Yeah, towards the end of the gen when they sold close to 0 units at 99$ because people standing around doing nothing is costly

Well, that's only as true as it was for any other game console that gets left with next to nothing in it's last year on the market before a successor.  It's not like Wii had fewer games in it's final 12 months than the GameCube or N64 did.

GameCube only sold at a loss during a brief period in 2002 when they lowered the price in North America from $199 to $149 after sales collapsed following the launch.  But systems are at their cheapest selling price in their final years not because companies are taking a loss but because the cost to manufacture the system decreases the longer it remains on the market.  GameCube wasn't selling at a loss in 2005 at $99, it was making money. 

Another absurd thread

Don't forget that Wii Fit U is supposed to come out within the next couple months or so. That will also likely see a summer bundle deal of some sort, and that game and name brand still has enough "oomph" to it, that I could almost guarantee it will sell well and move some consoles off shelves.

@amp316

I'm pretty sure all the fans of Monster Hunter Tri would disagree with you. I also think that Lego City Undercover, Wonderful 101 and Bayonetta 2 would disagree with you, along with Zombi U, which had a pretty decent attach rate considering the console has old sold somewhere over 3 million units. There will be 3rd party exclusives that people want beyond those, it's inevitable. Rayman Legends SHOULD have been one of them, but then again no one ever did accuse Ubisoft of being particularly smart.

My apologies then, i was missinformed. Though if the loss was because off a price drop on the 3DS it was essentialy still hardware that caused it.

Sega is not a good comparison because it's IP's aren't nearly as big as Nintendo's. Games like Mario kart etc. would sell 10m/20m/30m regarding what system they are sold on. The thing is that the hardware market has simply become much harder to compete on in the last two generations. Back in the N64/Gamecube day they we're able to launch a competing system at $199 with room for a price cut. If they hade try to do the same thing with Wii they would not have been able to, so they played it right and launched something entirely different(motion controls) at a very profitable $250 and it sold very well. With Wii-U they kind of tried to compete again but didn't go all the way, and now are stuck with an $300 system wich has no change against PS4 on the hardware front, and with an innovation in the tablet controller that doesn't seem to appeal to anyone. And still at $300 with a game included it doesn't make them a profit directly. Basically i don't think Nintendo will ever be able to sell the Wii-U at a profit because everytime they will get close they will have to cut the price because off sells slowing down.

The bottom line is Nintendo's franchises could easily sell 100m+ pieces of software each generation, and the Wii with games like Mario Kart has showed that these sales can go up much higher depending on install base. Basically i think they would make more money selling their games on other platforms with a much larger combined install base than selling on the Wii-U alone, and since that console itself costs them money there is simply no sense any more continuing in the hardware bussiness from a bussiness perspective atleast.

We have been experiencing a flood of "nintendo-doom" threads on these forum lately. Pratically every 3 days someone open a new thread with exactely the same issue. Wouldn´t it just be simpler to answer a thread, instead of making several similar threads ?

Sometimes I think haters and fanboys open these threads only on purpose of irritating others.

There's a big difference. An official price-cut is carefully planned and often timed with big software releases (see Vita in Japan). The UK price cut was made in the middle of a software drought, so if someone was not willing to part with $350 just to play NSMBU and Nintendo Land dropping the price to $300 probably won't entice him to buy it. On the other hand, if the price goes down to $300 just as say Mario Kart and Smash Bros come out then suddenly you've got a lot more people interested in paying for the console.

No, because due to their power, they're obviously going to have much longer lifespans while the Wii U is destined to completely fizzle out a little under 3 years from now, two more holiday seasons including this upcoming one. It's a much bigger deal for the Wii U to limp this early on than it is the 720 or PS4.

That said, if either sell, say, 25k in all of their first January in the US (half of what the WiiU has in same time frame), yes, that would be very troubling.

Oh I see. Does the UK unofficial price cut damage future price cuts then?