2013 Gift watch: Wii U

Everyone's in a tizzy about the "new" console generation, conveniently forgetting that, market-wise, it was already here a year ago with the release of Nintendo's Wii U. It isn't as advanced technologically as the new Sony's PlayStation and Microsoft's Xbox One, but the Wii U's like the kid who still likes Ninja Turtles when everyone's moved on to Power Rangers: They might not be as cool, but they're still your classmate, and they're still going to graduate with everyone else. Nintendo might seem a little square compared to Sony and Microsoft right now, but it still has the skills to succeed in school.

At launch, Nintendo sold out its entire initial allotment of 400,000 Wii U's -- which looked promising -- but after the holidays, sales softened significantly and continued to slide. By E3, the situation wasn't looking so good. Just a few months later, Nintendo announced a price cut of $50 for the console, reducing its profit on each unit sold. However, the price reduction also moved a lot of units, with the Wii U experiencing a 200 percent uptick in sales for the month of September.

Nintendo's ultimate goal in selling the console at a loss is to put more machines in homes so it can sell more games. In some cases, though, the games will sell the machines. The Wii U just experienced a 1,400 percent bump in Japanese sales due to the release of Wii Party U, going from a paltry 2,500 units moved in a week to almost 39,000. Not bad for a late-October release.

The Wii U's competition was soft on the eve of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One launches. With the new systems yet to launch, those who hadn't purchased any system (old or new) were probably waiting to see how things would shake out before making their decisions. The entire console market was in a holding pattern, with the majority of sales spurred by new game releases like The Last of Us and Grand Theft Auto V. Nintendo's also counting on games to sell its systems, especially around the holidays -- Super Mario 3D World launched last Friday, just in time for the shopping season.