Rumours of the WiiU’s Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

Peach-resized1

Scaremongering makes Peach cry. You don’t want to upset Peach, do you?

Ok, I’ve had enough of reading all of these crackpot articles about how Nintendo is in trouble. Sure, they get hits and some people seem to enjoy reading about Nintendo’s financial woes and how the WiiU is already on the ropes. The problem is the picture they paint is warped at best and completely unfounded at worst.

Some of my fellow journalists seem to be convinced that history is about to repeat itself. That the WiiU is about to suffer the same fate as the Dreamcast. But the fact of the matter is that Nintendo isn’t SEGA. Nintendo isn’t reeling from a myriad of incredibly incompetent business decisions and terrible internal politics. In fact they’re doing very well for themselves. But rather than just toss out some more baseless hearsay and conjecture I’m going to use these crazy things called facts, figures and context to debunk some of the more common doomsday myths surrounding the big N of late.

Myth 1: The WiiU is a commercial flop.

Reports suggest that the WiiU has only managed to sell just under  3 million units globally since its launch in late November 2012. That’s 3 million consoles sold in just under five months. I want to know how this is a bad thing because if we look at sales of the PS3 and 360 over their first five months on the market something incredible happens. The WiiU is actually performing just as well as they did.

Have a look for yourself; here are the global sales figures for the launch period (first five months) 7th generation of home console compared to the WiiU.

sales data

Xbox 360 – 2.4 million PlayStation 3- 2.9 million Wii – 5.8 million WiiU – 2.8 million
sales data provided by vgchartz.com

So the wiiU has actually sold more than the xbox 360 and only slightly less than the PS3 during their launch period, but just under half that of the Wii, Which is an insane comparison to make in the first place. The Wii was an absolute juggernaut which despite having its sales figures nose dive over the last couple of years still commands a 40% market share and  has sold an estimated 99.2 million units worldwide to date

Myth 2: The WiiU failing would mean Nintendo would have to stop making Hardware.

As I previously stated the Wii has sold in excess of 99.2Million units worldwide. Meanwhile the DS has sold a whopping 153.8 Million units and the 3ds is currently sitting pretty at 29.6 million

That’s a hell of a lot of consoles and no doubt a lot of cash. But here’s the real kicker. Nintendo never sell their consoles at a loss. They may break even but they don’t sell them as loss leaders like Sony and Microsoft’s do in order to make back the money on software later. So not only is the WiiU on target to sell a respectable amount by the end of the year but they’ll also make a profit doing so as well as having some serious cash in the bank.

If the WiiU were scrapped there’s no doubt it would be a blow to Nintendo, but it would not lead to a SEGA style restructuring of the company. The worst and I mean absolute worst thing that could potentially happen would be an end to Nintendo making Home Consoles and working solely on portables but the chances of this happening are almost zero.

Myth 3: There are no games on the WiiU, none coming, and the system will have no 3rd Party support.

This is probably the stupidest one of the bunch. It’s simply not the case. Unless I imagined that Nintendo direct from a couple months back. Nope here it is.

So far there’s also been some relatively stable 3rd party support from Warner, Activision and Ubisoft.

Sure at the moment there aren’t that many games on the system. But there weren’t in the first year of life for any console ever. Fro example, the PS3 only had 33 games released at retail for the system in the consoles first year, compared to over forty games released in the first six months for the WiiU. Its not falling behind it’s just new. Comparing the current slate of releases from established platforms against a brand spanking new one proves nothing.

monsoft

Monolithsoft’s Project X. A third party WiiU exclusive

The games are on their way. By the end of the year we’ll have Pikmin 3, Bayonetta 2, Wonderful 101 and a full remake of Wind Waker and that’s only some of the exclusive games we know about. Not to mention that there will no doubt be a new Zelda, Mario and hopefully Metroid at some point.

In the meantime the damn thing plays Wii games. Not only that but it upscales them too. Which, if you ditched yours after a very similar line in horse shit was circulated a few year back, means you have a second opportunity to play some of last generations hidden gems, more often than not at very reasonable prices.

Games such as; Fragile, Silent Hill Shattered Memories, Tatsunoko Vs Capcom, Lost in Shadow, Zack and Wiki, Muramasa , Mad World, No More Heroes 1&2, HOTD Overkill, Project Zero 2, The Last Story, Rabbids Go Home, The Last Story, Tales of Symphonia 2, Xenoblade Chronicles, Red Steel 2 and Pandora’s Tower.

I haven’t even mentioned any first party games from Nintendo you may have missed either.

If that’s not enough for you there’s always the likes of Trine2 Directors cut, Toki Tori 2 and the Cave on the old eshop or failing that there’s always the virtual console which houses pretty much every major game series that’s ever appeared on any Nintendo platform.

There are also rumours that the VC will expand to house GameCube games as well. Basically if you can’t find anything to play on your WiiU I’m sorry to say it’s your own damned fault.

With all of this in mind, I think it’s pretty safe to say that rumours of the WiiU’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.