JWeinCom said:
If the Wii U only averages 30K a week for the rest of the year, it would sell half a million units. Lets round this to a nice even 4 million units total at this rate. This is assuming the ridiculous circumstance that Wii Party U, Wii Fit U, Mario 3D World, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Wind Waker HD, a price cut, other games, and (hopefully) a marketing push have NO influence on sales.
The PS3 debuted with 670000 First Year (november december) in the US. 1,170,000 with Japanese sales. With European first two month sales, that would be just under two million. So, basically, we need a bare minimum of 2x the PS3 demand to meet the Wii U's figures. Keep in mind, we don't yet know that the PS4 will launch in Japan by the end of the year.
How much can we expect the Wii U to increase over the holiday period? For that, let's check in with our good friend the PS Vita. The Vita's monthly sales figures last year were hovering just over 150K in the middle of the year, slightly more than what the Wii U is doing now (average of 130K). So, the Vita will give us a good baseline of what to expect.
In November, the Vita's sales were at about 480 K, about twice to three times what it had been doing in the months leading up to the holiday. In December, the Vita sold 750K which was about about 3-6x what it had been doing in previous months. As such, we can reasonably expect the Wii U to get a bump of around a million for the holidays which brings our expected Wii U value to 5 million. At this point the PS4 would have to match its first two month sales (2,000,000) PLUS the Wii's first 2 month sales (about 3 million).
Of course, the situation for the Wii U is different. On the one hand, it already has a holiday under its belt, which will mean less pent up hype from kids waiting for the holiday to get the system and such. On the other hand, the Wii U has a stronger lineup. The Vita's big two holiday titles were Call of Duty Black Ops Declassified and Assassin's Creed Liberation, which sold 770K and 720K respectively. Each was bundled with the console. Nintendo has Wind Waker HD, Wii Fit U, Wii Party U, Super Mario 3D World, and Donkey Kong Country Returns, all of which are almost assured to sell more than PSVita's biggest titles. If you disagree, stop trolling. So we can expect a bigger boost for the WIi U. Lets be VERY conservative and put the combined value of these titles PLUS the rest of the lineup at 750K. Our Wii U expectancy should now be at 5,750,000.
Of course, this is not taking into account a price cut. The Vita WAS discounted at many retailers at various times over the the last holiday (in the US at least, I don't know about Europe or Asia). However, the Wii U will have a universal price cut by $50. How much can we expect this price cut to help? Well, let's look to the Vita again.
The Vita had a 30% bump in sales in the US based on the price cut, and a 39% boost in Europe. With the same amount of price cut, we should expect Wii U sales to receive an initial boost of 40%, dropping to about 10% over time (again being conservative). Of course, in Japan, where the Vita has software support, the price drop boosted sales by 400% over their normal price, and numbers stabilized at about 50-100% higher than they were pre-price drop. We'll still be conservative, and say the price drop will contribute 500K to the Wii U from September 20th to the holidays. So, the Wii U should be at 6,250,000 by the end of the holiday. That's not factoring in that Nintendo tends to get a bigger holiday boost than other companies.
By the way, for those who think I'm being optimistic towards Nintendo, this worse than any of the current gen consoles have ever done over the holidays aside from launch years. And speaking of launch years they are not the strongest periods of a console's life BUT THE WEAKEST. In its BEST year on the market (2011) PS3 sold about 5.7 million units over the holidays. Even if the PS4's launch matches the PS3's peak, the Wii U needs to sell about 2.3 million units over the next four months to prevent the Vita from overtaking it.
Even so, we have 6,250,000. So, the PS4 would have to sell better than the PS3 did in its first two months, the Wii in its first two months, and the XBox 360 in its first two months... combined... Sony may not launch in Japan, and it will launch at the same times as another console with a similar target demographic.
In other words, go home TC, you're drunk. I don't think the PS4 will outsell the Wii U between November and December. The idea that it will outsell the Wii U from November-December PLUS another 3.5 million is bat shit crazy.
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