I would say conservative, but not a deliberate lowball. 4.5 mil is more likely if they execute a proper price-cut strategy, 4 million if they only do a minor cut.

Pretty savage if they undersell the GameCube, though. After all the mindshare gains their franchises made in the last generation, you'd have to think enough of that stuck that they could beat the Cube at least.

Barely. It lasted long enough that the successor was out, and that was about it.

The key to the 2015 thing is "what do we replace it with?" Unless the system itself is so toxic to Nintendo's balance sheet that they don't care what they replace it with (which would be horrible for mindshare anyway), they need something with which to move forward.

A handheld capable of running Wii U games could do the trick. Many Wii U games have a pretty small disc footprint to begin with, that you could put a lot of the mainstays (like Mario 3D World) right across without worrying too terribly much about storage.

From that point, you pursue a three-pronged strategy: the Quality of Life platform pursues the same crowd that the "Touch Generations" brand pursued in the Wii/DS era. The handheld is their "mainstream" game device, garnering development support from Japan and, perhaps, hooking up with Android so that they can get Western mobile support. Handheld comes with an optional home-dock for local multiplayer, and the home dock could also support some "high-end" games, through extra graphics tech on its side.

The Wii-U not being able to outsell the gamecube has been likely for a while now. Back in december Nintendo lowered the forecast of the fiscal year to about 2.7 million i believe. Gamecube shipped double that in it's first full fiscal year. Aside from a descent launch Wii-U has always been trailing behind the Gamecube.

Only difference is that the Gamecube was already lowered in price to $149 by this time in it's lifecycle, and was lowered further to $99 later in the year in the U.S. So the Wii-U does have way more room for price cuts to boost sales a bit. However Wii-U is already pretty much dead when it comes to 3rd party, and Gamecube was more on par with the other consoles of the generation.

We will see how it goes but Gamecube seems out of reach.

People have suggested a temporary replacement hybrid that lets you play Wii U and 3DS. 

Either way, discontinued officially or not; the effect will be the same. The system will be dead in 2015 and sales will come to a crawl. 

They try the opposite-strategy. If they don't say it it will happen and if they say it it won't happen. 3.6 mill Wii U sold? --> more Wii Us sold. and no it couldn't be less than 3.6^^

And this gentlemen and gentlemen, is why Nintendo is expanding their bussiness to other areas with Quality of Life. There won´t be a new console in 2015, neither will Nintendo abandon the Wii U. Their plan is to hold their bussines with the 3ds, QOL and software sales.

So zero interest in Zelda, Smash Bros, and X?

spurgeonryan said: tbone51 said: Maybe they'll pull a capcom! Like MH4 2.7mil in 6months (done in 1month and 2 weeks :p) I think they are playing it safe, i bet it'll do alot more than that for sure They need to find a way to cut the price of the system. Gamepad is great, but is in the way of profit. Maybe a smaller gamepad is possible? I do not know. They must know it will be bad to just dump the system. Consumer faith will disappear, but their options are dwindling, just as their big bank account is starting to I am sure.

The MK8 bundle is about as close as you get to a price cut. For an extra $30 compared to other bundles, you get nearly $100 worth of product ($50 for an extra game, $40 for Wiimote, $10 for Wii-Wheel)

This is a really low figure and, as somebody else said, it's impossible that they are lowballing with official forecast.

I don't know what to expect from Nintendo, but they need some aggressive change to their business strategy, because things are looking dire.

Im glad Nintendo is going low im predicting about 4.5 million wii u being sold and to.all the talk of doom Nintendo Will support tell the end of 2016 early 2017