Wii U outsells PS4 3-1 in Japan, Ubisoft and COD skip Wii U, Wii U Preorder Increase – WiR 8/23/14

Welcome to the latest edition of Nintendo Enthusiast's Week in Review. Join Shawn Long as he breaks down the big Nintendo news of the week such as the Wii U dominating Japanese home console sales, Wii U preorders spiking high after Gamescom, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare skipping the Wii U, and much more. Don't miss out on a great Retro Game of the Week, and be sure to enter the contest to win Resident Evil: Revelations on 3DS!

[Axios2]

Congrats to Nintendo and the WiiU

[Corpser]

Nope neither is selling well, ps4 sales are in the thousands a week, RIP console gaming in Japan

[Alinea]

probably because console gaming in general is pretty bad right now, actually, majority of gaming, micro transactions, crap ports, timed exclusives, season passes, charged online gaming on the twins, ps4s being bricked etc.

[CloudRap]

Who needs them anyways? JRPGs are for creepy dorks

[ABizzel1]

Ya for Nintendo.

Now the real deal.

1. None of the consoles are really selling well in Japan. The Wii U is competing with the PS3 in weekly sales (an 8 year old console). The PS4 is doing bad, because there's no Japanese games on it, and those that are are generally on the PS3 as well, which is Japan I guess isn't worth upgrading over for the majority of gamers.

2. Japan is the smallest of the big 3, and chances are it could very well be dropped out of the Big 3 in favor of China is sales prove worthwhile over there. The combines sales of the last generation of consoles, aka the most successful console cycle in total sales ever was around 25 million consoles sold. Each console did more in the other 2 main regions than the combined sales of all 3 consoles in Japan. We constantly forget Japan is only a country (a highly populated, but small country), not a continent. For a country those sales are very good, but in comparison Japan isn't a make or break for these consoles, though the 10+ million sales do help Sony and Nintendo overall. Chances are China is about to knock Japan out of the big 3.

Here's hoping for an impressive TGS to get the Japanese gaming scene by up there, because it's currently on the rocks. Handheld and mobile gaming has taken over there, but hopefully the Wii U and PS4 can revitalize that, and even the XBO.

[Magicite]

we need next-gen JRPGS.
@KrimzonSnow Get back to your attic and fast!

[Metallox]

Xenoblade X is a very next gen JRPG.

[user367272]

Imagine the ratio when Xenoblade X comes out..the Wii U should do some serious damage. What I love about Japanese gamers is that they understand spec does not make a difference based on their love and suppprt for gameboy to DS to Wii U over much heralded more powerful competition.

[paddy95]

Wii u wins again!

[jcnba28]

Vert impressive Nintendo. Sony needs some jrpg's on PS4 fast.

[imt558]

I'm curious which games was cut off from Sony Gamescom conference and they are ready for TGS, according to Shuhei.

[ritsuka666]

Why do you think most jrpgs will save ps4 in japan? lol

[Remy_Chaos]

That's good for Nintendo but they're delusional if they think its going to stay like this forever. Hopefully Sony has some big news for TGS, I still think Persona 5 should've been for PS4.

[darkstar18]

Well we know it isnt the last guardian..

[Remy_Chaos]

Hehe Sony should just admit Rime is The Last Guardian. Also why the disagrees? Geez I just bought a Wii U earlier this month, lol some people.

[ritsuka666]

they're delusional if they think its going to stay like this forever. ''

And you are delusional if you think if PS4 will sell like hotcakes suddenly. lol

[Remy_Chaos]

Oh no I'm gonna run out of bubbles, oh well. Anyways I never said anything about hotcakes though they are delicious. I know consoles overall aren't doing so hot in Japan but as developers start moving from PS3 and other platforms, the PS4 will begin to move units. However Japan in heavily into mobile so I don't see PS4 reaching PS3 numbers but they'll be lucky if they do so. I'm not sure how well the Wii sold in Japan but I doubt Wii U will reach it's numbers.

[TongkatAli]

Irony at its finest, get ready to eat crow when Kingdom Hearts 3 and Final Fantasy XV come out on the PS4.

I bet it's going to outsell the Japan install base of the Wii U in one hour when one of those games drop.

[Neonridr]

@TongkatAli - you mean like when the 3DS sells games like MH4 and Pokemon X & Y which sell like 1/2 the world's Vita population just in their country? :P

I can play that game too.

[Sly-Lupin]

In Japan, people buy consoles in order to play games. They're so silly.

[Sashamaz]

As long as those games feature 12 year old trollops the Japanese will flock the stores.

