Following yesterday's comment by Naughty Dog co-founder and former THQ president Jason Rubin that, "Nintendo is irrelevant as a hardware manufacturer in the console business," analysts have told Bloomberg that Wii U is "not interesting to consumers" adding that the console will fail to meet Nintendo's sales forecasts.
Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter said Nintendo fails to realise just how dire the Wii U's chances are saying the console will fall far short of the company's targets for the current fiscal year:
“They steadfastly refuse to consider that the product is not interesting to consumers. They will fail to hit 9m, and they will likely miss their profit goals.”
Last month Pachter told attendees of the London Games Conference that the Wii U was “toast”.
SMBC Nikko Securities analyst Eiji Maeda supports Pachter's view, saying part of the problem is that only Nintendo fans are interested in the Wii U:
“Wii U has become a game console only for Nintendo fans. Wii U needs ground breaking software to draw casual and hardcore gamers.
“It’s going to be difficult for Nintendo to sell 9 million Wii U consoles this fiscal year. Iwata needs to plan what to do next year if the performance this year isn’t good.”
This follows a report which suggested the Wii U will see GameCube like sales of 25 million or less during its lifetime.
Former Sony developer Kenny Linder, who created Little Deviants, has also posted a damning message on NeoGAF which blasts Nintendo for its recently policies, including releasing Super Mario 3D World in the UK on the same day as the PlayStation 4 launched in the region.
He said the Wii U will not see another Christmas.
Though the message has largely been removed, Nintendo Life managed to copy-paste it before the edits were made:
"Releasing [SM3DW] the same day as PS4 in UK/EU wasn’t wise. The frustrating thing was this game was probably ready to go in October. I think retail and the market will push Nintendo in a direction whether they like it or not. They MUST be in danger of losing shelf space at this point.
“Retail will have four major consoles (PS3/4, 360/One) plus 3DS/2DS to push which will all move units, and it looks like Mario can’t help even poor Wii U out. If it goes from shelves, it will be finished. I am still confident in my crazy mind that Wii U will not see another Christmas after this one. But that’s just me. The future games will just get moved/axed.
“Releasing Mario on Friday was a really stupid thing to do, it could of come out weeks before that. I wonder if the same gamers who buy Nintendo home systems (150k of them in UK) are the same gamers that buy PS4/Xbox? That might explain lack of sales this week. Otherwise, nobody gives a s***.
“Also, I haven’t seen a single Mario 3D World advert on UK TV, whereas the other two (PS4 more so, especially last night, holy s***) are on all the time. They have failed to see what the market wants.”
Super Mario 3D World launched at 14th in the UK charts, behind the critically slammed PS4 platformer Knack.
