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Source: Link. To put that figure into comparison, during the same period in its lifecycle, Nintendo's Wii hit 435,000 unit sales.
Nintendo's Wii U had a rough January, CNET has learned.
Nintendo sold only 57,000 Wii U units in the U.S. in January, a person familiar with NPD's game industry sales data has confirmed to CNET. The leading console maker during the period, Microsoft, sold 281,000 units in January.
Gamasutra was first to report that Wii U sales were sluggish in January. That publication's source said only that January sales were "well under" 100,000 units.
The Wii U's trouble in January stands in stark contrast to its predecessor, the Wii. In its first January on store shelves in 2007, Nintendo sold 435,000 console units.
That Nintendo is having trouble selling Wii U units is nothing new. The company's CEO Satoru Iwata last month characterized Wii U sales as "not bad." That came just days before Microsoft and Nintendo announced their console unit sales in December. During that period, Microsoft sold nearly one million more consoles.
The Wii U's troubles negatively affected Nintendo's earnings for the nine-month period ended December 31. The company said that it sold only 3 million Wii U units since its launch in November, adding that upcoming games, including new entries in the Legend of Zelda franchise, could "help Nintendo regain momentum for Wii U."
Still, that a console that has been on store shelves for just three months is selling so few units is shocking. It's something that gamers would expect from unknown game companies, but that it's a Nintendo issue, especially given its recent successes, is surprising.
CNET has contacted Nintendo for comment. We will update this story when we have more information.Those numbers, assuming they're accurate, are appallingly bad. They're not DOOOOOOOOOOOMED bad, but they're objectively troubling as opposed to just tepid. Nintendo is going to need to take action more drastic than awesome Nintendo Directs, and Iwata needs to update his resume. If they have to price drop systems on short notice back to back, he should be out on his ass. EDIT - assuming I'm remembering things right and the data I saw is accurate, the PS3 never had a month that bad at $600. So this isn't just rough, it's legitimately bad. URL to share (right click and copy) |
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02/15/13, 17:25 |
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02/15/13, 17:40 |
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Oldmanwinter said:@kriswright
Nintendo doesn't need a game that looks like Watch Dogs. They needed Mario Kart with fully integrated online support.
Honestly the Wii U launch line up was horrible. There were pretty good games but nearly everything that came out could be had elsewhere for cheaper and the differences by all accounts are marginal. Why spend $350 to play any of those games? They needed something like a brand new Mario Kart or Zelda or something of that caliber for launch.
I mean imagine if the N64 didn't launch with WaveRace 64, Pilot Wings 64 or Mario 64 and instead had a bunch of PSone ports that were six months old for twice the cost. This. I completely agree. This is the first Nintendo console that I can think of that launched without one game that I really want that I can't get on another system. Nintendo needs to drop their heavy-hitters and tell 3rd party devs to deal with it. Nintendo games sell Nintendo systems the vast majority of the time. That's the way it's always been. This Rayman thing SHOULD be the proverbial straw. Nintendo corrected the 3DS pretty quickly and I think they'll do the same with Wii U.
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on: 02/16/13, 02:42 |
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02/16/13, 02:43 |
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@ZeroI'm comparing the technology to other stuff that does, essentially, the same thing with equal success. There are absolutely devices that handle streaming less effectively; no doubt. And the tech on the Wii U absolutely works effectively; again, no doubt. But it's weird that people are calling it remarkable. Other devices stream content that accept input absent lag and did so before the Wii U launched. @ZeroThe 360 gives MS about $100+ in hardware profit and has for at least a year, if not longer. The PS3 turned the corner in 2010 I believe, though I don't know how much they make on each console.
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on: 02/16/13, 03:49 |
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@Oldmanwinter Not that this really matters, but the Nintendo 64 didn't launch with Wave Race 64. It had nothing but Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64 for a full month.
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on: 02/16/13, 04:07 |
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I just don't understand how they can screw up both the Wii U and 3DS launches. I was/am happy with both but most it seems don't feel the same. More 1st party games please.
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on: 02/16/13, 04:56 |
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Mop it up said:@Oldmanwinter Not that this really matters, but the Nintendo 64 didn't launch with Wave Race 64. It had nothing but Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64 for a full month. Regardless I think you got my point;) And maybe it's because I didn't get mine until Christmas, but those were the three games I got. It's when people were selling them for like a 300% mark up, I was 14 or 15 at the time. I dunno how my parents swung it but they got one for me and my brother with those three games for Christmas. That was probably the last time I was unbelievably excited to get a new system, since then it's all been downhill as far as "wow" factor goes. At least for me. For the time those are probably the most three incredible launch window games ever released on any platform.
