Wii U retail impressions?

[Shifty Geezer]

Also we can be pretty sure it's not spectacular demand because Nintendo announced 400k over black Friday. Less than PS3 and 360.

That could be supply constraints. I don't think it was given subsequent retail puts the Wii U as readily available, but it could have been.

Incidentally, having just bought XCOM for PS3 for only £20 from ShopTo today, I noticed their Wii U bundles. Wii U +Zombi + NSMB for £375. Cheapest basic is £295. All bundles are apparently in stock. A 250GB XB360+Kinect is £260. 250GB+Forza+Skyrim for £190. 500GB PS3+game is about £240, while a 12GB superslim is £170. Wii U is definitely looking pricey considering content is very similar across platforms at the moment. Wuu's are in stock at Amazon, Play, Game, and Zavvi, although Zavvi have sold out of the Premiums and only have Basics in stock. That seems pretty unprecedented for a console launch to me. The thing came out on Friday, and supply is such that anyone can just pick one up. I'm not feeling high demand here.

 

[Nesh]

Lots of stock availability on both the basic and deluxe where I am. There isnt much of a talk about it. A retailer had it on display with Super Mario for try. But guess what. Without the tablet but with a standard wiimote used as a normal controller. Probably because the damn thing doesnt have a battery that lasts long.

To top it, they had it next to a Wii playing another game. It didnt communicate much of difference between them. It looked like another Wii.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Wow, never even thought about that, but you're right, the low battery life makes it impossible to use in a kiosk.

 

[JasonLD]

Wow, never even thought about that, but you're right, the low battery life makes it impossible to use in a kiosk.

? Why not, they can just keep it connected to the outlet.

 

[Clockwork]

It's fascinating all the various spin from some corners (too be expected).

"Nintendo is doing a fantastic job keeping retailers supplied"

And

"It's likely the days of console sellouts are over. PS4 and 720 wont sell out either"

Wanna bet ?

Also we can be pretty sure it's not spectacular demand because Nintendo announced 400k over black Friday. Less than PS3 and 360.

One thing to note, it sold better than 360 and PS3 did at launch.

Yes, 360 and PS3 had better sales this year, but they have a more enticing value proposition. They are mature systems with an established presence, they have extensive libraries of games, and they are comparatively less expensive.

Most people do not buy consoles at launch. The hardware is unproven (usually with teething issues), they have limited libraries, and carry an inflated cost (relatively speaking).

Different demographics altogether.

 

[TheLump]

It's fascinating all the various spin from some corners (too be expected).

"Nintendo is doing a fantastic job keeping retailers supplied"

And

"It's likely the days of console sellouts are over. PS4 and 720 wont sell out either"

Wanna bet ?

Also we can be pretty sure it's not spectacular demand because Nintendo announced 400k over black Friday. Less than PS3 and 360.

The problem is, in either case it could be spun positively or negatively.

Wii U Sells Out! - "Yay Success" // "Its a manufactured sell out by Nintendo to drive up demand. Boo!"

Wii U Doesn't Sell out - "Yay, they made enough this time" // "Nobody wants it, Nintendo are doomed"


If we look at strictly the numbers, 400k for a US launch isnt bad at all. Its not breaking any records but given recent past console launches & what some were expecting (that nobody wants it, everyone wants tablets/smart phones instead) - its by no means a bad opening week.

After Christmas and after worldwide launches, we'll have a better idea of sales performance.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The problem is, in either case it could be spun positively or negatively.

That's true of everything people can have an opinion on, such is the variety of human perception.

If we look at strictly the numbers, 400k for a US launch isnt bad at all.

400k for week one is pretty good. The concern comes from week 2 where the presence of boxes on shelves and low eBay prices isn't good this early for a console. Unless Nintendo are amazingly keeping up with massive demand (and if they can manufacture and supply 250k+ a week, how come they only had 400k for launch?) we're looking at low interest here, which is very bad for a new console.

 

[Arwin]

I think it's reasonable at least to explain it somewhat to the original Wii first Black Friday, which did 600k, and was sold out for months. Wii U did 400k, and is pretty much widely available. So there is at least a suggestion that it is not as successful. However, I am not a strong believer in the importance of selling out at launch. It's just an observation of how the device launched, but not necessarily relevant to its future success.

 

[Nesh]

The problem is, in either case it could be spun positively or negatively.

Wii U Sells Out! - "Yay Success" // "Its a manufactured sell out by Nintendo to drive up demand. Boo!"

