Despite popular belief, PS3 didn't have this miraculous turnaround, sales simply had a steady increase as the price came down and big games released.

2007-8 million
2008-10 million
2009-13 million
2010-14 million
2011-14.5 million
2012-12 million
2013-8 million

PS3 peaked in its 4th/5th full years when consoles typically peak in their 2nd/3rd full year, starting at a high price and taking a few years to get to a more consumer friendly price is what caused PS3 to peak so late, that is all. No miracle turnaround happened at all.

Cash and buildings (even construction in progress) are both assets.  Nintendo spending money on a building in Kyoto isn't booked as a loss.  The bigger factor at the moment for Nintendo is their large glut of inventory, though they have managed to burn through a decent portion over the last 6 quarters.  Even so, they are still more than 70% higher than before they were manufacturing Wii U's.  This is probably the biggest factor for the lack of a pricecut.  Hypothetically, if they have 2 million Wii U's on their balance sheet as $300 each, they don't want an immediate $200 million dollar loss by cutting it to $200.  That is before they even get into manufacturing new ones at a loss.

Nintendo have turned it around sooner when you consider profit, I think this is all Nintendo have cared about really

PS3 never really sold poorly, it just came out later than the X360. I believe it consistently outsold the 360 once it hit the $400 price point. Sony has a much larger fanbase than Nintendo as well. That fanbase waited on lower price points. PS4 sales would not be so impressive if the PS3 launched at $400/$300 like Xbox did.

Nintendo did something to piss off 3rd parties, to the point that they started abandoning the company during the GC years. Most can agree that most 3rd parties didnt try with the Wii and they certainly didnt try with the U.

Sony and MS owners are more likely to buy broken shit games in larger numbers and the Nintendo fanbase usually avoids that.

PS3 was never selling that badly, just underperforming by expectations

PS3 was always seen as desirable hardware

PS3 never had a lack of software.


The Wii U is fundementally unattractive from a hardware perspective. Even if suddenly it got all of the 3rd party software in the world, no one/very few would want to play Witcher 3 or FFXV on that hardware versus the PS4 or even X1. The only realistic thing Nintendo can do at this point is push it as secondary console and unless you have an amazing gimmick, very few people will put down another $250 just to play a few exclusives (Mario kart, Smah Bros, Zelda). Hence why a Nintendo system with no 3rd party support or successful gimmick will only ever sell 20m

Sony had a massive fanbase that WANTED to buy it but it was just too damn expensive. Some waited and some went Xbox but once they got the price down plenty of people bought in. I'm not sure exactly when but it took awhile for PS3 to get down to PS4's launch price much less WiiU's current price. Then you'll see the difference comparing sales after that point.

What turn around?

Well, PS3 sold better than 360 every year apart from 2008, so we can't talk about a comeback VS 360, PS3 basicly sold a lot more than 360 in the Global considering it was released 1 full year later in Japan and NA, and 16 months later in Europe. Wii just slowed down after 3 years, and PS3 got stronger with The Slim Model at $299.

WiiU does not have any weapon to comeback, PS4 is too strong. WiiU will not sell in its entire life cycle what PS4 sold in 13 months. Just imagine about a comeback...it will never catch X1 also.

OP - ''PS3 received one crap 3rd party port after another, most of which ran better on their competitor's console, leading a lot of people to believe the 360 was the better choice to play 3rd party games. Nintendo faced similar issues with 3rd parties where they got lesser ports in the beginning and eventually those dried up as well."

The PS3's 3rd party games improved, almost to the point of parity, and a handful even ran better on the PS3. Also as the wording of your post seems to imply, (even though I doubt you meant it that way), the PS3's 3rd party games support was always, always superior to the Wii-U, and never "dried up" either. So yeah, 3rd party support is one reason. Perhaps the biggest one.

What is that chart measuring?

Sony's game division had 29.3 billion OI in 2012. Surely taxes are not that high.