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on: 02/16/13, 05:23 |
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The Wii U will probably be fine if Nintendo gets very serious, very quickly. I'm sure they will. Wii U owners are going to have tons of amazing first party games to play over the next couple years, as Nintendo does everything they can to right the ship. It may not be enough to convince the masses but at least we'll be playing lots of quality stuff. What Nintendo NEEDS to do from now on is gather two or three large teams around two years before the release of their next console and handheld and create two or three MUST HAVE AAA games that will be ready for launch. Stop relying on third parties at the beginning. Have a couple HUGE core games ready to go at launch along with a big AAA bridge title that appeals to everyone. THEN have smaller AA games ready to go every month starting two months after the console/handheld release. Nintendo has a TON of dev houses and they have the cash to expand and open new studios if they need to. It is the responsibility of the hardware maker to create the install base, not third parties. I will never understand why Nintendo has been attempting to rely on them lately.
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on: 02/16/13, 05:31 |
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02/16/13, 05:34 |
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@Kal-El814 Well in that case my point stands even more. If you are correct, the Wii U is the one that is selling the hardware at the best manufacturing cost to price tag for the consumer. Why that is if the core tech inside is so close to PS3 / 360 tech I have no idea. But that's how it stands, apparently. @Kal-El814 Which other consumer devices accept input and stream based on that input and have no lag? I'd think the only thing this really applies to is video games and the Wii U is the only video game platform that I know of that does this. Any kind of video / etc. streaming device isn't running off of input and can buffer.
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on: 02/16/13, 05:33 |
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02/16/13, 05:35 |
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If third parties refuse to support the platform, I don't know how it could possibly do well. Survive? Probably. Flourish? Highly doubtful. Yea, first party games go a long way, but they only ensure survival. If third parties just decide to dig in their heels and not cultivate the platform, it simply won't flourish. .... and then all the third parties and Michael Pachters can say how right they were!! ........... yay.
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on: 02/16/13, 08:46 |
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@NinSageI really can't blame the third parties here. Every time I'm asked by students whether I prefer PS3 or Xbox 360, it's made obvious that the Wii U has made some major missteps when looking for customer attention. Half these kids seriously don't even know what the Wii U is. AT LEAST half. I am hoping for some crazy moves by Nintendo. They fixed the 3DS and now it's amaze-o-pants.
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on: 02/16/13, 17:34 |
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 That puts a little more perspective on things. Obviously not a great situation, but equally obvious that it's something the system can overcome. It will be very telling how Wii U stacks up next holiday when it will presumably be going against the other next generation consoles. deathly_hallows said:. In no other segment of consumer electronics could a company be successful by selling gear for the same price as it's competion yet offering a fraction of the value. Really? Go to Best Buy and compare TVs and laptops with the same specs, and tell me if there aren't some brands that are charging significantly more for the same technology. And again you continue to pretend that Nintendo can operate like Sony and Microsoft. For all the "success" of Xbox 360, the system has lost the company $3 billion. And that's after losing $4 billion on the original Xbox. Do you honestly think Nintendo could have survived this (a little outdated):  Even when it was dominating in 2012, it was still wasn't consistently making money. Nintendo doesn't have anything else to make up for that and stockholders simply would not accept it. You're living in a fantasy world. A video game industry where everyone operates like Microsoft is one where Nintendo ceases to exist, that is a plain fact.
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on: 02/16/13, 18:03 |
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02/16/13, 18:38 |
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@Jargon I suppose that this does add a bit of much needed perspective. I think the difficult part here is the momentum. Microsoft had been building momentum leading up to the 360. When all was said and done, the original Xbox really didn't sell that much better than the Gamecube, despite all of the praise that it got, but it did have forward momentum so the 360 launch probably wasn't considered as much of a bust, because it was just assumed that "the core" would buy into it eventually. On the other hand, the PS3 launch was considered pretty disappointing at the time and basically a huge step backwards from PS2 numbers, which is kind of where the Wii U is right now. I think Sony came back from that eventually, but it took awhile, and it only happened because developers kept making multiplatform games for it even when it was trailing. Whereas the Wii U 3rd party situation well... there isn't much on the horizon to help Nintendo gain momentum there.
