10 million units sold. Profitable as of Q1 2015. Sales are comparable to XBox One.
Its total sales since release are âcomparable toâ the XBox One (where âcomparable toâ == âis only 3 million lessâ), but its release was quite a bit earlier, and that gap will only grow with time, as their actual rates of sales are not quite so âcomparable.â This week, the XBone sold 120,000 units, while the WiiU sold 42,000.
As consoles go, Iâm personally most interested and excited in Nintendoâs stuff. But I have no illusions about their comparative performance in this generation.
Is the Wii U current gen or previous? Iâve been placing it as a late comer to the previous gen with XB 360 E since they came out around the same time and Nintendo NX as the late comer to the current gen which is due out in 2016.
In either case, itâs far from something almost no one has unless you consider 10 million homes almost no one.
That doesnât track at all. If the Wii U is part of an earlier gen than the PS4/XBone, then the XBox 360 is part of an earlier gen than the PS3/Wii by dint of also being released a year ahead of the competitionâŚ
A better analog for the 360 E would be the Wii Mini, a late-released repackaging of a previous-gen console at a budget price. The Wii U is its own separate platform from the Wii, and its release signaled the beginning of the 8th console gen.
Iâm not sure what statistical/rhetorical weight lumping in the Wii U with the previous gen does for its numbers, as if you stick it in that then, youâre not only comparing it to the XBone and the PS4, but to the insane number of the Wii itself, which only emphasizes how much the Wii U has underperformed, sales-wise.
Honestly, since weâre speaking globally, 10 million homes is a very small install base. Itâs significantly smaller than the install base for any other Nintendo system or handheld, bar the Virtual Boy. Itâs an install base that hovers around that for similar small cult-following systems like the Turbo Grafx 16 and the Dreamcast.
This is not a comment on the quality of the system, its games, or of Nintendo, of course.
I see where you are coming from. You consider game gen beginning in 2000 which is perfectly fine. I suppose thatâs just how itâs discussed these days. Itâs a handy way to compare whatâs on the market especially when hyping the âconsole warsâ. Myself, I see the Wii as 7th gen Nintendo and Wii U as 8th. Nintendo is showing profits now with the Wii U which kinda makes it a successful console IMO.
Now if I could sell 10 million units of anything, I promise you I will never consider that a small customer base. Nintendo has the enviable problem of selling more game systems than anyone. So, when compared to sales of other consoles, it may seem like a poor showing but that seems to miss the mark in my view.
And I still think the Turbo Grafx 16 is a cool system.
I think the TG16 is a cool system. I also think the Wii U is a cool system. But, again, weâre not discussing any systemâs subjective quality or coolness, but rather its quantitative install-base.
Most generational nomenclature (including the framework Iâm using) places Wii U in the â8th generation,â which also includes the PS4 and XBox 360. So, if thatâs where youâre placing the Wii U, we are actually in agreement, but some of your points earlier about Wii U being âprevious genâ donât really track, since the 8th is the current gen.
Also, Iâm not âhypingâ any âconsole wars,â just using the clearest, most intuitive, and agreed-upon historical frameworks for talking about this stuff. (A generation is a generation. My oldest uncle doesnât get to be my grandpa simply because heâs older than my other uncles.)
But Iâm honestly not clear why youâve introduced this generation stuff, as, again, when held up against this generation, or the previous generation, or Nintendo hardware across generations, the Wii U has had a very, very small adoption rate, and consequently its (often innovative and high quality) software has had a very small impact.
I think I used KidPix in the early 90s. IIRC I love the easy interface, and some of the image-filters FX. I had access to Photoshop at the time as well, but there were some things that KidPix just did ⌠better, IMHO.
Writing the black and white version was quite a challenge for me and I
had no idea how to program color. I anticipated several months just to
convert what I had done into color. As it turned out I figured out the
basics of the conversion in about a day, which left lots of time to work
on new features.
How often does that happen?!?
##Once.
No argument here - I just donât see it that way. Difference of perspective and all that. This is the 8th generation for Nintendo⌠sure. But if we decide to call all current consoles 8th gen, we have to call everything from 1993 to 2006 the 5th generation which included both 32 and 64 bit systems. In other words, we would have to consider 32 bit RISC systems at 12.5 MHz in the same generation as 64 bit RISC at 93 MHz. Thatâs a world of difference. I donât see lumping everything in that 13 year span as a single generation of consoles as being accurate, practical, or particularly useful outside a marketing paradigm.
Maybe Iâm alone in this but to me this is the 3/4th gen for Sony (depending on how you view the concurrent release of PS1 and PS2). For MS, this is the 3rd generation.
I suppose the question that illustrates this best for me is âWas the Wii designed to compete with consoles not yet on the market or consoles in the current market.â People keep saying that Nintendo is the first to market with the new console but I see it as being last to market.
Itâs a bit like how some Gen Xrs are now considered Gen Y.
The 32 and 64 bit systems released concurrently, and ran software of comparable technical sophistication (And in many respects the 64-bit system played games that were technically inferior due to factors other than processors, which indicates that fixating on the number of âbitsâ a system boasted is precisely the kind of âconsole warsâ-style pointless advertising jargon you were claiming to distance yourself form). There is no meaningful reason to place them in different generations, either.
The â5th generationâ label doesnât âlump everything in that 13-year spanâ under a single label, either. The lifetimes of consoles, and their respective generations overlap. While the consoles of the 5th generation were an ongoing concern from 93-06, the 6th generation of consoles began in '98 with the release of the Dreamcast.
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