The Wii U isn’t doing well. “We’re told by someone with access to the NPD’s data that sales for January were ‘well under’ 100,000 units. By our estimates, sales were somewhere between 45,000 and 59,000 units for the month, which is lower than any of the three previous-generation home consoles sold in their worst months, with the possible exception of a recent performance by the original Wii.” All that is old will be new again.
This is normal, in fact something similar happened to the 3DS in its first year (high price + no games).
There’s no games for Wii U and the price of the console is too high too… so the sales figures are poor. No mystery here.
A Zelda game and price cut will solve the issue.
Yup, looks like people will need the Wii-U to play Mario and Zelda, along with the next Xbox or PS4 to play everything else. This is as it has been since the Super NES. Seems that every other day, I keep hearing about some third party game or graphics engine that won’t be ported to Wii U, and the REAL next-gen systems haven’t even been released yet.
Really wish Nintendo would save gamers the trouble and just start releasing titles on other consoles. They do okay in the handheld scene, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Wii U was the last console they ever produce.
Edited 2013-04-09 00:08 UTC
Eh… back in the 32/64-bit era and the next generation of Dreamcast/GameCube/PS2/Xbox, Nintendo *was* pretty much my gaming fix. Not because it’s all I had (it wasn’t, especially in the later generation), but their systems typically have just the kinds of stuff I want to play.
Dreamcast was awesome, but some of its greatest games hit GameCube (unfortunately not including Shenmue). PS2, meh, I wasn’t a fan of it, it was only good for a handful of games. Xbox was good, but IMO still not as good as the Cube. N64 vs. PSX… hah, there’s almost nothing I really cared for on the PSX, N64 was where it was at.
So no, in many cases, I would honestly take the Nintendo. Sony, for the most part, just doesn’t cut it.
Wow, that one’s about as old as “the year of Linux on the desktop.” I’ve been hearing the same crap spewed since around the N64 days. Nintendo ain’t dead yet. But unfortunately at this point Sega might as well be.
Edited 2013-04-09 00:42 UTC
Yeah, don’t get me wrong… they do good stuff. It’s just unfortunate that people need to spend $300+ on a last-gen system with 2007 specs to play their newest console offerings.
It’s all in the games. Specs in the end don’t mean much… otherwise, Pole Position asd Pole Position II are garbage. (I still love those games! LOL.)
I think you’re missing the point here. Why should I have to spend $300 just to play Nintendo 1st party titles? That’s the only thing the Wii U is gonna be good for.
$300 to play with a clunky tablet controller.
I tried the Wii U and found it to be the most annoying game console of all time. You have to keep switching your focus to a small screen to view data that could just as easily be placed in the corner of your HDTV. It’s just a lame gimmick that doesn’t work very well. Poor products have poor sales and this falls into that category.
Again, people have been saying similar things for years. If you want to play Nintendo games, buy a Nintendo system. If not, don’t bother. No one is forcing you to if you don’t think it’s worth it. Spend your $599 on a Sony or something, an all-in-one kitchen sink with specs to spare. Just as it’s your right to choose whether to buy something or not, Nintendo has the right to release their games on their own systems in order to promote sales of their own products… don’t like it, don’t buy it. Easy.
Of course they have, and Nintendo keeps insisting on making their own hardware, despite gamers wishing they wouldn’t. Maybe this time around, gamers aren’t going for their bullshit.
Just wait for a price drop (Nintendo consoles have traditionally been released at $200, no doubt a lot of people find the current Wii U price steep) and a major game release (Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Metroid, Star Fox, etc.)… we’ll see.
Speak for yourself.
Edited 2013-04-09 22:22 UTC
You know, I keep saying that myself year after year. I grew up on the original NES so I am a fanboy at heart and I do wish it was successful. However, I do find I use the PS3 much more often than my Wii. And while the Wii is cute, the Wii U is what the Wii should had been from the beginning. I don’t get why they are so afraid of embracing the new technology like their reluctance to use discs when N64 came out (my only console I never owned from them, only that I was 16 or so when it came out and thought I’d get over gaming by then… lol) But yeah reason why I never got the Wii U is because of price and no Zelda. If they have a combined package I will jump on that fast!
