Topic: Let's address the elephant in the room.

This seems like a bit much. I realize Hyrule Warriors was a big hit (by Warriors standards, not Zelda) but THIRTEEN games? I mean...I guess they're gonna see what sticks.

Though I'm sad as I'm pretty sure this is way more games coming out than Capcom or Sega will release at all anywhere in an equivalent time.

"PS4: 62mill consoles, 405mill games -> ~6.5 games/console
XBOne: 30mill consoles, 197mill games -> ~6.5 games/console
Wii U: 14mill consoles, 90 mill games -> ~6.5 games/console

Wii U owners were not buying an unusually low number of games. Fact."

That's meaningless. That includes sales of first-party games. They bought a low number of third-party games.

Look at games released late 2013. At the end of 2013 the Wii U install base was 5.91 million. PS3 install base was 80 million as of mid-November 2013.

COD Ghosts sold 0.35 million on Wii U. It sold 9.38 million on PS3. Assassin's Creed Black Flag and Batman Arkham Origins have similar ratios of username to sales. Nothing (including Splinter Cell and Injustice) has a better ratio on Wii u. But still, well done Wii U you think? No, the issue is that PS3 owners had masses more choice (GTA V, Bioshock Infinite, Battlefield 4 and Tomb Raider for example) whereas Wii U owners with very little third-party software still bought those games in tiny amounts. They bought first-party games instead, as evidenced by the best sellers list on the system.

Good third-party games like Black Ops 2 (0.42 million), Deus Ex (0.11 million), Need for Speed (0.27 million) and even ZombiU (1.02 million) were hugely outsold by Wii Party U (1.78 million). Even rubbish like Game and Wario got to a comparable 0.24 million.

@electrolite77
You're talking in circles and ignoring the point. I never said that Wii U owners didn't buy first party games. All I said was that on average Wii U owners brought a similar number of games as the other platforms. And that third party games that did launch on Wii U actually had a similar attach rate to competing platforms.

Pointing out that Deus Ex sold poorly on Wii U relative to Wii Party or that CoD Ghosts sold ~25x more units on PS3 is just cherry picking data. It's not a counter argument. You could just as easily point to the raw sales numbers of Kinect Adventures vs Bayonetta on 360 or how many more copies of Rayman Legends were sold on the PS4 vs the Vita. It doesn't tell you anything about what kinds of games people who own those platforms will buy. It's picking out a bit of noise and ignoring the bigger picture.

@skywake I wouldn't say it's a Nintendo fan culture, but I think there's some merit to it. You can also argue that people who are interested in multi-platform games probably own a PlayStation or Xbox too, and are more likely to buy the games on those systems (pre-portable Switch era for the sake of the argument). So in turn, the Wii U was more of a first party machine than anything else. For the same reason that some buy a PlayStation or Xbox just for third party games.

I also think that comparing numbers 1-to-1 isn't entirely fair. I haven't calculated it, but it seems to me that systems with a low userbase have less trouble achieving high attach rates than successful systems. Mario Kart 8 has an attach rate of more than 50% on the Wii U. Ignoring the bundled Wii Sports on the Wii, no other game comes close on recent platforms, and I don't expect any game to sell 30+ million copies on the PS4 anytime soon. As the user-base becomes bigger, preferences also vary more widely, making it harder to sell to a fixed percentage of people.

And like you said yourself, there weren't a whole lot of third party games on the Wii U. Had the offering been on par with the other consoles, would they still have sold the same (assuming the userbase stayed the same)? Probably worse, if there was more competition.

@skywake

I'm right on point. Your point that "This idea that somehow Wii U owners didn't want third party games is nonsense. They definitely did and they did buy them"

And your statement that "relative to the install base the sales of those games wasn't unexpectedly low. Even with CoD it sold 1/20th of the units that sold on 360/PS3 but that was with ~1/25th of the install base." This is inaccurate.

You can stick your head in the sand about the numbers if you want but they tell the story. I found examples of games on Wii U and other systems and Wii U sales are not good in comparison despite the paucity of options on the system. The numbers tell the same story told by Spacestation Silicon Valley, Rocket, Billy Hatcher, Okami, Zack and Wiki, Red Steel 2, COD on Wii, and all the other good third-party games that tanked on Nintendo systems. It's been a long running issue and there's no point living in denial about it.

@Octane Do you think that the Switch has caught the attention of people more willing to buy third-party games? Or is it simply a case of a lot of people to own one now, wanting third-parties, doesn't matter if they tended to go with Nintendo first-party games primarily before?

@electrolite77 How do you see the third-party situation, about 1-2 years from now, given that Switch continues to do how it does?

@Octane
It's a chicken and egg sort of scenario. The Wii U wasn't the system to buy for multiplatform games because third parties were not porting their games. They weren't porting games because people weren't buying the console. In terms of attach rates on poorer selling consoles? Looking at the best selling games across a handful of systems ~30% attach rate is fairly typical for the best selling game across the board. Mario Kart 8 hit 50% but how much of that was because it was part of a bundle?

When push comes to shove? Attach rates for third party games on Wii U were not that bad. If anything there were a few games that performed surprisingly well given the low install base. If there is a lesson to be learned for the Switch from how third party games performed on the Wii U? It's not about the type of consumers Nintendo fans are. The lesson is to sell a lot of consoles early on and the third party "problem" will solve itself.

