14 DAY TRIAL // A game developer that has previously worked on Little Deviants believes that the Wii U home console from Nintendo will not be able to survive until the Christmas shopping period of 2014.
The device will fail to generate sales despite a set of new releases.
In a NeoGAF post that has since been heavily edited, but preserved by Nintendo Life, Kenny Linder states, “Retail will have four major consoles (PS3/4, 360/One) plus 3DS/2DS to push which will all move units, and it looks like Mario can’t help even poor Wii U out. If it goes from shelves, it will be finished. I am still confident in my crazy mind that Wii U will not see another Christmas after this one.”
Most of the blame for the declining fortunes of the Wii U is linked to Nintendo, which has made bad business decisions, like choosing to launch the new Super Mario 3D World at the same time as the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One were reaching the market.
The game maker also believes that more marketing was needed to promote the game, which offers one of the most innovative experiences linked to the franchise in the last few years.
He adds, “The frustrating thing was this game was probably ready to go in October. I think retail and the market will push Nintendo in a direction whether they like it or not. They MUST be in danger of losing shelf space at this point.”
Recently, a number of other game executives have expressed their doubts about the future prospects of the Wii U and analyst Michael Pachter says that pressure from the Xbox One, the PlayStation 4 and mobile devices is taking potential sales away from the device.
Nintendo still claims that new Mario and Zelda games will be able to make players interested in its home console once more and plans to sell 9 million of them before March 31, 2014.