The Wii U “isn’t going to work”, according to prominent video game industry analyst Michael Pachter. He believes the Wii U won’t achieve the same success as the original Wii console, which has sold almost 100 million units worldwide. This isn’t the first time Pachter is critical of the Wii U — he previously said the Wii U could be the next Dreamcast.
“I don’t get it. Somebody had an idea — ’let’s make the controller a tablet’ — and there aren’t many games that are going to take advantage of that” said Pachter in an interview with Edge. His comments are surprising, considering that plenty of third party developers are already on board and we’ve seen what the new GamePad tablet controller can do. Pachter added that Nintendo “got lucky” with the Wii, and they won’t get lucky with the Wii U.
“Hardcore gamers will buy the Wii U, hardcore Nintendo fanboys will buy it. They [Nintendo] could put out a piece of cardboard and say that it’ll play Mario and they’ll buy it”. Pachter added that having the Wii U console being “novel” won’t work this time around.
It’s obvious that the Wii U won’t match the sales numbers of the Wii — the video game market is very different today, as is the economy. The PlayStation 4 and the next Xbox won’t sell more than the Wii either. But Pachter is really pushing it by saying the Wii U won’t work, especially since we don’t know the launch price of the console. On top of that, a lot of game developers seem very excited about the Wii U and the new controller. Not to mention the gamers out there who are looking forward to the new console.