I think you are wrong and here is why: When the original Wii was released? A phone that would play games cost nearly $4500 and tablets weren’t much cheaper. Now you can get a tablet for like $70 that comes with Angry Birds and Cut The Rope and nearly every phone being offered by a major carrier comes with casual games.
This is what happens when you focus too tightly on a niche, if the market changes you are just boned. Nintendo decided to completely give up on ALL of the hardcore crowd and focus JUST on the casual set, we have seen several devs come flat out and say that the Wii U not only won’t play the next gen games it won’t play the hardcore games coming out now so this thing is ONLY good for the casual crowd and that market is too busy playing with their Android tablets or iPads to really care.
Personally I figured this would happen because every person I know has the Wii…and its in the closet. It was a fad, no different than Guitar Hero, everybody wanted it but quickly got burnt on the “Wii Waggle” and it ended up gathering dust in a closet. Now those people are too busy playing the latest phone games to really care about chasing the Wii Waggle with the Wii Tab and I don’t think cutting the price is gonna help, the market has just moved on.
I almost entirely agree with you bar the poitn about teh Wii being a fad. I don’t think it was as it outlasted any other fad by a long stretch and I might be wrong about this, but didn’t it also outsell the PS3 and 360?
The problem with the original Wii was that most of the games didn’t have much longevity and the specs were too poor to attract more of the serious developers (who knew that serious gamers would also be put off by the specs).
I think the original Wii was a gimmick that became very successful. And because of this Nintendo’s next console had great potential to build upon their market share but also attract some of the jaded non-casual gamers (and I think there are quite a few of those who are starting to get sick of the unimaginative titles on Ms and Sony consoles). The Wii was also the most social of all the consoles, which that in itself can help drive consoles as families can share gaming time rather than playing in isolation over the net.
However the Wii U is -in my opinion at least- a major blunder. They’ve moved more into the gimmick territory, the touch screen controller is bulky and a crappier version of smart phones / tablets that everyone already has, specs are driving new business away and now Nintendo are stuck trying to sell a gimmick that everyone has already bought into (either with the Wii original or tablets).
In fact Skyward Sword sold very well and Wii was already in the closet back then!
Because games are what really matters.
As long as people love Link, Samus and Mario… Nintendo will sell their consoles.
Yeah but how many games do the average wii owner buy? last time i looked at the figures the number was TWO, that’s it, just two.
My youngest was a console maniac before I finally managed to get him onto a PC (which turned out to be MUCH MUCH cheaper in the long run, just FYI) and how many games did he have for his wii? just five, that’s all, and two of those were gifts.
Mario and Samus and Link simply aren’t enough to keep a system alive and with the new consoles coming out the devs are all focused on those at the third parties and with the Wii u being so underpowered a Wii U port is just out of the question.
I really think they focused too much on the casuals and while i’m sure a few hardcore mario fans will buy anything he is on I really don’t see this even getting second place, if MSFT burns the X720 with online only and no used games they MIGHT get third behind Sony and Valve, MAYBE.
But the days of being able to sell with just a gimmick controller are over friend, the numbers don’t lie.
I think there’s a myth about Wii game sales, they were not bad at all (in fact it was 1st in # of games sold too, 800 millon games!)
Wii had a tie ratio similar to Xbox 360 and even higher than PS3 during the first years. Yeah, it declined very deeply in the last years but that’s because Nintendo abandoned Wii to concentrate efforts on 3DS.
As I said before, I think people buy Nintendo consoles mainly to play Nintendo games and the luck of their consoles depends totally on Zelda, Mario and company.
But for that to be a viable strategy they would have to have a LOT more content coming out than they do, a single company just can’t keep enough product in the line to make a console viable, just ask Sega.
I really do think that its gonna come down to the loss of the casual players, I really do, as I know a LOT of people that bought the Wii not because they gave a crap about Samus and Mario but because they heard it was great for party games. I really think that like Rock band it was a fad and the new controller just isn’t gonna be able to cause another fad because 1.- You only get one which takes out the “party games” aspect, and 2.- The casuals really have moved on to tablets and phones.
