Has Wii U Reached Full Market Saturation?

[zorg1000]

RolStoppable said:

zorg1000 said:

In this scenario, I don't see why both devices couldn't cost the exact same. The console would essentially be a home version of their handheld, similar to Vita/Vita TV except Nintendo has big multimillion selling franchises to support it with unlike Vita. Right now Vita is $199, Vita TV $99 standalone or $139 with a game, controller and memory card. So let's say Nintendo's next handheld is moderately more powerful than Vita in the same way 3DS is moderately more powerful than PSP. They could easily sell it for $199 in 2016 at a profit. The console version could be slightly more powerful in order to display games at a higher resolution/framerate, it terms of power it would basically be a Wii U but wouldn't have a Gamepad controller so it could easily be sold for $199 at a profit in 2016.

The console would get all the third party support that the handheld receives because they are essentially the same hardware just in a different form factor. They would get rid of disks entirely and use DS/3DS style game carts that are playable on either device.

The handheld and console would be the same price and offer the same library, it just comes down to whether u prefer playing on a TV or a handheld. They could also allow some type of extra features in games for those who own both giving consumers at least a little incentive to own both devices.

Ugh, that's one of the worst things they could do. That sort of stuff is usually not added benefit, but something that is withheld to bait people into double-dipping.

But anyway, you didn't really make a counter-argument to my point that one of the devices would suffer from redundancy if they both had the exact same library. At that point they might as well allow the handheld to be connected to a TV and be used with controllers, because that allows big cost-savings in R&D and manufacturing.

Don't they already kinda suffer from redundancy? Wii U has sold like 40 million less than 3DS to date, clearly outside of the most hardcore Nintendo fans, very few people are buying both, just like it was during the N64 & GC eras as well.

Lifetime sales for 3DS+Wii U will likely be around 80 million (3DS-65m, Wii U-15m), a well done unified concept could sell on par or worst case scenario sell slightly less. The main benefit is that Nintendo can maximize their software output and certain games will no longer under perform simply do to being on a low install base device. Like I said, many Wii U games aren't selling to their potential because Wii U is a low selling device but if these games had a 50-70 million install base to sell to, they would likely sell much more.

Would 3D World/Mario Kart 8 only be at 2-3 million each if they had released on a device with over 50 million owners? Looking at 3D Land/Mario Kart 7 sales being 9-10 million each on 3DS, I would say these games would easily have sold 2-3 as much. Same goes for a game like Donkey Kong, it's typically a multimillion selling series but on Wii U it's struggling to sell 1 million, whereas Returns 3D (a 3 year old port) sold about twice that. If Returns 3D never released and Tropical Freeze was instead released on 3DS in 2013, it would likely sell something like 3-5 million.

With a unified approach, Nintendo can offer these devices lineups that look like 3DS' 2013, every single year.