Call of Duty Black Ops 2
PS3: 13.8 mill / 76mill consoles -> 18%
360: 13.8mill / 78mill consoles -> 17%
Wii U: 0.4mill / 3mill consoles -> 13%

@UmniKnight We shall see. I have no idea. Sure, there's interest if I have to believe the people on this forum, but we're just a minority. Do people care enough about portability that they're willing to buy a portable version of FIFA over the home console/PC versions? Maybe? It's difficult to say right now, but the coming weeks are going to be interesting now that we're seeing the first big third parties appear on the Switch.

@skywake Well, I agree with the things you say in general. And I agree that sales weren't that bad on the Wii U all things considered. And yes, I also realise that it's been how many years since third party games appeared with full parity on Nintendo consoles? But at the same time I can't imagine a time when a third party game outsells a Nintendo game on a Nintendo system. Oh well, as long as the userbase is there, the Switch will be fine I think.

@Octane
To be fair if Sony or Microsoft had the strength of IP that Nintendo does we'd be saying the same about them. There hasn't really been any first party publisher with anywhere near the strength of IP as Nintendo since Sega. And with Sega's consoles the same was true as it was and continues to be with Nintendo. First party published games dominate the best selling games on their platforms

Bayonetta 1 wasn't free worldwide. I remember paying 10-20 € extra for the Version with both games.

And even then, it had to scrape the bottom of the barrel just to barely pass the 1 million threshold. Wii U gamers did NOT like buying 3rd party games. At all.

I think Bayonetta isn't a good example for a typical third party game. It just doesn't have much mass market appeal. The first game sold 1.3 million copies on Xbox360 and PS3 combined.
So in conparison, selling 1 million on WiiU alone is pretty good.

@Octane Which would you really mark as "big" third-party games? Fifa sure, but what else?

@skywake I know several people who own a PS4 or Xbox and only play FIFA, and maybe COD, Overwatch and Rocket League. I wouldn't say Sony's and Microsoft's IPs aren't that strong, some just want to play FIFA or COD and just buy the cheapest console they can find on the market. Those people aren't on Nintendo systems, because most multi-platform games don't come/didn't come to Nintendo systems in the first place. So sales are naturally a bit more biased towards first party on Nintendo systems.

@UmniKnight Any game that sells a lot (usually multiplayer games); COD, Battlefield, Battlefront, GTA, Overwatch, Destiny, Final Fantasy, The Witcher, whatever Ubisoft releases every year (The Division, Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, etc.), NBA, Madden...

There are a lot of variables that would work either for or against various games on each platform. But overall I think it's easy enough to say that it's mostly just a function of the install base. Especially for games with a super wide audience.

Now when a console gets a reputation for a particular style of game? There is probably something to the strength of one platform over another. You'd expect Nintendo style games to sell better on Nintendo's hardware. Rayman and Sonic do far better on Nintendo hardware than they do on Sony or Microsoft. When Halo was the biggest FPS on the market shooters would always sell better on XBox. But I don't think there's much beyond that.

Isn't that proof that the userbase has different preferences than the userbase on other consoles? It's not as if Rayman and Sonic games run better on Nintendo hardware or anything like that. I don't think it's all black and white, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was some correlation.

This is an interesting discussion. I'm largely with @skywake. The lesson from the Wii U launch was to sell a lot of units quickly. Do that and 3rd party sales won't be dramatically different as a percentage of the user base at the time.

There are a few more wrinkles. Some games sell 90% of everything they'll ever sell within weeks of launch. Those games are vulnerable to poor sales early on in a consoles life and those games are more likely to be 3rd party because Nintendo emphasises 'evergreen' titles that continue to sell over long periods of time.

The other is that you can build an audience for particular genres to perform disproportionately well. Like FPS shooters following in the Halo slipstream on Xbox 360 or platformers doing well on Wii U.

In short my guess would be that Skyrim will sell very well. It's a true evergreen title that'll sell for years and it's also the first 'Zelda like' on a console sold on the strength of Zelda. I think we'll see a Fallout release next year.

LA Noire will sell at least as well (relative to the size of the user base) as it will on the other consoles.

@Octane
There's something to be said for building an audience for a particular style of content on a platform. I just don't think that building an audience for one kind of content necessarily means you're filtering out an audience for other content. And I really don't think anyone outside of the armchair analysts on the internet really care about who publishes the game.

Think of it this way. You have Mario on the Switch and some people are going to buy the Switch specifically because it has Mario. So a similar game comes out on every system and it just so happens to do better on Switch. Simple. But then Doom comes out on every platform. Can we say that Switch users don't like Doom? Most Switch users didn't buy Mario, even fewer are super-fans. And even if they did and are how can we be sure they don't also like Doom? Is selecting for "fans of Mario" excluding "fans of Doom"? I'm not convinced it does.

In general. Capcom is mostly just the same few franchises and re-releases (mostly of those same few franchises), and it makes me sad, even if some of those franchises still have great releases. Like whenever people complain about Nintendo just relying on the same few series forever, they should be talking about current gen Capcom far more. Marvel vs. Capcom could've been "forgotten characters from beloved Capcom games, 1 per game series" and it would've had more Capcom characters than the current one does (especially if you separate the multiple types of Megaman series).

And Sega hasn't mattered outside of Sonic and certain western published titles for a while now (hopefully Yakuza can help change that).

@kkslider5552000 Nailed my feelings about Capcom on the head. They have so many franchises, but they do absolutely nothing with them! They don't even re-release games from those franchises. I truly have no clue as to what they are doing. Viewtiful Joe, Power Stone, Breath of Fire, Darkstalkers, Ghosts and Goblins, and you know Mega Man. All of them just sitting there dormant and unused. That is why for me personally Capcom is the worst game developer right now.