Never bet against Nintendo? old school doesn't cut it anymor

Wii U sales collapse with 'well under' 100,000 sold in January

"Gamasutra source says that the Wii U sold "well under" 100,000 units. Nintendo previously announced that it sold 460,000 systems in December, suggesting that demand has dropped off considerably among customers who hadn't already decided to buy the console at launch."

"DEMAND HAS DROPPED OFF CONSIDERABLY"

"Microsoft, meanwhile, announced that the Xbox 360 sold 281,000 units last month"

I remember watching the Wii-U Giantbomb stream, and felt really bummed. It wasn't even the stupidly giant launch patch. It was mostly Nintendo sticking to old school anti costumer decisions like fixing your profile and digital purchases to hardware! wtf! its 2013, haven't they understand the world has move on forward, Is the way internet works really so hard for them to understand!?

theyre completely detached. its over as far as im concerned.

I remember being excited for the Wii, because it seemed like something novel & fun. Plus I always have a soft spot for Nintendo, due to my childhood.

But we've all experienced motion control, and the zillion other gimmicks that it spawned. The Wii made a killing targeting parents & grandparents, and ignored core gamers quite a bit. So how did they expect us to respond to a new gimmick, and a system that ties current gen with rehashes of the same games already available to us?

I just hope their massive nest egg will keep them afloat until they figure things out. It'd be sad not to have Nintendo around.

i wouldn't count them out- but it certainly shows that they need to regroup and get their head in the game. it's a soft launch- they need to bring the software and bring the quality.

it's also disconcerting for the next generation of consoles in general. while i imagine sony and microsoft are taking notes, i think this fall is going to be VERY interesting to watch.

Nintendo still does go into interesting directions that a lot of other parties will not consider. It has been a fun device to use so far, and the off-screen part does help push it into its own category.

That said, the quality of the initial software and trade-offs made in the hardware design both seem kind of badly placed. It is a neat and unique piece still, and I would mostly like to see Nintendo to succeed (though I sometimes feel like their standing should take a substantial downgrade for shipping outrageously under-spec'd hardware that only makes sense if the next DS version in ~2 years can play all Wii U titles, selling hardware this out of date seems incompetent since minor price increases would have drastically improved performance).

It would be disconcerting if they were out after this though. I'd still hate to lose them even if it seems like a partnership with a serious technical company would do a lot of good. If the end-game is a unified DS U with the Wii U, and that ends up creating a super popular handheld, all of the speculation on Nintendo's future will probably end up replaced by a lot of talk about how visionary they were though :D.

Why don't we wait for the games before we start with this.

Yup it is a bummer. 2 Nintendo directs later and the only game I am looking forward to is Lego City Undercover. There wad seems completely blown at this point with E3 still months away. I hope they don't show up completely flaccid like they did last year.

For what it's worth, NeoGAF has a source that states the Gamasutra number is inaccurate and that sales are closer to the 55k range.

It's like Nintendo sold their soul to make Wii a success. I always hear "Nintendo is the most innovate" but it seems like they depend on Mario to get them quick dirty cash.

Once they get some more software out that people want sales will pick up. It won't be a super hot seller or catch the 360, ps3, or even what the new versions of those consoles will be, but I think it'll do fine on its own, long term - think more gamecube/N64 than NES/Wii numbers.

It's easy to see doom and gloom now because the numbers are low - there's no software coming out (Guarantee this will be the same situation 3-4 months after orbis/durango launch) and the system is overpriced, meanwhile most people interested in games are holding their breath for the next gen announcements.

It's only been 3 months. The software will sell this hardware. I think Lego City Undercover will give the system a nice bump from the kids/casual market. I can see that game being a BIG hit.

So they sold 55k units over a five-week-period? 11k units per week? Holy shit, this is "someone-is-getting-fired-over-this" kind of bad.

Apple is on a path to cause a second crash. It's bad enough that they set us back 4 years on CPU architecture, now they're cutting into the gaming market. Fucking pricks.

I am betting against Nintendo. They stopped making games and got rich selling waggle to moms, let them pull a sega and have a zelda come out on the ps4 and new xbox.

@genghisjohn: Nintendo haven't stopped making games, they put out just as many on the Wii/DS as they ever did in the past. There was just a lot more third party crap.

They've also said that if they ever stopped making consoles, they'd never simply become a publish. Their properties will go down with them. Considering how stubborn they seem to be, I don't think that's just smoke blowing either.

Besides handhelds nintendo has made nothing good since the snes.

I could see Nintendo transitioning solely into handhelds in the future. They seem to be still doing all right in that market.

