Way to ignore what I said. My point was that a Mario title selling well on a console that has tens of millions sold already isn't a surprise. And your point about Super Mario 3D Land is also invalid as well as disingenuous. The 3DS came out Feb 26 2011. Considering that February is a short month, let's consider the 3DS' launch as end of February. 10 months later its the end of November. That was the time that 3D Land was released in all regions. The 3DS had around 10 million units sold by that point. (An easy estimate seeing as how 3DS sales were at 15 million by the end of December 2011).j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
That goes against your point of the 3DS "struggling" in sales. (Also considering the fact that the 3DS beat the DS' sales in its first 8 months.) Super Mario 3D Land had the units in place to sell pretty well by the time it was released and helped sell more 3DS'. See, what your doing is lending credibility to my point about how Nintendo relies on Mario to sell units, but like I said, Mario selling well when the hardware is already sold is no surprise and nothing new.
The Wii was selling Twilight Princess mostly. Otherwise there were no massive sales across the board for many games on the Wii in its first year. Red Steel sold a million, that was about it. So my point still stands, SMB Galaxy came after a long drought of Wii games. Wii Play, Wii Sports, Twilight Princess, and Red Steel were the only games to sell decently well.
Keep in mind that Gears of War was the also came out on the PC. So like I said, the WiiU's 3.61 million isn't something to be hopeful for a Mario game to be carry units on.
Stating that a Nintendo console has more exclusives than other consoles is a moot point. That's been the case for Nintendo for a long while and the fact that it has the most exclusives doesn't help its sales. Look at the 3rd party software sales. The Wii U has more exclusive sure, but how many of those have sold well? Not many, especially looking at 3rd party software sales.
Also, the Sony and MS consoles also have the benefit of having 3rd party exclusives that people actually buy in great numbers. Greater then the vast majority of 3rd party exclusives on any Nintendo console since the Gamecube, that I promise you. Nintendo consoles sell when 1st party Nintendo games are released. That much is obvious.
Not much besides Mario. Sonic games on the Wii decreased in sales with every Sonic Wii title that came out. As it stands only the Sonic and Mario games sold really well, but they didn't move Wiis. Every standalone Sonic game to come out after the 2.6 mill that Sonic and the Secret Rings sold struggled to sell over 1 million. Not the numbers of a game that moves hardware. And out of the 3 DK games that came out on the Wii, only one was successful. The other 2 sold 1.2 million put together, and struggled to get there.
Not console movers.
Yup. As it stands Pikmin 3 is selling like the niche title it is. TV adverts and all. You know what other game had a lot of TV adverts. MadWorld. And it flopped so hard Sperm Whales were jealous of the splash radius. W101 will sell in the same fashion if the sales of every other game Platinum Games has ever made is an indicator. I haven't seen much at all for DK Tropical Freeze and that game will probably be trounced by the new Mario game's shadow, though I still think it'll sell a decent million with the units the WiiU has now. And Sonic and Mario? Probably a million as well.
None of these games have the Wii's benefit of selling crazy amounts of hardware. They are dealing with a much smaller user base, which is what you seem to be ignoring in a major way. The Wii had 13 million units sold by its first 10 months on the shelf. The Wii had sold 4.3 times the amount the WiiU has by this point in its shelf life. This isn't rocket science here. These are the numbers. I'm not being pessimistic here, I'm being realistic. The Wii and Wii U's sales expectations are not comparable at all currently, so stating that a bunch of franchises that sold really well with a massive install base last generation does no justice to your points here.
Are you really trying to use the sales of DK from a 23 year old console to prove that DK moves units today? Come on Jeffers, you're smarter than that I hope. The Wii DK game also came out at the end of the Wii's generation so of course it being a 1st party Nintendo mainstream franchise sold well. Did it move Wiis? Most likely not with the way Wii sales were falling in 2010. And the 2 DK Drum games both flopped hard.
