People can stop saying games are Wii U's problem now. It had no retail software last month and sold 66k. It had 4 games this month and sold a whopping 2k more.
Not that I'm wildly optimistic or anything, but I don't think any of the March releases exactly speak to the impact MK, 3D Mario, or SSB might have on hardware sales.
I have never subscribed to the theory that a game release provides a meaningful single month boost in NPD. It certainly may do so in Japan in the week-to-week, but as near as I figure it from looking at historical numbers, it seems to be more of a bias built into the numbers over a longer term both leading up to the release and, particularly if it's a game changer, in the months and even years following the release. There certainly can be a slight uptick in the month directly attributable to a game, but it seems more often than not the bigger shifts in a given month are due to bundles, price reductions, and obviously holiday shopping at the end of the year.
That is to say, people are not typically buying consoles the very day the game they want gets released. They find an excuse to buy it before, or they buy it that day, or they delay and buy it at some point later, and that some point can indeed be months or years after the release, particularly if they weren't aware of it at the time or the system wasn't in their budget.
This is a long way of saying that those 4 games mattered last month and will next month and the numbers won't change much. And the big hitters that people are counting on to shift some systems are already doing it
right now, and it's also not meaning much. These big games are known properties. One of them could certainly become a game changer and really move some units, I won't say none of them can. But barring some revolution, they won't lead to a tsunami. A gradually rising tide, perhaps.
If Nintendo is to change the fortunes of the Wii U, they're going to need to move the demand line with something akin to the phenomena of Wii Sports, Wii Fit, etc.
Not those games. They're known. But games that simply capture the moment in a way that not many anticipated, certainly to the degree to which they catapulted the Wii into the stratosphere. The problem is those games are like a bolt of lightning. Unfortunately, you never know when or where it's ever gonna strike. (And this is why Nintendo needs Marty McFly.)