[lilbroRx]

No, I'm pretty sure that is not how that works. People interesting in those types of games in Japan are an extremely small minority.

Them being all that Japan fetishists in America seem to care about doesn't make them all or even most of what there is.

[DefenderOfDoom2]

ARCADES !!!

[Geekman]

Odd how the better it does the more support it loses.

"Sorry, Wii U, but you're not struggling as hard anymore and I've lost interest."

[Sashamaz]

Doing slightly well in one week does not do much to change the overall failure of the system, furthermore the region where it sold well the week is not know for buying western games so from a business point of view why would you waste money making games for a demographic that wont be interested when you can just focus in areas hat you know you are guaranteed sales.

[marloc_x]

32 million pieces of software..failure?

[knifefight]

I don't know how anyone disagreed with you.

Oh wait, yes I do. They have no memories.

People look at one week -- or maybe two weeks -- worth of data and they boldly declare that a system is either "dead" or "soaring" and that's it, case closed.

That's short-sighted and dumb. You've gotta look at a period of months, not days, to get a real picture of what's going on.

[windblowsagain]

Console gaming isn't doing well in Japan.

It's all Handhelds and weird games.

SONY/MS know this.

USA/EUROPE are all that's important now.

[lilbroRx]

Actually, it is.

People are misreading the numbers. Prices of hardware and software in Japan aren't the same in the U.S. Also, the amount of revenue generated by them and profit margins aren't the same as they are in the U.S.

A game selling 200,000 in Japan is sometimes profitable for Japanese companies than a game selling 500,000 in the U.S. Less hands touched means less expenditure. Those numbers are smaller on paper compared to U.S. sales, but they aren't bad when viewed in proper context.

The Wii U is doing quite well in Japan and Nintendo software has been dominating for a long time.

[Codewow]

That's a win for Nintendo despite it being a huge franchise. Call of Duty is one of the scums of the earth as of a few years ago, so getting that scum off your console is good progress for the industry, maybe they'll stop releasing for PC too.

[OUROSMAG]

For real, stop using the rising sun flag whenever you reference japan..... It's offensive to them.

[R00bot]

Not surprised by this really, PS4 seems to be catering more to the Western Audience.

[breakpad]

the same it happened with Wii also...and didnt manage to close 2 years it started sinking to the abyss ...and if you think that there is no monster hunter now to support them (the deal with Capom must be expired by now) lets see what Nintendo will do when the big guns of PS4 will come out ..

[Realplaya]

It's not that Japanese gamers don't play home consoles it's just they refuse to buy consoles without games to play.

[BigDuo]

It's a shame Wii U's victory is a hollow one due to how badly all home console sales have been performing. Wii U has it worse considering it actually has flagship titles released.

Unfortunately, the original Xenoblade did not sell well in Japan despite debuting #1 on the software charts with 83k copies. By its second week of release, it sold a mere 20k copies and dropped down from #1 to #4 on the charts with a decrease of -75%. By its third week, Xenoblade dropped out of the top 10 chart, landing in 15th place. By its fourth week, it dropped down to 22nd place.It dropped al the way down to #49 out of 50 no the chart by around a month after its release. In the 6 months of its release in 2010, Xenoblade reportedly only sold 161,161 copies... and half of those sales were just from launch week alone. For the record, Wii had an install base of over 10 million units back in 2010.

Xenoblade X's chances of selling well seem pretty slim already, but when you factor in the overall software and hardware sales performance of Wii U in Japan, things look worse for its potential sales performance in its home country. It's sad the game won't likely do well even globally, , but at least were thankful that Monolith Soft is able to make it all. Hero-Nopon!

[lizard81288]

"Wii U preorders spiking high after Gamescom, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare skipping the Wii U"

I read that without the comma, thinking sales spiked because CoD wasn't coming to the wiiu.

[randomass171]

It'd be hilarious if it was true. :P

[Picnic]

When the PS3 came out, it was a significant upgrade from the PS2. The two later 128 bit consoles in that generation, the Xbox and Gamecube, had better processors than the PS2. And even though the PS2 could compete against them both because of its custom architecture (see the Silent Hill series great graphics on PS2), the fact that the Gamecube discs held less memory and great artsy games like Shadow of the collosus, it still 'on paper' had the lower processor- although it was greater than the Dreamcast's.

So the PS3 was superseding the PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, Xbox360 and Wii - 5 consoles.

Yet even though the PS4 is the most powerful console of its generation, it is only superseding the WiiU and Xbox One- 2 consoles. This is because the PS3 can lay claim to first superseding other consoles. On those terms, the leap is not as great for Sony as it was last time. The PS3 was a very capable machine.