Nintendo Wii U Shipped 160k Units Worldwide Between April and June 2013

...

 

Jesus, it sold so poorly in Europe that they had to put Europe in the "other" category? How did it sell 10k in Europe and the rest of the world? That's just ridiculous. Of course, I have never heard of anyone buying one here, but still.

 

I already mentioned many times what Nintendo needs to do to pull out of it's funk in my opinion. I won't mention it again.

I do wonder if they're just competing with XBox for the worst console ever, or they honestly are just making terrible mistakes. I don't know when Miyamoto got in charge of the major franchise games, and I used to blame NOA, who is basically the one who treated the third parties so poorly the last generation at least in the U.S, there was a LOT of third party games like the Xenoblade Chronicles that didn't make it overseas and/or when they did got screwed over. But there's something wrong with Nintendo right now and it's not improving.

Miyamotou makes fantastic games, I mean, spectacular. The guy mostly turns everything into gold from ideas. But that doesn't mean he has a good business sense. You need to have a feel for a company before going into it, you have to know how to run a business, no matter what it is. Even without an education, it can come naturally. He might be way out of his depth and not even know it anymore. At some point, something has to give, I just don't know what. Nintendo can't constantly keep on doing this despite gamers claiming they can run another three generations and lose a ton of money, economics and business, especially stock brokers, don't see it that way.

 

It only sold 10,000 in all of Europe and the rest of the world? Oof. ._.

To be honest, I haven't really been keeping up with the Wii U at all. Even with the Wii, there wasn't much I was looking forward to too much -- if anything, most of the games Nintendo's put out that I and most people I know around my area have been interested in have all been for the DS/3DS. (Which, I also consider Nintendo much more of a beast in handhelds than in consoles, can name at least 5 3DS games I've been itching to get).

Sales should probably increase with more games coming out (Bayonetta 2 and SSB especially), but that's still a pretty lackluster turn out. Best of luck to them in the future, I guess.

 

People use to say the Gamecube was terrible and that Nintendo could no longer create consoles because of how badly it sold, but this is what Nintendo is use to and they roll with the punches. I'm not saying this console will be ultimately successful for them and they'll meet their goals, but this isn't the end of Nintendo, they are still extremely successful after the Wii, and they keep their production costs low (with one of the drawbacks being slowly produced first party games). Their pull back from having a slot at E3 is a testament to their willingness to cut costs, considering a conference and E3 would cost them a lot, so
In terms of worst consoles, the WiiU is a good bit of kit with unique features, but on the software side, it's is criminally underused thanks to lack of third party development and slow first party stuff. It's similar to the PSVita in that sense.
And Nintendo don't really care about third party, people don't purchase Nintendo consoles for third party games, they do it for the Nintendo and their subsidiary company games. For Super Mario, Mario Kart, Xenobalde, Pokemon, Pikmin, Zelda, all of that. Nintendo also keep strong second party developers and game series, like Professor Layton, Wonderful 101, Bayonetta.
Miyamoto is only a developer for Nintendo, he's not on the business side of things, though he may have more an influence in Nintendo than most of their companies simply because of his influence in Nintendo's success. It's Satoru Iwata, he's the CEO, and the guiding hand behind the larger scale of Nintendo decisions and has been since been for 11 years.

Basically, if their WiiU fails, it will be the 3DS and licenses will keep them coming back for more.

 

...

 

...

 

I also challenge that people don't buy for just Nintendo games:

Earthbound/Mother Trilogy, Chrono Trigger, Mega Man, Final Fantasy before it moved, DKC before it went to Wii, No More Heroes, Xenoblade Chronicles...

All those games still have HUGE demand and are made by third parties. Go to Amazon and look at Xenoblade Chronicles demand right now and say they didn't get the shaft for going to Nintendo. People WANT third party games also, the problem is that the third party right now usually concerns of Carnival Fun House, Monopoly, and other such games. The good ones are still out there. Zombie U being debatable, but not enough for more people to buy the system.

If you look at The Last of Us, people are BITCHING about the fact they don't have a PS3, or they're going out to buy one right now. A console is coming out in less than a year and people WANT that game because of how fantastic it looks and plays. They need to bring in the third parties and hold onto them.

