Black Friday Sales Bring Little Joy for Nintendo in the UK

At the risk of being flamed, PS4 and XBOne have actual new titles to sell on black friday, Mario kart and Splatoon are the bundle-titles, so what else is going to sell big for Wii U?

@MysticX Mario Tennis Ultra Smash and Animal Crossing amiibo Festival, of course! What's not to love?

No but really, it's nice to see Nintendo still doing somewhat well with the Wii U. Despite the lack of more recent quality titles on the system. (I personally wouldn't trade my Wii U for a PS4 or XBone though, I'm loving my Nintendo stuff too much. Well.. mostly.)

Probably because most UK high street retailers, the biggest being Game, have stopped actively promoting Nintendo hardware and software in store.
My local Game has one wall for XBone with all the 'bells and whistles' the opposite wall for PS4 with all the 'bells and whistles'. Next biggest display is XBox 360 and PS3 software and accessories further into the store.
The next biggest display is for Lego Dimensions with all but WiiU starter kits available and Disney Infinity and Skylanders again with all but WiiU available.
Nintendo is on a small floating isle near the checkout desks, with mainly Pre owned Wii titles, eShop cards, a few old WiiU titles and a few old 3DS titles and the rest of the space being used by Amiibo. No consoles, no accessories. Untidy and uninteresting. Asked about Guitar Hero Live was told it wasn't made for WiiU and was promptly delivered a sales pitch on how the PS4 was what I wanted!!
Our local HMV doesn't have any Nintendo at all.

I know there is the online aspect, like Amazon etc but does those online sales go toward this chart?

It would have helped if Nintendo had some genuine Black Friday discounts.

If Nintendo Life and others are going to give such low scores to new games then gamers won't buy them and they won't appear in the charts. It's not rocket science.

There were no Genuine Black Friday Nintendo Discounts. .

Nintendo simply don't pump enough money into UK marketing, they're just non-existant. The Wii brand and Nintendo are practically separate entities as far as layperson is concerned over here.

Well I got Street Fighter x Tekken on Xbox 360 for £1.99, despite it being £11.99, and that was due to it being priced wrong, not because of Black Friday.

Nintendo only have themselves to blame. Two new games both of which have not only been labelled terrible but more importantly as disrespectful in terms of their amibo centric approach. Also it was possible to get an Xbox one with all its extra media dodads for £220 with 2 games. Cheapest wii u was the same price . With 2 great games but the public impression is that the xbox is the better deal. I got Infinity on Wii U as it was cheaper then PS4 and i want to support Nintendo. But as a owner since launch what else is there to buy that i dont already have.

It must have been a conscious decision for Nintendo to not support retailers with deals on Wii U. VERY had a couple of Splatoon / MK8 bundles at £199 which went in seconds. Apart from that £219 from Amazon or £229 with the Pro Controller was the best deal around. I think people were expecting more of the £180 premium bundles that we saw back in the summer. I also think many of the people that would have been tempted by a sub £200 Wii U Premium Bundle simply bought an xbox or ps4. The continued lack of Minecraft on Wii U is also a deal breaker for many.

@zool Well, reviews sites cannot give a Nintendo game a high score because it's from Nintendo or because they must help sales, this is simply awful toward the readers.

The Wii U black Friday deals were woeful, as was last years. Digital discounts were still not as cheap as some retail resellers, and recent releases are average games. The fact that the UK is a strong gaming market just baffles me why Nintendo don't TRY to sell more consoles!!

I got a PS4 as a secondary console, to go along with my Wii U, from shopto via ebay, and they were selling hundreds every hour. Although they've screwed up my order, but that's another matter.

NX can't come soon enough for Nintendo in Europe I think.

I didn't buy one Nintendo game over the weekend, but I did pick up a good few xbox-one and ps3/4 games.

Here's hoping Nintendo will pull an X360-esque Black Friday deal by next year. As in, New Super Mario Bros U being sold for no more than ten bucks, because that's how other console deals roll.

