Why Nintendo is in a Stump

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pleaserecycle said:

vivster said:

I don't think Wii U failed. It just performed on curve with the dwindling core Nintendo fanbase. The success of the Wii just makes it look like a failure but we all know that was just the motion casual accident that helped it perform way above its actual potential. The Wii just gave people a false sense of the actual fan power Nintendo had and the Wii U fixed that.

NES - 62m

SNES - 50m

N64 - 33m

GC - 22m

Wii - 17m (casual adjusted)

Wii U - 14m

Looks like a fine curve to me. Wii U's numbers aren't the problem, people's expectations are.

I wish more users would acknowledge this. Nintendo has experienced waning popularity since the NES. As generations of gamers moved from platformers to shooters and other types of games, Nintendo did not adapt. The Wii is an exception because motion controls provided a new experience. The transition from Wii to Wii U shows that consumers were more interested in the novelty than the game catalogue.

The problem with this theory of consistent decline is that it wasn't just blue ocean games that sold better on Wii than Gamecube; "core" games like Zelda and Resident Evil did as well. Yes, the Wii benefitted from capturing a new audience, but even if you discount that, it still did better than the Gamecube.