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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Nintendo initially projected the Wii U to sell 100 million units

Arlo on 05 July 2016

More proof that Nintendo doesn't look at the actual market--they go off of what they think SHOULD happen. There were so many things stacked against the Wii U, but they couldn't see any of it because of the Wii's success.



http://www.youtube.com/ArloStuff

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onionberry on 05 July 2016

one person at Nintendo*



Illusion on 05 July 2016
mountaindewslave said:

strange prediction considering the Wii U is not particularly similar to the Wii in design. I'm not sure how they thought a big tablet controller would attrack the casuals anyway near a gimmicky motion control wand would.

if anything the Wii U controller is more suited for the extremely hardcore who want to do a million things at once on different screens

Check out this thread:

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=147642

Signalstar is right, the attitude on VGChartz right up to the Wii U's release was extremely optimistic.  You would be in flaming territory if you predicted that the Wii U would sell less than 40 million.  And VGChartz wasn't in a bubble, everybody saw Nintendo as being the Apple of video games.  The Wii and DS were revolutionary and enormously successful and the Wii U looked like another daring and innovative creation from Nintendo.  When Nintendo's last two hardware releases had been nothing short of industry-changing, who would have possibly thought that the Wii U would have been anywhere near a flop. 

I can absolutely see this attitude extending to the people working at Nintendo, as well.  Top dogs like Kimishima were probably able to see the wheels coming off the bus a bit earlier, but the average rep at Nintendo probably had no idea that anything would go wrong with the Wii U's launch.



Mr Puggsly on 05 July 2016



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doctor4560 on 05 July 2016
SJReiter said:
Kind of misleading. Sounds like it was just one sales rep. Hardly constitutes the entire company projecting those sales.

Pretty much this



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Keybladewielder on 05 July 2016

Uh oh the thread title should be changed...



Lawlight on 05 July 2016

Based on their forecasts, Nintendo expected the WiiU to sell 5.5M in its first year. Then 9M in its 2nd year. That's 14.5M in its first 17 months.



pokoko on 05 July 2016

It's quite possible that Nintendo had lofty internal goals for the Wii U before launch. They started slashing projections almost from the start, sometimes more than once. They initially projected 5.5 million in the Wii U's first partial year, which they didn't get close to hitting. First full year projection was 9 million but that was after they were already in quicksand.

I mean, I doubt Kishima was listening to projections in a meeting from someone without some level of importance.



Jranation on 06 July 2016

Someone = Nintendo
Awesome logic Abbath



Pocky Lover Boy! 

Mr.GameCrazy on 06 July 2016

Wow. Nintendo was really overconfident about the Wii U. If Nintendo was going to achieve getting sales close to the Wii, they should've been more prepared for HD gaming, advertised the system better than they did, and given the Wii U a different name so that people didn't think that it was an addon for the Wii.