I think Wii U is selling 28-30 million total. The amount of casual gamers coming back that you have is highly optimistic IMO, that ain't gonna happen.

Mario Kart 8 - 9-10 million
NSMBU - 7 million
Smash Bros. U - 7.5 million
Super Mario 3D World - 6.5 million
DKC: TF - 3.5 million
Wonderful 101 - 150k (sadly)
Bayonetta 2 - 300k

Wii Fit U - 800k

Personally I think Zelda is a declining franchise. Twilight Princess was inflated by the Wii's early success, the next Zelda is not going to have the benefit of that. Expect sales more in line with Skyward Sword or less unless they really do something with the franchise that's mindblowing.

Wii Fit Plus sold 200K+ this year alone.  With no promotion on a dead system when the game itself is a three year old remake of like a 6 year old game.  Bayonetta is going to sell less than half of madworld (I guess all the casuals on Wii made mad world a success?).  Wonderful 101 will sell about 4X what Need for Speed Most Wanted.  New Super Mario Bros U (745k ytd) will sell 7 million worldwide (guess it's not going to pick up at all with the holiday lineup). 

This of course is all based on the ridiculous premise that "Wii U doesn't sell when there are no games or marketing so it won't sell when there are games and marketing plus a price cut".  Ah well.  Silliness like this will make it more fun when sales pick up.

This isn't going to be a pretty generation for people hanging their hats on Nintendo's console business. The apologists can keep spinning it as a rosy situation, but there's always some excuse lined up for them (Nintendo Land was never supposed to sell the Wii U, no one buys a console for Mario ... in 2D, but they will for 3D! ... of course Pikmin 3 can't be expected to boost the hardware at all, etc. etc. etc.). I'll admit if I'm wrong if it happens, but so far the system has performed even worse than my most pessimistic predictions. 

If I had told people here a year ago the Wii U would be performing the way it actually is right now, I'd get attacked left and right by people on this board who would claim it impossible even with a few months of delays to Pikmin + Rayman. I'd be inundated with "no system with a new Mario game is going to sell worse than the GameCube, you're crazy! Have you seen Nintendo Land? It looks super fun! And it has HD Call of Doooty! And Zombi U looks way better than Red Steel! LOL, 30k a month in North America? That's Vita levels, you're crazy, never will happen!". Even in months where LEGO City + Monster Hunter 3G and Pikmin 3 + Splinter Cell: Blacklist have come out the 30k/month needle on the Wii U hasn't moved at all, which to me is concerning.

It's ancedontal sure (as is anyone's prediction) but of the 15 "casual gaming" friends I know that had a Wii, not even one of them has a Wii U or has expressed any interest in getting one even when I told them it has Wii Fit U in a couple of a months. Some of my predictions may be a tad low, but others are probably generous.

I think it could get in between the SNES and N64.

Interesting topic with a lot of work put into the OP. Good job.

The Mario Kart numbers for Wii massively skew the average for that particular IP, though.

If Wii-U went on to be a SNES-level success, it'd have to sell better than the Mario Kart on SNES + another 5 million to reach the "average" for the series, just because the Wii version was so much higher than all of the others. Which in turns is so much higher because of bundling.

wow, just wow

Thank you im considering doing ones for Playstation and Xbox as well, ill wait and see if this thread turns out good first.

It will be interesting to see if the Wii version of Mario Kart has permanently expanded the series fanbase or if it will retun to sub 10m sales. If Wii U does 40-50m then I think Mario Kart will come close to its average. Most of the other series didnt really improve drastically due to Wii install base.

Haha if and when Wii U sales improve, im guessing he will switch to "it was blatantly obvious Wii U just needed its consistantly high selling exclusives to release and now that its much cheaper than the competition, people will see the value. Everyone who thought otherwise was delusional."

Twilight Princess was the game every Zelda fan was waiting for, casuals did buy Sports (or bundle) not Zelda......and the reason for SS sales were 1. 2nd game on the console 2. you needed a extra accesoire for it 3. a lot of people didn't like the motion controls and artstyle.

LOL, so lemme get this straight ... Wii U bombs worse this year than anyone predicted and this is a "rah rah" moment for you guys?

Sure I bought into some of the kool-aid and spin that people were putting on the Wii U.

I was wrong. I did think there was a chance that Nintendo Land and the quasi-home handheld nature of the console could succeed in Japan.

It hasn't at all. But that's not on "me", lol, that's on Nintendo and their own crap market performance.

Wii U has performed worse with virtually every demographic than I could have imagined. I also underestimated the impact of tablets/phones/freemium gaming.

Nintendo Land isn't a terrible game, it's probably a better quality product than Wii Sports, there just isn't a market for this idea anymore in a mass market sense. 4-5 years ago, a Mii-based party game featuring popular Nintendo IP attractions probably would've sold through the roof, the audience for that sort of thing just waned and the people willing to pay $300+ for that type of experience are even fewer.