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SwooshX on 11 December 2014
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zorg1000 said:
SJReiter said:
Also, the 10% increase in Wii U sales shows that Smash was not a system seller at all. In fact, that 10% increase could have occurred even if Smash hadn't been released in Nov. Really incredible when you consider how much Mario Kart 8 helped the Wii U. Seems like people who wanted Smash already had a Wii U by the time it came out.


Mario Kart didn't really cause that huge of a boost. People seem to forget that in 2013, Wii U had literally no meaningful software between Lego City in March and Pikmin 3 in August. Having one of Nintendo's biggest franchises release right in the middle of this period in 2014 made it seem like it caused a massive boost for late spring/early summer.

If u go back and compare Jan-April for 2013/2014, sales are pretty similar and each had one real big, significant title in the US, 2013-Lego City, 2014-Donkey Kong. Then fast forward to Sept/Oct/Nov and it seems like sales are similar in 2013/2014. In this time period, 2013 had Wind Waker HD & Mario 3D World as major releases while 2014 had Hyrule Warriors & Smash Bros U.

Overall it appears that early and late 2013/2014 are pretty similar with 2014 up slightly, it's just the middle of the year where it did much better which is solely due to releasing one of their biggest ip in a period which had nothing the previous year.

Yeah Wii U was back down to poor sales by August. But yeah Smash isn't a huge system either. The problem is all these 'big' Nintendo games have large overlapping fanbases. The person who likes Mario 3D World probably likes Mairo Kart and probably likes Smash Brothers as well. The hardware impact of these franchises was overestimated all along. 

Though Smash barely doing anything for Wii U sales is probably a tough pill for some to swallow. Was a lot of hype behind it being even bigger than Mario Kart and giving Nintendo a strong holiday season.