By Nelson Schneider - 01/19/14 at 03:42 PM CT
The big and overblown news story dominating the minds of Internet Trolls this week is that Nintendo has cut their WiiU sales forecast by 2/3, from 9 million units to 2.8 million. Plenty of businessy types and trolly types are pronouncing Nintendo’s DOOMED status, once again.
Nintendo may be going through a rough patch, and they may occasionally fixate on some gimmick to the detriment of the overall quality of their products, but saying the company is DOOMED and going out of business seems a bit ridiculous. We must bear in mind, after all, that Nintendo is a videogame company, while Sony is a generalist electronics company, movie studio, and recording label; and Microsoft is an enterprise-level productivity and OS developer. If either of those companies stopped making games, they’d continue making other products. If Nintendo stopped making games, the company would be gone. And despite a variety of missteps throughout their history (Virtual Boy, N64, MotionPlus, stereoscopic 3D), Nintendo is still the company that built the foundation upon which every modern videogame is built. Nintendo re-created the console market after Atari (delenda est) trashed it. Nintendo built the iconic games that solidified the rules of a huge variety of genres, including both 2D and 3D platformers, action/adventure, and kart racing to name a few. For a company that deeply ingrained in the history of a medium to just disappear would be a tragic loss.
Of course, Nintendo disappearing is entirely theoretical. Yes, they slashed their drastically overestimated sales forecast for the WiiU. If I had been in Nintendo’s shoes, releasing a follow-up to the incredibly fun and incredibly profitable Wii, I would have predicted the new console to be just as good. Of course, had I been in Nintendo’s shoes, I would have been privy to the knowledge that there was very little software waiting in the wings to spur people into buying new hardware, and I might have adjusted expectations accordingly from the outset.
No matter how you look at it, though, Nintendo is still leading the 8th Generation in sales. According to VG Chartz, as of this writing, Nintendo has sold 5.34 million WiiUs, while Sony has only sold 4.38 million PS4s and Microsoft has sold a comparably dismal 3.11 million XBONEs. Furthermore, as I have revealed in my monthly “Backlog: The Embiggening” articles, neither the PS4 nor the XBONE have anything significant coming down the pipe with regard to must-have games. All three of the 8th Gen consoles experienced solid holiday sales around the time of their initial launch. While the WiiU has had an extra year over the other two, its sales quickly tapered off after the holiday rush… just like the other two are currently doing. Nintendo really had no system-seller game releases in the post-launch window… just like the other two are currently doing.
Since the PS4 and XBONE are following in the WiiU’s footsteps, how long will it be until Sony and MS cut their sales forecasts as well? How long will it be before some Youtuber rips-off the MeltedJoystick WiiU Funeral video and plants the PS4 and XBONE in side-by-side graves?
Regardless of what financial pundits might like to promote, the worldwide economy is still in the toilet. It may have moved up a bit, so that it’s circling at the outer edge of the whirlpool, but any mistakes, miscalculations, or greedy power plays could flush those tenuous gains in an instant. People are struggling to put food on the table. People are struggling with long-term unemployment and underemployment. What the world doesn’t need right now is a bunch of new, expensive gadgets competing for its entertainment dollars, and the planned obsolescence of the gadgets that have already been paid for. These relatively close-together sales numbers put up by all three consoles represent those obsessed early adopters who MUST buy every new gadget ASAP just for the sake of doing so. Now that those folks are all satisfied, how many new sales can Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft expect to get from regular people who probably don’t see the incremental improvements in this new hardware as a reason to abandon their old hardware or plunk down several hundred dollars?
Nintendo needs to rework their angle on hardware integration. Selling a handheld and a console that don’t interoperate with each other is yesterday’s hardware. The 3DS and WiiU need to be twins: One for travel, one for home. Both platforms would benefit from tighter integration, and a more sensible, modern implementation of users’ Club Nintendo accounts.
Sony needs to include a Vita in every PS4 box if they want their handheld to reach any kind of market penetration. Getting two consoles for the price of one (yes, the price for the bundle MUST remain the same) might spur people to buy the package, even when neither platform has any worthwhile exclusives.
Microsoft needs to GIVE UP ALREADY. Everyone hates the XBONE, and the Console Wars were only really enjoyable when they were fought on two fronts and both fronts were substantially different. Release the Kinect 2.0 for Windows 8.1. Sell Xbox Live Arcade games in the Windows Store. Kiss-up to Valve in order to get off Gaben’s sh!t list. If MS doesn’t do something to regain its grip on PC gaming, it will completely lose the only gaming market it ever really belonged in.
Most of all, all three companies need to think realistically about sales projections. They are selling videogame hardware to videogamers. None of these companies are Apple, which sells expensive toys to hipsters and status seekers. The console makers can’t hope to reach Apple-like sales quotas, which seems to have become then new ‘normal,’ because they are targeting completely different demographics. People buy consoles to play games. People play games on iPads because they need to so something with the $700 sheet of glass and aluminum they bought because everyone else was buying one. Cutting these kinds of unrealistic sales numbers isn’t a sign of DOOM but a sign of common sense.
