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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - GameCube Vs. Wii U (Month To Month In NA)

WagnerPaiva on 30 July 2013

And... done:



My grammar errors are justified by the fact that I am a brazilian living in Brazil. I am also very stupid.

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sales2099 on 30 July 2013

Very telling indeed.



Xbox: Best hardware, Game Pass best value, best BC, more 1st party genres and multiplayer titles. 

 

oniyide on 30 July 2013
Soundwave said:
gum said:
Soundwave said:
gum said:
Soundwave said:
DevilRising said:
Doing this kind of comparison is horribly moot, because the advantage Gamecube had, was a nice, steady flow of GAMES, first and third party, from launch onward. GC had no real "drought" to speak of. It had several big games right out of the gate in the first few months of it's existence. Wii U has not had that, and THAT is specifically why it has sold worse than GC for now. That will not be the case once more actual GAMES come out. And this fall/holiday season are set to see plenty of them.

The real question is, will there now finally be a fairly steady release of first and third party games in 2014, and onward, to build momentum and keep it going?


Oh boy, as someone who lived through the GCN era, lol, the GameCube had a monster drought from January-June 2002 where the only really notable exclusive title was the Resident Evil Remake.

There was a ton of belly aching and a lot of "wait for Mario! wait for Metroid!" at that time too (sounds familiar?), lol.

The Wii U has managed to top the GCN, but believe me it wasn't pretty in 2002 either, there was a lot of complaining online about the GameCube library and a large contingent of Nintendo fans saying everything would be fine once the "big guns" like Mario, Eternal Darkness (lol), Metroid Prime, Star Fox Adventures, Zelda, etc. arrived.

That's why this whole thing feels like deja vu to me in a lot of ways, this is like going through the GameCube all over again and it's funny to read some arguements that could almost be verbatim the same thing from 10+ years ago.


I's not deja-vu as both situations again aren't comparable. Ths GC had to sell well very quickly to catch up in terms of installed base with the PS2 in order to stay relevant. The WiiU on the other hands doesn't need to sell well as quickly as it is the first next gen. So again this comparison is pretty much pointless.

Yes and no. One could argue the Wii U is in a worse position as it's selling considerably worse than the GameCube with no competetion.

That said in the long run I think Wii U will turn out better for Nintendo than the GameCube mostly because their brand share has improved a good deal in Europe and should be enough to buoy them to a 30 million userbase at least IMO.

If they can't get to that, then Iwata honestly should step down and take an advisor position because I don't think that type of performance could be excused.


People saying the WiiU is in a worse position that the GC obviously should talk about something else than video games sales. What condition the future of a console are games meaning first and third party support. First party support for WiiU will be much stronger than what it was for GC as Nintendo has now much more strong ips than it has back in the day and in terms of third parties what really matters is to compare the installed base of the platform with its competitors. Indeed installed base is the final key factor for third parties and this comparison will determine what choices in terms of platforms they will make.

In other words if a console sells well but still has a much lower installed base than its competitor third parties still will continue to support the second one, this is just pure and simple logic.


It's hard to say with the future. When I saw NSMBU for the Wii U launch I, and many others figured that at least assured Nintendo a solid launch. I mean you're talking about like a 20+ million seller. Now of course after the fact people are going to make excuses as to why it didn't sell consoles.

But it was the same thing with the GameCube. Believe me before Mario Sunshine and Star Fox Adventures and Metroid Prime and Zelda: Wind Waker shipped, there was a definite belief that those games would move *tons* of systems.

I remember distinctly people laughing at Microsoft even trying to release the XBox (especially after a horrid E3 2001 showing) saying there was no way head to head they could match up with Nintendo's franchise power.

We're seeing a fair bit of regression even on the 3DS in a lot of Nintendo IP ... NSMB2 is likely not going to come close to NSMB1, in fact NSMBU+NSMB2 combined probably won't. Mario Kart 7 has sold well, but probably won't come close to catching Mario Kart DS, and the same is likely to be even more true for MK8 vs. MKWii.

What we saw during the DS/Wii era was an inflation of certain "pick up and play" friendly Nintendo franchises (notably just about every game with Mario in it) that benefitted tremendously from the Wii Sports/Brian Training/Nintendogs/Wii Fit audiences coming in en masse. Look for a normalization this gen.

to be fair you could say that about any of the big franchises form last gen. Nintydogs, brain training, none of them are reaching the sales of their originals. I dont know if that is diminished interest or flat smaller install base. Hell i would argue that we saw signs of this even on WIi when some of the franchises their started to decline. (carnival games, etc.)



Mnementh on 30 July 2013
VGKing said:
Soundwave said:
aikohualda said:
do you guys think wii u will out sell GC???


Mario Kart U is really going to have to drive hardware sales and a much cheaper price point because I don't see many people accepting this as their primary console, so it has to be much cheaper.

Mario Kart won't do much. These "core" Nintendo titles have been proven to not sell systems. People didn't buy a Wii to play Mario Kart, they bought Mario Kart because they had a Wii.