I don't think Nintendo are doomed just yet, but the fact you can get the premium bundle of the Wii U with £50 knocked off it already is not a good sign.

I hope Nintendo pulls a Sega and stops making hardware. That way my dream of seeing a Pokemon MMO on my PC is that much closer to reality.

Nintendo have no clue what they're doing. They hit big with the Wii but it was all short-term buck. Their business now is similar to the manufactured celebrities of today where they get famous, milk it as much as possible for a year or 2 if they're lucky then never get work again.

Meh. People love talking about doom and gloom for Nintendo but I am more excited for what they have announced this year than Sony and Microsoft at this point. The last of us is the last console exclusive we know about right now that I want. Nintendo has a lot coming that I am excited for. Plus I still news to finish zombiiu and ninja gaiden, also the cave and trine 2. I have wii u games to play yet.

The Wii U's launch seems abysmal, but the economic climate has changed so much since the start of the generation that we don't really have any context for success until the other two launch their consoles.

Anyway, I haven't bought a Wii U yet but definitely will once the big games come out. Even if it's just for Zelda, I'll always buy the new Nintendo console. I'm guessing there's an army of Nintendo fans waiting for E3, so we'll see.

Nintendo really cannot be losing money, ALL THEY DO IS VIDEO GAMES THEY HAVE Wii stockpile of money (90 million served)

-"Never Again" said the US market

I think it's tough. Nintendo has been a bit of a slow starter recently. Ever since there was no launch Mario game, their systems always have a little dead zone between tent pole releases. That being said, I think they're really fucking up. Games like Luigi's Mansion 2 and a new Mario & Luigi give me some hope, but both of those are on 3DS and Nintendo has been pretty good with their handhelds.

They should think about revisiting some of their other franchises like F-Zero, Mother, Star Fox, even Custom Robo for the Wii U. A console Mother sounds like it would be pretty big (I've never played them, but there's a lot of love for them) and I would be excited for a new, proper Star Fox game on a home console. But sadly, I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon.

You know what they also need? Some new fucking console franchises. But that seems like a huge long shot. I think they'll be ok in the end, though. They'll pump out a couple big games that people will buy (even if it won't be Wii-levels of people) and they'll make their money that way.

Nonsense, 2 and a half months is the exact time to be making sweeping predictions for a Nintendo product. Clearly the numbers as they stand at this very moment will never vary in the slightest and should be taken as absolute truths

@big_jon Yeah I'm much more interested in what the sales will look like after those new Mario games ship.

The 3DS on the other hand...

This is argument is grossly misinformed, You can't blame apple for doing good products:

-ARM (A6) iPad retina, pulls out almost 3 times the amount of pixels a 1080p monitor has, with 9 hours battery life and almost no heat. Add 10 point multitouch that actually works, the best app ecosystem on earth and great manufacture quality. Wii-U? no thanks.

-If there is a dated architecture is x86, intel incompetence to bring its platform to mobile is the one to blame, They have fail over and over again to reduce heat and battery consumption. Latest flop: Surface PRO, 4 hours battery life, gets hotter than a frying pan, are you kidding me? is this your x86/windows version of mobile?

-I don't think there is anyone but video game publishers and console manufactures to blame if this actually a video game crash, they have failed to adapt and bring value to consumers, hence people won't buy your shit anymore.

-Apple has done more for technology adoption (the kind that matters) in computer history that any of what a video game company has ever done.

-This might be a AAA video game crash, I hardly think this is actually a video game crash in the large scheme, there hasn't been so many people playing video games ever before.

At the end you can't blame free market to do what it does best, cut the crap, let dinosaurs die and keep evolving.

eh, I still like Nintendo.

I'm rooting for them I guess.

It depends on if people still want their games, once they've got X-Eight and PS4 games to compare them to. If yes, they'll carve out a sustainable market for themselves. If not, it's time to go back to the drawing board. Regardless, the Wii and DS phenomenon is over, and 3DS and Wii U won't catch lightning in a bottle for them for sure.

Good thing they've quite the warchest.

When the Nintendo games for the system start coming in then I'll pick up a Wii U simple as that. I don't like how accounts and purchases are locked to the one system and perhaps a firmware update can fix that if Nintendo come to their senses.

I don't know, you still can't count Nintendo out because this was the same song and dance when the 3DS came out. Everyone was all gloom and doom saying handhelds were dead and all that and now its doing great in japan and pretty well here. I also would say Nintendo is not really anti consumer the opposite really, its just more in line that online services is not Nintendo strong suit and they can't get around it now which will be some hard lessons for Nintendo.

