The Nintendo Wii U got off to a decent start during the 2012 holiday season, but as soon as the new year arrived things basically went to hell. The Wii U only sold 57,000 units during the entire month of January, leaving many to suggest that Nintendo was already out for the count.
In fairness, 57,000 units is an abysmal number for a brand new video game system in its third month on the market. If there was anything good to take out of the data, it was that Wii U sales couldn't possibly get any worse.
In February, the Wii U definitely performed better, but it still ended up disappointing. Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter sent out a note to investors this week claiming that Nintendo's system only sold about 80,000 units — the same amount of units moved by the six-year-old Wii.
Worse, though, is that it continued to be outsold by competitors. The PlayStation 3 sold 165,000 consoles while the Xbox 360 continued to dominate with 225,000 units sold.
"The Wii sold nearly double our estimate as the Wii U vastly underperformed our expectations, likely due to a relatively thin release slate and an unusual number of returns," Pachter said. "It is difficult to envision a turnaround in Wii U hardware sales without a price cut or until more compelling software becomes available, but we think that weekly sales of 20,000 units is likely."
The big question is how the Wii U will fare when heavy hitters like the PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720 (codenamed Durango) hit shelves later this year. Both systems will sport more processing power than the Wii U and probably have a greater focus on online interaction and social integration, so unless Nintendo starts releasing some innovative new content, the Wii U could be in trouble.
"We think that the long-term appeal of the console will be severely limited by the perception that the next consoles from Microsoft and Sony will be much more powerful with greater online integration and multimedia functionality," Pachter said.
Earlier this week, Super Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto admitted Wii U sales haven't been ideal, but he said he isn't quite worried about the system's future just yet.