Also, Miyamoto is in charge of a department, he's actually in charge of all the major game series for Nintendo. It's on his Wiki, I did hear he was in charge of a branch of Nintendo.

To comment on what you said, Libre, if you look at before the 64 era, maybe even GC, they had a HUGE game library of variety. Yes, some was made by Rare and Square, but a lot was made by third parties. They didn't need to depend as much on their formula, Castlevania, Metroid, and the Legend of Zelda didn't actually become much bigger until the 64/GC era. Before that, they were making game per console and still bringing in a ton of cash because the third party games like The Legend of Gaia, Super Mario RPG (I know that was Nintendo made, but not fully.), and a ton more. They actually need to go back to the formula they had before and try to find third parties that make fantastic games willing to help them in between their regular games.

 

...

 

Not really, they lost 926 million in 2009 and 26 million the year before. I don't know the recent numbers, but I saw a video about it. That's not good for any business.

 

...

 

The thing with Nintendo is that they seem to use the reverse of the other companys, and mostly of Playstation. That is a problem, and let me explain it.

We all agree (I guess), that Nintendo is pretty bold with their hardweres endeavours, like in Wii/WiiU they set in motion all this motion capture and second screen thing (sure Playstation and even Dreamcast had already this ideas at their cores, but never got it working before nintendo).

They do have good ideas, or at least they do bold moves.. thats because they have a great fanbase that will support what they do, If they give all the same games they were waiting for.

The others (Xbox, and specially Playstation) make their hardwere at first sight less risk, it seems like they play safe with it, but they make up for it with great new games. Each new generation has a new feel to their consoles, and in the end games is why we buy the consoles, not for all the perks (that don't quite work like planned.. Kinect and Wiimotes don't capture fine movement, Ps move do it well, but it is to expensive).

While it seems like this is a simple choice "invest on the hardwere" X "invest on the softwere", is not only that.. when you buy a Wii and a WiiU, you know what you are gonna get for the next 10 years, and this is NOT OK! When you buy a Playstation and a Xbox, YOU KNOW that their games will evolve and that a game 5 years from now will look far better than a launch title... so the Playstation and Xbox have room to evolve for the next years to come so that they can compete with each other (and pc as well).

Just look at Xbox 360 and Ps3, they were at one track and then they go to the hole "Motion capture" in their middle life cycle.. is not a thing that I can see Wii or WiiU doing, it can't evolve, it can't change over the years it won't get better, only will get new (of the same) games.

That is the main problem of starting a new generation of gaming with old technology, you will be surpassed over the years so you have to make a huge investment at start so you can still be relevant at the future.

 

I' m not sure that' s what you' re getting at but, in case you' re implying Nintendo would keep suporting a product no matter how hard it flops as long as they turn a profit overall ... remember the Virtual Boy ? Yeah, me neither.

If they keep wasting significant amounts of money on the Wii U no matter what, or on any other system for that matter, chances are they will discontinue it. As far as I know the N64 and the GC kept oscillating between small profit and small losses, so it made sense to keep running along with them (I assume they turned a profit on the long run anyway, and besides discontinuing them would have had bad consequences for Nintendo' s image).

I did think the Wii U was taking the N64/GC road at first, getting there slowly but surely, but given these sales charts I' m seriously starting to wonder wether it' s taking the Virtual Boy ramp or not.

 

...

 

...

 

Just looking at the chart for the Wii U showing the games show why it's not selling. The games are very scattered and very small. look at Wii, N64 and SNES. I remember most of those games from the system. Granted, Super Mario Bros and Pikimin will always be a seller. But look at the SNES, 64 and GC. They made games practically every MONTH and the charts show it for people flocking to buy the system. Even though Wii doesn't show as high of a game seller, a lot of people bought it for the motion controls. I remember it coming out and senior citizen homes/families/etc buying the system along with families because of the motion controls. Does that make it a system seller, once the people who are buying it for the gimmicks run out, no. The games have been and always will be the most important part of gaming.