It's certainly an impressive number, but it's a bit unfair to directly compare it to the Wii U numbers. At this point, it's simply too early to judge the Wii U launch. The week one numbers definitely could have been better, but they weren't all that bad and nowhere near low enough to conclude that it's a failure.

@jdh5153 What exactly do you have against Nintendo?

Other than price point... is availability not an issue? I know I couldn't find a Wii U anywhere where I am. I know the GB crew says it was so easy for them to get one. Wasn't for me.

I wonder how many of those purchases were people doubling down because their original 360 fucking Red Ringed?

I've bought 3 Xbox 360s and I'm an idiot.

@Hizang said:

@jdh5153 said:

@Hizang said:

So this is actually quite a surprise, I mean wouldn't everybody who wanted a 360 have a 360 by now?

That's what I thought. Almost a million, quite impressive.

I mean thats why the Wii stopped selling as good, because everybody already had one.

Wii nearly outsold the Wii-U as well. Sort of weird, I don't think this bodes well for Nintendo. Which is a bummer.

Wii U has no games, Xbox does. Wait until march when this stupid "launch window" is over and we'll hopefully see some more sales on the Wii U end. I would love to pick one up!

@TooWalrus said:

However, I'd never wish them to go out of business... They've done so much in the past, and they've got such great potential, it's only a matter of time before they make something truly great again...

Do they have the time though? Console launches aren't cheap and I know I could walk into almost any store and buy one right now, which is something I never thought I'd be able to do less than a month after a launch. It's an honest question, and I hope they prove me wrong because you're right; Nintendo means too much to gaming.

They'll never go out of business though; their IP's are just too valuable.

@Choffy: They have (or recently had, at least) 10 billion dollars in cash in the bank, and they make money on every WiiU as long as everyone buys one game. They're not going anywhere.

@supermonkey122 said:

@jdh5153 What exactly do you have against Nintendo?

Nothing really. I just don't think they're worthy to be in the console business any more. They put out THREE straight underperforming consoles. There will never be a 3rd party game on a Nintendo console that will make you go 'wow', it'll always be better on the Xbox, PlayStation and PC. So what's my real motive you ask?

I want Nintendo to go the route of SEGA. They make some decent games, but I think at this point they'd be better suited making those games on other consoles. That's right, I want to see a Zelda game on an Xbox with no motion controller, just good old fashioned gameplay. I want to see Pokemon on the iPhone and iPad (they'd easily sell millions of copies). I don't like Nintendo consoles at all. I don't like the gimmicks. I don't like the graphics. Furthermore I think handheld gaming machines are archaic. An iPhone and an iPad can do anything they can do.

Douchy enough for you?

@jdh5153 said:

@supermonkey122 said:

@jdh5153 What exactly do you have against Nintendo?

Nothing really. I just don't think they're worthy to be in the console business any more. They put out THREE straight underperforming consoles. There will never be a 3rd party game on a Nintendo console that will make you go 'wow', it'll always be better on the Xbox, PlayStation and PC. So what's my real motive you ask?

I want Nintendo to go the route of SEGA. They make some decent games, but I think at this point they'd be better suited making those games on other consoles. That's right, I want to see a Zelda game on an Xbox with no motion controller, just good old fashioned gameplay. I want to see Pokemon on the iPhone and iPad (they'd easily sell millions of copies). I don't like Nintendo consoles at all. I don't like the gimmicks. I don't like the graphics. Furthermore I think handheld gaming machines are archaic. An iPhone and an iPad can do anything they can do.

Douchy enough for you?

By under performing I assume you mean ones you didn't like? Because the Wii sold like crazy, which to a business means it performed incredibly well. Also,the Pokemon games already sell millions, for about 40 dollars a pop, so I really don't see the advantage for Nintendo to drop that into a marketplace that demands 99 cent games, or the advantage to the player to experience those games with an on-screen d-pad or whatever.

@evanbower said:

@jdh5153 said:

@supermonkey122 said:

@jdh5153 What exactly do you have against Nintendo?

Nothing really. I just don't think they're worthy to be in the console business any more. They put out THREE straight underperforming consoles. There will never be a 3rd party game on a Nintendo console that will make you go 'wow', it'll always be better on the Xbox, PlayStation and PC. So what's my real motive you ask?

I want Nintendo to go the route of SEGA. They make some decent games, but I think at this point they'd be better suited making those games on other consoles. That's right, I want to see a Zelda game on an Xbox with no motion controller, just good old fashioned gameplay. I want to see Pokemon on the iPhone and iPad (they'd easily sell millions of copies). I don't like Nintendo consoles at all. I don't like the gimmicks. I don't like the graphics. Furthermore I think handheld gaming machines are archaic. An iPhone and an iPad can do anything they can do.

Douchy enough for you?

By under performing I assume you mean ones you didn't like? Because the Wii sold like crazy, which to a business means it performed incredibly well. Also,the Pokemon games already sell millions, for about 40 dollars a pop, so I really don't see the advantage to Nintendo to drop that into a marketplace that demands 99 cent games, or the advantage to the player to experience those games with an on-screen d-pad or whatever.

Underperforming hardware wise. The last three have been years behind their competition. The N64 was the last one that actually took a leap forward.

Final Fantasy Dimensions sells for $27 on iOS, there are plenty 'retail priced' games on the iOS market that sell quite well. Why would you need an on screen D-pad? Check out Final Fantasy III on the iOS or Android. The menus function great through touch and there's an 'invisible' analog stick wherever you put your thumb on the screen for movement. It's actually quite fluid and more enjoyable than playing on a handheld.

