Michael Pachter says Wii U to sell 20 million units worldwide

[fleischr]

Mummelmann said:

fleischr said:

Say the WiiU gets a really aggressive pricecut - goes under $200 - 250 with bundled games

Then let's say new NX home console  gets pushed out to late 2017, maybe even into 2018.

To get to 20 million, the WiiU needs a pricecut and it needs to exist at retail into 2017/2018. Neither one of those things are really out the question.

So lets say WiiU has a really good holiday and hits 13 million by 2016. 2016 having a pricecut in effect with a bunch of solid games at retail makes it sell another 4 million that year. Then between 2017 and 2018 when the NX console arrives, another 3 million are sold. 20 million.

Not impossible, but very unlikely.

1: I have no faith in price cuts when the product itself has shown a great lack of appeal.

2: There is no reason to delay the NX till 2017 with the current state of things, let alone 2018, that would be trademark suicide.

3: Even if a price cut and retail presence until 2017 or 2018 and they somehow manage a few decent titles in 2016; that doesn't mean much will happen in terms of sales. They've thrown every big title they have at it and it has been the cheapest 8th gen console all along, to no avail.

Like I said; not impossible but very unlikely. It depends on a lot of things, of course, but the way I see it, there is a much greater chance of it not reaching 20 million sold than reaching it.

1. There seems to be enough good things about the WiiU and the Gamepad that the system could have better mass appeal if positioned better in the market. A lot of the shortcomings are easily overlooked when the price is lower.

2. If there's nothing actually ready for the NX home console in 2016, there's no reason to release it so soon. It very well could suffer similar droughts WiiU had early in it's lifecycle. Two struggling home consoles on the market, especially for Nintendo, is worse than just one. While we speculate a lot of WiiU games are being put on hiatus to become NX games, there's no guarantee that's even possible. Given the fact Nintendo has delays so many other WiiU games in the past, what convinces you they're already set to deliver an entire lineup we've heard nothing about on new, more advanced hardware? It's more likely NX starts as a handheld with PS Vita - Wii U levels of power, and then we get a home console with the same OS / Architecture but more power in 2017.

3. Read what I wrote more carefully. 3 million across 2017 and 2018 - basically just 1.5 million per year. That's pretty damn low, but also consistent with what you'd expect with one final production run of the system.