Poll Wii all (finally) agree the Wii u is dead right? (136 votes)
The Wii u is an interesting story and all the mistakes have been talked about to death, but there are STILL people, yes, STILL people who say they can turn things around. people don't see to realize how dire the situation the Wii U physically and financially.
The Wii U HAD been tracking behind the gamecube for awhile, and while people still say that, saying it now seems more like DC for the Wii u. It ended up tracking behind the Dreamcast and got to the point of tracking behind the Saturn. It's actually a wonder if the Wii u will sell 2 million units before the next console which will likely be announced (and drown out whatever few Wii u sales there are ) in 2016.
not only that, they still can't reduce the price/ditch the gamepad/make a separate sku without the gamepad/go the multi game bundle route becauswe they literally have no more options unless they have a chance at a risk having a decent chance of success.
The Wii U's 2013 was pretty bad after the initial succes. People think it picked up now, and I have no idea why people are saying that, with a barrage of popular entries in FP franchisees, remakes, a ton of indies, and of course, Bundles, they literally made their 2014 year pretty much track almost even. it Slightly went up year over year and this was the Halo 3 of the Wii U's life going by games, deals, bundles etc.
The holiday sales were actually 'worse' than last holidays (going by GFK and NPD anyway) overall, and that also came with their Super Smash Bros push. Nitnendo literally has no other moves, you could say that they could cut the price and take the risk for market share, but the Wii u is still a money vacuum. They could barely have any black Friday deals. it's why those refurbished units for $200 kept selling out. But you know Nintendo cannot afford to use that price on sku's on the street. But it shows that a price drop at around $250 but mostly $199 is Nintendos only way of getting the market share, but they would lose triple the money. That bet is insane, and it's already too late for them to make it. If it was sometime last year (well, 2013) or maybe, maybe, early early, 2014, then maybe. But right now the lossese have piled up and then already wasted all their potential market reviving games. So they can no longer take a risk, because now they will be taking more losses without the ability to claim they grabbed back lost market share.
The only thing Nintendo has left outside of a couple new Ips, is a sequel to Xenoblade, Zelda, Firefox, and maybe a few other unknowns in 2015. Already we have tons of Mario, 2 Zelda, a couple original games, Pikmins revival, a bunch of family games, Super Smash bros. Mario Kart, a Kirby (if not mistaken), Donkey kong, etc. I mean what do they have to increase 2015 over 2014? or even stay with it in pace (even barely)?
So now you got one other excuse, the 3DS can cover it. and the answer is simple. no it can't. The 3DS isn't doing that well outside Japan, and 3DS had quite a few of the Wii U's mistakes as well (name a little, promise of western games, than dropping them after the first few, price, game selection, etc.) and they cut that 3DS price in desperation (and they needed to because without a portable support the Nintendo would be losing money on all fronts, that among other things) and because of that was able to get marketshare at the expense of taking losses for awhile.
In comparison, the GBA was launched outdated as most nintendo handhelds, with a low price tag, high attach rate, cheap games, and was printing money. The Gamecube while a disaster, was able to be recovered by the GBA's profits, which amde it so that the Gamecube could go into firesale status after they had stopped shipments for poor sales. Still not much profits but they avoided heavy casualties.
the 3DS can not do this, it's barely a player itself, it does not "print money" as people keep saying. in japan yeah sure, otherwise, uh no, not the way the people saying it keep implying.
Well tiger, what about the Amiibo they say? AMIIBO? Well there's this theory that it's making Nintendo a lot of money when in reality all it has done is maybe cover some Wii u losses and their questionable strategy of low shipments to inflate demand are a litt uh, weird.
Now i will say Amiibo, among one other thing, is was actually put out to try and get nintendo into another pot. Which they really do need. I also think it will be an important part of the new console and was only really put out now to try and prevent any issues from the 3DS and Wii u sales not reaching expectations. But the lack of implementation also makes it 100% clear that outside of making some extra profits, Amiibo won't be helping make it possible to drop the Wii U $100 or so dollars, or to cover all of their losses, or even really to move much hardware. As shown during the holidays. unless DEC NPD and GFK have surprise numbers we don't see.
I mean i still don't see how anyone could think they can turn it around. Wii u is not moving and is already being taken off the shelves or barely mentioned in multiple countries, people keep thinking it will turn around to be profitable, uh, no it won't and when the new console comes out you're going to have wasted unsold SKu's probably buy backs (which has already happened) and of course other issue. heck the Wii u's struggling to sstay on shelves cost nintendo money. So wtf is this magical turn around supposed to come from?
I mean people even think the Wii U will somehow reach near the gamecube numbers or still have a chance to reach it. The Wii U's going take, if it makes it at all in 2015, to reach 10 million sold through by the last few months of 2015. and that's assuming it reached 10 million sold-through.
I don't know if I'm missing anything but i hope I painted a concrete picture. The nest console will have to start out with a console with cut and declining marketshare. Even the gamcube picked up. Hell people look at Xbox one and PS4 and see pick up, and good sales, the Wii U is literally dead with no hope and all it's cards played. I believe another shipping restriction like the gamecube would be the better option. Well, then again Amiibo may be able to at least help make Wii U's occupy space to create the illusion of sales to casuals in stores. Although it's not really working to well currently hmm...
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