People don't buy consoles just for one game. Not any more. They're too much of an investment. The only recent instance of people buying a console for one game was Wii Sports, and that ain't happening again. Not for Nintendo, not for Sony, not for Microsoft. People need a bunch of games to tempt them to pick up a console. For every person hopping in on PS4 at launch day for Killzone, there are another 6 or 7 waiting for the library to fill out somewhat. It's called the cumulative effect. And by the end of this year, that's what the Wii U will have. Not one single game to sell the console, but a group of games across a range of genres for consumers to buy.[/quote]
Bull.
After all that talk of how a 3D Mario title helped move 3DS hardware you flip and say that no one game sells consoles? I also never said that one title sells consoles. I also said that Nintendo needs a few games for WiiUnits to move off the shelf. But since this is Nintendo we're talking about and with the way Nintendo's consumers buy their products, It falls on the shoulders of DK and Mario to help move the Wii U. And two 1st party titles isn't enough to move a major amount of units in the same month as 2 new consoles are coming out. The people who want the new DK and Mario probably have Wii Us already and I can't see just those 2 titles being enough to be saying that in a year's time either of them will be at 6 million sales.
That assumes that Pikmin, W101, Sonic, DK, and WWHD add the same amount of interest to buying a WiiU as a single Mario game. And that's an assumption that can be chalked up to wishful thinking. The weighting of your hypothetical look at WiiU titles is unrealistic. We both know that the spotlight will grow bigger on the upcoming Mario title with every passing day until its released. Web adverts be damned. If web ads worked, Kane and Lynch would have sold well and Jeff Gesterman would still be at Gamespot. MadWorld also would have not horribly flopped.
Look at how many 3rd party titles, niche or not, flopped on the Wii. The majority of them. Same with the Gamecube. We had the games of the Capcom 5 flop for the most part on the GC and we had the games in Operation Rainfall fail to reach 2 million sales between the 3 games.
Even with over 100 million units sold the Wii's audience just didn't not give a fuck about 3rd party titles for the most part.
I've said this on the forums and I'll say it again now, Nintendo's marketing of the Wii was the equivalent of them asking John Gallager to smash their head in with that comically sized mallet of his. It destroyed what little 3rd party support Nintendo had left for the WiiU and eradicated any reason for Nintendo to localize games.
It shows consumers that there's a range of gameplay types and genres to be had on the console. Which, considering how many people are getting burned out on shooters, and how the PS4 and Xbone are marketing themselves predominantly on shooters, is probably a smart move. Killzone, Titanfall and the like are all competing for that same, diminishing demographic which enjoys scripted shooty-bang games. Pikmin 3, W101, Wii Fit U and Mario are all different experiences, and are therefore aimed at different demographics.[/quote]
Again, the amount of people that care about Pikmin3 or W101 vs. those who want the new Mario is so slanted it doesn't matter. You're looking at this as a gamer/Nintendo fan. I'm looking at this from the average consumer. Which game do you think a parent is going to buy their child for their WiiU (if the parent is even informed enough to know that the WiiU isn't the Wii...)? Most likely the game with the 30 year old name. Mario. And that's the factor you keep overlooking.
Nintendo's not targeting the average gamer, their targeting the average person. They did it last time and it worked, though they owe a lot of that the the motion control feature that wound up being used more as a crutch/gimmick then a feature. It's not working this time because the average person is not a repeat costumer in the video gaming world. The average gamer is. And most average gamers these days don't go for games like W101 or Pikmin 3. They go for franchises they know. You seem very confident in W101 selling well, but please, look at the amount of like it that failed on the Wii and reassess how well you think W101 will sell. It probably won't crack 1 million worldwide.
If No More Heroes, with the developers rep, the marketing it had on TV and online, and even Nintendo somewhat helping its marketing couldn't even crack a million worldwide, what is it that makes you so sure that W101 or any niche title will do better on the WiiU?