Just a reminder, since a few people in this thread seem to be mistaken, the 9 million forecast was for the fiscal year.  That means 12.45m shipped by the end of March.  If we are generous and say they are at 6.5m shipped at the end of 2013, that means another ~6 million in just the next three months.  That is 74% more than they shipped in the past twelve months.  A 1438% increase YoY for the quarter.

Short of giving them away for free, the Wii U has no chance of being close to their forecast.

I think that the only way they might be able to reach that 9 million goal is if they start selling the Wii U in China this quarter.

What about Smash Bros.?

Yup. Nintendo isn't revising the figure because they have a super bundle and plan to meet it lol.

Im not disputing that this bundle would help increase sales but at this point its absolutely impossible for Nintendo to reach there projections. They arent expecting 9m lifetime but 9m just for this fiscal year which means a total of 12.45m by Mar 31. As of Dec 21 Wii U has sold 5m and with next weeks numbers probably around 5.2-5.3m so thats probably around 6m shipped. It is impossible to ship another 6.45m this quarter.

By March 31st, they will have sold 1 million consoles (due to DKCTF and Wii Fit U), leading to a total of 6 million.

Yeah they are not going to make 9 million by march...

Also they cannot keep dropping the price, all that does is damage the product brand over time. It needs to stay stable and they need to start pumping out those games.

It is true that it's practically impossible for Nintendo to reach 9 million for the fiscal year. But some people are underestimating the potential sales by quite a bit, in my opinion. Note that I'm not even going to bother responding to those who make claims like "even if they cut the price in half, it wouldn't sell".

A good measure of potential sales figures for Financial Q4 is the sales of the Wii at the height of its sales. To be clear to those who like to cast aspersions over comments like this, this is a method of determining what might be considered the theoretical maximum for a Q4, not a prediction for actual Wii U sales. At its height, the Wii sold about 4.32 million units in Q4. The only platform we have proper data for that has done better than this is DS, and I'm not counting handhelds because there's a bigger theoretical market for handhelds (there are more people than households).

Realistically, the Wii U could expect, even with a new bundle and Mario Kart 8 releasing in February or March, to sell maybe 1-3 million units, biasing a little towards the lower end (my personal prediction, with MK8 releasing in April, is 1.5 million). Less than 1 million is certainly possible, if Nintendo makes no further efforts to sell units beyond the release of DKCTF, but I personally doubt that Nintendo will be doing nothing.

I actually think Nintendo had planned to have something big for Q3 that didn't end up being ready for release. This would explain the sky-high prediction. Perhaps there's some connection to the recent rumours about an unannounced third-party exclusive. Or maybe the third title was the third Sonic game (Mario x Sonic, released in early December, could probably have driven some decent sales, for instance). I'm not sure, but I doubt that they'd predict 9 million on the back of 3D Mario (which has always performed less well than 2D Mario) and Wii Party U (Wii Party wasn't a massive seller).

Also note that I'm expecting some strong Christmas-week sales numbers, so I expect shipped numbers to easily be at 6 million by the end of the calendar year - so a strong 3 million in Q4 would at least get them to 9 million LTD (which is still well below their prediction of 9 million in this FY, but they could at least claim a partial victory at this level, since it would indicate a turnaround in Wii U sales).


As for the idea for a bundle... I'd suggest that they'd be better off offering the whole of Wii Sports Club for free in the bundle. As described, the bundle is really nothing more than the inclusion of a Wiimote and a preinstalled demo... unlikely to drive sales in that form.

If they really wanted to drive some big sales, and had the games ready in time, then a set of bundles, including a Wii Fit U bundle, a Mario bundle (NSMB U + 3D World), a Mario Kart 8 bundle, a Wii Sports Club bundle, and a Gamers bundle (say, Rayman Legends + CoD Ghosts + Wonderful 101 + , or something like that) might help. Perhaps the best thing to do, though, would be to run National Tours in various countries throughout the next three months, getting the Wii U into the hands of people more. It might help to better emphasise that this isn't the Wii, it's something new.

I'm still shocked that Nintendo didn't do massive Wii U tours in the same way that they did with the Wii prior to release.

Nintendo reported 3.9m sold at the end of March 2013. They projected a further 9 m for this financial year on top of that. These are Nintendo shipment figures not end user purchases so a certain amount is in retail channels.

Vgchartz is stating 5 million sold at this point. Not sure if these represent Nintendo shipments or consumer purchases or somewhere between the two.

Post Christmas console sales are low normally but Mariokart is being released as a major title. However looking at mario 3d world figures I'm not sure mario kart will be hugely significant although should be as its normally such a fantastic title.

Really Nintendo have only shipped 1-2 million wii u consoles when they predicted to sell 9 million this financial year. Hugely disappointing by any standard. However both PS4 and Xbox One are just entering the post christmas abyss so its important to see how they fare in comparison. I suspect Xbox one sales will drop off more significantly because its such an expensive product and like wii u overpriced for its specification.

Wii u had a good launch then sales dropped hugely. We don't yet know if the later consoles will do something similar. The point is though ps4 and xbox one can attract gamers with cutting edge visuals and improved gameplay mechanics thanks to their more powerful hardware. So their exclusive titles are much more tempting and likely to get consumers to buy. It's much harder for wii u to impress gamers because of its weak performance level.

Too expensive, who would still buy a Basic console without any noticeable games for the price of almost a premium.? E.g., in Europe the premium bundle with Nintendoland starts at 277 euros (and for Nintendo dollars and euros are the same).