“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.” This doesn’t surprise me. I’ve always wondered: who’s the Wii U for? Casual Wii buyers – which comprise most of the Wii owners, I’d guess – have little reason to upgrade, and hardcore Nintendo fans are waiting for the next re-releases of Mario and Zelda from the Nintendo Game-o-tron. Until then, who’s going to buy this thing?
In truth, I hadn’t even realise it had been released. Given how much fuss Sony, Microsoft and Apple all make about their flagship product launches, the Wii U launch completely passed me by.
Of course there’s always the chance that I’ve just been oblivious to it (I’d be quite surprised given how closely I follow tech news – but it’s not an impossibility). I do wonder how many others missed this though.
You did miss the Pebble watch too.
Then again I doubt you are the targeted audience of the Wii U.
My son is though and he wants one. On the plus side he can still play his old Wii games, on the minus side it’s rather expensive.
In my defence for the Pebble, I tend to ignore Kickstarter stuff. But of course you’re right, I did still miss the Pebble and I’m not the Wii U’s target audience either.
Maybe I’m just getting old and losing touch with technology.
I did see it coming, but when I visited a toy store and saw one I thought, “Oh, it’s already here”.
My son recently played with an Xbox 360 from a friend and now he wants one too. And a Wii U.
I’m not too convinced about the Wii U. Actually I haven’t informed myself yet, but I think it also offers media content which in The Netherlands we are often left out (iTunes movies, series & books).
The Xbox 360 is okay I guess, but that’s been out a while so a new model may be coming.
But I still have an Atari 2600 and a lot of games!
That’s exactly what I meant though. I knew Nintendo had a new console due out soon and I knew a few details about it. But I had no idea it had already been launched.
Frankly I’d skip the WiiU and wait to see what MS or Sony release this year.
I don’t know how old your son is but consider that as he gets older he will be less and less impressed with the WiiU. The shelf life of the other consoles is a lot longer.
Ultimately you’ll have to figure out balance out longevity of the console versus cost (the others will be more expensive than a WiiU). Also another thing to consider is that the WiiU will probably drop in price when the PS4 and the 720 get released.
He’s nearly 10, but he plays a lot on my iPad and plays Minecraft on my wife’s iMac. That takes away playing time from his Wii, making a Wii U not a very good investment I think.
I think you’re right and it’s better to wait a while and see how things develop.
Admit it, what you truly want is for him to bring yet another Apple device home as his next console
I just want him to have/use his own stuff.
Now I play games on my iDevices, he sees that and wants to play them too. As these devices are single user he messes up my game progresses!
Being original is good.
like wii, ds and 3ds Nintendo consoles are always not well received buy customers at the very first start.
they are not conventional…
they use very exotic hardware that take time to be mastered.
also they put efficency in first place so only the best developers in world could get the maximum from the hardware.
but like the 3ds is saving the market also wiiu will show how innovative games could be done by the best developers out there.
average developers will make party games using the tablet only for menus…but simply dont buy such games…
being ps4 and xbox 3 based on pc cpus and only partially customized gpus, Nintendo will remain the only one having a real dedicated hardware for gaming…
apple???
Pippin showed already how they are not good as console makers…
in the meantime you can “play” with the fantastic google street app developed by google exclusively for the wiiu…
Edited 2013-02-15 10:43 UTC
Are you kidding the Wii was huge success from the very beginning, after two months and half, it had reached 4.5m sold units (worldwide), against 2.5 for the wii (source: vgchartz). It was the most successful launch for a game console. The DS was at 3.3m after two months and half in sale only in Japan, the 3DS 2.5m, with only one month between Japan and worldwide release. DS and WII were very hot success right from the beginning.
But both DS and the Wii brought something desirable for the consumers, DS was the only way to get portable gaming at the time, 3DS is now competing with smartphones, which have a strong impact on sales. Wii came with something truly brilliant, the wiimote, and the promise of a new way to play. That is the wiimote that made the Wii so successful. While the WiiU does not have anything of value, compared to the competition, it has roughly equivalent spec to the PS3 and the XBox360, for roughly the same price, with almost no game available. Oh and it has a new controller with a screen on it, but I have yet to see a good use for that, or at least, an use that would make people think they really need the WiiU.
