Nintendo has traditionally cut the price of their consoles fairly early though.

The SNES, N64, and GameCube all received $50 price reductions within like their first 10 months on the market, so the GameCube wasn't really anything all that shocking in that regard at the time.

The Wii is really the big exception to the rule, but it was selling faster than hotcakes.

N64 price cut was the same thing, retaliation from PS1 price cut, not sure about SNES but could very well have been to match Genesis price.

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?

Wow, the GC was a real beast to start off with in America, wasn't it?

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.

Not really, it was beaten month to month pretty routinely by the newcomer (XBox) and absolutely routed by the PS2.

The N64 was a beast to start off in North America though, but couldn't keep pace with the Playstation once the disparity in CD vs. cartridge software support became apparent.

The fact that the Wii U is making the GameCube numbers look good just sorta illustrates how poorly its doing. It's definitely the worst selling Nintendo console out of the gates with the exception of the limited release Famicom/NES, but the industry obviously was far different then.

The Wii U is the first Nintendo console to dive to the depths of Sega territory from launch.

It's not deja-vu as both situations again aren't comparable. The GC had to sell well very quickly to catch up in terms of installed base with the already released PS2 in order to stay relevant (which was impossible and as a result the GC was already dead on arrival). The WiiU on the other hand 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.

For me though it's deja vu, because a lot of the arguements are exactly the same. You can't judge the GameCube because it only has a Luigi game and that doesn't count, you have to wait for Mario Sunshine! I mean you could swap in NSMBU and Mario 3D World there and it'd be the same arguement today, lol.

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 and that shows that market shares much more than actual sales is what really matters. As a result comparing two consoles with very different market shares is again pointless.

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.