Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia says that Nintendo’s holiday season went worse than expected because of the fact that the Wii U’s hardware sales at GameStop are low, and that the system’s availability across all GameStop stores is “abundant.”
He also said that the Wii U has a low attach rate at GameStop stores, though he did not provide any specific figures.
“Our conclusion is the Nintendo Wii U launch has been slightly disappointing,” Bhatia said.
The $350 Wii U Deluxe model is selling better than the $300 basic version at GameStop, according to Bhatia’s investor note. This is probably due to the higher value for money in the costlier model, since it has 32GB storage space and a bundled copy of Nintendo Land. The basic version has only 8GB worth of storage space.
The Wii U managed to sell 400,000 units during its first week, and its overall sales were going strong as per the last report, so this comes as a bit of a shock.
Stay tuned for more updates.
[GameSpot]
