Topic: Wii U Console sales comparison

Why is the Wii U in such a bad shape when it has nearly 2 million more units sold than xbox one and 2 million less than PS4, putting it in second place out of the 3 current gen consoles.
Why does the Xbox One get continued third party support and no doom and gloom stories but the Wii U gets regular bad news and no decent third party support but shoddy old ports.

The WiiU got released a year before the XBO, yet is only 2M ahead of the XBO. That's why.

The attach rate for XBO consoles is a lot higher than for WiiU consoles, which makes it worth investing in assuming it'll continue selling the way it does at the moment. Whereas it's the opposite with the WiiU.

Also, the Xbox One and PS4 are both basically underpowered PCs, so it makes porting multiplats very easy.

The Wii U released a year earlier than the other consoles and all three are nearly tied up.

Nintendo failed to take advantage of its head start against the competition and developers know not to support a walking graveyard. Not to mention most third party titles sell better on other brands. From a business perspective, I do not blame Ubisoft, EA, Konami, Capcom, and Activision for focusing on Sony's and Microsoft's product(s).

I wouldn't expect xbox one sales to get better once it's released in japan, it will sell abysmally there.
I think Wii U will stay ahead of xbox one all the while people are more focused on PS4, nobody wants two consoles that do the same thing and play pratically the same games.

You had me before you said that. Out all the current gen consoles on the market the Wii U has the highest attach rate. It's up at 4.1 which is pretty high when compared to the XBOne (3.3) and PS4 (2.7). The Wii was last out of the three last gen consoles true, but not by much at all. The Wii was the lowest with 9.1 and the 360 was the highest with 10.8. It's not that big a gap.

As for sales well sure. But as of right now the XBOne and Wii U are selling at pretty much the same rate. So it might have been true a few months ago but as of right now I wouldn't put my money on the Wii U coming third necessarily.

I don't think it's 2 million ahead of the Xbone now. Last official word we got from either was end of March where MS had shipped 5.1 million Xbones and Nintendo had shipped 6.1 million Wii Us. Since then Wii U has been selling around 40k a month in each Japan and Europe, about 60k a month in the US, (140k a month in the big 3 regions) while the Xbone is selling between 200-300 a month in US and Europe.

It's getting bad press because it's sold less than the Cube and Dreamcast sold when they were this old. They sold 2.7 million consoles worldwide in a whole year. MS and Sony had doubled that in 6 months. I desperately want the Wii U to succeed but it's being pegged as a sales flop so far for a very good reason.

NPD for June come out today and it's a big one for Nintendo. They had MK while the competition had no big releases. If they didn't outsell the Xbone in June, I don't see when they ever will.

1. Wii U had a massive head start over xbox one, being 2 million behind is a terrible accomplishment

This is a software sales chart for the UK.

In the first 6 months of the year there were:

1.68 million PS4 games sold in the UK.
1.44 million Xbone games sold in the UK.
380,000 Wii U games sold in the UK.

It's not really doing any better in the US either.

Except it's doing a lot better in the US...

I don't know if that is bad or good really. The install base in UK is pretty pathetic so any kind of software sales are always going to look bad. It looks like the average Wii U owner has bought a few games at retail this year in UK. I have only bought 1 and a few bargain-bin/used games.

Well raw numbers will be better but the US larger so that is expected.

The reason publishers hate the Wii U is because games like CoD and AC are million sellers on the relatively small next-gen userbases but are selling in the tens of thousands on Wii U. Even if they break even, it's still a massive waste of resources to make no money. It could be even worse if they actually advertised those games but then again maybe they should at least try.

Yeah, sorry. Poor choice of words on my part. I don't really know why I said attachment rate, since that refers to software.

What I meant was simply that the XBO is selling more than the WiiU spreading out total sales for each system. As in XBO selling 4.83M in ≈8 months Vs. WiiU selling 6.58M in ≈20 months.

The Wii U might have actually outsold the XOne for the last 2 months (according to vgchartz, so grain of salt). Probably just a MK8 bump, but if the Wii U can continue to hold its own the XOne won't be able to catch up, which is as it should be. I think the only thing that helps the XOne is that it has the same architecture for them to just automatically make games for PC/PS4/XOne, so despite it being inferior to PS4, it will still get the games no matter what and some people will still buy it since it will get the games no matter what.

MSFT- at least this spring was reporting SHIPPED, not sold. I think they have been rather vague about their numbers b/c of investors. It was even speculated that they might reduce production. I'm pretty sure the figures you see for Nintendo are sold, actual units on shelves.

Yes, it's doing outstanding in the U.S. hahaha

Seeing that all 3 parent companies of these consoles have reported losses (if not only on their gaming subsidiaries), it shows that the high end electronics market is generally still in the doldrums. The truth is there isn't that much in innovation or evolution in what people already have that's grabbing the customer. I still think this generation won't rival the near 100m each console, and these consoles won't survive a 10 year life cycle due to antiquation. The belief any of these companies has a bottomless pit of cash to throw at a problem until it's fixed is greatly mistaken when Microsoft and Sony are making such cuts across their businesses, cuts that will no doubt affect the desirability of their products.

The Xbox's price cut and Kinect removal will sell more consoles in the short term, but they must still be taking a hit on profit by not covering the Kinect's development cost plus the cost of any cancelled Kinect games. Plus Kinect was going to be what Microsoft used to lure casual gamers eventually, just like the Wiimote. Also they've spent a huge amount on advertising, some which has been detrimental to the system (that 'Xbox On' commercial for example). It's all very well being able to say 'We've sold 10 million boxes' or whatever, but are you actually making that much money on it after pricecuts and advertising, and do you have a plan what to do after all your core fanbase has one? The cancellation of Microsoft's TV programming for the X1 could have been that thing that enticed people INSTEAD of shiny graphics, and I have no doubt Sony may do similarly to their plans. I also question if any of the systems has a high enough games attach rate after such lacklustre launches- a problem that Sony is still suffering at the moment no matter how many consoles it sells. More games sold= more profit.

Instead of just asking 'how many consoles have been sold?', we should also be asking: 'how much cost does it take to get a customer, and how much profit does each generate?'

@MrGawain

Couldn't agree more. And everyone needs to realize they're not in the business - you don't have access to facts and statistics that the actual companies do, so @Chrono_Cross saying cheeky things like, "Yes, it's doing outstanding in the U.S. hahaha," is fine to let out internet aggression ... but it's nothing more than that. You actually have no clue what "outstanding" from Nintendo's perspective even constitutes. For all we know, maybe the Wii U's recent increases are "outstanding" for them once all sorts of factors that we can't even comprehend are factored in by the people who actually have all of the information.

Of course it does. UK has the worst taste in gaming.

The thing is Sony/Microsoft fanboys are the ones buying those consoles - and these fanboys like the third party games. because really, there aren't many first party titles on these consoles, and those that are there, kinda suck, so the third party games sell really well on the PS4/Xboxone. The Wii U is bought by Nintendo fans who like the first party games and by families who also don't like third party games that much.