Wii U Selling Half as Many Units than Gamecube...

...at the rate it's going.

According to analyst David Gibson, just over 70,000 Wii Us were sold in March 2014.

During their second March on the market, the Gamecube (March 2003) sold 165,000 units and the Wii (March 2008) sold 721,000 units.

As a step further, here’s where each of those three systems were at sales-wise overall at those same points:

• Wii U - Between 5 and 6 million units worldwide as of March 2014
• Wii - About 25 million units worldwide as of March 2008
• GameCube - About 9.5 million units worldwide as of March 2003

Source: Nintendo World Report

I'm normally against Nintendo doom and gloom threads, but it can not be denied that the Wii U is currently in a very depressing situation. However, it does not mean Nintendo will die soon or whatnot. They're a multi-billion dollar company and the 3DS is still the best selling video game system with nearly 50 million sold.

2014 still does not look like a great year for the Wii U considering we vaguely know that 3 - 4 big titles will be released after Mario Kart 8. Hopefully they'll prove us wrong during E3.

Thoughts?

Dont really care about its sales, Nintendo experience is still the same. They make a few first party games that are really good, and maybe the odd 3rd party exclusive and that's about it.

The experience stays the same if Nintendo sell 1 million or 100 million units.

Actually, sales can drastically influence a company, for better or worse.

For example, if Super Mario Bros sold poorly, Nintendo would not have made more Mario games. Who knows were Nintendo or the gaming industry in general would be now if Super Mario Bros was not successful.

Also, the dreamcast sold more in total than the wii u as of now.

Yeaaaah it's a tough situation. I like the concept of the console but Nintendo learned nothing from the confusing 3ds launch and repeated the same mistake and took too long to rectify it, released too late after the Wii momentum died completely, and didn't come out with games fast enough to explain the long drought that came before launch.

Difference with GC, GC still making profits with each system sold,...with Wii U - system takes a hit abit. Its up to Nintendo turn around Wii U..they did it with 3DS..there's no reason they can't do the same for Wii U..the only reason not to, would be is they are giving up on Wii U..& have something new coming up. :P

Nintendo was on the verge of bankruptcy with the Gamecube, that whole "they made money" is a myth.

The Wii U isn't hurting the company as bad as the Gamecube hurt it but that's like terminal cancer with 6 months to live is better than terminal cancer with 24 weeks to live, they're really close and both are awful.

They should just re-release the Gamecube and make games for it again. I'd love that.

@ANIMEguy10034: Big shocker this does nothing but say what we already know. But what I would like to know is didn't the Gamecube have a lot more big hitter games in this same time frame then the Wii U does?

@Chozofication:

Irrelevant, Sega's fate was not to be successful. There was nothing that would change it. Fate is unchangeable.

oh, that is pathetic... I had hopes for the Wii U and with Fatal Frame getting announced, well I hope that doesn't get cancelled. As of now I only see myself using the Wii U for X and Fatal Frame. It's collecting dust for months now after beating RE Revelations on hard mode. If this continues I can't see any reason for them to keep it going. If they cancel X and Fatal Frame then it's a total loss and waste for me.

nintendo was never near bankruptcy lmao the first loss nintendo made was 2 yrs ago i think since the 80s so , how the heck you come up with near bankruptcy lmao

@Master_Of_Fools: During the same time frame, the Gamecube had Metroid Prime, Smash Bros Melee, Mario Sunshine, Pikmin and Zelda Wind Waker. The Gamecube had a better start than the Wii U, but its sales declined rapidly soon after. Hopefully the opposite happens for the Wii U.

Hmm seems to conflicting info on the net...some say GameCube sold at a loss, others says GameCube didn't sell at a loss..overall yea GC made a loss for Nintendo..if GC system was sold at a loss then yea..my mistake..thought Wii U was the first console Nintendo sold at loss. :P

Sega is just really bad at financial management...they're having money problem even now. :P

These figures are a little misleading aren't they? These are just US figures aren't they? Also the 5-6million sales figure is around four months out of date, I'd say the Wii U is probably around the 6.5-7million mark in global sales. At any rate the Wii U is selling far worse than the Gamecube and I don't think it's a fair reflection on what I feel is a great console. It should be a damning verdict on an out of touch and incompetent Nintendo hierarchy who seem to be stuck in a slumber of complacency.

