Video game analyst Michael Pachter has been critical of Nintendo and the Wii U in the past, to say the least. He followed today’s Wii U preview event and tweeted his thoughts during the show. And judging by those tweets, he sounds pretty optimistic. At one point, he says that the Wii U will “sell out through April at least”. He bases this on his expectation that Nintendo will manufacture 1 million Wii U consoles per month, which would mean Nintendo would ship 7 million consoles through March 2013, according to Pachter. And all of them will sell out, reportedly. He adds that he expects the 30% of the Wii U consoles to be allocated to the US, which would be 300,000 consoles per month.
The Wii U will ship in two flavors: a $299 “Base” version and a $349 “Deluxe” version. Regarding the price, Pachter said that he “thinks Nintendo is pricing it right” and that Nintendo has “fervent fans who will buy at this price”. He also predicts that the Wii U will see a price cut in 2013.
On the games side, Pachter was equally impressed. He said that third party support for the Wii U was “pretty solid”, and Nintendo titles looked “high quality”. He also believes that Activision’s support of the Wii U with a lot of casual titles (sans Black Ops 2), signals that “they think the Wii U market is casual”.
So far, Pachter seems pretty optimistic judging by those tweets (you can read them here). In addition to the price, Nintendo also revealed that 50 Wii U games will be released during the launch window, which spans through March 2013.
