January 2015 NPD Thread! Hardware estimates up!

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tbone51 said:
From Nintendo:

Nintendo games and systems closed 2014 with strong momentum, and that has carried over into 2015. Some Nintendo highlights from the January NPD report include:

· Sales of Wii U hardware and software increased by nearly 30 percent and nearly 45 percent, respectively, over the same month last year.

· Super Smash Bros. for Wii U added more than 90,000 combined physical and digital units to bring its lifetime total to more than 1.4 million total units in the U.S.

· Pokémon Omega Ruby and Pokémon Alpha Sapphire sold more than 150,000 combined physical and digital units, bringing their combined lifetime total to more than 2.7 million total units in the United States alone.

· Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS sold more than 90,000 combined physical and digital units in its fifth month on the market, bringing its lifetime total to more than 2.1 million total units in the United States alone.


On Feb. 13, Nintendo will launch the New Nintendo 3DS XL system with four unique SKUs to choose from. The new system will launch alongside two highly anticipated titles: The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D and Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. Exactly one month later on March 13, portable gaming fans will be able to play Code Name: S.T.E.A.M.

In just a few days on Feb. 20, Wii U fans will get the chance to experience Kirby and the Rainbow Curse. A few months later in May, gamers will get the chance to play one of the more anticipated titles of the year in Splatoon.

So SSB physical sales could be between 150 and 180K (I doubt digital is all that big). So positions 1-5 for NPD software are all >150K pretty much guaranteed. Positions 6-10 are all <180K pretty much guaranteed. Of course because VGC counts official bundles where NPD does not VGC might not exactly align.

3 weeks of Jan on VGC has Wii U at 69K. If VGC was planning on having Wii U flat WoW for the final week of the NPD month that would make Wii U overtracked by nearly 40%. Wii U averaging ~16K pw for Jan. While being up YoY is better than being down or flat, it's being up an a terribly low number and it's still a very low number. For SSB+MK8 to be having such a low residual effect is troubling for Wii U, especially as SSB U is selling at least 50% more than Wii U right now.