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h2ohno on 06 May 2019
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colafitte said:
RolStoppable said:

If you look at the NeoGAF thread with the shipment data again, the SNES and Wii both lasted the same time. Shipments in their eighth fiscal year became negligible, about ~1.5m each. I hope you noticed that the Wii data isn't complete because the thread was created before the Wii was discontinued.

I'd call Skyward Sword a bad Zelda game. And after Breath of the Wild, even most of those who defended Skyward Sword for years have come around to adjust their opinions of SS. Much of Wii's success was based on getting back to the basics, i.e. doing what made Nintendo big in the first place with the NES. If you browse the bestsellers list of the NES, you will notice that simple sports games like Golf and Tennis have sold quite a lot of copies; the modern version of those games was Wii Sports. Wii Play modernized games like Pong, Duck Hunt and Combat. New Super Mario Bros. Wii was the first new 2D Mario game on a home console since 1990's Super Mario World.

Skyward Sword missed the mark spectacularly because it is the most linear Zelda game whereas the original Zelda on the NES offered an open world to explore. If you wonder about Breath of the Wild's success, Nintendo's developers created a prototype of BotW with NES graphics and really used the original Zelda game as their inspiration. SS and BotW have a difference like night and day, and that means that SS won't sell big numbers on any console because it doesn't meet the expectations that the market at large has towards a Zelda game.

Your huge paragraph contains a lot of rambling, but it also provides the explanation for it. You've made up your mind and you aren't going to change it. The only thing I want to touch on is that the 3DS did not really fine because it caused Nintendo's first loss in a full financial year since they had started making video games.

SNES lasted since 1990 to 1999 according to that data, Wii didn't last that much. But i guess, i am not going to get you to understand my point. The point was basically the decline Wii suffered in question of 2-3 years that no console has ever suffered at the same degree. Every console basically declines at some point, Nintendo consoles usually decline at the same time, PS consoles last longer, X360 lasted even longer than PS3. But even between Nintendo consoles, no console went to sell more than 20M to 5M in a matter of 3 years (using VGC numbers). It was just an anecdotal data, a curiousity, i wasn't trying to convince anybody, but it was just a number. I wasn't trying to figure out the reasons why it happened. It just happened. One day it was the hottest item in gaming and the other day is was not. Just that.

As for Skyward Sword. I liked a lot the visual artstyle, but everything else was a drag. It's one of the games that i consider overrated just because of the name of the franchise. It was not a bad game, but no a 90+ game either. BOTW was what the Zelda franchise needed...for years. It still not perfect in my opinion, but it was in the right direction nonetheless.

I get your point on Wii going back to basics, but i don't agree on that as much because it was N64 the console who started the modern Mario Golfs, Mario Tennis, Mario Partys, ...Wii Sports and Wii Play were just the same concept only this time with motion controls. And 2D Mario, yes, but it came in 2009, when Wii was already phenomenon everywhere, hardly the reason of why Wii had sold so much until then. I'll admit it helped the Wii to keep selling a lot though.

And that paragraph was not rambling. It was a polite way to say that your arguments do not convince me to change my opinion. But i guess this site can't accept other opinions. "You are with me or against me" mentality. I think a lot what i say here, and of course i won't change my opinion here just because an argument in a afternoon. Who i am, like Ross when Phoebe forces him to admit maybe he was wrong in his ideals??. I thought the same in 2009 (when i didn't understood then why Wii was selling so much), i thought the same in 2012 when WiiU launched, and i still think the same in 2019. I don't expect you changing your opinion either. Let's accept we are on different points of view, and let's finish it here, in good terms.

No Nintendo console has sold 20 million in a year to begin with.

Going by fiscal years, the Wii sold 5.84 million in 2007, 18.61 in 2008, 25.95 in 2009, 20.53 in 2010, 15.08 in 2011, 9.84 in 2012, 3.98 in 2013, 1.22 million in 2014, and was still being tracked at over 100,000 in 2016, it's 10th year on the market.

Saying that a decline from nearly 26 million to less than 10 million 3 years later is a huge decline is accurate, but it's a decline to numbers which are very close to the best years the SNES ever had, 1992 and 1993.  No Nintendo home console has ever sold nearly 10 million units in its sixth year except the Wii.  Most consoles peak at around that number in year 2 or 3, and some never reach it at all.  The Wii in its sixth year outsold the best years of the N64 (9.42 million), the Gamecube (5.76 million), and the Xbox (4.4 million).  Even going well into the next gen like year 8 the Wii was selling on par with the SNES.  The SNES in 1997 (counting 8 years from the launch of the Super Famicom, not the SNES in the US) sold 1.28 million units, compared to 1.22 million for the Wii's 8th year.  If you count 1998 as the SNES' 8th year after its international launch the comparison goes in the Wii's favor, and if you count it as the 9th year the Wii still come's out on top by nearly double compared to its own 9th year.  In the 10th year as well Wii reached 6 digits where the SNES didn't manage it.

It just goes to show how freaking insane the Wii's sales were that even after falling so much they still compared so favorably to Nintendo's other consoles.  2009 Wii was the best year any home console has ever had and it outsold the entire lifetime shipments of both the Gamecube and the XBox in that 1 year.