So if you are a fan and hope it does well? I wish you luck, I really do. I just don’t see any kind of groundswell happening for the Wii U like we did the Wii. Again just look at the numbers, they aren’t just bad they are shockingly bad, the thing just isn’t selling.
That’s not really true – j2me games were and still are big on popular inexpensive mobile phone models…
http://business.opera.com/smw/2012/03/
“The top content for downloading is by far games applications”
This is not normal, sales are poor compared to previous consoles.
Nintendo just like Microsoft got “tablet fever” and created a clunky touch product that no one asked for. Even worse is that the Wii U has a mediocre cpu so you can’t count on it to have silky smooth frame rates.
This ignores that Nov-Dec sales were extremely high. In the first month and a half the Wii U sold about as many systems as the Xbox 360 and PS3 did in their first 6 months.
What’s happening here is that they were able to have more units available at launch than most systems do. They were able to satisfy the early demand right away, rather than trickling out to the early adopter crowd.
Like every other console at its launch, there aren’t a lot of games out for it yet. The games will come later this year, and sales will pick up.
Extremely high? It was outsold by the 360 in December.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/xbox-360-was-best-selling-us-console-i…
Sorry but the Wii U is just not striking the right chord with gamers. It’s a mediocre system with a clunky touch controller that no one cares about. Most of us gamers said “meh” when this thing was previewed but Nintendo didn’t listen. They also ignored requests to make their first-party games work with the pro controller. I’m really sick of these arrogant tech companies thinking that they can ignore customers and chase trends while expecting those same customers to keep forking out the same amount of money. It doesn’t work that way and Nintendo deserves to get burned.
Seems to be working fine for Apple
I dunno.. N64 was for me the last console they made that I wanted to buy. I really wish I was interested in the games on Wii and probably WiiU .. but when I play stuff at my friends places, it just doesn’t do it for me and I find that the “cutesy” “G” rated style of most games won’t hold my attention for long .. never did really. I want to like their kit .. but just don’t.
I dunno.. perhaps being in my very late 30’s .. I’ve finally figured out that I’ve out-grown Nintendo products?
once they release the newer version of their franchises, like mario, zelda, mario kart, smash bros, it will go back to selling. it’s always like that with nintendo.
but i think the problem is that making games is getting more and more expensive, so it takes them longer to come out with them…
I would hope that this is because people finally got bored playing same Mario, Zelda, etc games.
But nope.
Edited 2013-04-09 16:36 UTC
The poor sales of WiiU are hard to interpret right now. Nintendo itself may be a dying brand, based on weak Wii sales for the past few years and a disappointing 3DS launch. Admittedly the WiiU launch was weak, and there’s still not a killer app which shows off why every gamer needs to have a touchpad at his/her disposal. Sales may very well pick up once there’s a new Zelda, Smash Bros. or Mario Kart.
I doubt WiiU will be a dud on the scale of Virtual Boy, but it’s also hard to imagine it’ll sell anywhere near the number of units that the original Wii did. I suspect Nintendo has another Gamecube on its hands: an inexpensive system that gamers will buy for a few great first-party games, while turning to Sony or Microsoft to meet most of their gaming needs.
You could be forgiven for not knowing the console is available here in the UK.
Not seen a single TV advert for it and even in stores, the areas dedicated to it is the same size as xbox or ps.
You would have expected Nintendo to pump some money into advertising while it is a “generation ahead” of the competition. Make no mistake, MS and Sony will POUR money into advertising their new consoles
Sony isn’t exactly in a great position to pour money into much of anything at the moment.
PlayStation division’s operating income in Q2 was ^Ayen2.3 billion ($29 million), a year-on-year decline of 23.3 percent
They can afford to spend a fair amount to revitalize the platform.
I know this has nothing at all to do with the gaming side
or the usability, BUT:
It (the Wii U GamePad controller) looks like a Fisher Price toy! ..or at best an early-learning V-Tech type kiddies computer..!!
That really doesn’t help matters. The poooor screen, visually, plus the poor touchscreen doesn’t help neither.
(sorry if that’s already commented upon – no time for reading lots of fora today – packing for new job)
Edited 2013-04-11 15:38 UTC