Don't you actually have to have a product to sell and then actually put them on sale to compete? I mean we got two year old games for $30 digitally here, while there were about 20 Xbox One games in a fancy display case for $20, and a similar setup for PS4. Heck, even Disney Infinity figures were 2 for $15 at a few locations.

To those of you complaining about sales and deals have you also considered that with a lot of UK retailers Wii U has barely a presence at all.

@Laxeybobby my local game is the same!

Is anybody surprised? They didn't have any deals, their recent releases have been $h1t and they don't spend a penny on advertising.

There is only one reason why Nintendo is performing so badly, and it aint rocket science. It is something called MARKETING! With no adverts at all on television there is little wonder that the heavily advertised Sony & MS products are selling and the WiiU is not, Not even Mario Maker was advertised and that could be a huge system seller, never mind any sort of ad for Xenoblade.

Until Nintendo sacks its 'marketing' teams and replaces them with competent people AND a budget to market products, then sales will remain dire. The NX will have the same fate as the WiiU unless Nintendo gets its act together. Sony and Microsoft marketing teams must laugh at the incompetence of Nintendo which had a 100M+ Wii user base and has wasted this massive competitive advantage in just a console generation.

@ThumperUK I agree with you on the whole marketing thing, but it's definitely not the only problem. The best marketing couldn't make Xenoblade a mainatream title. We're a bunch of Japan-Lovers here, but most people don't care for that look and sort of gameplay. They want western RPGs.
I still think though Mario Maker could have been that system seller. Nut timing and marketing weren't right. :/

This is another proof of the results of Nintendo's current strategy. It attracts only the most hard-die fans, who have already purchased both Wïi U and its main games (Mario Kart 8, Splatoon, etc.), while sceptic people remain indifferent.

@Darknyht pointed out another reason. Microsoft offered Rare's Rare Replay on Xbox One for €10 (-65%), while Sony offered Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster for €25 (-50%). On the other hand, Nintendo offered The Wind Waker HD which is not a bundle of HD remasters but a single HD remaster with less improvements than FF for the same price as a Wii U new game without any discount on Black Friday. On Xbox One and PS4 lots of games with discounts bigger than 50% while on Wii U only five titles: Bayonetta 2, Tropical Freeze, Pikmin 3, Super Mario 3D World and The Wonderful 101, each one for €30 or more. To people saying that giving gamers a cheaper way to play is to prostitute franchises, lately I haven't seen anyone prostituting more their franchises than Nintendo with their shabby yet expensive entries and spin-offs, depreciating Nintendo's assets, flagship characters and reputation. The games selected by Nintendo for Black Friday are good but the selection itself is stingy.

Meanwhile at Nintendo UK's marketing department they're celebrating the news.

http://www.choosewhat.com/starticles/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Empty-Office.jpg

@Yosher Whats not to love? How about two bare bones titles that looked to be rushed out quickly when Starfox got delayed.

How is this a surprise? Did anyone see compelling sales for Nintendo products? I didn't...

@Laxeybobby Just sad. So many great games are being missed.

@Sligeach tbf Nintendo still have success here even recently, Majora's Mask 3D was the highest selling title in February and became the fastest selling Zelda title ever in the UK. The same thing happened with ORAS this time last year, fastest selling Pokemon games ever in the UK. And Wii U titles Mario Kart 8, SSB, Splatoon, Mario Maker etc have all sold well, as have amiibo of course. How much of that was because of the marketing team? I don't have a clue, but I do know you're being really, really harsh there with your view, it appears to me that there's some personal bias there, you get sacked from there in the past or something lol. For me it's really simple, Nintendo did well last year because they had Smash and ORAS, this year they had nought.

Wii Us were available in the US at Target for $249.99 and in UK at Argos for £249.99. I'm no economist but i'm pretty sure that's not the exchange rate...Target's offer topsold and unsurprisingly Argos' didn't chart.

