Yakuzaice said:
It's pretty wishful thinking that just because Wii U sales have grown YoY means it will continue to do that. Even more so that it will grow to such a degree that it will beat the Gamecube by 6-10m. We also don't really have enough data to describe it as "growing each year". Yes, 2014 was higher than 2013, and 2013 was higher than 2012, but 2012 was less than two months of sales. So we really just have 2014 being higher than 2013 which isn't much of a trend. The data from 2015 has been mixed. It is down in Japan, but up in the US. I don't think we have any European sales numbers for this year yet. In fact, if we go by quarterly shipments, we have more quarters down YoY than up, including the most recent quarter. Only the 2 quarters April - September 2014 have been up. October 2013 - March 2014 were down, and October - December 2014 was back to being down. So far after 9 quarters the Gamecube has a lead of 4.74m. Over the last 9 months it has gained 1.36m. The Gamecube will do another 630k in the last three months of that fiscal year. Considering that is more than the Wii U has ever shipped outside of a holiday quarter, it seems unlikely it can match those sales in this quarter. The next fiscal year sees the Gamecube shipping 3.92m. The Wii U could hypothetically be up in the fiscal year ending March 2016 and still lose ground to the Gamecube. That would put the Wii U 14 quarters into its life and roughly 5m units behind the Gamecube. When will it manage to not just catch up, but outsell the Gamecube by 10m? 14 quarters in the Gamecube had sold 85% of its total. The Wii 70%. The N64 90% (a bit rougher there due to the staggered release dates and lack of quarterly data). If the Wii U is only around 13m by March 2016, that would put it at just 41% of the 31.74m (10m more than the GC) total. Quite unprecedented for a recent Nintendo console. |
And January 2015 was bigger than January 2014 and looks like the same will be said of February. Also a great software lineup this year and a likely pricecut coming.
Right now I'm estimating that the wiiu will sell around 26 million lifetime. It's based on the rule of thumb with Nintendo consoles that at the end of peak sales year the system will have sold approx 50% of lifetime sales. If 2014 was peak year then it likely won't catch cube. But I think this year will be peak.
