It seems like Nintendo might not be overly optimistic about its Wii U sales. According to the company’s latest reassessment, it seems that they will be slashing estimated sales of the Wii U from 9 million units from April 2013 until March 2014 to a mere 2.8 million, which is less than a third of Nintendo’s initial predictions. If anything this seems to suggest the Nintendo had actually sold less than that figure to date which is admittedly pretty disappointing so far. To put it into perspective, Nintendo had managed to sell 3.45 million units of the Wii U during its launch year.
The disappointing sales of the Wii U units also seemed to have affected software sales as well. Originally the company had anticipated sales of 3.8 million units but those numbers have since been revised to 1.9 million, half of Nintendo’s original predictions. This is pretty bad news for Nintendo especially in the face of competition from Sony and Microsoft, both of whom have released their next-gen consoles whose sales have well eclipsed the Wii U to date.
So why aren’t customers biting? Well it seems that it could be a vicious cycle. Developers aren’t too eager to develop for the console, and at the same time gamers are complaining there aren’t enough games. Nintendo has yet to release newer first-party titles like Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros., although we have to wonder how much help that will do. What do you guys think? What can Nintendo do to pull themselves out of this?