The truth is Nintendo is in a weird spot right now after the success of the wii its going to be hard to get that thunder back if its even possible. Now that new systems are coming out Nintendo will have a harder time selling the Wii u if every core gamer jumps to MS or Sony. The Mass market will not upgrade to Wii u in the numbers that bought the Wii.

Its still too early to call anything and depending on what the other companies do, it can very well be a different ball game. If any of the rumors of always online systems or blocking used games are true it could make the Wii U a very marketable system to gamers.

I don't think they could do that even if they wanted to. Nintendo is a publicly traded company; their shareholders would force them to either sell off the IP or become a developer/publisher only. Someone would pay truckloads of money for some of the Nintendo IP, and shareholders would never allow that to go to waste.

I wouldn't write off Nintendo until they're written off. They have a way of suddenly coming up with something to keep them afloat.

That said, I also wouldn't be surprised if they followed THQ and Midway down the long road to hell by the end of this generation. I don't know if the 3DS alone can keep them afloat when people have iPad's and stuff that they occasionally play games on and don't see a reason to play dedicated handheld systems, and they sure as hell aren't doing anything for the Wii U since one can only take so much Mario and Zelda before they go "eh, I can live without" and proceed to put that money toward the new Xbox, the PS4, or maybe a PC like so many others have been doing the past few years.

I think there's still a debate to be had over whether these numbers are okay considering the current situation, but to just look at these figures in a vacuum and say that they spell the apocalypse for Nintendo, as some have, seems silly. Of course demand for the console has significantly dropped, if you couldn't work out that it would, you really shouldn't be doing even simple economic analysis; we went from December when tons of new games are coming out and everyone is buying consoles for Christmas, to January which is a traditional dead zone, with few new significant games. We also have to remember that games sales in general are dropping because for Microsoft and Sony they're at the end of their current console generation, and that we might see more Wii Us selling once we're into the new generation proper, and there are more ports, and more competition.

The real worrying thing is that the amount the Wii U sold in January is less than the 360 or PS3 did, even in their worst months throughout their lifespan, but to say that the issue here is that Nintendo just do things old-school and old-school doesn't cut it, and that's why they're leaking cash, is very reductionist. Firstly, for some, old school obviously does cut it, there are still a hell of a lot of people out there buying traditional Nintendo games like Mario and Zelda. Secondly, yes, in some ways Nintendo are old school, but the thing that has basically defined Nintendo hardware for the last several years, and made them a boatload of cash, is the fact that they've been doing something very new. Nintendo made millions and left the rest of the console world trying to desperately catch up because they worked out new ways to make, market, and provide for a console, that catered for new crowds that had previously never been part of gaming.

I think there's serious criticism to be levelled against Nintendo for the ways in which they are stuck in the past, and there is definitely a valid debate to be had over whether this is enough for old school gamers any more, but half the debates I see over Nintendo's downfall are these arguments where it's suggested that because they're not doing whatever we, the more traditional game crowd want, that they must be doomed. We have to recognise that we're far from the only ones in this ball game any more, and that a bigger problem for Nintendo may not be that they're trying to push a lot of old-fashioned ideas in their console, but that their new ideas aren't succeeding the way they have before.

Well, at least they still got the 3DS... R.I.P. Nintendo/Rorie

@donpixel: When Apple switched the using Intel CPUs then Intel stopped innovating as quickly because they had less of an impotence to so yes I can blame Apple.

What do they expect? Not many people were actually excited for it. It's an underpowered next-gen system. Also, they only sold 460K in December. What happens in December I wonder... oh yea, Christmas! I doubt they thought those numbers were going to continue into January. Nintendo dropped the ball on the system and it makes me sad because I really liked Nintendo and thought they would do better after they realized the Wii was just a console for shovelware and a few great games once every couple of years.

@gamer_152:I tend to agree with most of what you say about old school, perhaps more than "old school" I should have said anti-consumer policies. Anti consumer policies really makes me feel like I don't want to support them anymore.

I grew up with a SNESS, however... I did grew up, I work on computers, I'm familiar with technology, I feel like Nintendo keeps relaying on fooling out people unfamiliar with tech, they keep trying to sell gimmicky instead of technology.

Few poitns:

- The Wii-U pad doesn't support multitouch, really? Apples multitouch is what made touch a viable UI. Nowadays even Polaroid's cheap android tablets support some kind of multitouch

-Wii-U pad with poor battery life, what is the point of 2 hour battery life !? that is not acceptable for today's standards.

