| Turkish said: Sales are dropping, WiiU will further eat away whats left of the Wii sales. |
Do you honestly believe that a large proportion of the people who buy a Wii U early will be people who were considering buying a Wii, and that the only thing that will stop them is the release of a significantly more expensive system? When the Wii is likely to be a third of the price by that point in time?
The release of the PS3 did nothing to impact the rate of sales of the PS2. From December 2006, an article in BusinessWeek provides a number that lets us see just how strongly the PS2 kept selling. In March 2006, the PS2 had shipped just 103 million units worldwide. Keeping in mind that shipped =/= sold, we can probably estimate the true sold number to be somewhere of the order of 100 million units worldwide. It is now over 150 million units sold. This is despite the release of the Wii, the PS3, and the 360 (which had already released by this point).
What made this possible was that the PS2 was a well-known console that had received yet another price drop, and had some very strong software on it. And this is also the intelligence of the backwards compatibility, both for PS3 and Wii U - by having the new system compatible with the old format, developers have less reason to fail to release titles for it. And with a 100 million strong base to sell to, there's enough motivation to keep at least some titles heading to the system in an ongoing manner.
It's much like how Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 are being released on the DS, despite the 3DS being available. Note that the entire industry is currently depressed, but is likely to bounce back. Note that the Wii sold quite well during the holiday season of 2011, too. Just Dance was sold over a million a week for a few weeks in a row, the Wii, while behind the PS3 and 360, was selling over 600,000 units a week, and that even now, the Wii is able to move over 800,000 copies of games a week, during the relatively slow period. All this, even though the Wii U was known about and known to be coming in 2012, and despite the Wii still being at $149.
Of course there's a key difference between the PS2 and Wii - the PS2's successor struggled immediately, whereas it is likely that the Wii U will perform more like the PS2 (thereby making the Wii more like the PSONE). Note that the PSONE didn't sell as strongly as the PS2 after its successor was released, but it still managed a healthy 13 million or so. This is what the Wii has to look forward to, I suspect. Remember that the 13 million was over about 5 years, of course (and the PSONE was dropped, eventually, to just $49).
My expectation is thus: some time in the next three months (probably August), Nintendo will announce a Wii price drop, to $99 (and equivalents in other regions). This will likely be combined with a new bundle of some sort. This will produce a spike in sales, which will settle to a slightly faster sell rate than it has recently seen - I expect somewhere around 80,000 a week as base, plus an extra 5,000 due to it being the lead up to the holiday season. This spike will be due to people who tend to hold off on console purchases until they're really cheap finally deciding it's time, because $99 is the typical lowest price (with $49 being an unusual case seen in the case of PS1). Remember, the PS3 and 360 are still significantly more expensive, and MS is unlikely to drop even the cheapest 360 to $99, while the 360 is still "current".
This will, of course, be followed by the release of the Wii U. Remember, though, that most of the people who buy a console at the end of its life do so because it's cheap and has a strong existing library, not because of a strong lineup of upcoming titles. All the Wii needs is a few third-party mainstream titles (like Just Dance, or Madden), along with the titles released over the next few months (Dragon Quest X, Epic Mickey 2 (Epic Mickey sold 2.62 million copies, including about 100,000 in 2012), and Lego Batman 2 (first one sold 2.52 million on Wii, and sells about 500,000 each year) are good examples).
If the Wii U struggles, the Wii will last longer. If the Wii U sells strongly, the Wii will weaken faster. Either way, though, 100 million is a strong likelihood, and 102.5 million is a reasonable possibility. The only way to be certain that it doesn't is if Nintendo decides to simply stop production of the Wii... but they have no reason to do that. The Wii won't cannibalise the Wii U, and the Wii U won't cannibalise the Wii much.
