Analyst sees signs of hope for Wii U to be competitive against PS4/XOne

[StuOhQ]

KLXVER said:

It desperately needs a price cut. Nintendo isn't being aggressive enough. Its mostly their own fault that the WiiU isnt selling.

I know several people who have been waiting for a price cut to $250... for eight months or more. Everyone says that the price point isn't the matter ("if you'll buy it at $200, you'll buy it at...", goes the logic), but I know for a fact that if the Xbox One were $200 I would own one right now, and if the Wii U were over $400, I wouldn't own one. The PS4 was an outlier as the hot-item of the moment and my wife made that decision - I wanted to wait for "Uncharted 4" to hit (should have trusted my gut, in retrospect).

There are $99-199 Nintendo fans, $249-349 fans, and there are the crazy >$400 fans who spend $200 for component cables for their GCN's and $500 on deformed amiibo figures. 

That being said, Nintendo really needed to see some profit this Winter, and so keeping the price high over Christmas actually worked out for them financially. Now, however, they'll be shooting themselves in the foor if they don't drop to $249 with one of their late spring/early summer releases.

There are plenty of people who now know about the Wii U (and didn't previously) and and, having enjoyed some of its great games through friends and family, are coming on to the idea of owning one. The problem is, you don't sell (relatively) underpowered consoles for $300 to modest fans of Nintendo.

The Nintendo core is all but spent at the $299 price point and Nintendo is going to have to sacrifice a little profit to renew their brand recognition and maintain some semblance of competition this generation. How many people are going to jump in quickly on Nintendo's boat during the 9th generation if they fail to move 20m units during this one?