| PAOerfulone said: |
I've cut the stuff above out purely to save other users' trawling through data.
I don't expect these Wii U titles to stop selling, but the point is with so few new Wii U users coming onto the scene, and Nintendo cutting software shipments and reducing hardware shipments to a trickle, the truth is Wii U has very little life in it. That doesn't just apply to the hardware sales, that applies to the software ecosystem too. That being said, I hope Splatoon does hit the 5 million mark this Christmas, that would be a real milestone for Nintendo and Wii U. But, when it comes to 2017 and 2018 software sales, expecting Wii U titles to have a long-tail doesn't make much sense to me. In all likelihood, we're going to see versions of major Wii U titles hitting Switch (Splatoon, Mario Kart all but confirmed, Smash, Mario Maker rumoured), and on top of that, we'll see new entries in Nintendo franchises coming to Switch, such as 3D Mario. So I admire your optimism, but I don't think there's much to back it up when you look at Wii U's future. We heard those rumours a month or two ago that retailers had been told not to expect new stock beyond the end of the year, and the fact Nintendo only plan to ship 240k really does suggest we're at the end of the Wii U's life. It is not going to have a long-tail into 2017 and 2018 the way 3DS does, because 3DS is still being shipped in the millions.
I expect Switch will easily hit that 2 million mark at launch. I wasn't doubting that, merely stating it marks a significant change from Nintendo's approach with Wii U and 3DS. To be honest it makes sense. Wii U and 3DS suffered because Nintendo couldn't shift their initial shipments, then had to announce paltry shipment levels in their post-launch quarters, which told the world their new hardware had sold very poorly. They need to avoid a repeat of that scenario and one way to do that is spread their early adoption shipments out a little more. There's a danger if Switch is competitively priced that they'll end up with shortages at launch, but I think given their recent history, they'd rather have launch shortages to make up for in Switch's second quarter, than having to reduce shipments massively post-launch because Switch units are clogging up warehouses.
