Wii U Sales Not on Par with Nintendo's 9 Million Sold 2013 Console Goal
Analysts predict that Nintendo will fail to reach its 2013 sales goals with the Wii U by a long-shot.
Nintendo was anticipating selling around nine million units this year, and not only is that number far reaching but it is not even close if adding last year's totals as well. As the console stands now, it has sold 3.91 million units since its launch last fall. Compare that to the PS4 and Xbox One selling one million each on their launch day, and the Wii U's numbers are not impressive at all.
"They steadfastly refuse to consider that the product is not interesting to consumers," Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said according to Bloomberg. "They will fail to hit 9 million, and they will likely miss their profit goals.
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"Wii U has become a game console only for Nintendo fans," Eiji Maeda of SMBC Nikko Securities said. "Wii U needs groundbreaking software to draw casual and hardcore gamers."
According to CVG, both analyst predict the Wii U will be hovering in the six million sold numbers by March 2014.
In the last quarter, the Wii U sold a messily 300,000 consoles, which is an upgrade to what they had been doing previously, but still not great. The console is only expected to sell 25 million units in its lifetime, which is only three million more than Nintendo's worst selling console, the Gamecube. Meanwhile the Wii U's predecessor, the Wii, sold over 100 million, making it the highest selling console of all time.
In comparison, Xbox 360 and PS3 sold roughly 80 million consoles each over their seven years of existence.
During the summer, Nintendo was selling the Wii U at a loss, and they had just come off their worst quarter only selling 160,000 units between April and June-- a number that was less than half the amount of the previous quarter. Nintendo reported that so far they had lost nearly $174 million on the lackluster sales.
However, once they chopped down the price by $50 and started coming out with solid first-party games, things began to turn around, but the new consoles that arrived this month are the main focus now.
After a strong end to October and early November where Wii U sales spiked in Japan because of Wii Party U, the console was outsold by Xbox 360 and the 3DS for the entire month of October. 360 sold 166,000 units while the 3DS pushed an astounding 452,000.
Still Japan's rapid adoption of the Wii U is greatly helping Nintendo. In the first week of November alone, Japan sold 40,000 Wii U units, a 1,500 percent increase. In September they sold only about 1,000 a week, according to Polygon.
Only time will tell if Mario, Link, and the rest of Nintendo's stars can help resurrect the falling Wii U.
