Topic: Wii U moved just 46,000 units in the U.S. in July according to leaked NPD figure

[Parallax Scroll]

http://www.gamepur.com/news/19972-us-sales-wii-u-selling-just-46000-units-july-according-npd-leak-rumor.html

Not a great moment for Wii U. After the launch of Splatoon, which sold and is still selling pretty good, console’s sales are not so good as expected in the United States where, according to NPD leaks appeared on NeoGaf, only 46,000 units were shipped to retailers.

Nintendo may have the best lineup in both, the console and handheld segments, but you wouldn’t know it by their market performance. According to the latest NPD reports, Nintendo’s flagship console, the Wii U, had a dismal showing in the world’s biggest video game market last month.

Although NPD itself never gives out hard numbers, leaving it to the companies themselves to hand it out at their own discretion, we thankfully have some leaks from creamsugar, a well known industry follower who has often leaked NPD numbers in the past. According to him, Wii U’s sales were 46,000 units last month, which is a dramatic decline from the otherwise decent numbers the system had managed to post over the last few months, ever since the launch of Splatoon.

However, it was not all doom and gloom, either. The 3DS continues to impress, with its hardware sales up 35%, and Nintendo’s software sales over the last seven months are up 10%, thanks to the launch of Splatoon.

However, given the general anemic retail performance of the Wii U, it’s not hard to see why Nintendo would be fast tracking the NX for next year.

http://gamingbolt.com/wii-u-sold-just-46000-units-in-usa-in-july



source: http://neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1095924&page=10

[BlackNMild2k1]

Hey Nintendo, what's NeXt?

[Ian Sane]

Cut the price and I'll buy one.  It has a good amount of quality first party titles that I'd like to play but it has no third party support and no future so I'm not going to drop any significant change on it.  At this point it's an ideal secondary console to gain access to its exclusives but it is too expensive to fit that role.

[Soren]

I hear water is pretty wet.

[Stogi]

Cut the price and I'll buy one.  It has a good amount of quality first party titles that I'd like to play but it has no third party support and no future so I'm not going to drop any significant change on it.  At this point it's an ideal secondary console to gain access to its exclusives but it is too expensive to fit that role.

I've been waiting for a price drop, but honestly, if I wanted to nap one on the cheap, plenty of people are getting rid of them. So I guess I just don't need one until something comes out that I must play. And that has almost always been Zelda. Too bad it's looking less and less likely to release on the console.

[MagicCow64]

Out of curiosity, what price point would you guys bite at? I got mine at $250 when they were clearing out the Basic systems and thought that was reasonable, but at the standard $300 it's clearly not getting a substantial chunk of 2nd console buys from enthusiasts.

Thing is, Gamecube was an ideal second console with a comparatively strong library at $99 (eventually), and it still barely cracked 20 million units worldwide. WiiU is at around 10 million and would be lucky to crack 12 at this point with a strong holiday season.

[broodwars]

*shrugs* Yeah, it's not exactly news these days that the Wii U is a colossal failure in nearly every conceivable way.

There's just no value proposition to the Wii U: it's based on a gimmick (the GamePad) that no one wants and even Nintendo has failed to demonstrate why it's necessary; its 1st party support is very few and far between; its 3rd party support has been a running gag since launch; and (for its technical capabilities) it's been laughably overpriced and underpowered since launch.

I mean, really, for a whopping $50 more you could get an Xbone from a (now) far more competent console manufacturer, with far better 3rd party support and an increasing focus on exclusive titles. For a whole $100 more, you could get the far superior, market-dominating PS4.  But at this point, Nintendo's apparently satisfied with being the definitive loser of this generation as they willingly slip off into irrelevance.

That's really what irritates me about Nintendo: they put themselves into this position and gave been perfectly happy to stay the course no matter how bad things get, because they have cheap toys and the 3DS to prop them up. They often don't even look like they care about the Wii U, and NoA certainly hasn't in years.

[Soren]

You guys do know you can get a refurbished Wii U for $200, right?

[broodwars]

You guys do know you can get a refurbished Wii U for $200, right?

I learned a long time ago to never buy refurbished hardware when my refurbished PS3 permanently yellow lighted on me (we tried to fix it multiple times, but it would just YLoD again within a week).

[Evan_B]

The hilarious thing about the Wii U is that, with the current rumblings, it's biggest game isn't even going to be exclusive to the hardware.

I like my Wii U a lot, but it's an impossible sell to anyone who doesn't love Nintendo games, or someone who wants variety in their gaming experience. Nintendo was straight up lazy went it came to the lineup, focusing on titles that sold ungodly numbers on Wii because the the Wii sold ungodly numbers, and the worst thing is, they don't seem to have any concept of what people want to play.