Incidentally an Xbox One with Fifa 16 at Argos was £279.99. What happened to marketing Nintendo as a budget alternative to the global leaders? Why are Nintendo UK not making a bigger effort with the price point? If they don't start shifting units this Christmas, yes at a loss but nevertheless for a three figure sum, they are going to be sitting on millions of units this time next year that they cannot give away in the wake of NX. Surely increasing the install base for the final year would also improve the likelyhood of third parties porting to WiiU in 2016 and helping fill the desparately sparse release schedule? I cannot see the logic in not just cutting their losses and shifting the stock now for £150 rather than being left with another Virtual Boy scenario - a warehouse full of consoles they can't shift for a song.

3 out of 40 is not good... I really hate to say it but 3/40 is rather pathetic considering how the top 40 of the UK does not lump all the versions (at least I am pretty sure it doesn't lump them) of the same game together so Nintendo should have had a good chance of being in there. Even if you got a hardware boost, that wouldn't be something to celebrate.

@Mister_Wu right, so if its not the reviewers it must be the game that is not up to deserving big scores.

Wii U games "sale" was appalling! It's a sad day when your Black Friday efforts can be trumped ANY DAY OF THE YEAR by PS Store deals! Crap service from Nintendo and it's reflected in the sales charts!

I saw plenty of PS4 and Xbox One deals being advertised, but there were very few Wii U deals.
Plus, if we take into account the higher normal price for the PS4 and Xbox One, the deals for these consoles were much more enticing than the Wii U deals.

Wow Chibi-Robo is out of the top 50 3DS chart (why does 3DS have a larger chart than all formats?). Not even £10 could save that and heck Code name STEAM is barely hanging in there at £5.

As for the chart itself. No surprise the Wii U hardware bundles were poorly priced and have not been getting better with time (these prices are rather static so logically if someone didn't want to pay £200 for the MK8 bundle w/free game offer in 2014 they're not going to be at all interested in paying £220 for a MK8+Splatoon bundle, especially if an Xbox One or PS4 which actually have more of a future are in that ballpark). For being "old" 3DS XL stock the deals on that system were not that great either. Likewise the New 3DS deals were also a disappointment (New 3DS w/Pokemon Alpha Sapphire was £105 a few months ago on Amazon UK, the MH and Xenoblade consoles offered this time I think were around £130, many people did not want Pokemon so were salivating over it returning with something they did want).

@ikki5 There are multiple charts published. All formats lumps all versions together while individual formats does not.

Some people prefer individual formats because all formats is sometimes odd when it comes to combining things. Pokemon X and Y wouldn't be combined due to being different games (despite being near identical) but Fifa 15 and Fifa 15 legacy edition (which is actually Fifa 12 with a roster update) would be combined though. Looking at both gives great insight into how little the lower rungs of the chart actually sell if you can find snippets of info about platform split and that.

@hadrian I see sarcasm isn't your strongest point.

I don't even see why Black Friday is a thing in the UK. It's not linked to a holiday so it's basically just shops being open for Thursday hours on Friday. Whatever.

@MysticX Right on. You speak only truth.

Let's just say it like it is: The Wii U is dead.
The NX will probably be a straming/download only console with no disc-drive, so they won't depend on retailers anymore...

Yup. This Black Friday (and the one or two weeks surrounding it--not a doorbuster) I could pick up a PS4 or an Xbox One for $300 with a game. If I were the average consumer, I would have been stupid to get a Wii U for the same price. But I think Nintendo knows that, and they're just looking to the future.

Maybe it would help if Nintendo of Europe had a proper sale. In fact, what on earth is the point in NoE, they don't seem to do much at all?

@Curlynob
Nintendo chose not to support retailers in the EU for holiday deals or other manufacturer sales, fearing another ANTI TRUST suit from the EU Commission.
Nintendo was already found guilty of [b]ANTI TRUST violations and price fixing with retailers in the EU during SNES to GCN era on games and systems.[/b]
Nintendo purposely doesn't support retailers in the EU with deals and price cuts fearing another massive ANTI TRUST and price fixing suit from the EU Commission.
Nintendo lets retailers price their products as they see fit.