- Crap OS? that's been said a lot, how is it possible they manage to make browsing basic functions such a chore!?

-720p, its been what? almost 10 years of HDTV, is it much to ask for full 1080p experience? feels like my HDTV investment is not being respected.

- Dated connectivity and dated digital distribution, a lot its been said about this.

I know the economic climate is not the best, but Apple, Samsung, Lenovo, and at some degree android/google had show that if you do a no compromise quality device, people will buy it. With the high standard for electronic devices nowadays, Half-ass, half-priced, half-cooked shady hardware like the Wii-U belongs in the 90s.

Dude, I can respect you not liking Apple for personal preference. But you gotta give credit to credit is due, Apple has one of the best engineering teams out there, The MacBook Air basically invented the Ultrabook, they took intel technology (x86) make it better, and at this point after 3 years intel hasn't catch up. The MacBook air is still the best ultrabook out there.

Some articles as reference:

ARM's 2014 processors will blow today's smartphone chips away, with 3x the performance or 1/4 the battery drain

Ultrabook, round two: can Intel control the future of the laptop?

You cannot blame on Apple the demise of traditional video game companies due to their own incompetence.

The biggest thing to me is the store. As it is, I'm really reluctant to put money into their e-shops. If I could buy something and it was on the e-shop and PSN/XBL, there is no chance I would buy the e-shop version. And there is also no chance I would buy e-shop over retail.

The 3DS and the Wii U need account based systems, badly.

Whether they find the success they are looking for or not, it is something that has to be done. No matter how difficult or complicated it might be, they just need to rip that band aid off asap.

It feels stone age at this point.

I wouldn't be surprised that the age of the board of directors being somewhere in the 50s-70s, probably explains all of the weird business decisions they make.

i love them, but i think they are done... :(

Anybody saying Nintendo is done is being silly. They're not done. The Wii U is in trouble, no doubt, but it's not going to sink the company. Almost all analysts predicted a huge dropoff after the holidays, and most analysts are sticking to estimates of 30-40 million units for the Wii U during its cycle. They're going to survive.

That said, I love Nintendo. I love their in-house games. I love the fact that they do everything differently. It adds a lot to the world of gaming. But they really do need to get with the program a little. Maybe going back to 3rd place in the console race will finally goose them into action.

People are much to pessimistic.

I think their approach is aways interesting. Maybe not the best, but interesting. There just needs to be the game that comes out that people need. Zombi U is an unproven franchise so it wasn't that and Mario U was sort of the same old same old. Which brings up something else that I'm tired of people talking about. Nintendo innovates probably as much or more than any other company, it's just that the innovation is lost in a sea of being behind the times and them being sort of the same. Nintendo needs to have better online services.

Mario Kart, New Super Mario and Pokemon sell way more than the Galaxy games. All those games are probably much easier to make. Every other Kirby game is vastly different from the last, but those probably don't sell systems. When they got their A game, when they have Intelligent Systems or their Tokyo studio making games they hit it out of the park.

@dallas_raines: Remember when the 3ds came out and everyone thought it was dumb, and that iphones took over and that there were no good games? To the point that Iwata publicly apologized, slashed the price and offered early adopters some of the best games made for the GBA? Then everything got better. I could see the same thing happen to the Wii U.

When will people learn? We went through the same song and dance with the 3DS, and look at it now. It launched with few worthwhile game, like the Wii U, and struggled off the bat. Then Nintendo announced things like Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 (along with a price cut) and what do you know, people started buying it. Until this system has a 3D Mario or an original Zelda game at least announced, let's hold off on all the doom and gloom.

They'll continue to sell to the people who already buy Nintendo but they won't be getting very many new customers at all. Their attempts to innovate are nice but it doesn't help when they can't get good third party games and a platform on par with the current gen systems. They'll end up even farther behind when the next gen hits. I don't think you can consider the WiiU a next gen console, it was merely an attempt to catch up to the current gen....way too late.

I'll tell you where they messed up on. They called thweir new system the Wii-U. Some people only go by new appeal when deciding what to go for. Wii-u sounds like some console update name a la what they do with their handhelds all the time.

Theres just not enough to make the jump for most wii casual users.

@ll_exile_ll: Not to mention how we went through the same thing with the Wii and original DS.. Two systems that went on to destroy the competition.

They've definitely made some early mistakes with the Wii U, but I don't think that spells outright doom for Nintendo or the console. I also think that people are grossly over estimating how powerful the new systems are going to be. The Wii U will undoubtedly be the weakest of the three, but the gap isn't going to be as big as it was between the Wii and the PS3/360.