[Stogi]

You guys do know you can get a refurbished Wii U for $200, right?

I'm in no hurry. There are rarely games that I need to play this moment. Mario Maker is looking like one of those since every level I've seen people play look hysterical. And it sounds like fun to see what I'd come up with. But I can wait. I'm still treading through my PS3 and Wii backlog. I haven't touched Xenoblade or Just Cause 2 and both of those games are more than 25hrs each.

So maybe when it's 200 with Mario Maker/Zelda?

[Luigi Dude]

It goes like this, Nintendo actually likes money.  The Wii U despite the poor hardware sales, still makes a profit and cutting the price would destroy that.  Plus at this point when most of the Wii U's biggest titles have 3DS versions that were similar that sold millions more, dropping the price probably wouldn't do that much since many of their more casual fans are happy with the 3DS versions and there's no guarantee they'd buy the Wii U even if it is much cheaper.

Basically Nintendo strategy is to get as much profit off the hardcore fans with the Wii U with it's higher price, DLC and Amiibos, while the 3DS keeps them popular among everyone else.  No point in losing billions with a huge price cut when most of the people who would buy the Wii U in this situation are just as likely to buy the next home console if Nintendo makes it more appealing with more unique software and a better price from the start. 

[Evan_B]

If Nintendo likes money so much, they could have made something that appealed to a broader market.

But I forgot, they need to "do their own thing" AKA make 2D platformers.

[NWR_insanolord]

If Nintendo likes money so much, they could have made something that appealed to a broader market.

They did. It's called Splatoon. It just came too late.

[Soren]

So maybe when it's 200 with Mario Maker/Zelda?

[Stogi]

I'll admit it. I'm the wrong audience for Nintendo. I don't live breathe and eat games. Half the fun of playing videogames is playing it with friends, but we'd rather do other things with our collective time, and if we actually do decide to play something, a nintendo 64 has and will always suffice.

If you want to sell to me, you need to sell to me with urgency, as if I'm missing out. But as the entire course of videogame history has shown, those times rarely occur. So I'm content to wait 2 or more years until prices and hype are at their lowest and the value of a game to me is at its highest.

I swear I made a thread about this somewhere. I think I called it being a 2 year old gamer.

EDIT; And just to be clear. I have no desire to buy a PS4 or Xbone. I may get a few PC games..Maybe, but that's only because I'm building a custom desktop for video-editing.

[Ian Sane]

You guys do know you can get a refurbished Wii U for $200, right?

I don't trust refurbished stuff.  For a price cut I would be all over a $200 price but I know that's not realistic.  $250 is an okay compromise.  Puts it $100 less than the XB1 so there is less of that feeling that you could spend a little more and get a different console.

Basically Nintendo strategy is to get as much profit off the hardcore fans with the Wii U with it's higher price, DLC and Amiibos, while the 3DS keeps them popular among everyone else.  No point in losing billions with a huge price cut when most of the people who would buy the Wii U in this situation are just as likely to buy the next home console if Nintendo makes it more appealing with more unique software and a better price from the start. 

But don't most hardcore fans already own a Wii U?  You can't sell someone the games and the Amiibos if they don't buy the console because they feel it is too expensive.  Nintendo's focus on selling hardware always struck me as kind of nutty because you only sell the hardware once to each customer while you can sell an unlimited amount of games.  With handhelds for example they get all worked up when the system sales start to slow down so they go with stuff like the DSi and New 3DS to try to get a double dip.  The DS sales peaking were actually a GOOD thing as it meant that damn near everyone that was a potential DS customer owned one and thus DS games had huge potential sales but Nintendo was all focused on the hardware.  Each Wii U game has a greater potential of selling more copies if there are more Wii U owners.

If Nintendo likes money so much, they could have made something that appealed to a broader market.

But I forgot, they need to "do their own thing" AKA make 2D platformers.

Nintendo thought they were appealing to the broader market.  The plan was to recreate the Wii's success with a similar product.  It's just that the market had changed and the Wii U's controller feature was not a dream concept like motion control was.  They busted out the 2D platformers because games like NSMB U sold big on the Wii so they assumed the trend would continue.

[NWR_insanolord]

Refurbished hardware is generally a safer bet than buying it new, because it was specifically tested to make sure it worked right. The ones Nintendo sells also come with the same 12 month warranty as a new system, so if there is something lingering you should be fine.

[Ian Sane]

Refurbished hardware is generally a safer bet than buying it new, because it was specifically tested to make sure it worked right. The ones Nintendo sells also come with the same 12 month warranty as a new system, so if there is something lingering you should be fine.

