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Forums - Gaming Discussion - If exclusives sell consoles, how come the Wii U failed? Also, why are few youtubers saying exclusives sell Switchs/PS4s but not Xbox Ones?

deskpro2k3 said:
PS3 needed exclusives to be competitive, and in the end they kicked butt.

PlayStation 3

The top-selling PlayStation 3 games (all figures in millions of units sold-through since launch).

Pos Game Year Genre Publisher North America Europe Japan Rest of World Global
1. Grand Theft Auto V 2013 Action Rockstar Games 6.37 9.84 0.99 3.12 20.31
2. Call of Duty: Black Ops II 2012 Shooter Activision 4.99 5.88 0.65 2.28 13.80
3. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 2011 Shooter Activision 5.54 5.78 0.49 1.54 13.35
4. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2010 Shooter Activision 6.01 4.40 0.48 1.78 12.67
5. Gran Turismo 5 2010 Racing Sony Computer Entertainment 2.96 4.87 0.81 2.10 10.75
6. Call of Duty 6 2009 Shooter Activision 4.99 3.66 0.38 1.59 10.61
7. Grand Theft Auto IV 2008 Action Rockstar Games 4.79 3.72 0.44 1.62 10.57
8. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 (Working Title) 2013 Shooter Activision 4.11 4.01 0.39 1.62 10.13
9. FIFA 13 2012 Sports EA Sports 1.07 5.13 0.13 1.68 8.01
10. Battlefield 3 2011 Shooter Electronic Arts 2.86 2.94 0.35 1.07 7.21

 

PlayStation 4

The top-selling PlayStation 4 games (all figures in millions of units sold-through since launch).

Pos Game Year Genre Publisher North America Europe Japan Rest of World Global
1. Grand Theft Auto V 2014 Action Rockstar Games 5.88 9.46 0.60 2.94 18.88
2. Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 2015 Shooter Activision 6.15 6.05 0.41 2.44 15.04
3. Call of Duty: WWII 2017 Shooter Activision 4.63 6.13 0.40 2.10 13.25
4. FIFA 18 2017 Sports EA Sports 1.26 8.63 0.15 1.73 11.76
5. FIFA 17 2016 Sports Electronic Arts 1.25 7.95 0.12 1.61 10.94
6. Uncharted (PS4) 2016 Action Sony Interactive Entertainment 4.42 3.90 0.21 1.68 10.20
7. Red Dead Redemption 2 2018 Action-Adventure Rockstar Games 3.31 3.98 0.19 1.43 8.92
8. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare 2016 Shooter Activision 3.06 3.82 0.19 1.35 8.42
9. Fallout 4 2015 Role-Playing Bethesda Softworks 2.86 3.95 0.27 1.32 8.40
10. FIFA 16 2015 Sports EA Sports 1.15 5.77 0.07 1.23 8.22

 

Huge difference.



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TheBraveGallade said:
Miyamotoo said:

SM3DW, Mario Kart 8, Splatoon, Mario Maker, Smash Bros 4, Zelda BotW...are all great and strong potential system seller games, but they all come out on Wii U when console was already dead and considered for fail, Wii U need some of those games on launch and in its first year, similar to Switch.

Pretty much this.

I'd say if either 3d world, mk8, smash 4, or Splatoon  (splatoon that early could have LITERALLY made the ps4 crash and burn inJapann) came out by holiday 2013 it would have done SOOO much better. 

3D World did come out by holiday 2013.  It came out in November 2013.  But that was still too late.  Once the launch window passes Wii U had practically nothing for about 6 months.  The biggest exclusive between January and summer was Lego City Undercover.  There was also an HD version of the Wii's monster hunter game which had its own 3DS version at the same time.  But this wasn't anywhere near enough.



I mean,even on the exclusives department the Wii U kinda lacked. The console came and go and it didn't received a Fire Emblem, an main Animal Crossing, a Metroid, an main Kirby,a Luigi's Mansion,the 3D Mario was a sequel to a portable game and not the open worldmany were hoping, it only got one Mario Party,the Zelda and Paper Mario released at the very end of the console life. It had pretty good exclusives on it,but many Nintendo franchises went missing on the platform.



