We've all read plenty of Wii U doom threads, and many of us have speculated what the Wii U will sell based on current conditions. What I'd like to ask in this thread today is how much the Wii U can sell if Nintendo plays all the right cards. Or, in other words, What is the Maximum the Wii U can sell?

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Despite its rough start, I believe the Wii U can sell around 40 to 50 million units lifetime, provided Nintendo supports it at least through 2018 and never has a major drought like those of 2011 to 2012 for the Wii or 2013 for the Wii U. This is a bit optimistic, but I am inspired how the PS3, now a quite successful system, had only sold about 9 million units worldwide by the end of 2007 despite offering the cheapest Blue-Ray player on the market and having the legendary PlayStation brand name behind them. 2014 could be a great year for the Wii U, especially if all the announced games for it come out within that year and the competition remains relatively disappointingly supported. Then, the system could coast off of the momentum for years, keeping things from collapsing by releasing sequels to known hit franchises as well as ocassional oddities. Even if the Wii U is replaced in 2018, and discontinued in 2019, that means it would only need to average about 6 million units a full year to reach the mark mentioned above.

About 50 million seems like the ceiling. They need a Mario Kart bundle and perhaps a model without the gamepad ($200 or so) to make it happen, plus all of the heavy hitters like the mainline Zelda and Smash have to be spectacular.

What do you mean with 'no bad decisions'? They already made their decision: put absolutely no effort in getting (exclusive) third party content despite all the money they earnt with Wii/DS. Nintendo is now paying for this disgusting strategy. Only real Nintendo fans (like me) will get a Wii U eventually. And that is no more than 20-30 million.

They could, but they need real good 1st & 2nd party games and they need 3rd parties to stop making cheap ports on the system. 

60 million imo... Nintendo made similar mistakes with the 3ds and the 3ds has nearly zero western third party support just like the wiiu and it is dominating in the handheld space... Since the wiiu is in a different market however... I cant see it selling close to the wii or the 3ds so I think 60 mill is a good number if they dont make anyyyyyyy mistakes

First party + Japanese third party is Nintendos only hope and by the looks of it... They r going that route... Hopefully they can get more third party involved in the future

     Most likely 35-50 million... More if  a Mario Kart 8 + Smash Bros 4 bundle happens.

30mil

30mil

The difference with the PS3 was it had the entire backing of the third party community. Developers couldn't afford to rely only on the XBox 360 and Sony had a lot of built in credibility with third parties after an 11 year stretch of being no.1 with PS1-PS2.

Sony really only had one main problem -- the price, which was going to become less of a factor over time, and ultimately over the course of a 7 year console cycle, it wasn't a big deal for the last 5 years of the gen.

If Nintendo does everything right from here on out, I could see maybe 30 million WW, more if they can conjure up a break out new hit IP but I would say these are extremely optimistic scenarios. 

If the Wii U had a chipset that wouldn't be outdated in a couple of years, I would say they have more of a runway to make up for their mistakes, but alas. 

"Despite its rough start, I believe the Wii U can sell around 40 to 50 million units lifetime"

WUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Its impossible, people doubt if it can reach 15 million lifetime...  15-25 million is a very optimistic number. Wii U sold terrible on the market before PS4 and xbone arrived, its losing to PS360. Its going to be even more difficult for Nintendo to sell from now on. It got a 2D and 3D Mario already and those didnt help exactly.