GRcade

So the Wii U has just launched in the US - how do you think things will pan out for Nintendo's latest console?

Post your predictions here, then I'll archive this thread and we'll come back to it in a few years time and laugh at how wrong we were!

Buyers remorse dictates that it will be raved about. It'll actually be the same as what we have with the added bonus of tablet gimmicks that will definately never get old fast.

Third party support will have dried up by 4th year.

They will sell 40-45 million over a 5 year spell, so twice as much as Gamecube but half as much as Wii, I can't see it catching on with the broader casual audience like motion control did.

More sales than the cube, less than the wii.

Something Fishy wrote:More sales than the cube, less than the wii.

Yeah that's pretty much what I was going to say as well. Despite the somewhat negative vibe that it seems to have at the moment I think it'll go on to sell really well.

In terms of third party support, I think certain devs/publishers will shun the console but at the same time I think Nintendo will announce more third party exclusives similar to that of Bayoneta 2 over the course of the year.

It'll do some decent numbers but not as much as Wii. Third party support will drop off in 3 years (but I predict far fewer 3rd party games for any console come 4yrs time due to the very shitty structure of publishers at the moment). I predict it will do very well on eShop with the indies and smaller studios who don't have the staff/finance to tool up for writing the AAA blockbusters.

Codename 47 wrote:Despite the somewhat negative vibe that it seems to have at the moment I think it'll go on to sell really well.

There was a negative vibe on the internet about Wii, too. Internet forums are the worst places in the world to get a prediction of the actual success of a console.

My guess it will sell well, wont be as popular as the Wii & will be bummed six ways from sunday when the next Xbox & PlayStation arrive.

Sell more than the gamecube but not as much as wii but it will also house 4-5 games that are considered the 'top 10 games of this gen'

(By this gen i mean Wii U/720/ps4 era)

Also i think miiverse will take off and will be a huge feature that 720 and PS4 try to emulate in future firmware updates

WiiU sales will fall quite a bit short of the Wii's and will have just as bad 3rd party support.

The problem is at the moment it stacks up weakly to the 360 and PS3, which both cost much less and both have a huge library of fantastic games. It doesn't even add much more, sure it plays Wii Games but instead of upgrading, why not just by a PS3 or 360 for less money and more features?

At the moment there's no exclusive games worth buying a system for. This will come in time but it may come too late. The hardcore Nintendo fans and Christmas shoppers will be snapping the system up for a while, but it has 1 year to become worth owning before the next Xbox and PlayStation are within grabbing distance. Once the competition arrives with beefier graphics and better multimedia capabilities the WiiU is going to look pretty outdated. It's the system for now, not for the next 7 years.

I am not optimistic, and many publishers share my point of view. They will feed the WiiU cheapish games and ports as they wait to see how it does. But this holding back is going to damage hardware sales if Nintendo don't provide enough exclusives of their own. E3 is going to be mental.

I think it'll have one good year and then bomb. 3rd party support and user interest will drop off.

Like every Nintendo home console since N64 I reckon this will have a handful of truly amazing 1st party exclusives buried neck deep in a bunch of 3rd party gooseberry fool. I think it will sell well for the first couple of years but once a) the novelty wears of and b) SONY and Microsoft have their new kit on the shelves sales will start to drop.

Ports to have parity and beyond (better textures/effects) by the end of next year.

Most of the haters now will be turned around before the launch window closes.

Yeah...l agree with Rik. lt'll sell half as much as Wii throughout it's life-cycle but only up until the next PS/XBOX is released then it'll fall to a quarter of sales for the rest of the life-cycle.

I actually think the Wii U will do quite well in the long term.

More successful than Gamecube or N64, but not as successful as the Wii is what I'm expecting.

The concept of Wii U isn't as immediately understandable as the Wii was, nor does it have the same appeal. It also has the higher price point and seemingly less of a focus on casual gamers, many of whom bought into the Wii but have now moved on to Smart Phones, Tablets etc. It definitely has a smaller target audience available.

That said it is a Nintendo system and if you want Nintendo exclusives its the only place you can get them and Nintendo still have a huge audience for this, one that has probably grown larger with the success of the Wii. It will always be the selling point it holds over MS/SONY.

Furthermore there's all this talk of new consoles this time next year and how they're going to steal all the limelight, but I'm not so sure. Price-point is going to be an issue, and if MS do want to implement a touch-screen controller or kinect heavily into the new system as speculated then I struggle to see how they could get a significantly more powerful system anywhere below £300. I would suggest anywhere from £4-450 a more likely price point. It is then likely to suffer from a launch line-up of PC Ports and 360 games with HD Texture Packs and will, if Microsofts previous launches are anything to go by, have some huge issues in the build quality of some area of the device. Furthermore it'll be a system where the immediate difference is nowhere near as clear as the difference between the original Xbox and 360.

As for Sony? We all saw how long it took them to get PS3 out of the gate and I'd be shocked if they have a new system ready for release this time next year.

Even if they do launch then that's at a point where Wii U will have a 12 month strong library, likely with a big release (Metroid or Mario) on the horizon and potentially be in a position to offer a price-cut so it can certainly compete for its part of the market share.

Additionally with the amount of 360/PS3 systems out there, the inevitably lower development costs compared to PS4/Nextbox and the Wii U operating on hardware of similar capabilities a great many developers could just stick with that generation for a good while.

Personally I think PS4/Nextbox will really struggle early on.

Impossible to predict IMO. The thing to remember is that we aren't the general public when it comes to gaming. I doubt anyone here can honestly say that the Wii would have gone on to be the successful console it was. It was fairly crap hardware wise compared to the PS3 and 360, but this seems to have made little difference to the public. I guess it's USP was the fact it had motion control. Now we are in an age of tablets, will a console that comes effectively with its own tablet do the business again?

I think any system out of sync with the Call of Duty, FIFA and Madden lead systems is going to struggle to get off the ground in the west. Nintendo's first party will carry it.

looking forward to the Watchdog show about the failed wii u's dying because little johnny pulled the plug as he could not be bothered to wait for it to update.

One of the ways the Wii was so successful was because you you could chuck it anywhere public and have people get involved and get playing. I remember very early in the Wii's life I was skiing in Andorra and to my surprise one of the bars we regularly went to in the evening had a big screen set up with Wii Sports Bowling on it. Everyone loved a bit of it.
I CANNOT for one second believe the same will happen with Wii U.
I like to gauge my students' feelings towards new gaming stuff at times like this; unsurprisingly I've had a shit-load ask me if I've got BLOPS 2, but not one has mentioned Ninty's new console. Not even so much as me eavesdropping on a conversation involving it.
I predict mediocre sales initially, then massive tail-off when Microsoft and Sony show their hands.