Nintendo needs another Wii Sports or Wii Fit phenomena to even come close to the Wii sales. Otherwise, this will sell closer to the Gamecube or N64.

I agree with you. While Kart can sell consoles (as it did with 3DS) it is not that easy formula - Mario Kart means sales. People said that about 2D-Mario too. No, the problem is that the concept of the WiiU is so completely between all different interest-groups, it confuses everyone. While the WiiU COULD have games that appeal to casuals, they aren't here (no, Nintendoland isn't directed at casuals). While the WiiU has games for the core, they advertise it differently. Overall neither group really is attracted. At this moment I think it would be wise for Nintendo to concentrate on the casuals, that would mean a clear message, a basic system without the gamepad but with a wiimote (that is a working controller for the WiiU).

Funny thing is, for me it is the greatest console, because it delivers me excellent games to my liking, MH3U, Lego City, ZombiU, RE:revelations are all great games, and Pikmin 3 eats my time the last days. But it will not sell very well. In the end it will be famed like the Gamecube - many already say it's their most beloved Nintendo-console, but it didn't sell very well overall.



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Mnementh on 30 July 2013
catofellow said:
One factor in my opinion going against Nintendo long term is their use of an IBM CPU. Apple, Sony, and Microsoft have all ended support for IBM CPU's, and Nintendo is the last holdout I am aware of in the gaming software space. Software developers would like to focus on x86 processors or ARM processors, both to allow for ports between platforms, and to reduce the skill sets they need to maintain within staff.

Nintendo will enjoy XBOX 360 and PS3 ports for the time being, but eventually the Wii U will be significantly under powered compared to modern consoles and PC's with a completely different architecture. That will not make it easy for developers to port to or from other platforms. I'm no techie, but I think this will be an issue long term.

As a programmer I can assure you, that all modern processor-architectures are no problem for porting software. Compilers pretty much take care of the different instruction-sets. The features included in the instruction-sets are more and more similar. So that is no problem in porting. The overall architecture of the machine has more influence, and WiiU with the classical GPU/CPU-approach and split memory is much nearer to PC-development than PS4 with the unified memory (I think XBO has also unified memory, but could be wrong on this). While this may have big advantages it makes development very different to PCs-



3DS-FC: 4511-1768-7903 (Mii-Name: Mnementh), Nintendo-Network-ID: Mnementh, Switch: SW-7706-3819-9381 (Mnementh)

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10 years greatest game event!

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DevilRising on 30 July 2013
Soundwave said:

Just because the Wii U is reaching new lows for a game drought, doesn't mean the panic button wasn't flipped on for the GameCube back in 2002 -- it definitely was. The message boards were filled with pretty much the same kind of chatter as there is today.

I remember the sinking boat images on Gaming-Age's message board back in 02/03 (lol) with Nintendo written on the ship.

Nintendo finding a way to top that GameCube drought is kind of a feat in and of itself, and that's really their own fault, but the GameCube had far harsher competetion going head to head against the PS2 juggernaut (best selling console of all time, even makes the Wii and original PSX pale in comparision) and the surprising XBox launch with Halo really being a blockbuster hit and catching Nintendo off guard.


I'm not arguing that things didn't seem rough to some fans back then. I honestly didn't bother with video game message boards until sometime within the last 6-7 years. Sometimes I think I should have stayed that way, lol.

But my point stands, that at least GC did in fact have a steady flow of fairly solid and substantial titles. I wouldn't call that a "drought" personally. Not compared to Wii U having months where 1 or 0 games come out in the first half of this year. That's all I'm saying, is that Wii U has had a real honest to god drought of software, and that has definitely hurt it.



Mnementh on 30 July 2013

Soundwave said:

Agreed that beating PS3/Wii U/Dreamcast level first year sales is nothing impressive. PS4 should crush those numbers pretty easily if supply is readily available.

XB1 might have a slower start due to the $100 difference.

We will see, to early to judge. If I learned something, that it is better not to talk about sales before the numbers are in.



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my greatest games: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

10 years greatest game event!

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Soundwave on 20 November 2013

Can anyone update the original chart? I think GCN is going beat the Wii U soundly for year 2 it looks like (50-59k for Wii U in October).



superchunk on 20 November 2013
Soundwave said:
Can anyone update the original chart? I think GCN is going beat the Wii U soundly for year 2 it looks like (50-59k for Wii U in October).

You could pull the numbers from my thread.

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=151051

edit: nvm, didn't realize this was NPD data only



Soundwave on 20 November 2013

There's also this chart which compares Wii U/GCN/Dreamcast:

And this one which compares N64/GCN/Wii U:

I'm thinking somewhere between 250k (4.25x-ish bump) to 350k (6x over October) for Wii U in November 2013. Those are fairly generous Oct-November bumps. 

For example the 3DS went from 250k (October 2011) to 795k (November 2011; Mario 3D Land) to 1.1m (Dec 2011 approx; Mario Kart 7), so roughly a 3.15x increase from October to November. 

I think this puts into perspective though that the Wii U has a tremendous uphill climb just to match GameCube and N64 sales.