As for their UK marketing, their ads and other forms of marketing have been regularly ordered off the air and out of print by the UK regulators because of complaints filed regarding "false" advertising of features and system capabilities.

UK is traditionally one of Nintendo's worst selling territories, with Wii being the exception.
This is the country where retailers removed all GBA and GCN systems and games in 2003 due to "low" sales.

@Trotterwatch I think Shibata is doing a much better job than Reggie. Just my opinion.

@electrolite77
Nintendo is still under the watchful eye of the EU, they have received warnings over the past decade about pricing and bundles of their stuff even through the Wii era.

Nintendo is still bound by the strict anti trust ruling in the EU.
This is why Nintendo isn't willing to major bundles very often.

Yes retailers in the UK did drop all Nintendo systems including GBASP due to bad sales.

Many retailers in the UK also dropped DS at one time too for not meeting their sales requirements.

Right now a few retailers in the UK won't stock any Nintendo stuff including 3DS and Wii U games.

Anyways late adopters are always feel burned when the new hardware comes out every damn time like clock work.
It was no different when PS2 and PS3 launched, it is no different when NX launches.

@Superryanworld
Reggie has very little say in how NOA runs.
The President and CEO of Nintendo proper is also the head of NOA too with full power at NOA

Not a surprise to be honest, there was literally lack of good deals on Wii U everywhere. Was waiting for an offer sub-200 for the Mario Kari 8/Splatoon bundle and that (considering the Wii U popularity and rumors of NX coming next year) would still be relatively expensive.

Sony was losing money on each PS4 system sold when it went on sale, hoping the software would boost the proft - and that's exactly what Nintendo should do now, especially since they have enough software on the market already released to gain profit (although I doubt they would still be losing money even if they dropped the price of Wii U premium to ~170...)

@electrolite77
I remember reading the articles and the threads on NeoGaf about it.

Though at Best Buy, Meijer's, TRU and a few others here in NA, Microsoft are winning.
Xbox One has a sizable distinct section while all of Playstation is intermixed in one big section and all of Nintendo is intermixed in one big section.
Strangely Xbox 360 is separate from Xbox One with actual information pointing it out.

The reason why Sony and Microsoft get more space is mainly due to them selling more products than just video games to most retailers.

Microsoft sells Windows, Office, other software, some hardware, accessories and has a marketing hand with Intel pushing Intel PCs.
This gives Microsoft huge amount of leverage with retailers.

Sony sells tons of entertainment hardware outside of Playstation, they also sell CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays,PC software, and lots of other products.
This gives them equally huge amount of leverage when getting shelf space.

Nintendo only sells video games and Amiibos. This ensures they don't have any real leverage with retailers, thus get smaller shelf space.

Valve is having the same issue with Steam Machines, Steam Link and Steam Controller, no retailers outside of Gamestop are willing to stock their hardware.

Until Nintendo and Valve find a physical hit or are willing to break the bank, they aren't going to get good retailer support.

@Xenocity I'm aware of that. Even before being demoted I wasn't impressed with him. NoA is a mess.

No surprises here. The Wii U is seen as a silly, childish console by the majority of UK gamers. Actually that probably goes for the way Nintendo are viewed.

To have success in the UK they need to change this image. If not they need to "drop" the UK and push this image much more where it has more appeal like N.America and Japan.

I couldn't find any offers regarding the Wii U on Black Friday, games or consoles so this is to be expected. Nintendo seem just as unwilling as retailers to even bother making the slightest success out of the Wii U. At Game the Wii U was the same price as PS4/XBOX and in some cases actually cost more on Friday and in those circumstances there is no reason for anyone to even consider the Wii U. We know Nintendo have moved on long ago to the NX which in part goes to explain the shoddy output of games recently, so why not lower the price of the bundles to below £200 just to get them out there. Considering so many of the games are first party they'd likely make the money back through software sales anyway, whilst having more potential customers to upgrade to the NX.

To be fair, there weren't any good offers on Wii U stuff for Black Friday. At this stage on it's life, it's heavily overpriced whether you think the Gamepad is cool or not.