CNN Money writer Adrian Covert has posted an article which basically says Nintendo is clueless and is behind the times. Apparently this writer didn’t do a whole lot of research on this topic because there are several factual errors and misleading statements throughout the article (such as ignoring the fact that DLC and subscription services are very popular on competing platforms, saying PlayStation was Sony’s top console in 2001 (PS2 released in 2000), bashing the Wiiware service for lack of titles on it despite the fact that Wii U came out in 2012 (albeit late 2012) and thus the Wii was no longer the primary focus of developers, and more).
They also seem to have a different definition of “badly missing” than I do when they claim 3.45 million is a huge difference from 4 million. Is 550,000 units a lot? Yes, but it’s only 13.8% of the total. So it’s not “badly missing” in my opinion. Badly would be something 2 million+ off. Lots of sales forecasters would love be that close to an estimate I’m sure. You see forecasts all the time where they say yeah we’re going to sell 50 million units or something ridiculous like that and then they only do 1-2 million and they act surprised/shocked/disappointed. Of course that’s going to happen when you over-inflate forecasts. Is it good that Nintendo missed their forecast? No, of course not, but it’s not quite the dire situation implied by CNN Money.
No the Wii U is not selling like hotcakes, but Nintendo still has time to right the ship. They did it with 3DS despite what this writer has claimed (3DS has already outsold several systems that were on the market far longer).