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What held the previous record?

The real question is, since 3DS sales are going so well, are hot cakes sales down?

Nice to see the 3DS rebound. It will be interesting to see if they can keep the momentum going in the new year.

My guess would be either the DS or Wii, but that's just a guess.

I really wish that paragraph went on to say: "Those responsible for such foolish and short-sighted claims have since been removed from their jobs in the fields of game media and analysis."

*sigh*... maybe next week.

They were probably the very same idiot analysts who in 2006 predicted the Wii would be in distant third this generation. I don't know why these people are getting paid for their predictions. Some random member of this very forum probably has a better chance of giving an accurate prediction than these "professionals" do.

And just today our "favorite" analyst Michael Pachter predicted that Wii U was "assured of limited third party launch support, which ultimately will lead to modest hardware sales". The fact that Wii U has already gotten tons of announced third party support (including some big games) is lost on him.

Yeah, I don't know where Pachter is getting that to be honest.  While he surely has some level of inside information that we don't, that train of thought seems to be very much in the vein of, "Nintendo did X poorly with Wii, so they will logically do X poorly with Wii U."  As we've seen with the transition of GameCube to Wii and even GBA to DS, that isn't necessarily the case.

One of Pachter's gripes is the non-standard Wii U tablet. Sure, Wii U is going to have a "strange" controller that some cross-platform developers will shy away from, but it's not going to have nearly the amount of developers shunning it for graphics hardware reasons.

It'll be interesting to see if we get specs for Wii U/Xbox v3/PS4 at E3 this year...that way we'll be able to see how much of a visual spread there will be between the upcoming consoles, which should give us a better handle on the potential for cross-platform support.

Now, Pachter is an analyst.  He operates in the "real" world and thus would be completely objective.  However, his only claim to fame is in the realm of video game coverage.  The audience for video game coverage is largely composed of the kind of self-proclaimed hardcore gamers who lap up NINTENDOOMED stories with big grins on their faces.

So, do you think it's possible that Pachter repeatedly picks against Nintendo, in spite of evidence to the contrary, as a business decision to keep himself popular among his prime audience?

I know it sounds a bit far-fetched, but I honestly can't think of any other explanation.  Can anyone else?

See: comic strip

double post
.... is there a delete option??

If idiot gamers are his prime audience, he's a pretty terrible industry analyst. And hey, that checks out pretty well, but I still don't think it's realistic to believe that theory.

Does it matter what gamers think of him anyway? They aren't the ones who pay his salary (or at least not directly).

ah well... twas just a hunch.  ;D

Unfortunately, this is a new story written to inform and to be as objective as possible, leaving any personal opinions, bias or fanboy ramblings aside.

So don't expect that to change this week, or the next one, or the next one.

I hate to coplain about the Nintendo's DOOMed people but when sells drop, like roches in the dark, they
will come out to say  the same old crap again.
Its a fad, they will be stomped by Real platforms and Real games. ETC.....

Who held the record before was probly PS2.  HUMMMM...

In the years 1997 or so until early 2006 someone could argue Nintendo was "doomed" and there would be a good reason to take those arguments seriously, because Nintendo wasn't doing very well during this time. But from mid-2006 onwards anyone who says Nintendo is doomed deserves to have rotten tomatoes hurled at them, because the success of the Wii and DS clearly shows that argument is a bunch of bullshit.

That's not to say Nintendo couldn't slide back into dark times yet again, but something like that could only happen with a major hardware blunder like a stupid decision to use cartridges with the N64, for example. The Wii U may not be a perfect system, but there's nothing about it that suggests Nintendo is going to drop from 1st place down to a distant 3rd because of it. So if Nintendo is ever going to be truly "doomed" again, it probably isn't going to be anytime soon. Certainly not in the 8th generation anyway.

Precisely.

To play devil's advocate a bit, it's not easy to hold onto the mainstream, nongamer market that Nintendo carved out with the Wii and DS. They have yet to demonstrate something that would be likely to get those kind of people to pay $300+ for a new system. Without those people, they're right back where they were with the GameCube.

Not saying Nintendo won't find a way to do it, and I do think there are a lot of people who are too quick to discount them, but success like they got last time around is far from assured.

I dunno what's gonna be harder for Nintendo, recapturing the hardcore market or keeping the blue ocean crowd.

I'm not so sure it was even so valid back then. Nintendo may not have been anywhere near selling as many home consoles as its strongest competitor, but they were still profitable, sometimes moreso than Sony with their PS1/2. Meanwhile, nobody spelled doom for Microsoft and their XBox, which sold equally low compared to the PS2 but lost billions of dollars for the company.

To be fair on this point, Nintendo haven't shown anything for the Wii U that would convince anyone to buy it, casual or otherwise. And they won't, until they show some actual software and not just concept and tech demos. Also, I don't believe that hardcore gamers are very loyal; everyone ditched Nintendo and Sega in favour of Sony's PlayStation, so if Wii U offers the games that everyone wants, they'll have no trouble buying one.

I don't think there's any question that it would be easier to win back the hardcore than to do what they did with the Wii all over again. More expensive, more effort involved, maybe, but it's a lot clearer of a path to follow.

Maybe not shown Wii U versions, but tons of hardcore games have been announced for the system so far. If you mean first party, obviously they will do that at E3. Last year was just to announce the system and to show that they were serious about courting third parties this time.

They don't have to get the same success as they did the last time (and truth be told, they probably won't). All I'm saying is they won't be "doomed". They will probably slide down in market share a bit, but they will still probably be number 1 due to their head start. Even if they fall to second or third though, they still wouldn't be "doomed" as long as the difference in marketshare between the consoles is negligible. So if they are in a close third they are still fine. But if they fall to distant third, then they would be doomed. I don't see that happening though. Even some rabid anti-Nintendo "analyst" probably knows better than to predict that happening.