Topic: Nintendo Sales Panic: July 2015 US NPD Group Results

[Shaymin]

Dinosaurs rule the day while squidkids continue to impress.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/40952/nintendo-sales-panic-july-2015-us-npd-group-results

The NPD Group has announced their retail results for July in the United States, with a limited Nintendo presence.

On the software front, Lego Jurassic World was the best selling game in all combined formats, barring system bundles which would have given the win to Batman: Arkham Knight. From July 5 to August 1, the 3DS version was the second best selling version of the game, while the Wii U version outsold the PlayStation 4 version of the title. In a statement to VentureBeat, Nintendo revealed that Splatoon sold 85,000 units in the month in North America, combining retail and eShop sales, and Wii U sales were up 10% over the first seven months of 2014 which included Mario Kart 8's launch months. Later reports indicated the retail Splatoon sales in just the US were about 70,000.

Hardware continues to be a struggle for Nintendo, as the same VentureBeat report indicated that 3DS sales to this point are up 35% from the same time last year, translating to approximately 105,000 units. Wii U sold approximately 47,000 in July, which finally allowed the system to surpass the US sales of the Sega Dreamcast after 33 months.

[broodwars]

You really have to wonder at this point just how badly the Wii U needs to continue to sell for Nintendo to drop the price. It was already ridiculously overpriced at launch, and now it's just $50 less than the Xbone. With hardware sales as continually awful as Wii U's and Wii U entering its last period of major software, I really don't understand how that thing isn't $200 by now, if not $150.  Surely by now they've found a way to lower production costs enough to justify dropping the price to ensure someone buys all that software this Fall.

But hey, the Wii U's finally outsold (after nearly double the time) the Dreamcast, the console that delivered the deathblow to SEGA as a hardware manufacturer (and it's only sold half as well as the GameCube, which almost took Nintendo out of the console business), so it's all OK, right?

[Enner]

...[size=78%] so it's all OK, right?[/size]

Well, probably not with that attitude :p


All of your questions can only be answered by looking at Nintendo's books and projections. Lacking that, all we have are our feelings and criticisms.


Personally, I don't think a price cut will do anything for Wii U outside of cutting in to Nintendo's margins. Now, maybe we all have enough anecdotal evidence that will justify to ourselves that a price cut should be in order. I just can't imagine enough people on the fence, waiting for the Wii U to break to the $199 or $149, to support a price cut. Besides, I assume the Wii U GamePad is still a fixed cost of $50-100 worth of plastic, LCD, and radio chips.


I'd sooner expect more aggressive bundling (the current SKU has Super Mario 3D World and Nintendo Land) with two $60 games than a Wii U price cut.

[Ian Sane]

Since I'm eyeing a Wii U for Xenoblade a price cut would be nice.  Since I really just want the system for a handful of games it is a little expensive as is.

If the price isn't cut for this Christmas I'm assuming that either the controller truly is too damn expensive for Nintendo to lower the price without taking a loss or Nintendo has "if we sell it for a million dollars we only need to sell one" logic going.  Though I could also see some serious denial going on at Nintendo.  "We can't cut the price or we'd be admitting the Wii U is a failure!"  These guys went from having one of the most successful consoles ever to one of the least pretty much overnight.  That's got to hurt their egos.

[Fatty The Hutt]

It was hardly overnight. Wii sales dropped off a cliff for it's final couple of years. It's last big year was, what, 2009? 2010 maybe? I can't be arsed to look it up.

[Leo13]

Isn't overnight and dropping off a cliff about the same thing?

[Fatty The Hutt]

LOL can't argue with that.

I could state that I was reacting to a specific quote (below) but that would just be petty.

These guys went from having one of the most successful consoles ever to one of the least pretty much overnight.  That's got to hurt their egos.

[Mop it up]

It was hardly overnight. Wii sales dropped off a cliff for it's final couple of years. It's last big year was, what, 2009? 2010 maybe? I can't be arsed to look it up.

You probably should have looked it up, because the Wii was selling millions every quarter until 2012, which is the same year that the Wii U launched. Ian Sane's metaphor was close enough to work okay.