Hardware Wii U sales top 8 million worldwide

shinkodachi · Dec 29, 2014

VGChartz: http://www.vgchartz.com/article/252605/wii-u-sales-top-8-million-worldwide/

This is very good performance, IMO! Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. have obviously helped keep up momentum for Wii U sales, so here's hoping 2015 will bring people (and developers) even more reasons to support the console.

I know it's VGChartz, but the numbers sound very believable. Of course, naysayers still dismiss these numbers stating crap like the Wii U had a one year's headstart... That may be true, but other platforms in the 7th gen still had strong anticipated releases well into 2013 (e.g. The Last of Us, GTA V) and a lot of people likely skipped the Wii U on launch day to wait for the PS4 and Xbox One first. So with that in mind, 8 million sold units worldwide is impressive.

thorasgar · Dec 29, 2014

I suspect the Wii U will always come in third, but what I have never seen mentioned is how many do they need to sell to still be considered a success? Or is 3rd place an automatic failure?

Nathan Drake · Dec 29, 2014

8 million sold in two years is bad no matter what excuses you use. If I'm not mistaken, over half of those sales came from the first year too, which means the second year has actually been worse. Not particularly a good reason for celebration.

aofelix · Dec 29, 2014

whats the attach rate per wii u console?

i would guess it is ridiculously high.

stomp_442 · Dec 29, 2014

thorasgar said:
I suspect the Wii U will always come in third, but what I have never seen mentioned is how many do they need to sell to still be considered a success? Or is 3rd place an automatic failure?

From what Nintendo have said it seems like they are good with the way sales are headed right now. From what some third party game developers have said it seems like they are unhappy with sales of their Wii U releases. I guess it just depends on who you are if you want to consider the Wii U a failure. If somebody makes and sells a product and it makes them money then that would be considered a success.

shinkodachi · Dec 29, 2014

Nathan Drake said:
8 million sold in two years is bad no matter what excuses you use. If I'm not mistaken, over half of those sales came from the first year too, which means the second year has actually been worse. Not particularly a good reason for celebration.

It makes you wonder if there's any significant amount of Wii Us that were resold shortly after launch and during the first year of game drought.

trumpet-205 · Dec 29, 2014

shinkodachi said:
It makes you wonder if there's any significant amount of Wii Us that were resold shortly after launch and during the first year of game drought.

During the first year (2012/12 to 2014/03), 6.17 millions of Wii U hardware were sold. Second year only accounts for 25% of total hardware sales of Wii U, hardly anything worth celebrating.

Source: http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/library/historical_data/pdf/consolidated_sales_e1409.pdf
You add FY3/2013 and FY3/2014 to get the sales number during 2012/12 to 2014/03 (Japan fiscal year starts at April and ends at March. Plus Wii U launched in December.)

Briefly reading the sales report Wii U seems to be the only Nintendo console that has declining sales at the beginning of second fiscal year.

Haloman800 · Dec 29, 2014

I predict that Wii U sales will significantly increase once the console is hacked. I waited to buy a 3DS until it was and IIRC I wasn't alone according to sales charts.

trumpet-205 · Dec 29, 2014

Haloman800 said:
I predict that Wii U sales will significantly increase once the console is hacked. I waited to buy a 3DS until it was and IIRC I wasn't alone according to sales charts.

Hacking community only accounts for a fraction of total gamers. Don't let gbatemp fool you, not many people actually hack their system.

the_randomizer · Dec 29, 2014

Haloman800 said:
I predict that Wii U sales will significantly increase once the console is hacked. I waited to buy a 3DS until it was and IIRC I wasn't alone according to sales charts.

Hacking only contributes a very very small % of users.

bowser · Dec 29, 2014

Haloman800 said:
I predict that Wii U sales will significantly increase once the console is hacked. I waited to buy a 3DS until it was and IIRC I wasn't alone according to sales charts.

The Wii sold what, around 100 million units? GBAtemp has 300,000 members. Of the 300k members, not everyone has a Wii and of those who do, not everyone has hacked it. Assuming half of GBAtemp has a hacked Wii, that's 0.15%. Even if you consider lurkers and people on other sites, I doubt the number will be beyond 1-2%. And that was for the Wii. I bet the number will be a lot less for the Wii U.

