Nintendo expected the Wii U to sell 40 million units during it's life time. However, they later speculated that it will sell 25 million units after seeing the Wii U start off. Wii U didn't even sell close to those units. The predictions were far off. Nintendo intuitively assumed that Wii U will sell 40 millions based off the 100 million units it sold from the Wii.

It's quite clear Nintendo can't predict how many units NX will sell. How much units units will NX need to sell? The answer is subjective for the most part. If a person is an executive at Nintendo, they would like the NX to sell 100 million units like Wii did.

However, how much units does NX really need to sell? What benefit is there for having a high amount of units for gamers? For starters, if NX sells a high amount of units, third parties games won't pass over Nintendo's console. Nintendo NX will need to at least sell 20 million units if they don't want to miss out on third party games like Star Wars Battlefront.

@moywar700: Well ideally, Nintendo would be sweet talking developers and publishers now to see that their games are coming to the platform. If they have to wait until they sell 10mil units to 'prove' their console then they are already screwed.

Developers already stated that they don't have any interest in producing Nintendo games unless they have a programming language is the same as XBOX. The reason being is because porting the games will cost zero dollars. If they use a different programming language, porting the game will cost money because they pay people to edit the game.

I have no idea if NX will be identical to the XBOX in programming language.

http://www.videogamer.com/news/third-party_publishers_wont_support_nintendos_next_console_unless_costs_are_low_pachter.html

I've checked out the best selling games for PS4 and XBOX. It appears the best selling games are third party shooter and action games. Those games don't really appeal to me like Watch Dogs. However, it does bother me that a game I like like Star Wars Battlefront passes over Nintendo. I can see the publishers viewpoint for doing so. I want a first person shooter games that isn't Call of Duty.

Nintendo's in a no-win situation. It's been long-established that third parties are not interested in developing for Nintendo's platforms (unless they see massive hardware sales numbers - but even then, third-party AAA offerings are usually pretty slim), and without third-party games Nintendo's hardware remains largely for a niche market.

It seems like Nintendo needs to either embrace that they need to make a platform that caters to their dedicated niche audience and brings financial success with smaller sales numbers, or fundamentally change both how they do business with third parties and design their hardware ecosystem... and risk pleasing absolutely no one.

You have to take published estimates like that with a grain of salt. Companies almost always project upwards when estimating, even if rational analysis yields otherwise. Because if they officially publish a low estimate, their stock will tank *hard*. Meanwhile estimates that are higher than analysts' assessments are pretty much par for the course and won't rock the boat; the damage when the reality of low sales occurs is not nearly as bad (and in your next PR cycle, you mostly focus on how the future will be better since nobody can do anything about the past; rinse & repeat).

I'm pretty sure that internally, they knew they were in trouble as partners were quickly abandoning them during / before launch, and Wii U was clearly not hitting the same magic spot as Wii somehow did.

As someone who is making his money in demand planning it comes down to the business case and how many units they have to move/ install base to achieve in order to make the project as such profitable for the company.

Predicting future demand in entertainment tech industry is crazy hard as there are so many variables and trends/tech changes so fast. Also there is always a risk of a very distinct process bias being present - as costs for a given project are to a big extend known/highly predictable, you can calculate the minimum number of sales you need to achieve in order to break even/make profit. There is a risk this skews your perception internally on which figures you project.

The business I am working in is more predictable by and large and even in that field we had major product launches that have been off by 50% or more for various reasons. Don't think Big N is particular weaker in that field in comparison to other companies of that industry.

@moywar700: Games would still have to be ported regardless of the programming language used. Even if they were the same base architecture (x86 for example) Nintendo will still have their own SDK to communicate with whatever new hardware (the controller or whatever) they have which wouldn't be present on the PS4/Xbox One. But that's already the case right now, for all I know PS4 and Xbox One both use the same language but the libraries that are provided to developers are still different because they're two different platforms, you don't just write the same code for both platforms and it will have some sort of cost.

@kingbonesaw: Who even knows? Their shitty ports can't have sold very well on the Wii U and their original offerings didn't review very well. With the Wii U not doing great numbers and the NX coming late to this generation's party and likely with the same Nintendo "uniqueness," I'm not so sure that there's a compelling reason for them to do so.

A lot of people seem more interested in the NX than the Wii U but that maybe just due the speculation and mystery surrounding it currently.

Hardware sale predictions are usually based on a few things and aren't just subjective. You can gauge developer interest when you're handing out dev kits and in the ramp up to production and release retailers will begin to show, or not show, interest in the console. High retailer interest could mean high order numbers which Nintendo would hope would lead to high sales numbers.

So it is subjective but there can be indicators towards high sales. And if you remember the Wii U launched with a lot of 3rd party support. Ubisoft, EA, and Activision were on in on the launch.

If they don't get 3rd party support it will sell as much or less than the Wii U, i mean i have almost 0 nastalgia for disney, zelda and mario and that's all they bring to the table it seems. I'm honestly suprised they are making a new console, but maybe they will go heavy on the hand held part of it which is where their bread and butter is these days.

Predicting new hardware is an educated guess look at VR every analyst gives you widly different figures, Nintendo aimed high with the Wii U because the enormous Wii sales. If the NX is x86 and similar power to the XB1/PS4 it'll get third party support, BLOPS / FIFA 15 were on the Wii sell enough units and you'll get third party support. The Gamecube sold 20 million and wasn't a financial failure it must be the lowest number that Nintendo can be sustainable from.

NX = Wii U 2