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on: 02/16/13, 19:42 |
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02/16/13, 19:43 |
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Ultimately it doesn't matter if the Wii U's games are 1st party or 3rd party. It doesn't even matter how -many- games there are, so long as there are some that stand out enough to make people need the machine. That's what's required to get the momentum going, that and good marketting. I've never seen a new console launch have so little and so lackluster marketting as the Wii U right now. It practically feels intentional, like a soft launch. Both the games and the marketting situations will only improve. And judging by the quality of the ports at launch, it's quite possible to stay optimistic about some 3rd party support when the machine builds sales. It's proven to be relatively easy to get results on the Wii U, and that was despite a general lack of information from Nintendo, late devkits and hardware that doesn't offer up it's strengths in the most obvious way. Judging by Criterion's recent interviews on the subject, we're looking at a machine that's capable of having noticeably enhanced ports of PS3/360 versions of games, and anyone who has owned a U for a while, knows that the player experience offered by the GamePad is worth developing new ideas for. It's still so early, and the problems are clear, mostly expected and definitely fixable.
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on: 02/16/13, 19:57 |
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02/16/13, 20:00 |
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Infinitywave said:I've never seen a new console launch have so little and so lackluster marketting as the Wii U right now. It practically feels intentional, like a soft launch. I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo kept the marketing to a minimum until -just- before the other generation 8 consoles launched; it'd be a good strategy for convincing those on the fence to go Nintendo. If the rumours are true, games on the other consoles will routinely cost $70, opposed to the $60 WiiU games typically retail for; and the actual systems will easily cost more than $400, unless both companies want to take massive, massive losses. As such, the WiiU will not only be closer to the other systems specification wise, but it'll also work out much, much cheaper. On top of that, at this point, the WiiU will have an established library, as opposed to whatever paltry launch line-ups Microsoft and Sony throw at us. As you say, it's early days. The generation hasn't truly started yet, and Nintendo has at least eight months to fix the problems the WiiU is having currently. All of the current problems the WiiU has can, and will, be fixed; and depending upon how badly Sony and Microsoft drop the ball, Nintendo may come out on top at the end of it all.
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on: 02/16/13, 20:56 |
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@plootI know what you mean, my students are the EXACT same way. However, let's imagine what the world would be like if third parties and the gaming media treated Nintendo consoles like any other major platform? Ah, how different things would be ... And seriously, I know a lot of people are like "well, if Nintendo would get their heads out of their asses and do _____ then they WOULD get equal treatment!" But really, what the f*ck does Nintendo do that is sooooooo much worse than the others? Processing power? First party titles consistently demonstrate that you can do a lot on Nintendo machines when you TRY. Unique input methods? When you look at the wiimote/nc and ESPECIALLY the gamepad, it takes about 2 seconds to realize that those fancy new methods are merely OPTIONS - more freedom to get creative IF the developer wants to. Family friendly appeal? Ask Sony and MS if they want to be embraced by the expanded audience like Nintendo was. Oh wait, you don't have to, the Kinect and Move already prove they do. Seriously... there is no good reason Nintendo always has to fight such an uphill battle of gloom, doom or just plain ignorant media, and stubborn third parties every time they launch a platform.
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on: 02/16/13, 21:13 |
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Nintendo's in for some tough sledding going forward. And as much as I personally enjoyed the launch lineup, Nintendo's handling of the pre-launch, launch and post-launch of this system has been flat-out terrible. To be brutally honest, the system really doesn't deserve to be selling any better right now than it is, and I think sales are going to get worse before they get better. A lot of their problems have been predicated on a number of (apparent) assumptions that the company has seemingly made, most of which have been way off-base. 1. People knew what the Wii U was: This was one of the things that struck me as surprising after E3 2011, that media outlets were reporting the Wii U as just a new controller for the Wii. Obviously, I knew going in that it was a brand new console, but I found it interesting that for those that knew nothing about the system going in, their message was very unclear. It's almost 2 years later now, and there still seems to be some brand confusion. Here's a little story from a few weeks ago. I had a friend in town visiting, guy is a total casual gamer (in high school, he was one of those "buy the PS2 for EA Sports and GTA and that's it" gamers). We had some time to kill, so I threw in Madden on the Wii U and handed him the Pro controller. He didn't really understand what it was ("Do I have to move around to play this?"). I had a good bit of fun trying to explain that this was really no different from playing Madden on PS3 or 360, but he heard "Wii U" and immediately started thinking about Wii Sports. ("So it's just a Wii with a regular controller?") Again, it wasn't until we got into the game that he realized that it was a more powerful