Wii U was ‘disappointing to everybody’, including Nintendo, says GameStop CEO

The Wii U was “disappointing to everybody”, including Nintendo, according to GameStop’s CEO Paul Raines. But despites the console’s failure, he still hopes that the company can come out “with something exciting and innovative” for the Nintendo NX.

“Wii U was disappointing to everybody, including them [Nintendo],” Raines told [a]listdaily. “They made some bold bets, and maybe some of them didn’t work out. But they have a lot of creativity there. They’re a very innovative group of people, so we never count out Nintendo. Even now it’s incredible how strong some of their IP is-Pokémon, for example. We could have a Pokémon weekend this weekend at GameStop and we would break sales records just because every time they put out a new game they have a very loyal fan base. Super Mario, Zelda, all those IPs have a huge, loyal fan base.”

“There is some excitement around NX,”, however, he added earlier in the interview. “Lately here, we’ve been hearing a lot more buzz than we have in the past. Nintendo is interesting in that they really are able to keep things as quiet as they can for a while. And then they just lost their leader, so they’ve gone through a mourning period and so forth.

“NX sounds exciting. We’re looking forward to it. They’re very innovative in everything that they do. I hope that they come out with something exciting and innovative. I think we’ll be dominant distributor of that platform.”

Wii U launched worldwide in November 2012 but failed to live up to the success of its predecessor, with sales standing at 12.8m units – just over 1/10 of the 101m managed by Wii. The firm expects to sell only 800,000 Wii U consoles during its current financial year, down from the 3.2m units sold last year.

It is also reported to have said that Wii U production could come to an end by March 2018, one year after the Nintendo NX launches in March 2017.

Source: alistdaily.com