It’s a sad state to see Nintendo’s newest home console continually failing to reach the sales levels that Nintendo had hoped. It’s a shocking change for the hardware creator after the phenomenal success of the Wii U’s predecessor the Wii, let’s not forget that we’re now fully into the next console generation with Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s Playstation 4 now on the market. To make matters worse the Wii U itself has been on the market for a great deal longer having released in Europe on November 30th 2012!
IGN reports as to a huge cut in Nintendo’s financial forecast for the Wii U, dropping from an initial estimate of 9 million sales this financial year to a much smaller 2.8 million. Again quite a shocking drop in numbers when you consider that both the Playstation 4 had already achieved sales over 4.2 million back at the end of December 2013 and is yet to release in it’s native territory of Japan.
Having played the Wii U, I can safely say it’s actually a great piece of hardware and whilst graphically it’s not in contrast to that of the Xbox One and PS4 that it feels great and the dual screen gameplay can provide some excellently fun results. For me though, i’ve also found little reason to play it as content that i’ve truly looked for has been few and far between. The recent Super Mario 3D World was one of few titles since the consoles release and the excellent Zombi U that i’ve wanted to play and I must say I’m yet to have the chance given that it released amid the flurry of the Playstation 4 and Xbox One launch.
I do hope for Nintendo’s sake and for gaming in general that they are able to turn these fortunes around. But inspirational content is the key here and if Nintendo don’t start producing then there’s going to be some serious troubles ahead. It concerns me that the line up for 2014 on Wii U looks weak and given that the 3DS has been out for sometime now, sales are likely to start to slow down leaving Nintendo with an even bigger deficit. How do you feel about the Wii U and the state of Nintendo in general, we all know they can produce industry leading gaming content but are they killing themselves in the hardware market where perhaps they could become and ultra publisher?
Ben Corbett-Mills / @benleopards