The Wii U is a brilliant little console, but it does feel like a lazy, ill-thought out cash in on the Wii brand and unfortunately for Nintendo it hasn't worked out to well for them. Well it was never going to work out too well with a lack of third party support, virtually no marketing and no must have compelling software at launch and within the 18 months of the consoles life span.

Can Mario Kart 8 rejuvenate the Wii U's fortunes? I'm not entirely sure, I hope so, but I have to say I'm bit disappointed that Nintendo have done another rehash job with "classic Mario Kart courses" from previous console iterations in their last two games which smacks of a lack of effort and yet more laziness on Nintendo's part. Rehashes and DLC at Nintendo, who'd have thought it? Then there's the inability to have in game voice chat. I mean seriously? Are you for real?

Once again a Nintendo system is relying on its first party offerings to drag it out of the gutter and I hope it works out well for Nintendo. People downplay the failing of the Wii U and say "Nintendo has billions and cannot afford to lose billions for the next few decades" and these people miss the bigger picture; "Consumer faith". Money can be earned back far more easily than consumer faith.

The failing of the Wii U and the negativity that has engulfed the console is eroding consumer faith in Nintendo hardware. A lot of people just aren't prepared to spend $300 on a console for less than a handful of games and I can't say I blame them.

I think Nintendo need to go through a process of modernisation, they need a new business model, a new direction and a fresh approach with new top executives who are going to maximise Nintendo's core strengths, while minimising their weaknesses and exploiting the opportunities that present themselves to Nintendo, so that Nintendo can once again become a serious ball player in the console game.

If we go by what happened after Gamecube, we can predict that Nintendo will take a new approach with their next system. They'll drag Wii U by its ankles to the finish line and do something different. One of the reasons the Gamecube failed was due to the lack of a unique gimmick to get people interested. It had power and great software, but lacked the multimedia and online functionality offered by competitors. Wii U has a gimmick to make it stand out, but it's not compelling enough to make people go out and buy it, due in part because Nintendo's marketing is abysmal. The myth that Nintendo shouldn't have a gimmick and just focus on its software has been tried already and the results are poor. Had the Gamecube worked out well for them, they would have continued in that direction.

The Wii U is another wake up call for Nintendo. I can see them ditching the Wii brand when the next cycle comes around. As for the new approach Nintendo will take on consoles, that's anyone's guess. I don't think any of us could have predicted the Wiimote and limited tech that debuted in 2006.

Yet people still say it's a bad idea for Nintendo to drop their losses and come out with something new sooner than usual. Though that would be a bad idea if Nintendo just does things a little differently while making all the same mistakes.

I love the Wii U, but I despise Nintendo's executives immensely. Lazy, arrogant, stubborn, willfully ignorant, delusional, incompetent fools, the lot of them. Nintendo's far too great of a company to be in the hands of such morons. It deserves so much better and is capable of so much more.

I will REJOICE when current management retire/are fired. Seriously, I will celebrate, and usually I'd wish nobody to lose their job but those incapable of it deserve to. Iwata and his crew deserve to be out on the street selling homemade lemonade, and they'd probably fail miserably at that as well.

I just hope it can survive this storm of rife incompetency it's now suffering. Unless things change drastically (and rapidly) Nintendo will be driven straight into the ground. I am 100% convinced of this. And Japanese companies really struggle with change, it's all cultural. Their whole honor mentality and inability to be willing to admit mistakes will be their undoing. They're too proud for their own good. Because of this I think the company's in great danger.

They have a point. Just how many of the 6-7million Wii U adopters will be willing to drop another $300-$350 on a Nintendo console so soon after purchasing a Wii U? If Nintendo brought out a new console later on this year, I sure as hell wouldn't buy it and I'd be quite angry about it.

Nintendo have isolated a lot of gamers already, the last thing they'll want to do is isolate even more gamers, gamers who are supporting Nintendo by purchasing their hardware and software.

There's 93 million people out there that got a Wii and didn't get a Wii U.

That 6-7 million is a small piece compared to the larger audience that's available.

