Purely Opinion: I don’t care about the Wii U sales
It’s been a while since I wrote an article defending Nintendo and the Wii U. This isn’t one of those articles. This is purely my opinion as a video game connoisseur. As a gamer and not as a media member who relies on Nintendo for work, I don’t care about Nintendo’s sales. What?! How can I not care?! Simple, I am getting everything I want and more. Why should I care?
There hasn’t been a flood of titles for the Wii U like its predecessor at the same point of life. But that doesn’t mean we have missed out the same quality games. At this moment I have 25 Wii U titles, not counting Indie eShop. That’s about a title every 4 to 5 weeks. For me, that’s an overwhelming ratio. In my older age, I don’t have time to complete a game every few days. Most of these games sit half completed. Not because of quality for the game, but quality time on my part. These numbers are skewed with the huge drought at the start of 2013. But droughts happen for most new systems. We are past that now and everything is Pharrell Williams happy.
Looking at my 25 titles, bought and reviewed, all of them, except for one, are titles I would recommend at some level, with half of those being highly recommended – with the one exception being Transformers. There are different approaches to what is considered a “good game.” But I am sure most Wii U owners would have trouble finding more than 3-5 Wii U games that could be considered less than enjoyable or unplayable.
Why are we seeing higher quality games for the Wii U? It comes down to simple numbers.
At the same point in life the Wii was sitting around 25 million units sold, and growing quickly. This higher install base offers a stronger opportunity for sales. Selling games is all about playing the percentages of attach rates. Depending on the level of production, a fair attach rate for AAA software would be around 5-10 percent. A shovelware title, which the Wii was known for, would be happy with around 1-3 percent. Let’s keep this simple and stick to estimated percentages and nice round numbers. Lets’ take 100 million Wii’s – If you take the estimated sales of Mario Galaxy, 11 million, that’s an attach rate of about 11 percent. Mario Galaxy 2, 7 million in sales, an attach rate of 7 percent. Then we have the big title Mario Kart Wii seeing an attach rate of around 34 percent. Let us take this out of the Wii and look at the 360 which had three of its top titles seeing similar numbers; Halo 3 at 17 percent, GTA V at 31 percent and Gears 3 at 7.5 percent.
I was going to continue and talk about the similar attach rate percentage with the major Wii U titles, but I will leave that to you smart people to figure out. Hint, it’s pretty much similar. I want to move on to what all this means. Basically, almost any game with the proper marketing could see success on the Wii. I’m not a statistic expert, but to me it’s pretty simple. With 100 million potential buyers, there are good odds that even a half percent would be the right demographic for a game. That percentage equals 500 thousand in sales for a quick shovelware title from a small team. That is beyond success for a title like this.
Now that we have all those number things out of the way. What does this mean for a gamer like myself? Well its simple my friends, because of the lower install base, developers have to work a lot harder for sales. The days of tossing a game on a system and playing the numbers game is over. Developers have to work harder to impress and draw gamers to purchase their title. In turn, for the most part, Wii U owners are seeing higher quality games. I remember with the Wii waiting through 10 “shovelware” games before that one quality game that I had to own. If you take that into account, I probably was buying a quality Wii game at a similar rate as my current Wii U purchases.
That is why as a consumer of video games, I am happy with the Wii U. Besides the severe drought of early 2013, the Wii U has produced a very strong amount of quality games. I’m not the same gamer I was 15 years ago, with time to play through a game a weekend. For me, a strong quality game a month or so is plenty to keep me happy. If Nintendo sells only 5 Wii U’s a week for the next five years, as a gamer, I don’t care, as long as the Wii U keeps producing high quality games like Rayman Legends, Mario Kart 8, Pikmin 3, Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze, Wind Waker, ZombiU, Monster Hunter Ultimate, The Wonderful 101, Need For Speed, New Super Mario 3D World, and a ton more, I am happy. You don’t have to agree with me, this is my purely opinion.
*All numbers are estimates
June 8, 2014
I wholeheartedly agree. I say all the time: I’m not a shareholder. I don’t have any vested interest in how many units a platform sells (until and unless the sales are poor enough to start impacting how reasonable my expectation of continued support for said platform is.)
Provided I’m getting what I want out of the system, I’m happy. And I am. The Wii U has become the most frequently used platform in my home, even in contrast to my gaming PC. And there’s much more on the way that I’m stoked to play.
June 8, 2014
I have enjoyed my Wii U from Day One. Even when I attended the Wii U Experience prior to release I knew that the Wii U was going to be a wonderful console and at that point the Wii U had sold zero units.
As James said, as an older gamer I don’t have the time I used to and it is hard to find the time to 100% or even get to the end of a game in a timely manner. There are quite a few titles in my Wii U library (15 boxed retail titles & 28 downloaded non-Virtual Console titles) to play and even more on the way! I have never run into a problem with not having something to play on my Wii U. And again as James said, there is a diminutive amount of bad games on the Wii U.
Wii U still has a lot of potential and even if it doesn’t sell enough units to satisfy other, I am completely happy with my decision to buy the Wii U.
June 8, 2014
I really liked reading this, It made a lot good points. It also helped me not to worry so much about Nintendo and their sales. Thanks for the post. Also Junebug81 great point that is a great way to state everything. I too am an old gamer. I really like Nintendo’s IPs and that is what brings me back time and time again to Nintendo and their games.
June 8, 2014
Great read, and so, so true. It gets tiring hearing about the negativity around the lacklustre sales performance of the Wii U., when everyone who actually owns one knows it’s a great system with top-notch games. It’s a little like being in a secret club – only the members (i.e. Wii U owners) know that they’re onto something good, and those not in the “club” just don’t get it.
June 9, 2014
Very well put I like the “club” idea you said, I think you explained it very well.
June 9, 2014
Thanks! Hopefully I showed some of my extended family how great the Wii U is today with a little 4-player Mario Kart 8 action. Soo much fun!
June 9, 2014
No problem… Mario Kart 8 is such a great game. I have been playing with my son.