RolStoppable said:
There was no real chance to change the Wii U's course. When the 3DS did badly early on, its weekly sales were higher than the Wii U's during its good times, and that makes a significant difference when it comes to price cuts. When the price is cut, a company has to expect that the loss it takes in the short term will pay off eventually. The 3DS didn't make much money in its lifetime despite its hardware and software sales, so the result for a hypothetical Wii U price cut may very well have been negative. Consider the bad outlook for software releases for the Wii U in 2014, there wasn't any reason to believe that a lot of software would be sold to make up for the losses that would come with a hypothetical price cut. Maintaining the number 2 spot in the console race was an impossibility because Microsoft could also slash the price of their hardware and, unlike Nintendo, they wouldn't have to go through prolonged software droughts. With the Wii U, Nintendo's choice came down to acting aggressive, selling more hardware and taking bigger losses on the whole endeavor versus acceptance of the failure and damage control. You can argue that Nintendo should have made more and better bundles for the Wii U, but ultimately the Wii U could never be corrected like the 3DS. It also helped the 3DS that its only competitor was the pathetic Vita. Meanwhile, the Wii U's competition was and is a lot more fierce. Price cuts would have probably followed the path of the GameCube. It didn't pay off back then and it's very likely that Nintendo remembered that when they considered the options for the Wii U. |
Oh no, it could never have been as successful as the 3DS. But the Wii U had no reason not to pass the GameCube. The Wii U could have hit N64 numbers without much trouble, imo. That's a huge improvement over where it is now. Also, I meant maintaining the number 2 spot for 2014 cause they got passed by the end of that year, which was astoundingly pathetic.
And judging from the attach rates of the big hitters on Wii U and the fact they have maintained pace with sales, there's no reason to believe that a price cut in Holiday 2014 wouldn't have had significant gains for the Wii U's hardware and software and been a net possitive gain. Nintendo tanked the Wii U with their aweful decision making from day one, 2014 is just the highlight of that series of mistakes but the fact that their injuries are all self inflicted is, in my frank opinion, not up for debate. The Wii U could have had a normal controller, been as strong as the Xbone, and been called whatever name you please and it still would have done little better than it has because frankly Nintendo's early marketing was *repulsive* and every single time they had an opening to exploit, they did precisely dick to make any gains.