system than the Wii. I know all of that is completely anecdotal, but he wasn't the first person who's given me this look when talking about the Wii U. 2. Nintendo Land would be the next Wii Sports: This was the thing that had me worried about the Wii U ever since this past E3. It was a weird feeling watching that show, after MS and Sony practically no-showed the day before and Nintendo was sitting pretty with their year headstart and had the stage for themselves. By the end of the show, after the literal grand finale that was Nintendo Land, it's weird to say but I actually felt bad for Nintendo at that moment. You could see that they truly believed in Nintendo Land as the next big thing, and I just knew that it wasn't going to work that way. It just wasn't like the Wii, where they first showed off that controller and you just knew that it had potential to be a big deal. With third party support mostly consisting of late ports, and first party support seemingly not yet ready to roll out, they seemed to be going all-in with Nintendo Land carrying this system for a while like Wii Sports did. 3. New Super Mario Bros. is a system-seller: I knew this was a no-brainer for launch after they showed off a NSMB mini-game when debuting the system back in '11. It's actually a really good game too. But NSMBU is not a game that, on its own, really justifies why you'd need to run out and get a $300-350 system. It's basically an HD Wii game, a quick and safe title in their most popular franchise that Nintendo could get ready for launch. But when you look at the 20+ million it sold on Wii, that was more of a result of NSMB being that perfect title that had casual and hardcore appeal, and was the flagship game in a year that was pretty dry on the first-party front. Reggie was saying "People said we needed Mario at launch. So here, we have Mario. Check that box." But that only tells the story about the name, not the game. Historically, a system's first Mario game has been the game that sends the message "this is our new system. This is what we can do." Games like SMW, Mario 64, Sunshine, Galaxy and 3D Land on their own justify the existence of the console. NSMBU is not that game. 4. Third Parties are going to just bring everything over: I know Reggie isn't the guy making all of the decisions, but his quotes in the past few years really sum up where Nintendo has gotten things wrong. When Keighley interviewed him at E3 and questioned him on 3rd party support, the answer was simply "We're HD. Check that box. We've got a more traditional controller. We've got online. Check those boxes." And yeah, that's all fine and dandy, but you're checking off boxes for things that 6, 7-year old consoles already feature. A year before those consoles get phased out for new consoles. Did they really think that's all they had to do, after 3 straight generations of mostly-abysmal third party support and relations? Release a system that apparently doesn't make porting 360 games over easy? They're basically assuming publishers are just going to go out of their way to port games from a 150 million combined userbase of the PS3/360 to a brand new userbase where multiplatform games have already sold poorly. And Nintendo really believed that the 3rd party support would be there to fill in the gaps for a while. Because for a much flak as Ubisoft got for delaying a finished Rayman (and to be fair, that situation is even more dickish because it was announced just a few weeks before its release), Nintendo is also sitting on finished games, the rationale being that they wouldn't need them yet. Oops. I think if you look at those four issues, it paints a good picture as to why the system is struggling right now. It's basically a repeat of the Wii launch, except with no mainstream success story like Wii Sports, and no Zelda. And just a bleak future lineup, from both first and third parties. Think about where we were at this point back in 2007. We had so much to look forward to in the coming year from first parties (Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3, Smash Bros. Brawl, etc.). While they've name-dropped Mario and Zelda and Mario Kart, the games that we really know anything about right now are a remake of a 10-year old game, and Pikmin, a game that could have been out on the Wii and there's absolutely no reason for not being out already on the Wii U. The PS4 is going to be unveiled in just a few days, the next Xbox I'd imagine not too long after that. Do you really want to wait until June to start talking about what game Retro is working on? How long do you wait before showing the world why EAD Tokyo's next Mario game is the game to have? How much more momentum are you willing to let erode? To say Nintendo is "doomed" is crazy, but there's no mistaking that they took what is normally an advantageous position (previous-generation's market leader with a year's head start on the competition with next console) and have dug themselves a pretty big hole. It's going to take some work to dig themselves out of it. Will sales improve drastically with the release of their big guns? Absolutely. But I also don't think you can reasonably assume that their first-party franchises alone can do much better than the GameCube's final tally. And unlike the GameCube, the Wii U will be at a big disadvantage when it comes to tech, and from the looks of things, third party support could turn out worse than it ever has for a Nintendo home console. I really don't think it's overreacting or "doom and gloom"-ing to sit here, knowing what we know today, and feel like it's going to be an uphill battle for Nintendo to even match the success of the GameCube, I really don't. And knowing what we know today (and keeping in the back of your mind that it's all subject to change), matching the GameCube's success may even be optimistic. I don't think it can be downplayed that they've got their work cut out for them. Their immense "war chest" is often brought up, and I think the time has arrived where they need to start making some withdrawls from the