What's a Wii-U?


Seriously, to me (and I know this perspective is not shared by everyone) there are really no "system sellers" for the Wii-U. I own a Wii-U, and I bought it just so I could say I own it. It collects dust. A lot of dust.

Consider this: how well would the WiiU have sold without Smash Bros over the holiday?

Nope. MK8 was definitely a much bigger system seller.

I does offcourse.. but not as much as MK8..

But you should not use the word "was".. it's still a system seller.. :)

(And it will be for the comming years.. Not as big as MK8.. (Mariomaker and hopefully splatton) but lot of future WiiU buyers, will look at this game, and it will be one of the reasons why they choose WiiU)

Why do you think this is?? No doubt at all that Mario Kart is the bigger franchise - so the bump there is about the biggest one you could expect. Certain inventory constraints on WiiU (namely Amiibo and the GC adapter) could be to blame. Also consider the fragile state of affairs Nintendo has with retailers and manufacturers over the WiiU. Nintendo doesn't have the resources, willpower, and/or trust among business partners to ship bigger numbers and cut prices to have another major boost in HW sales.

Is Smash losing its popularity? ABSOLUTELY NOT!! Combined sales with the 3DS version are already mounting towards 10 million. Smash as a franchise is selling the best it ever has. Smash is continually growing.

 The Wii U falling behind the PS3 in sales is just plain sad.  What are your thoughts? I'll reiterate this: Nintendo doesn't have the resources, willpower, and/or trust among business partners to ship bigger numbers and cut prices to have another major boost in HW sales. In contrast, that's already been accomplished with the PS3. The difference in third party support should be considered as well - as some customers would care only sports games, Call of Duty, and or random stuff like "Duck Dynasty: The Video Game". There's really nothing on WiiU shelves now to appeal to such a customer. In 2013 they could skate by with unsold games like those from 2012. The WiiU had even worse 3rd party support in 2014 than it did in 2013. Now more than any other time in history, people are buying Nintendo home consoles just to play Nintendo games. Consider: many WiiU games will outsell their GC counterparts easily -- but GC likely will end up with the larger install base in the end.

Did everyone forget that they released Smash for 3DS? Many of those sales would have went towards Wii U and it would have seen a bigger boost than it got, but they made another version that was readily available. It was smart in that it sold more 3DS games, but was horrible because it took sales away from Wii U.

I think releasing Smash on 3DS BEFORE the Wii U version was the dumbest move ever. If anything, they probably should've waited until this spring or summer to bring Smash to 3DS. I feel like that would've boosted the Wii U by at least another 200k or so... but no, bring it out FIRST to a system with an install base that's 5x bigger than the system you're trying to save and justify... makes perfect sense.

Mario Kart is more popular than Smash Bros. Also, the fans of Smash Bros likely already have a Wii U, since much of them also seem to like Mario Kart. However, MK appeals to a larger audience that eclipses Smash Bros' audience, it makes sense that it's more of a system seller.