Wii U Was A Mistake – Michael Pachter

Michael Pachter is an industry analyst renowned for his uncanny and indispensable grasp of the obvious. He often blurts out things that anybody with an internet connection and primary school reading abilities. Regardless, he has something rather controversial to say today and we’d best let him say it since we love our controversy here at eGamer. We’d obviously prefer to manufacture our own but that doesn’t always go down so well so we’ve outsourced it.

Looking at the UK market sales figures, the Wii U only accounted for 1.6% of the nation’s total games market spend in January. He went so far as to call the console a joke by virtue of the manner in which retailers undercut themselves in order to compete with each other and guarantee a sale.

Speaking with GamesBeat, Pachter said, “I think [Nintendo] misfired on the Wii U. It’s just not that different from the other two [existing] consoles, and the gameplay isn’t as unique as the Wii. They made a mistake, it’s something they probably can’t recover from.

“I think they have made a costly mistake. And their handheld business can’t save them in the face of cannibalization from smartphones and tablets.”

As a comparison, Nintendo failed to sell over 100,000 Wii U consoles in the US through January, while around 281,000 Xbox 360 consoles were shifted by Microsoft in the same region. For further comparison, Wii U sales in the US are currently 38% down on the original Wii.

Personally, I didn’t see much purpose to the Wii U and still don’t with next-gen console just around the corner. It may be the most powerful console for now but there’s no serious incentive to ditch your Xbox or PS3 for it.