bank. Of course, they could come up with the next Wii Sports/Brain Age overnight and get this thing turned around quickly, but I think focusing too hard on hoping for lightning to strike twice has too much risk if you don't have something to fall back on. I keep pointing to Wonderful 101 and Bayonetta 2 as the start of something that Nintendo should keep pursuing. I think their best chance for success is to build a strong lineup of exclusive games, and differentiate themselves from the competition's lineup so much so that if you own a PS4 or a Xbox 720, you will want a Wii U sitting along side it. Think about it this way. Let's say that trends continue, and things end up like the Wii where developers make games for PS4/720-only, and skip the Wii U. If I'm Nintendo, I'm working out a deal with Capcom to make an exclusive RE game (like Revelations was) for the Wii U, while they go ahead and bring RE7 to the other systems. You get a game that only your system has, and if the numbered RE games keep going down the path they are on, the Wii U would probably end up with the better game. Rockstar is only bringing GTA 6 to the PS4 and 720? Go to them, work out a way to bring a "Vice City" or something over to the Wii U. That's one thing that has happened on the 360/PS3. The mid-tier budget game is on the endangered species list (there's not much in between "AAA" and "indie" right now). My biggest fear with the next Sony and MS platforms is that budgets will become so high that these games will become even more dumbed-down and accessible than they already are. If Nintendo can revive the mid-tier budget, "AA" game, they have a chance to position the Wii U as a hardcore gamer's go-to system, and while maybe not nearly repeating the sales of the Wii, they'd certainly earn back a lot of goodwill that they've lost over the years. But again, that's something Nintendo is going to have to cultivate themselves. We've learned by now that third parties just aren't going to do it on their own. And who knows, if it turns out that the PS4 and 720 don't set the sales charts on fire while budgets get to be too much for some publishers, the Wii U looks a lot more appealing. It looks bad right now, but there is so much that Nintendo can still do to get things turned around. But I also think that releasing Mario and Zelda is only part of the solution, and I think bolstering their 1st party lineup with new IPs through increased partnerships, as well as funding some third party exclusives, is the avenue they should take. In any event, this should be a very interesting year for the industry as a whole, maybe the most important we've seen in a long while.
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on: 02/16/13, 21:38 |
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@TheBigG753 I mostly agree, except that I think that deep down Nintendo knew Nintendo Land was not Wii Sports. I think what they were hoping would happen is the Wii Sports crowd would buy it just because it's the next Wii, and then Nintendo Land would sell them on Nintendo franchises. Also we don't KNOW that Nintendo is sitting on finished games, do we? All that article quotes Iwata as saying is: “Nintendo tends to release too many titles at the launch of a hardware system and as a result suffers a drop in new games for quite some time after launch, and for the Wii U launch, we are being very careful not to let it happen. Fortunately, third-party publishers overseas are launching many titles for us this time, and we were able to push back the release of some of the titles that we had originally intended to release as launch titles until next year.” Originally intended doesn't necessarily mean complete though. It might mean "we made a decision awhile back and now we have more time to work on them". In fact... it probably means that?
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on: 02/16/13, 21:46 |
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02/16/13, 21:48 |
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@ZeroI know, we don't know for a fact that they are done or anything, I'm just saying that these were clearly strategic delays and not driven by the need for more time to finish them. The reason Pikmin isn't out right now is purely business. They didn't think we needed more games to play right now (and I think a lot of it is that they grossly overestimated the interest in late ports of Batman, Mass Effect, Call of Duty, etc.). It wasn't like the GameCube, where there was a long drought after we got Smash, Luigi, Pikmin, Wave Race, Rogue Squadron, etc., and you'd almost wish one of those games came out in March or April instead. EDIT: I hate to keep picking on Reggie, but he's had to make some really stupid arguments of late. There's no way to justify Batman as being one of your "system sellers", at $60 bucks, a year after it came out. It's a great game, but...seriously.
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on: 02/16/13, 22:00 |
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02/16/13, 22:06 |
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@TheBigG753 I guess, but I always assume that most launch games are not ready and DO need more time in general, and getting to push them back isn't a "delay" so much as letting them release when they would naturally release without a launch to worry about.
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on: 02/16/13, 22:14 |
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@ZeroAfter at least 5 years in development, I find it hard to believe Pikmin 3 is a game that needed to be rushed for launch. 
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on: 02/16/13, 22:25 |
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@TheBigG753 I don't believe for a second that this game was in active development for 5 years. The way Nintendo talked about it made me think it was more a sort of conceptual thing for a long time.
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on: 02/16/13, 22:33 |
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