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RingoGaSuki said:

Simple. The exclusives weren't good enough. NSMBU was wanted by no-one, same for SM3DW and the Zelda remakes. I bought one for Pikmin 3 and sold it soon after finishing it. There was nothing else there that I couldn't play on the 3DS. It felt like they were competing with themselves

I agree with you to an extent because while the overall top games the Wii U got is comparable to any other Nintendo platform, they all came too late.  Nintendo placed all their hopes on Nintendo Land and NSMBU holding things down until reinforcements could arrive and both games failed.  After that they had nothing to get them through the drought of 2013 and the console's reputation as a failure was cemented before Mario 3D World, MK8, Smash 4, Splatoon, Mario Maker, XCX and others could provide support.



You need a high quantity of high quality games. Not just quantity and not just quality.



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Honestly, exclusives do sell consoles and is probably the reason why the Wii U managed to outsell the Dreamcast and Saturn and pushed 14 million units despite being the worst console hardware to hit the market possibly ever from a major console developer. If it wasn't for games like Mario Kart 8, Smash 4, Splatoon, Mario Maker the Wii U probably would have sold half of what it did. The Wii U was a complete disaster in terms of hardware and I would say was an even bigger hardware failure than the Saturn. Honestly, if Sony, Microsoft or even Sega released hardware that was as bad as the Wii U they probably would have killed it after a year because nothing could be done to resurrect such a disaster. Nintendo EAD had so much talent that they were not only able to keep a pulse in this dead console despite zero third party support they actually created some of the best games of the generation. If you look at the major sales spikes from the Wii U during its life, it always followed one of the amazingly successful first party releases.



The exclusives weren't that great.

Super Mario 3D World was one of the worst 3D Marios they could have put out. We went from Galaxy to that and it hurt. There's no mainline Zelda game (they'd delay BOTW to the point where it's a Switch game). Retro was forced to make a boring DKCR sequel instead of an awesome first person shooter or WRPG. No Metroid. No third party support (even the GameCube had some decent third party games). Smash Bros. 4 seemed like such a weak attempt that the name was literally "for Wii U" as if it was a commodity.

The tablet controller appealed to no one. I predicted the Wii U would fail immediately because the tablet controller made no sense. The Wiimote was obviously a hit, but Apple was trying to hop on the tablet bandwagon at the time but it literally added nothing to the system. I mean, it wasn't even like a console-DS. Nintendo would go with the "last gen graphics" but charge a full gen price with NO benefits. The Wii could have weak graphics because of its mass market appeal with motion control. Same with the Switch which has the portable gimmick. The Wii U had NO reason to be so weak. It didn't need to be PS4/One strong, but it should have been like PS3.5 or Xbox 540 strong at least!

Lack of online features in 2012.... in 2002 it was acceptable, but not in 2007 much less 2012! The price was way too much (as mentioned above). No hard drive. I could go on and on and on and on and on.

The Switch thankfully rectified (or is rectifying) a lot of these issues and is an amazing console . The Wii U was just a bad dream.



mZuzek said:



The Wii U had Super Mario 3D World, Pikmin 3, The Wonderful 101, Bayonetta 2 (before it came to Switch), Zelda: Wind Waker HD, Twilight Princess HD, Star Fox Zero (say what you want about it), Star Fox Guard (again, same as Zero), Yoshi's Woolly World (before it released on 3DS), Captain Toad Treasure Tracker (before it came to 3DS and Switch), Nintendo Land, Splatoon, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Paper Mario Color Splash, Super Mario Maker, Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (before it came to Switch), Hyrule Warriors (before it came to Switch), Pokken Tournament (before it came to Switch), and Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE,

That's a pretty good amount of games from 2012-16, even if a good amount of these games are no longer exclusive. Hell, I think Tokyo Mirage Sessions (the Atlus, Nintendo, and Intelligent Systems collab) should definitely get a second chance of life as it was just sent out to die in 2016 when the Wii U was at its lowest point.

Unfortunately, exclusives, no matter how good they are, won't be able to carry a console, especially if there are negatives that bury the console's potential. Even the Vita suffered that fate. Yes, it doesn't have the AAA exclusives from Sony that the Wii U had with Nintendo, but it had pretty good indie/Japanese support. Nevertheless, the pricing of the console + the weird deal with AT&T for the 3G Vita, the pricing of the memory cards, the dwindling AA-AAA third party support not too long after launch, and the rise of mobile gaming severely affected the Vita's life. For the Wii U, the confusing branding, the lack of marketing, the lack of third party support post-launch, the Nintendo exclusives releasing too late when the Wii U needed them, and the popularity of the PS4 took away the Wii U's headstart and the console did not gain much traction after.