The problem is this, Nintendo dragging their feet is only letting the next gen consoles gain more steam and customers are making investments in them. By the time that Nintendo catches up with current gen the lines will be drawn.

If we've learned anything from the demise of Sega, it is that you shouldn't drop your major hardware early. I'm sure they were thinking "Oh, it's only 6 million customers." when they went from one band-aid solution to the next. Shafting them caused a ripple effect and they wound up losing more customers than just that 6 million through diminishing consumer confidence.

The Gamecube did poorly, yet Nintendo managed to drag it to the finish line, and when the time was right, they dropped it like a ton of bricks and moved on to the next thing.

Very true, but say that Nintendo moves away from the Wii brand and comes out with a console on par with the PS4 and Xbox One, how do you know it will sell? What happens if that console struggles to sell? Does Nintendo release yet another console down the line?

If that starts happening then how can any consumer purchase a Nintendo console when in the back of their mind they are wondering just how long that console will last for? Could you honestly invest in hardware that may only last a year or two before it's killed off and replaced with a new model just because the company in question is struggling to make it attract to consumers and therefore struggles to generate any profitability from the product? I know I couldn't.

Also of the 93 million people you refer to are gamers? Many people who bought the Wii were not gamers in the truest sense of the word. Those people were playing on PC's, 360's and PS3's, not the Wii and they're the people who pump billions into the industry on an annual basis. I bet you most of the 93million people you refer to are more than happy playing mini-games on their smartphones and tablets and have no intention of dropping $350 on a console and $60 on games.

This is it, Nintendo would seriously damage their brand by dropping support of the Wii U as early as 18 months into its life cycle. Nintendo have the power to change the fortunes of the Wii U, but unfortunately I don't think they have a President that is willing to adapt and change in order to succeed and the longer he refuses to change and the longer that Nintendo refuse to make changes, the more difficult it will be to turn the fate of the Wii U around.

If I was Iwata I'd be looking at securing some third party exclusives that will have a mass appeal - but he's ruled out ever opening his wallet to secure such changes as he believes it becomes an endless cycle of expectancy by third party developers and publishers and while he has a point, evidently Nintendo need to do something, do anything to get the Wii U out of retailers and into the homes of gamers.

@19James89:

What Nintendo could do is work with 3rd parties to bring their engines over to the Wii U. Nintendo worked closely with Unity Technologies to bring their engine to Wii U. What you make in Unity on your PC, you can execute on Wii U, though you may need to make some concessions depending on what you're trying to achieve. If they can work with Unity, I don't see why working with Dice for Frostbite or Epic for Unreal would be out of the question. With compatible engines, porting could be a faster and cheaper process.

I understand for game franchises that's the case, but for consoles its different. Look at the gamecube and the Wii. The lineup of 1st Party Nintendo Games are similar and they both lacked the third party support.

My point was regardless of the number of consoles Nintendo sell they will still follow the same pattern

@YearoftheSnake5:

Understand where you're coming from but even in Sega's case dropping the Saturn early was the right decision. Comparing the Sega Saturn to Dreamcast sales wise also is bumpy. Sales went up in the west but went down in Japan with the Dreamcast. Dreamcast also saw better software sales. Another example the naysayers always ignore is that Sega also dropped the Sega Master System just as fast as the Saturn in favor of the Genesis/Mega Drive.

Dropping something consumers don't want isn't going to result in a great dip in consumer confidence. Unless again they keep repeating the same mistakes.

My argument still applies for console sales as well. A company will change for better or worse if their console sells poorly. They'll either play it safe or take risks which could alter the "experience."

The Wii experience was different from the Gamecube's because Nintendo had a change in goals and focused on a different demographic. Same applies for the Wii and Wii U. There are no similarities between how Nintendo handled their consoles. Just because they have the same franchises does not mean there's a pattern. Saying that the Gamecube experience as of March 2003 is exactly the same as the Wii U experience as of March 2014 would be a flat-out lie.

What'll they do, oh what'll they do?

A part from the Wii which was an anomaly Nintendo consoles with each passing generation have obtained smaller and smaller install bases. My guess is the Wii U may well continue this trend and Nintendo may find itself even more marginalised as a result.