Wii U Doesn't Sell out - "Yay, they made enough this time" // "Nobody wants it, Nintendo are doomed"


If we look at strictly the numbers, 400k for a US launch isnt bad at all. Its not breaking any records but given recent past console launches & what some were expecting (that nobody wants it, everyone wants tablets/smart phones instead) - its by no means a bad opening week.

After Christmas and after worldwide launches, we'll have a better idea of sales performance.

Since we have sales figures which have not been impacted by supply shortages (unlike the Wii) and we know how much it sold compared to the Wii, we can with certainty say that the launch-relatively to its predecessor underperformed whatever the reasons and we can suspect that the Wii U even if it does sell well, it will most likely not reach Wii sales figures.
It is not far fetched to expect that the WiiU might reach its peak and experience growth slowdown faster, given the price, competition, design, capabilities and overall value.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It's just an observation of how the device launched, but not necessarily relevant to its future success.

I disagree. The early start doesn't prove a certain future to any degree, but for a console where sales typically snowball, a slow start is a considerable negative for the platform. It means consumers aren't enamoured and Nintendo have their work cut out to change that, either by improving their marketing or slashing prices or whatever. But for a console that's dependent on a partnership with content creators who have the choice to avoid a platform as dead-in-the-water, a really strong start is pretty important IMO. I expect plenty of 'wait-and-see' devs to notice the lack of demand and decide to avoid Wii U for their next project, whereas if Wii U was filling the news with stories of massive demand for this Christmas's Big Thing, those same devs would be ordering up their Wuu SDKs. You could write a download title for Wuu, or Nexus 7 + other Android devices with a million a month sales, or the ludicrous iOS, or the 50+ million strong XB360s or PS3s. With a clear, strong market, why invest the cost and effort in bringing your ideas to Wuu?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Wii U software fails to make the top 10 in UK. UK execs said they expected Wii U sales to hit the top 10, maybe even the top 5. Having said that, there are Wii U games in the top 10, just not platform exclusives. Maybe lots of Wuu buyers were getting it for BLOPS2 and FIFA?

 

[Arwin]

I disagree. The early start doesn't prove a certain future to any degree, but for a console where sales typically snowball, a slow start is a considerable negative for the platform. It means consumers aren't enamoured and Nintendo have their work cut out to change that, either by improving their marketing or slashing prices or whatever. But for a console that's dependent on a partnership with content creators who have the choice to avoid a platform as dead-in-the-water, a really strong start is pretty important IMO. I expect plenty of 'wait-and-see' devs to notice the lack of demand and decide to avoid Wii U for their next project, whereas if Wii U was filling the news with stories of massive demand for this Christmas's Big Thing, those same devs would be ordering up their Wuu SDKs. You could write a download title for Wuu, or Nexus 7 + other Android devices with a million a month sales, or the ludicrous iOS, or the 50+ million strong XB360s or PS3s. With a clear, strong market, why invest the cost and effort in bringing your ideas to Wuu?

Well, then we'll agree to disagree.

As for the charts, the ratio between concurrent online players on Wii U vs 360 is in the order of 500:1, and although it's possible that all Wii U owners bought it for the single player campaign only, it doesn't seem likely to have made a big impact.

The only thing to take into account perhaps is that the 32GB version of the Wii U comes with a free download of Nintendoland?

 

[Grall]

I've no idea how wuu's doing for retail, but Nintendo has managed to create the most bloody obnoxius DLC transfer process ever, in the history of everything ever of all universes that may or may not have existed in all eternity.

Fifty million steps to complete, takes bloody forever (been listening to that fucking Nintendo muzak way too long and it's only 16% complete), and it can't even detect before the process starts that a 512MB SD-card actually isn't big enough (even though it should be), forcing me to start all over with the wuu side of the preparations.

Damn... Now it errored out on me. FUCKING NINTENDO BURN IN HELL I HATE YOU BASTARDS!

 

[TheLump]

That's true of everything people can have an opinion on, such is the variety of human perception.

Very true

400k for week one is pretty good. The concern comes from week 2 where the presence of boxes on shelves and low eBay prices isn't good this early for a console. Unless Nintendo are amazingly keeping up with massive demand (and if they can manufacture and supply 250k+ a week, how come they only had 400k for launch?) we're looking at low interest here, which is very bad for a new console.

If thats accurate - then you are correct. Not good signs. However, I thought there were plenty of reports of stores being out of stock too (of the premium model certainly), just as much as there are reports of stock on shelves. I'd have to wait for the next lot of sales figures to make a call on that.

