Haha the doom in this thread is delicious! I'm really not that worried about Nintendo though.

Maybe it's for the best honestly. The company has become lazy since the height of the DS/Wii days and has not adjusted. It's time for changes especially now that Yamauchi is not there to shield Iwata from shareholders (as he was the biggest single shareholder before) anymore. 

It's time for Nintendo to wake up to the reality that the Wii-era is over. 

This is true but it is still bad. So bad that no nintendo console have had worst sales ( consoles that have not been superceded ).

When you consider the GC sold 22m or whatever wii u is heading significantly lower than that as things stand.

I think it can still be turned around but Iwata must go and i hope he does when his forecast falls way short. Bring in someone more dynamic that can shake up the company and make hard choices... whatever those choices are.

Yup, adjusted down due to Pachters prediction.

Nintendo is pretty much trapped with the WII U. It's almost fated to do worse than the gamecube. (Which is extremely frightening. It'll be lucky to manage 15 million for lifetime sales afterall that mismanagement.)

There's really nothing they can do unless they start by abandoning the WII U at early 2015 and get a new console out in the holidays but this time they have to stop with the gamecube/dreamcast strategy and start by using blue ocean WII. 

I'm with you.   Sure the numbers were a little lower than expected but I think the bigger story coming out of NPD is that even though Microsoft keeps spinning Xbone numbers, they look awfully familiar to what we saw from the Wii U last year.   The more I see the more I really think the Xbone is going to have some terrible sales numbers in 2014.  PS4 is going to do alright just on all the overflow demand alone.   What I really do not understand is why Titanfall is going to be on 360. That alone is going to cost them 300 - 400k in console sales alone just from people like me who will get the 360 version and be happy with it.

They won't drop the Wii U so early, it will be a suicide (even more than keep selling the console). 2016 will be the earliest.

Yeah whatever happens I'm not worried. They've got the cash in the bank to lose some money rearranging their company if they need to. As long as they stay true to their core game development principles I'm happy (gameplay over graphics, don't release it until it's finished etc). Even if they made games for PS4 I wouldn't be upset provided it didn't affect the quality or creativeness of their games. Pride can be a funny thing though...

The biggest thing they need to do is hope that they are right about software moving hardware.  In terms of 3DS vs. Vita that has been 100% true, but the console market is a different animal.  If Kart / Smash / DK / Bayonetta / Zelda / X / and atleast 2 other titles, come out in 2014 then the Wii U will be just fine, but if these things start getting delayed they are screwed.   I keep seeing Gamecube comparisons but you guys forget that it launched last, was only a graphic upgrade, and was aimed directly at the core gamer.   The only thing similar are sales, but the situations surrounding them are completly different.

It would be funny if the failures of the Wii U and Vita brought Sony together with Nintendo. 

I think Nintendo *might* be OK with it if they were allowed to manufacture their own version of the PS4 (perhaps with the Wii U integrated within? That way it could play all Wii/Wii U games and PS4 software). 

The other reason that might work is they're both Japanese companies and the head of the entire Sony corporation is a video game man (Kaz), so Iwata would be more easily able to communicate with him. And Sony simply doesn't have the money to buy out Nintendo, so Nintendo would be able to stay indepedent (whereas an alliance with Apple, Google, MS, etc. might put Nintendo in danger of being bought even if it works out well, lol).