The thing that strikes me is that Nintendo really doesn't seem to care about the Wii U's situation. I've never really seen a business hold such a "meh" attitude towards their own product as I have here. Almost like they don't believe in themselves. The feeling of apathy is very tangible and I think this rubs off on people and is partially responsible for the U's mediocre performance. It's unfortunate too as the U really is a capable console. Do they not know how bad it's doing? Do they really think marketing is unimportant? Or that one game can change everything?

I just picked up my system a week ago. It has enough games to warrant the cost to me so anymore coming out is extra bonus in my view. But I just can't understand why Nintendo seemingly doesn't even want to try. What is it? How can a company operate with such an attitude? I hope they can once again get a fire lit under their ass like in the past and get back to the company they once were, because as it is now Nintendo is really a sad shadow of its former self. Watching Nintendo's deterioration over the years has been sadly fascinating. How can any business fall so far, so hard, so fast?

I hope Emily Rodgers writes an article on this, it'd be fascinating to know what's going on behind Kyoto's walls.

I wish Nintendo the best. I don't think anyone wants them not to make good games. We'll see.

@ANIMEguy10034: The experience from Gamecube-Wii was similar, probably gamecube being better due to better controls. With such dramatic difference in sales I didn't notice Nintendo act any different than they did during the Gamecubes life cycle.

Although there was lots of 3rd Party shovelware

Slightly off topic but Dolphin emulator is amazing, you can Wii games with a 360 controller and map the waggles to the right analogue stick, it works well for Mario Galaxy and Twilight Princess.

Gamecube was $199 when it released.and did poorly

The Wii game out and was $250 and touted to be a Gamecube with motion controls and sold millions.

Then they beg for a HD Nintendo console and they got it with a $299 price tag but does worse than the Gamecube and Wii.

Did I miss something?

the price tag was 350...actually

Yes but that was the deluxe version that was bundled with a game. It wouldn't be cheaper if you bought the basic a long with a game.

The basic model was not attractive for its $300 price considering its competitors offered similar hardware, a cheaper price and more than ten times the storage. The Wii sold millions because the motion control craze was at its peak. Waaaay too many people only bought it for Wii Sports, fitness and party games. That demographic have no interest on the Wii U, therefore launch sales did not reach expectations which caused third party developers to shy away. Those that begged for a HD Nintendo console expected Nintendo to be up to date with hardware, but they released the Wii U too late and now those people are demanding a console on par with its competitors.

The problem is that the console pretty much sits right next to PS3/360 in terms of power instead of being something that sets its own standards (Obviously not as powerful as XOne and PS4, but at least in the same realm). That proved to be detrimental to 3rd party support (More power could have enticed 3rd party companies to work with Nintendo, perhaps work on new and improve game engines for consoles) which also gutted Nintendos already ailing user fanbase...

Besides, GC had problems such as a lack of a DVD playback drive (Which was sort of a big deal in that time period, and something that helped move PS2 systems at the time. GC's mini-disc also wasn't the most attractive medium devs wanted to develop games on as far as I know) and online support. And no, the Panasonic Q doesn't count since it cost well over $400, which was bullcrap....

If you look how technology advance in the past six years when the Wii u it technically impossible for the Wii U to be close to the Ps3/360 in terms of power when you have the Snapdragon 800 which is weaker than the WIi U but can outperform the last gen consoles and run the Unreal Engine 4. The only evidence to back up that statement would be looking at 3rd party ports but then you see games like Mario Kart 8 showing off deferred rendering being done in 60fps. Then theirs the leaked screen of Sonic Boom showing Dx11 MedSpec off a dev kit. If devs are confident enough like Slightly Mad, developing games for the Wii U will be closer to the Xbox One utilizing the eDram.

Also I don't think the MiniDvd on the Gamecube caused a problem when you had the 360 being stuck with a Dvd9 and requires people to swap disc. Plus online wasn't popular on the Ps2 when some of the best games on the system doesn't support any online functionally.

No, see this is where the problems start.

The Wii U is a weak console using outdated parts that are easily bested elsewhere.

It's not a question of "well you just need to work harder" because that's impossible. Nintendo has been very careful to not put any power heavy games on the console yet because they know the first game that's not running at 1080p and 60 fps is their death sentence.