Not sure about their production throughput. They did have manufacturing problems a month or so before launch didnt they? (to do with the gamepad I believe) which may have cut down launch day numbers. Who knows. Could also explain why apparently the EU didnt get many at launch - what with the US being their main market.

Amazon UK was sold out ZU bundle a while ago, selling for £429 through marketplace and premium bundles were sold out just before launch. The Premium Bundle was yesterday showing as "10 left in stock" at a price of £444 (through an another seller, not Amazon directly). Now out of stock but expected back in on 4th Dec at the normal £299. That could be a good sign - depends how many the UK got though I suppose.

Also could be spun positively (its sold out!) or negatively (UK didnt get many, thats why its sold out!). Too early to tell.

 

[TheLump]

I think it's reasonable at least to explain it somewhat to the original Wii first Black Friday, which did 600k, and was sold out for months. Wii U did 400k, and is pretty much widely available. So there is at least a suggestion that it is not as successful. However, I am not a strong believer in the importance of selling out at launch. It's just an observation of how the device launched, but not necessarily relevant to its future success.

I dont think anyone with any sense thought it would match the Wii's demand. Did they? I didnt, and I'm one of the ones that think it might succeed (thats a relative term)

I'd like to know how many they shipped before I can judge how good 400k is. Just seemed pretty good for a launch to me -given previous launches. I'd suspect Sony would kill for numbers 2/3 of the Wii launch when PS4 goes on sale*. Of course that doesn't guarantee a succesful product and we'll have to see what the coming weeks hold before we know whats what.

*Edit: I'm not saying PS4 wont reach that number, just implying that as Wii launch was notoriously good - 2/3 of those numbers would be a good thing ratehr than a bad thing.

Since we have sales figures which have not been impacted by supply shortages (unlike the Wii) and we know how much it sold compared to the Wii, we can with certainty say that the launch-relatively to its predecessor underperformed whatever the reasons and we can suspect that the Wii U even if it does sell well, it will most likely not reach Wii sales figures.
It is not far fetched to expect that the WiiU might reach its peak and experience growth slowdown faster, given the price, competition, design, capabilities and overall value.

I'm not sure we know that. As I said to Shifty - I was under the impression that there were manufacturing problems a month or so prior to launch which at one point it looked set to derail the EU launch (if rumours at the time were to be believed). Coupled with the reports that in the UK/EU retailers received lower stocks than expected, on top of an already apparently low allocation: it could point to there at least being some disruption to the intiail supply. We dont know the extent of that though, so again: too early to be definitive.

I fully agree with the rest of your post though.

I've no idea how wuu's doing for retail, but Nintendo has managed to create the most bloody obnoxius DLC transfer process ever, in the history of everything ever of all universes that may or may not have existed in all eternity.

Fifty million steps to complete, takes bloody forever (been listening to that fucking Nintendo muzak way too long and it's only 16% complete), and it can't even detect before the process starts that a 512MB SD-card actually isn't big enough (even though it should be), forcing me to start all over with the wuu side of the preparations.

Damn... Now it errored out on me. FUCKING NINTENDO BURN IN HELL I HATE YOU BASTARDS!

They seriously have to add some servers or somthing. Its getting embarassing now and once the launch hype dies down this sort of thing will really put people off. its not like 3DS is overly slow, so why cant they get this sorted on WiiU? Also, was there ever any news of that "early december" patch which was supposed to help loading times etc?

 

[Grall]

What I don't understand about their DLC transfer process is why they complicated it so damn much. The number of steps with information, instructions, caveats and warnings is just incomprehensibly, mindbogglingly huge. And the process is not even consistent in the advice it gives, like asking for a SD card with at least 512MB capacity in one step, and in another it wants more than 512MB, yet it lets you complete the initial wuu side of the process with a card that's "too small" regardless, even though you CAN'T use all of the wii's 512MB internal flash for DLC, and I hadn't filled up all of my wii anyway.

After the transfer failed (which totally hung my wuu it seemed as even holding the power button down would not turn the fuc^h^h^h damn thing off; I had to pull the power plug), it ran all the way through on the 2nd try without a hitch. WTF. So on top of being enormously cumbersome, the transfer process is also incredibly fragile as well. Well done, Nintendo... Well done. *golfclap*

It's so stupid. Nintendo's even worse than sony at building software, and that says something. Wuu's overall super inconsistent all over the place, some things can only be done on the gamepad screen when the TV would have worked just as well, sometimes the home button doesn't work... *sigh* And sometimes the pad won't sync with the console even though the console is right next to the pad. And, if that happens, only thing that works is turning off the console by using its power button - the pad's won't work as that only turns off the pad. Really crappy resident software that can't handle these kind of cases.