My bad feelings regarding refurbs actually comes from Microsoft as I very briefly owned an Xbox for one evening.  Bought it refurbed, loaded up Jet Set Radio Future, two seconds after I started playing the game froze, I reset, whole system was frozen, I returned it for a refund.  So Nintendo is probably a little more reliable than MS on that.  Of course Nintendo's rep for build quality is so good that I don't assume any risk in buying new.  I assume I will have no problems and so far I never have.  But I know that refurb was a lemon at some point.

Looking at Gamestop's Canadian website a new 32 GB Wii U with Super Mario 3D World and Nintendo Land is $300 while a refurb without the game is $230.  New games cost about $70 CAD these days and I'd be giving up TWO of them.  The new one is actually the better deal.

[ThePerm]

The head line could  be Nintendo only made a million dollars in July off of Wii U hardware. Of course they still made 4.2 million off Splatoon in July. As of May by my math they made a quarter billion dollars off of Mario Kart 8 and a half a billion off of Smash Bros. Wii U/ 3ds.

funny these two articles

2012
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/05/02/nintendo-reports-its-first-annual-loss-in-three-decades-over-500-million-in-the-red/

2015
http://www.polygon.com/2015/5/7/8564943/nintendo-profit-fiscal-year-2015-financial-results

[Mop it up]

Refurbished hardware is generally a safer bet than buying it new, because it was specifically tested to make sure it worked right. The ones Nintendo sells also come with the same 12 month warranty as a new system, so if there is something lingering you should be fine.

This. I can see being weary of GameStop, but the stuff Nintendo sell on their own website is reliable. I bought a refurbished Wiimote and Nunchuk from it before, and aside from missing the original packaging it looked and felt like new. I have no idea if they ship to Canada though, or if they do then it could be costly.

[Louieturkey]

Looks like you have more options for refurbs now.  The basic one with Nintendoland is $200, but the one that includes Mario 3D World is $225.  The Wind Waker HD special one is $235 and a new one with Zombi U is $300.

[Ninferno]

Well, I have always been for "Wii U as a 2nd console", and I can totally see that $300 is probably too much for that. So, why not release a cheaper bundle with the pro controller rather than the game pad? Sure, you HAVE to use the game pad for system settings, but guess what, you used to HAVE to use the game pad for eShop as well; Nintendo released just a system update and you can use the pro controller for that from then on. It is not rocket science and Nintendo can certainly do it if they feel like to. Yes, some games, including the Wii U game of 2015 - Splatoon (and probably Super Mario Maker) require the game pad and there's no easy way around it. Still, a cheaper bundle that doesn't hurt Nintendo's bottom line while providing a better value proposition as a secondary console for a wider audience sounds like a really good idea to me; it is at least worth trying. Granted, releasing a Wii U SKU without the game pad is like a slap in the face for Nintendo. However, given the dire situation, I don't think Nintendo is in the position of saving faces.

[Soren]

Granted, releasing a Wii U SKU without the game pad is like a slap in the face for Nintendo. However, given the dire situation, I don't think Nintendo is in the position of saving faces.

That is a terrible idea. Just cut the price $100 instead of releasing a SKU that renders half the game library for the system unplayable.

[Ian Sane]

Well, I have always been for "Wii U as a 2nd console", and I can totally see that $300 is probably too much for that. So, why not release a cheaper bundle with the pro controller rather than the game pad? Sure, you HAVE to use the game pad for system settings, but guess what, you used to HAVE to use the game pad for eShop as well; Nintendo released just a system update and you can use the pro controller for that from then on. It is not rocket science and Nintendo can certainly do it if they feel like to. Yes, some games, including the Wii U game of 2015 - Splatoon (and probably Super Mario Maker) require the game pad and there's no easy way around it. Still, a cheaper bundle that doesn't hurt Nintendo's bottom line while providing a better value proposition as a secondary console for a wider audience sounds like a really good idea to me; it is at least worth trying. Granted, releasing a Wii U SKU without the game pad is like a slap in the face for Nintendo. However, given the dire situation, I don't think Nintendo is in the position of saving faces.

Wouldn't entice me.  I don't really care about the Gamepad but I'm not going to sacrifice numerous games that require it just to get a cheaper Wii U.

Nintendo has some mark up on the price to make a profit.  Well how low can they go before they take a loss?  Lower the price to whatever that is (and put some wiggle room in obviously) and make up the profits on the increased game sales that will come from it (evergreen titles like Mario Kart will almost certainly get a spike in sales).  I'm not asking them to take a hit on the Wii U but making less profit on it isn't doing that.  Unless they're pretty much at the break even point right now they can cut the price.