Umm, what? Half a gig of ram vs 8 gis. A six year old R520 based graphics processor compared to a heavily modified R700. What are you talking about?
while wiiu is quite on par with ps3 on specs it doesn’t mean that it’s the same generation of ps3.
generation is not only about raw power of cpu or gpu…
wiiU will never be as powerful as ps4 of course…but as wii and ds showed this could be an advantage and not a problem.
It is far beyond the PS3’s capabilities.
What? Wii U has 2GB of RAM with 1GB usable by apps. What are you talking about?
history repeats,
you are like those that in the past hate the ds preferring the psp or the wii preferring the ps3…
wiiU has introduced a new way of gaming that is asymettric gameplay.
Really? Last I checked, the 3DS was outselling the DS thus far in its life cycle. Phones don’t even come close to scratching the same itch that the 3DS does. Not saying that one is better than the other, but there’s definitely room for both. When I’m in the mood for something a little ‘meatier’ than Temple Run or Super Hexagon, that’s what my 3DS is for.
Are you married? I’m not, but I have a few friends that are, and they LOVE the Wii U screen, because they can now game in the living room without monopolizing the TV. Some of them, who are hardcore Nintendo fanboys, are convinced that this is what is going to make the Wii U rule this gen… millions of fathers and husbands in the same position they are. I have my doubts, but I give them the benefit of the doubt, because for all the times people have been predicting doom and gloom for Nintendo, they always seem to find ways to print money. They are a lot like Apple that way
Edited 2013-02-15 21:05 UTC
These statements are ambiguous are seem to conflate architecture with periphery. Nintendo is very conservative on the architecture level and does all its experimenting on the control and display front. Kinect is as unconventional as anything Nintendo is doing, while the PS3 is the real mutant under the hood, which also makes it the greatest challenge to skilled developers, much like the Saturn and Jaguar were in their day (those things were both mismatched clusters of oddball processors).
Now you’re just living in the past. You might as well say iPhone will fail as a gaming device because N-Gage proved phone+games doesn’t work and Game.com proved games+Internet doesn’t work. It’s a different world now, and the products in it are much better.
I’ve read reviews that the UX of the WiiU is just terrible, with incredibly long load times, so I hope that’s significantly hurting sales as general crappiness rightly should. On the same token, I hope Nintendo fixes its firmware problems and is rewarded with improved sales thereafter.
But whatever Nintendo does next, Apple owns a huge chunk, if not the biggest chunk, of the present and foreseeable future of gaming. Granted Apple’s success and Nintendo’s are not mutually exclusive, but iOS and Android are extremely capable with much lower software prices, and the iPad captures more collective techlust and toy appeal than a new generation of settop console refreshes. Combine that with Windows 8’s general unfriendliness to Steam and traditional aftermarket software, and you have a perfect storm that will have massive repercussions on the base or “hardcore” gaming industry for some time. The failed launches of both PSVita and WiiU are partly to blame on flaws of the product itself, but I believe they’re also symptomatic of a larger change that will significantly hinder the next Playstation and Xbox as well, regardless of their ultimate quality.
If you look at the success of the Wii, it’s biggest audience was probably casual games of all ages; from 8 to 88.
Fast forward a few years and now everyone has a capable mobile device, be it a 4-5 inch smartphone or some sort of tablet. Many of those games are Fun to play. It’s not about the graphics and that’s where the Wii succeeded. The Wii U is just and evolution of that but this time around it has some major competition.
Xbox and Playstation are fine (for now). Projects like NVidia’s Shield and a more advanced Apple TV could take a chunk out of their share as well.
in the end only wii opened to casual market,just look at WiiU launch games: majority are hardcore games.
I bought mine for the HD Zelda coming in 2014; I figured there would be something out worth playing before then, and nintendoland plus the new super Mario brothers games are definitely fun. I can’t wait for the new metroid from Retro studios, personally.
tl;dr: Bought one for games over a year away, probably would have been better off waiting.
saturated market (wiiu’s biggest competitor is probably wii itself), competition from tablet/mobile, poor economy, average us income is down something like 10k/yr from 5 years ago.
Nintendo has taken risks in the past. most have payed off, perhaps the wiiu won’t. Wonder if the micro consoles will do better?
I suspect it will sell as well as the Playstation Vita will, but it’s too early to tell. I’m more interested in seeing how the next Playstation/Xbox fare, and personally I think both should hold off for another year or two, rake in more profits from games, then we’ll get better machines more capable of running 4k games. Think about the amount of power it will take to run 4k games at 50 frame per second – not expecting a massive jump in 3D performance.
