URGH... Are some people on here STILL preaching this 'worse than GameCube' line of deception!?
First, the Dreamcast was out in North America well after it had been on shelves in Japan. In turn, by the time that it launched, it had more games in its library. You can also see that it had a lower point of entry to ownership than the Wii U. The Dreamcast was the first 6th Generation home console to launch.
You can see very clearly in that graph that the GameCube also had a lower point of entry than the Wii U. The GameCube was the third 6th Generation home console to launch. When both price cuts came into play, their prices are HALF of what the Wii U is now, and that was in a better economic climate.
Skeleton Statistics won't cut it here (that is, simply quoting numbers without flesh/substance). To understand WHY the GameCube is doing better at this point, I'll leave this below:
I went into details about the growth of Nintendo IPs since the GameCube era in that post, but I feel that the above can cast some light on why the GameCube is faring better at a similar point. My position is the same as it's always been - that it needs more of the games that people want, and the biggest selling games (Smash Bros., Mario Kart) aren't there yet; However, I am not in the business of predicting numbers. Super Mario 3D World will continue to do well - However, one must note that the Mario & Luigi Bundle is currently the most popular, and that NSMBU saw a rise, too. I would imagine that there are enough Mario platform games for people to play should they bite now, and would say that those who bought that bundle, and other prospective buyers will most probably buy Super Mario 3D World at some point - This is why they are considered as 'Evergreen'. They might also want to play other games on it, so that they don't suffer from a Mario overload (for want of a better expression) - You can see in threads on here, that some new owners bought Pikmin 3 or The Wonderful 101, for example, and that those waiting to bite are asking for recommendations. There is a sense that its tide is making a turn - More positivity in Wii U-related articles, and a brighter change with regard to perceptions. To reinforce those statements, you can see in the Media Create threads of the last fortnight that following the release of Super Mario 3D World, its numbers picked up, and in the second week, those numbers continued to elevate.
Also, Nintendo released a new LOZ game on the 3DS (According to Iwata, the 3DS is expected to lead Nintendo's drive for 2013-14), and Super Mario 3D World on the same day as the XBox One - that was 22nd November in North America. You had the PS4 launch a week before it, too. So, if we can agree that more or most people had bitten when SM3DWorld released, then one would have to look at what was achieved in the last nine days of that calendar month, and if the majority of units for November were sold in that time, it is actually rather remarkable for a console still with many cards to play, and in the face of two other console launches. I'm saying that a greater insight is needed here. I'm also saying that for a console with such cards available to it, it's in a better position than many on here think it is, and there is no reason for Nintendo to panic. They'll be fine. During its life, it can still hit a profitable $249 point of entry, then a profitable $199, and even a profitable point below that when it reaches its twilight years. It is worth noting that the PS360 consoles did not achieve a full recovery until 2011, some 5 and 6 years after their releases - So, writing off the Wii U at this point is not right or proper, in my opinion. I'm not in the business of predicting numbers. I'm not saying that it will rise to DS heights, and I'm not saying anything about 'winning' the 8th Generation, only that it is extremely misleading to say that it is doing worse than the GameCube, when it's very apparent that without its top cards, without notable support from other parties, and without a stronger marketing drive, it would've suffered a significantly worse fate at the same points.
Furthermore, Nintendo are a compassionate conservative company. They won't kill off the Wii U early, when they've just made a transition to HD game development to release a more powerful system, and potentially quadruple their development costs, which happened with first party studios on the PS4 at launch. They are in a position where a Wii U Fire Emblem game would be viable with sales of 700,000 units - that is profitable to a point of satisfactory return on investment, profitable, or, at worst, breaking even, all on a system showing noticeable steps. With this in mind, I suspect that they will stick with it for quite a while, because it's very much in their interests. Still, the GameCube didn't cease production after having played more of its cards, and it was there for over five years, so it is rotten, premature, fanboyist folly to declare 'death'. As for 'sold at a loss' - No. It has been known that one game makes the transaction profitable, and it won't be sold at a loss forever. Still, this loss is in the U.S. - $299 is NOT the same as 299, or in Britain, £249. They're in the business of making profits, so, where a loss is made, it is natural that they will raise that concern, as investors will want to make the greatest returns possible.
For more details on just how steep a decline would have to be to 'fail harder than the GameCube', I wrote
this a while back. It's a lengthy post. Whatever. That's all that I'll write here.
