Wii U has historically bad January, sells about 50,000 units in U | Hacker News Reader

Wii U has historically bad January, sells about 50,000 units in U

arstechnica.com

We bought one. I have mixed feelings about it. The new Wii U controller and the touch screen feels like more of a novelty than a useful/lasting gameplay dynamic. It kind of feels more distracting than immersive at this point.

Part of the reason for the slow sales may be that there are virtually no games out for it yet. There are several coming out starting in March, so it may be interesting to see what sales numbers are like, then.

Also Nintendo isn't launching with a new Legend of Zelda game to accompany the new console this time. I guess the Gamecube didn't have Windwaker until about a year later, but Ocarina of Time launched with the N64 and Twilight Princess with the Wii. The Zelda franchise alone seems to boost console sales a fair bit (which is pretty telling in its own right).

essentially ...

"Still, if Nintendo's hardware sales numbers stay this low for much longer, a downward spiral of developer and customer expectations will have the Wii U entering the desperation territory of systems like the Dreamcast and the Virtual Boy before too much longer. If Nintendo is going to turn this boat around, it had better do it quickly."

my take: mobile is eating game consoles.

Mobile is nibbling at console gaming in general, but it's absolutely FEASTING on Nintendo. While other consoles like Xbox and PlayStation have better GPUs and better network multiplayer integration, which is harder to replicate on mobile hardware, Nintendo has for years operated on the general concept of "games don't have to have real-world graphics to be fun."

And for the most part, up until the last couple of years, they've been right. The Wii launched with 1999-era GameCube graphics, and almost nonexistent networked mutliplayer interaction, and sold stupid ridiculous numbers of consoles, all playing games in glorious 480p resolution.

But the games were darned fun, and made up for it. When I had friends over for game night, the Wii was the regular choice for gaming over anything else.

However, mobile hardware has evolved to the point that they can easily replicate everything that Nintendo hardware can, with the sole exception of actually playing the Nintendo brand games that are still so popular. [Edit: Yeah, I know about emulators, but I mean natively for mainstream users.]

Nintendo's intentional choice to stay behind the bleeding-edge hardware curve is finally coming back to haunt them. Also Nintendo's had a terrible time with actually delivering games for their consoles over the last couple of years. The 3DS has been out for a while now (a year plus, IIRC) and I'm still waiting on the release of two games that were announced as launch titles.

Really the only reason I still buy the hardware at all is primarily to play titles that aren't anywhere else - Nintendo's policy of "Nintendo brands on Nintendo hardware" still sells hardware for long time fans of Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, etc., but even that's waning quickly because of delays in shipping the titles and the lack of real innovation once those titles ship.

It pains me to say it, but Nintendo's headed down a path that's going to be very hard (if not impossible even now) to recover from. I think they could turn their business around nearly overnight if they go the Sega route of either abandoning the hardware business, or at the very least abandoning the exclusivity of putting their big brands on their own hardware.

If you want to sell a few million copies of Pokemon to a new audience eager to give their money to you, release it for iOS.

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