Look at all third party games. Everyone wants to make money and if the Wii U was able to keep up with the current gen consoles they'd put their games on the Wii U and just have extra sales. They're not though, they're avoiding the Wii U because it's lower specs mean that they have to gut games to make them run on the Wii U.

That's not even getting into the fact that most games need some sort of online these days and Nintendo's offline infrastructure is about a decade and a half behind the times.

Accept the Wii U for what it is, stop making it seem like it's on par with the current gen consoles.

yea and you stop acting like the xbox/playstation are a real next gen leap...because they are not.

Wii U gpu - 320 shaders with 2011 architecture / 360 gpu - 240 shaders with 2005 architecture

Wii U main memory - 1024 MB's for games / 360 main memory - 480 MB's for games

360 eDRAM (fast memory for graphical tasks, very important) - 10 mb's @ 32 gigabytes a second / Wii U eDRAM - 32 mb's @ 60+ GB/s + an extra 2 mb's from Wii BC (in this area Wii U is actually pretty close to the Xbox 1)

So all the multiplats aren't on the Wii U why?

the same reason they werent on the gamecube and the wii.

The only thing Nintendo can do is put out as many great games as they can. Third party has not been around for a long time so the specs do not matter for Nintendo. If people dont buy it after it gets a better catalog of great games then thats just the way things are now days.

360's is actually 48 shaders it used an early adaptation of VLIW5. No one actually knows the number of shaders in the Wii U.

Later in its life the memory size of Wii U's Os will get smaller and for a system that is dedicated to play video games, I don't see the purpose of needing more unless you leave everything uncompressed which is terrible optimization

Where did you get the eDram's speed from? eDram is known to have ridiculously high bandwidth speed unless you got the info from Intel's Iris Pro 5200 which it's eDram is separate from the CPU unlike the Wii U's as its on the GPU.

For the most part they were on the Gamcube, for the Wii it was lack of power and functionality.

The same problems with the Wii U

48 was when shader cores were counted in groups of 5, so if wii u's were counted the same way it would have 64 cores. Techheads have known for about a year wii u has 320 shaders from looking at die shots and the simple fact that it pretty much has to have that number to do the things wii u's doing because it was known to have either 160 or 320 cores, and obviously it isn't a weaker chip than 360's.

Yeah, that's a good possibility about having more RAM available down the line.. but it really doesn't need more than that considering the gpu and cpu. My guess is that they want to keep improving the os instead.

No one really knows the exact speed of the eDRAM yeah, but it's a good bet it's not be any less than 60gb/s due to it being a very modern chip with speed in mind, it has to be fast to make up for the somewhat slow ddr3 main memory. Some people at beyond3d seem to think it could be as high as 70 gb/s, but whatever the case it's a crap ton better than what's in 360.

eDRAM bandwidth is always limited by a systems bus speed, so that's what i'm going by.

nope...xbox got a lot more multuiplats than gamecube.

call of duty, tomb raider and other games were made to work on the wii.....other games could have.

Nintendo puts the 3DS first too much. Its internal development is always making titles for the handheld and no one works on titles for Wii U. Nintendo's biggest problem is that the company wants to do everything itself. Nintendo needs to reach out to third parties more and try to get them to at least make titles based around its own franchises. Sony tends to do this when all of its first parties are working on other games. It green lit Sanzaru to make Sly 4 and United front to make Little Big Planet Karting. These examples might not be the best considering your own opinion on these titles, but the idea remains the same. Sony did not have enough man power to make games for PS3 and PSP so it had Ready at Dawn make God of War and Jak and Daxter games. You also had other developers make the Ratchet games for PSP as well. Sega did a great job with Sonic All Stars Racing. I do not see why Nintendo will not not ask them to make a new F-Zero game. I know that Sega already did that with GX, but still. They could do it again. Nintendo could try to get Insomniac to work on a Metroid game. That would not be a bad fit. Nintendo could also ask the defunct Sony Liverpool developers to do F-Zero as well. After all, Wipeout was inspired by the franchise. I am sure Platinum already expressed interest in making a new Star Fox. The studio could do it after finishing Bayonetta 2. Didn't one of the main men behind Castlevania express interest in making a Metroid? Nintendo does not have enough internal development to make titles for both platforms, so it needs to make partnerships with developers.