adriane23 2 hours ago

"Of all the people I know that own a Wii (just about everyone I know minus my nieces), none of them used it after the first year they bought it. So yeah in my opinion, it was an extremely successful fad."

I could say the same about the PS3 and Xbox360.

Ugh, alright then.

*pulls pants down*

I'm not going to argue with the rest of the post but the bolded is just flat out wrong. There is nothing even remotely average about the Wii's incredible decline, especially considering its peak sales and installed base. And being a market leader makes it even more exceptional.

uhm..  that's funny, as far as I remember you guys were "expecting" it to behave very much like the PS2 in sales at that time, just at a way higher lvl

I must have missed the posts that said it was going to struggle to hit the 100m mark before its successor is released between all the 200m+ predictions.

I said no such thing, nor was that my point. The Wii's decline is not normal, it went from outselling the PS3 and 360 combined to selling less than each individually in a timespan of less than two years, that is unprecedented. It has seen decreases of over 40% yoy for some time, which is also unheard of, especially for a market leader.

You don't have to dig very far back on vgchartz to find a lot of threads that explicitly stated that the Wii would continue to grow, would sell incredible amounts, would get tremendous 3rd party support and would most assuredly be the longest living console this gen. This was not predicted, or rather, stated as fact, by only the ones with insane predictions of 200 million + consoles sold, it was the general consensus among Wii fans on the site. You and I have both been on here long enough to know that this is true. HD console growth and lack of tech causing the Wii to drop was also not an option to these people, the Wii was every bit as future proof as the others.

There were also those who didn't believe in the Wii's longevity, I was one of them. "The Wii is a sprinter and not a long distance runner." is what I used to say. I said silly things in the past and I stand by having said them, that's how you learn to moderate yourself and show an ounce of humility, why are there so many who can't do the same?

This, i love how some of these fans want to play "captain hindsight" all after the fact. Why is it so hard to admit that they were just flat out wrong?? Not to mention some of the "Conduit, Madworld, NMHs, etc. will sell millions" those were pretty fun

On predictions. I cannot remember what I said 4 days ago, let alone 4 years ago. But I think a lot of us over estimated eventual third party support and undestimated how many Wii buyers got it as a secondary console or we secondary game players.

On the crash curve, I would love to see the actual drop off for other consoles. The Wii drop feels much the GameCube and Xbox, both of which were effectively killed off for new consoles. It does not feel like the PS2 because the size of the install base -- both in numbers and dominant market share -- allowed Sony to continue selling and supporting it. (As did selling it in new, untapped, emergent markets even after the introduction of its replacement.). Ironiocally, that same dominant market position which kept the pS2 alive and getting games are the introduction of its replacement, probably slowed PS3 early adoptions ( as admittedly did the $599 price tag).

Mike from Morgantown

If it was a fad it was a popular one.

thats the beauty of these kinds of sites, you dont need to remember just find an older thread and its all there, hell you can go on any the the Wii games walls, like Conduit and see the insane predictions.  Yes alot of people overestimated, what the Wii was gonna do. Personally i never thought it was going to get the 3rd party support that some said it would, there was too much time and money invested into the HD consoles and the 360 was already out a year before the Wii. BUt on the other hand, I never thought the WIi would fair that poorly in support and be that riddled with shovelware, but looking back it makes sense, they are easy to make and dont need to sell alot to make a profit

No, it isn't a fad. Most people feel it's a fad because it's supposed to behave like one; that's the disruption model. What made the Wii successful and arguably a failure is its Blue Ocean strategy. It created a market for Nintendo, but it divided the audience, and confused the third parties. It also didn't help that most people deemed Wii failure from the get-go. Confidence was never there for third parties, but they wanted to take advantage of its market share so they developed these half-assed games that were supposed to be 'AAA' games and ended up not selling well. It's a slap to Wii owners, and an excuse for third parties to abandon the Wii.

Ultimately, what slowed the Wii sales down was Nintendo. It felt like to me that they knew they could never acquire a full commitment to third parties so they focused for the next gen: 3DS, and Wii U, and with their 7th gen profit, this gave Nintendo a jumpstart.


IMO, 3DS felt like Nintendo had similar strategy as they had with the Wii. This time, though, they think DS had strong enough brand recognition for them to sell it at $250.00 with 3D but they were obviously proven wrong.
Either that or Nintendo planned it that way to drop the price by the release of Vita... I can't prove it though. It just feels like it.

$250!