Soundwave said:
I really honestly have not seen any indication at least in the US that anything over than the really big Mario games cause any type of bump for the Wii U.
Even franchises like Donkey Kong Country and Pikmin 3 seemed to cause a nominal blip at best.
I'm not even sure if you can say the Wii U is a system that sells Nintendo games very well, it basically just sells the main Mario games at an OK attach rate.
Everything else, even Nintendo is having trouble selling games on this thing or getting any type of even temoprary bump from non-Mario releases.
While it's a quality machine, from a market POV this is pretty much Nintendo's nightmare console.
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DK/Pikmin are not even remotely on the same league as Zelda or even, to a lesser extent, Metroid. Neither of which are anywhere in league with Mario anything, but they still make sizable bumps because they are mainstream and known titles which can be marketted heavily if done properly and have established mind share. Pikmin and DK are not very commonly known, Pikmin especially is a niche upon niches. Xenoblade has this odd transient state of being a recently established name in communities for "the JRPG experience" and that can also be worked into more than just niche appeal as the generation as a whole has and will continue to lack titles from this genre until DQXI which will likely come well after Xenoblade X. As recent releases like DBefault or even the original Xenoblade, have shown there is a market for JRPGs in the west and Europe, its just not tapped frequently if at all.
Ultimately, for the WiiU, the system is building a bunch of dots on the map that, little by little, interconnect for people. There are a handful of titles come, coming, and coming next year, that are big blips that get bigger returns/sales than normal. Little things like Bayo2 or other niche titles might push a few tens of thousands of people over the ledge and then open up the whole backlog library. Etc. This won't get it to sell spectacularly but it will chug along and, as I said, it will likely end up with the console as a whole (along with the 3DS) returning to profitability by the end with Nintendo losing little to no money in the long run.
WiiU currently has the highest attach rate as far as I remember, so obviously it sells its titles well enough (and one has to consider that it has more titles and a longer market time, so attach rates should be dropping as not everyone buys everything) and the YoY software sales increase is a sign of it at least selling something.
Nintendo will teeter through the storm well enough, what they do after will be important but at least they got several big hurdles out of the way. If they can build up a strong core-image, that's even better.