Haloman800 · Dec 29, 2014

bowser said:
The Wii sold what, around 100 million units? GBAtemp has 300,000 members. Of the 300k members, not everyone has a Wii and of those who do, not everyone has hacked it. Assuming half of GBAtemp has a hacked Wii, that's 0.15%. Even if you consider lurkers and people on other sites, I doubt the number will be beyond 1-2%. And that was for the Wii. I bet the number will be a lot less for the Wii U.

Your figures assume only members of GBAtemp hack their consoles, it doesn't figure in all the other hacking communities who are also interested in owning/hacking a Wii U.

LightyKD · Dec 29, 2014

This is kinda depressing. Honestly it's Nintendo's fault. Sure, Smash, Kart, Amiibo and character themed controllers are fun but, it's past time for them to catch up with, proper online services and more games.

shinkodachi · Dec 29, 2014

LightyKD said:
This is kinda depressing. Honestly it's Nintendo's fault. Sure, Smash, Kart, Amiibo and character themed controllers are fun but, it's past time for them to catch up with, proper online services and more games.

In light of how Nintendo has largely neglected the Wii U, this is the best performance we're going to get sales-wise. Attach rate is a different matter, hopefully it's high, otherwise it's going to be hard for Nintendo to move on to future hardware.

trumpet-205 · Dec 29, 2014

Smash, Kart, Amiibo, etc all provide very short term sales boost. When you look at the big picture fact is sales is sliding down, big.

What's even more shocking is that sales is going down on the second year of Wii U lifespan. Other Nintendo consoles have hardware sales going strong for at least 3 years before going down. I suppose N64 is an exception since it failed big on its home turf, Japanese market.

I don't know about Nintendo as a whole but Wii U itself is in deep trouble, and Nintendo shows very little effort into addressing it.

shinkodachi · Dec 29, 2014

trumpet-205 said:
Smash, Kart, Amiibo, etc all provide very short term sales boost. When you look at the big picture fact is sales is sliding down, big.

What's even more shocking is that sales is going down on the second year of Wii U lifespan. Other Nintendo consoles have hardware sales going strong for at least 3 years before going down. I suppose N64 is an exception since it failed big on its home turf, Japanese market.

I don't know about Nintendo as a whole but Wii U itself is in deep trouble, and Nintendo shows very little effort into addressing it.

Could that be why they're already talking about future hardware?

gypsynimrod · Dec 29, 2014

Haloman800 said:
Your figures assume only members of GBAtemp hack their consoles, it doesn't figure in all the other hacking communities who are also interested in owning/hacking a Wii U.

If you are honestly trying to say that the Wii doesn't have abysmal number of people who hacked units out, please stop.

purupuru · Dec 30, 2014

Nobody is going to buy a Wii U for 3d party titles. It seems that the failure here is directly linked to Nintendo's lazy attitude on first party releases. They release games and all of a sudden the console starts to sell. Yeah, who would have thought? It's like a repeat of what happened with e game cube. You'd think they would have learned from past experience. When Zelda is released I doubt they'll be able to keep the wii on store shelves.

mightymuffy · Dec 30, 2014

trumpet-205 said:
I don't know about Nintendo as a whole but Wii U itself is in deep trouble, and Nintendo shows very little effort into addressing it.

2015 should at the very least give us some sort of teaser as to what Nintendo's next console activity will be, as I'm quite sure they know themselves there's no point putting any effort into addressing the Wii U's pitiful sales now: we've had Mario Kart 8 and Smash Bros all released this year. Perennial big hitters (and I might add both excellent entries in each series too!), yet still, well the sales for the year there speak for themselves.. however inaccurate that figure might be (it's not gonna be far off the mark though)

No point flogging a dead horse, they may as well just stick with it for as short a time as is feasible, make whatever money they can from it (I'm sure MK8 & Smash made e few bob for them at least), then start again at the earliest moment they can get away with, with whatever strategy they have planned...

eriol33 · Dec 30, 2014

well I hope they can keep this momentum...

however how meaningful is this to the third party publishers if MOST best selling games on Wii U are only nintendo games? okay, super smash bros and mario kart 8 have helped Wii U sales, but how many people buy a Wii U to play other titles other than nintendo's? I just hope this will encourage publishers to make good Wii U exclusives so people have incentive to buy Wii U.

casual gamers will probably not buy a Wii U since they are satisfied with their casual games in Wii already.

even GameCube still has a better hardcore game libraries than Wii + Wii U

Hardware Wii U sales top 8 million worldwide

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