@jdh5153 said:

@evanbower said:

@jdh5153 said:

@supermonkey122 said:

@jdh5153 What exactly do you have against Nintendo?

Nothing really. I just don't think they're worthy to be in the console business any more. They put out THREE straight underperforming consoles. There will never be a 3rd party game on a Nintendo console that will make you go 'wow', it'll always be better on the Xbox, PlayStation and PC. So what's my real motive you ask?

I want Nintendo to go the route of SEGA. They make some decent games, but I think at this point they'd be better suited making those games on other consoles. That's right, I want to see a Zelda game on an Xbox with no motion controller, just good old fashioned gameplay. I want to see Pokemon on the iPhone and iPad (they'd easily sell millions of copies). I don't like Nintendo consoles at all. I don't like the gimmicks. I don't like the graphics. Furthermore I think handheld gaming machines are archaic. An iPhone and an iPad can do anything they can do.

Douchy enough for you?

By under performing I assume you mean ones you didn't like? Because the Wii sold like crazy, which to a business means it performed incredibly well. Also,the Pokemon games already sell millions, for about 40 dollars a pop, so I really don't see the advantage to Nintendo to drop that into a marketplace that demands 99 cent games, or the advantage to the player to experience those games with an on-screen d-pad or whatever.

Underperforming hardware wise. The last three have been years behind their competition. The N64 was the last one that actually took a leap forward.

Final Fantasy Dimensions sells for $27 on iOS, there are plenty 'retail priced' games on the iOS market that sell quite well. Why would you need an on screen D-pad? Check out Final Fantasy III on the iOS or Android. The menus function great through touch and there's an 'invisible' analog stick wherever you put your thumb on the screen for movement. It's actually quite fluid and more enjoyable than playing on a handheld.

Pokemon Black/White sold over four million copies in Japan alone in its first three months on shelves, which also means that is four million handhelds people had to buy from Nintendo to make that happen. We can guess that for those four million people, each gave about 200 dollars to Nintendo in those two purchases alone. I don't see how moving to iOs could ever increase the audience that much that it would ever benefit Nintendo. And an invisible analog stick and on-screen d-pad achieve the same thing... they're the developer saying, "this game requires buttons, but your phone doesn't have any, so.."

The invisible analog sticks absolutely suck on touch screens. No one likes that.

As for a high priced iOS game lets see how FFD actually sells, then again we'll probably never know how many people actually end up paying for the entire thing versus just buying an episode or two.

As for system performance the Gamecube looked and played just fine. There were some beautiful looking games on that system. And regardless of that, good games are good games. Who gives a flying fuck if the graphics are cutting edge. Not every game needs to be that.

@devilzrule27 said:

The invisible analog sticks absolutely suck on touch screens. No one likes that.

As for a high priced iOS game lets see how FFD actually sells, then again we'll probably never know how many people actually end up paying for the entire thing versus just buying an episode or two.

As for system performance the Gamecube looked and played just fine. There were some beautiful looking games on that system. And regardless of that, good games are good games. Who gives a flying fuck if the graphics are cutting edge. Not every game needs to be that.

Yeah, invisible analog sticks are the worst. I don't mind iPhone games, but I won't touch any try to push those on me.

Also, your definitely right and I meant to mention that. The Gamecube was actually more powerful than the PS2 (and less powerful than the OG Xbox), but since every human owned a PS2, games were developed for that hardware and didn't take advantage of the two stronger systems. It did surface in a few areas though, like the compromises they had to make on the PS2 Resident Evil 4 port.

Yeah it's not like some huge games came out on the 360 or anything. Plus I'm fairly sure they only shipped roughly the amount of WiiUs that they sold... plus, the 3DS was a complete failure at launch and is now one of the hottest sellers. You can't really tell anything about the launch other than it wasn't an abject failure.

Those are impressive sales for the 360, that's for sure, but saying Nintendo is "burning in flames" and this is "their last console" only two weeks after launch is jumping the gun by quite a bit. People were quick to dogpile onto the 3DS calling it a failure and the end of handheld gaming, but after a year on the market it was labeled a success. I'd also like to point out that you could walk into just about any store during the launch week of the 3DS and pick one up without hassle. 
 
I'm not saying the WiiU is successful either. I can't know that. No one can know that yet. I'm certainly not going to wish their demise, though. That's childish.

I seem to remember the PS2 destroying the 360's sales numbers immediately after its respective release.

I think we can pump the brakes on jumping to these sorts of conclusions.

Black friday caugh . sales , vs no sales and a sold out supply? vs readily available and a big library vs just starting , ya it may have got out sold by 360 but ps2 out sold 360 at launch to ,

---guess what else what is wii u competing with , ,

---ps4 and xbox 720 - not the ps3 360 , that war has came and gone ,, so wii u is winning lol

I just noticed a trend that Nintendo and Sony always release their consoles around the time the Yen and USD is at it's worst exchange rate relatively. Which as a Japanese manufacturer they'd want. I don't know if this is just a coincidence but it's very smart. I think this may be why the WiiU got released this year instead of last year, because then the Yen was doing much better last fall.

The WiiU was released a the day the USD/JPY had the second lowest exchange rate of the year.

Food for thought.

Maybe we should start pinning release of the PS4 to this exchange rate?