The analyst also criticizes Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and Activision

Dec 11, 2012 09:16 GMT  ·  By

Customers purchase 1.2 games with each Nintendo Wii U they buy, according to an analyst that dissected the numbers offered by the NPD group last week, who also claimed that Activision shouldn't brag about the performance of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

Nintendo released the Wii U last month all around the world and, judging by the first initial estimates, sales are quite good, as plenty of people flocked to purchase the new home console.

What's more, according to other surveys, plenty of people decided to buy the pricier Wii U packages which included either a copy of Nintendo Land or ZombiU as well as the 32GB version of the home console plus a variety of other accessories.

According to the NPD data, deciphered by Longbow Research's James Hardiman, via GamesIndustry, each Wii U customer bought 1.2 games for it, which is much lower than 2 games sold for every Wii console back in 2006.

This is due to several reasons, according to Hardiman, starting with the Nintendo Land or ZombiU bundles, which already had games for the console, as well as the fact that the console is quite expensive, which didn't allow that many new owners to buy extra games for it.

The analyst also commented on the sales figures registered by Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, which sold around 7.4 million copies during November, less than the sales registered by the previous game in the series, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

Even if Activision boasted the fact that Black Ops 2 reached $1 billion (€774,000) a day quicker than Modern Warfare 3, Hardiman notes that the period in which the new game achieved this included Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

"We do not believe that Activision did itself any favors by putting out a press release on Wednesday touting that Black Ops II had crossed $1 billion in just 15 days, faster than the 16 days required for Modern Warfare 3 to reach the $1 billion mark," Hardiman said.

"What management did not mention is the fact that with an earlier release date, Modern Warfare 3 was able to reach $1 billion a day before Thanksgiving, whereas Black Ops II was not able to get there until after Cyber Monday."

While both the Wii U and Black Ops 2 had decent results, it seems that they didn't really succeed in achieving that big of a success.