up the whole backlog library. Etc. This won't get it to sell spectacularly but it will chug along and, as I said, it will likely end up with the console as a whole (along with the 3DS) returning to profitability by the end with Nintendo losing little to no money in the long run.

WiiU currently has the highest attach rate as far as I remember, so obviously it sells its titles well enough (and one has to consider that it has more titles and a longer market time, so attach rates should be dropping as not everyone buys everything) and the YoY software sales increase is a sign of it at least selling something.

Nintendo will teeter through the storm well enough, what they do after will be important but at least they got several big hurdles out of the way. If they can build up a strong core-image, that's even better.


DKC is very much in Zelda's league, if anything Zelda is overrated as a big seller (Metroid is waaaaay overrated, DKCR outsold all three Metroid Prime games combined). 

I dunno, I'm pretty much calling it on Wii U, I think it's a turkey and nothing is changing that barring Amiibo becoming the next monster toy craze that actual appeals to normal kids who wouldn't buy Nintendo otherwise (not just 30 year old Nintendo fans). And even there, Wii U has to "share" amiibo with 3DS/n3DS (just like Smash and NSMB). If there was to be some big turnaround we would've seen it already with Mario 3D World and Mario Kart 8, even the 3DS had an immediate jump to much healthier sales, but the Wii U continues to drop back down to the gutter. 

I think it's going to be their last console, Fusion will be next, but in that scenario the "console" is probably just replaced by something that lets you play the main handheld games on your TV (basically the VitaTV idea, just with actual Nintendo support behind it).

And maybe that's for the best honestly, it really is a shame that many legitimate good games like Hyrule Warriors, Bayonetta 2, Splatoon, DKC: Tropical Freeze, Xenoblade, Pikmin 3, etc. are going to suffer on the Wii U's tiny userbase. If those titles had access to even a 3DS sized userbase they would comfortably enjoy better sales but as is they're likely all victims of a really crappy selling console. It's a damn shame, but you can't make the amount of stupid mistakes Nintendo made and not pay a heavy price for it.