Slashing projections and talking up changing business structures add up rough days ahead.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/editorial/36376
The idea of 9 million Wii Us being sold in the current fiscal year, which began back in April 2013 and ends March 31, 2014, was a joke back when Nintendo stuck by it after the Wii U didn't touch 500,000 units worldwide in the first half of the year. Well, it's no laughing matter for damn sure right now.
Early this morning, Satoru Iwata announced that the projected amount of Wii Us sold worldwide is being trimmed to just 31% of the original projection. That's a disparity of 6.2 million systems. Nintendo expects to sell 2.8 million Wii Us in the current fiscal year ending this March.
Hoo boy, that's rather poor. To compare, the PlayStation 4 sold 4.2 million units in 6 weeks and the Xbox One sold 3 million units in 5 weeks. The Wii U, according to estimates, sold somewhere between 800,000 and 900,000 units from October to December in North America, and likely somewhere in the ball park of 1.25 and 2 million units worldwide over that three-month period. If all of this continues at the same pace, PS4 and Xbox One will outsell the Wii U by the end of the March at the latest.
Nintendo isn't doomed. They're not going to close up shop. The Wii U, though, is flopping hard. December 2013 was its best sales month to date, but it's still small potatoes to basically every game system except the Vita. Who knows what the future will hold. At the press conference today, Iwata said "We are thinking about a new business structure. Given the expansion of smart devices, we are naturally studying how smart devices can be used to grow the game-player business. It's not as simple as enabling Mario to move on a smartphone."
The cape feather in Nintendo's cap, the 3DS, was the best-selling console in North America in 2013. High five, right? Not quite. While the 3DS is doing well, take note of something else in Nintendo's recent adjusted projections. The 3DS' sales expectations were taken down from 18 million to 13.5 million, which is sizable reduction. Who knows why the forecast was cut, but I think there's a few reasons.
The 2DS didn't do as well as they hoped. If you notice, we haven't heard anything about how XX% of 3DS sales were 2DS systems like we did when the 3DS XL was a smashing success. Obviously 3DS systems are still selling well, but the 2DS looks like it didn't give the platform the shot in the arm it was expected to do.
Or maybe it's a little bit darker than that. Maybe Nintendo's expectations for the console and handheld space are unrealistic. Maybe there is some truth to the console industry as we know it declining.
Yes, the PS4 and Xbox One had fantastic launches, proving that the doom and gloom surrounding disappointing new console sales was only limited to the Wii U. However, Sony and Microsoft's actions show a different side of the story. Sony just announced PlayStation Now, a way to play PS1, PS2, and PS3 games on, eventually, nearly any TV, tablet, or mobile device. PlayStation Mobile, a platform for integrating mobile development with the PlayStation Network. Microsoft is, to a little less success than Sony, cultivating the Xbox One to have a similar interface as the one in Windows 8, Surfaces, and Windows Phones.
Nintendo doesn't have a platform like this. If Nintendo's consoles were to fail, which the Wii U is in the act of doing, then they don't have a publicly known fail-safe plan. They haven't cultivated any future-proofing concept that allows their work to easily carry on in another form.
I'm not saying Nintendo should port everything to mobile or tablets. I do think they need to have some back-up plan, which for all we know, they already do. If the Wii U were to go, what are their options? Make another system? Focus solely on handhelds? Go third party? Sony and Microsoft have other options. Sony could have their games exist through PlayStation Now. Microsoft could turn to focus on their grander media aspirations. Nintendo doesn't have that possibility, no matter what novel updates they added to Nintendo TVii since launch.
Whatever the company has up its sleeve, we'll likely see it this year. As he stated, Iwata isn't resigning and if he's true to his word, big changes could be on the horizon. Nintendo and its president will have to be agile this year and do things most Nintendo fans thought weren't possible five years ago. All we can do is watch their execution and hope it works out.
Topic: With Wii U's Failures, Nintendo Lacks a Fail-Safe (Read 17077 times)