Don't get me started on the loadtimes. 1GB reserved for the OS in wuu, and absolutely nothing is preloaded into it from what it looks like. What the shit are they using all that memory for? Pre-release talk we had a couple months ago about serving media in the background, web browsing on one screen and gaming on the other - all of that is pretty much out the window thanks to the enormously anemic hardware thrown together inside this thing (by a hardware engineer with no knowledge of modern tech, drunk to the point of near-unconsciousness.)

 

[JasonLD]

Is it possible that early reports about update nightmares and games being somewhat inferior to PS360 versions might have impacted WiiU's sales some way?
I know Nintendo has almost no problem manufacturing as the system is not even close to being high end, but just weird seeing it available in so many places 2 weeks after launch.

 

[TheLump]

What I don't understand about their DLC transfer process is why they complicated it so damn much. The number of steps with information, instructions, caveats and warnings is just incomprehensibly, mindbogglingly huge. And the process is not even consistent in the advice it gives, like asking for a SD card with at least 512MB capacity in one step, and in another it wants more than 512MB, yet it lets you complete the initial wuu side of the process with a card that's "too small" regardless, even though you CAN'T use all of the wii's 512MB internal flash for DLC, and I hadn't filled up all of my wii anyway.

After the transfer failed (which totally hung my wuu it seemed as even holding the power button down would not turn the fuc^h^h^h damn thing off; I had to pull the power plug), it ran all the way through on the 2nd try without a hitch. WTF. So on top of being enormously cumbersome, the transfer process is also incredibly fragile as well. Well done, Nintendo... Well done. *golfclap*

It's so stupid. Nintendo's even worse than sony at building software, and that says something. Wuu's overall super inconsistent all over the place, some things can only be done on the gamepad screen when the TV would have worked just as well, sometimes the home button doesn't work... *sigh* And sometimes the pad won't sync with the console even though the console is right next to the pad. And, if that happens, only thing that works is turning off the console by using its power button - the pad's won't work as that only turns off the pad. Really crappy resident software that can't handle these kind of cases.

Don't get me started on the loadtimes. 1GB reserved for the OS in wuu, and absolutely nothing is preloaded into it from what it looks like. What the shit are they using all that memory for? Pre-release talk we had a couple months ago about serving media in the background, web browsing on one screen and gaming on the other - all of that is pretty much out the window thanks to the enormously anemic hardware thrown together inside this thing (by a hardware engineer with no knowledge of modern tech, drunk to the point of near-unconsciousness.)

I LOL'd (edit: but gutted for you that it sucks) Although I think most would agree its likely (hopefully) down to software rather than hardware. Lets hope they can speed that up considerably as its simply impossible that its thats slow due to hardware limitations. There are much more fancy OS's running on much less fancy hardware out there. Maybe this is just another result of them rushing it out the door.

Is it possible that early reports about update nightmares and games being somewhat inferior to PS360 versions might have impacted WiiU's sales some way?
I know Nintendo has almost no problem manufacturing as the system is not even close to being high end, but just weird seeing it available in so many places 2 weeks after launch.

High end doesn't come into it. Its not "off the shelf" by any means, so regardless of performance its as susceptible to manufacturing problems as anything else. And like I said, unless someone has information to the contrary/I'm mistaken there were reports of manufacturing problems with the 'Pad prior to launch which lead to fears of a delays in the EU launch (which thankfully didnt happen - although reports have been cirulating that the UK/EU were not supplied with many WIiUs).

 

[babybumb]

40k? To be fair Gamecube did less than 5M Euro/Aus combined. USA is more Pro Nintendo but if Wii U does any less than 1M combined in this years NPD it dosent look good

Wii hammered PS360 but its successor will have a very hard time vs the next year.

Regardless Wii U is just baffling hw design. If you can build a better box at retail prices something is very wrong. The next 18 months could see some dramatic changes at Nintendo if hardware countinues to cause profit problems

 

[TheLump]

My WiiU retail impression.

I only have the pro controller, 2 games and no console (thankyou Amazon)

Pro controller feels great to hold, nice build quality. I'm pleasantly surprised as it looked plasticky. Not so. Stick clicks are a bit weak, and almost sound like a double click but tested against my ps3 controller (dual shock 3) feels pretty much the same.

Discs for the game feel strange and actually do have the mythical rounded off edges! Excite.

That's my review so far.



Oh, and everything has that "new" smell.

10/10. Sponsored by Doritos.