Edited 2013-02-15 14:37 UTC
There is no way in hell that 4k games will exist in 2 years. Whilst 4k resolution is achievable, you’d have to sacrifice too much scene complexity, in effect reducing the visual fidelity of games. Also think of the bandwidth consumption of the textures required to look good at 4k.
What you might see is 1080 (or slightly larger) upscaled to 4k and then antialiased, but definitely not native.
A $300 console + $60 video games is simply asking too much for many Americans these days when gas prices are up, taxes are up, health care cost are up, and job opportunities are low.
Also video games are overpriced. The retail price of video games should be $40 not $60, and handheld games should be $25 not $40.
Video game sales in 2012 have been abysmal for all consoles, anyone with a brain can see why. The terrible economy plus the expensive cost of video games is the main reason why.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/08/video-game-sales-down_n_20…
Now if the US was like China and they decide to legalize piracy, games would be much cheaper. One of the reasons why video games are expensive is because of the copyright laws that forces video game publishers/developers to license their software.
Edited 2013-02-16 01:12 UTC
I don’t see how Sony and Microsoft are going to try and sell $600+ PS4/Xbox 720’s with $80+ games in this market.
Even in a healthy economy, $80 video games is ridiculous. It was only a decade ago that the retail price for video games was $50. If Sony sells their games at 80 bucks, the piracy rate would soar through the roof.
The PS4 will probably cost around $350 if there is no PS3 backwards compatibility, games will still retail at $60. No one buys $60 games anyway, one of the reasons why video games sales are down is because msrp price is too high.
The US and the rest of the world can learn from China and their lack of copyright enforcement. Even though video game consoles are banned in China, you can get modded Xbox 360’s and Wii’s in gray markets. You know how much the games cost? $1, yes $1 Xbox 360 games.
http://www.techinasia.com/thoughts-xbox-360s-potential-china/
Despite the massive piracy in China, all three major console manufacturers (Nintendo, MS, Sony) want to sell their systems to China, but the government won’t allow it. In China piracy is morally ethical but video games consoles are banned, don’t you find that ironic? I’ve come to the conclusion that many of these video games companies don’t really care about piracy that much. It’s only because of the government (copyright law) that they sell their software at inflated prices.
I’m not saying copyright should be abolished, but piracy should be legal to an extent or the copyright laws need to be dramatically scaled back. That is the only way you will see a dramatic decrease in the price of video games. With the technology we have today games should be cheaper not going up in price. The problem is many of these newer technology (like blu-ray) are protected by copyright and patents, and in order to use these newer technology you have to pay a licensing fee.
Edited 2013-02-18 08:19 UTC
You still live in quite prosperous bubble… people in many less prosperous places (which is most of them) still buy into games.
Corporate/publisher piracy won’t bring many people to developing games in the future…
Well I play casually – 5-10 hours a week. Except that I enjoy “hardcore” games – you know, Gears of War, Dark Souls, Battlefield 3, Vanquish, Halo.
And Wii U with it’s controller might be the best gaming innovation for 5784th Mario game, but taking your eyes off the screen to look at another screen is just… It will never work for my type of games.
Kinect, Wii U second screen – all are useless if you wanna play “big boy” games. And for “childish” games I have my phone.
So buy an iPad instead of Wii U. You can play on the toilet plus read osnews.com on the couch.
Edited 2013-02-16 08:06 UTC
I bought one, this month. I like it, the kids like it. The wii pad is nice, it can control everything.
If it flops I’ll just get another console. Works fine for now. I bought a Wii 5 years ago, now this. Got my moneys worth from the Wii, so why not get this.
My kids have lots of fun with the Wii now. In fact, I just put a new optical drive in it. I really don’t see what the Wii U brings to the table right now. Nintendo usually drops prices on their consoles after a year or so. That’s probably when I’ll buy.
This year, everyone got tablets. 3 cheap no-name brand ICS tablets for the boys, and a Kindle fire HD for my 12yo daughter.
The tablets are cheap enough so everyone gets their own (no fighting) and it’s not so painful when they inevitably get destroyed.
Nintendo needs to take a lesson from their old rival SEGA’s demise and drop the damn gimmicks. Get back to delivering core gameplay and the best experiences possible on hardware that isn’t a generation behind. Kill the shovelware garbage while they’re at it