I have been thinking about what went wrong with Nintendo and if they can fix it. You look back at the Wii and what made it successful it was a totally brand new idea. Everyone has used a touchpad before, almost all a better touchpad than the Wii U pad. No one had ever used anything like the wiimote. It was something you can show off to anyone and instantly grab their attention. The Wii was innovative with the perfect companion game. It became the party game machine, the family machine. The capturing of the casual market allowed them to succeed last gen and maybe that is the market they should have stayed focused on. They still gave us gamers the games we love, just on inferior hardware. They were never going to capture the core gamer market and the third party publishers going head to head with MS and Sony, Nintendo knew this so they switched focus and it worked. They were very healthy for some years and the other consoles were very healthy, everyone was happy.

Then Nintendo decided to go back to the hardcore, a noble gesture but one they are paying for and may be a complete disaster. Of course their biggest mistake is making the hardware a gen back, this is the biggest cause of the lack and future lack of third party games. The Wii Pad is not innovative, its not new, its not something people can latch to and say wow this is cool I want. So the Wii U is not a system core gamers want and its not something casuals even pay attention to, who is this console for? The hardcore Nintendo fans? We are gamers, yeah i buy the console to play Nintendo games but I expect some other stuff. I enjoyed the Wii for three years, it had some cool third party stuff, I dont see that same thing happening with Wii U. The Wii made a great secondary console, I dont know if the Wii U can claim that, you cant ask people to pay over $300 just to play Nintendo games.

Many will point to GC and say Wii U will just be another GC. Gamecube is from another era when third party exclusives were still happening frequently. The GC had Resident Evil exclusivity, some Star Wars games, some other Capcom games, Metal Gear Twin Snakes, big time Sega support. There was plenty of the GC outside of the usual Nintendo games. Also the market was different, PS2 was the king with Xbox and GC fighting for sraps but it still worked for them and made them different. Now we have an era where all three consoles are huge successes and the third party exclusive is almost extinct.

Clearly the Wii U will not be another Wii, the concept simply isnt there and I dont see what they could do to fix it. If they dont get the casuals why would the core get the system if all it has are Nintendo games. It won't be like GC cause there wont be many third party exclusives and that is during this first year when they could keep up. What happens next year when all dev teams shift to new graphics and leave Wii U in the dust. What happens when the new Xbox and PS4 sell well, both outsell the Wii U easily, both offer a huge library of new games and features. Why would third parties put their game on the Wii U? Why would people buy a Wii U without third parties? They are stuck.

Can Nintendo survive on their brand alone, I guess but its going to end up with sales worse than GC, that seems like a total faliure to me. Nintendo needs to refocus and decide what do they want to be. If they do want the core (which they will never get) they have to be up to par with modern systems first before addressing anything else. If they want to do the Wii again they need another spark of innovative concepts, the Wii U is lacking in them. I guess I should have seen this coming but I expected the Wii U would capture more of the casuals than they have. I expected half the sales of the Wii which would still make it a successful system. But I dont see how this system will sell more than the GC at this point, its only going to get worse once the others hit.

Posted by Dvader Sat, 16 Feb 2013 00:23:33 (comments: 56)
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Sat, 16 Feb 2013 03:43:30
phantom_leo said:

It's a three way cluster-fuck. They are continuing their own pathetic Eye-Toy line, while making it sound like an iPad, while making it mimic the Wii U Controller all at the same time. The name may sound like Apple, but the design is stolen from Nintendo.

On the PS2 the EyeToy was a true innovation though (and it actually worked).  It was a worthy pioneer that now has the washed-up loser stoner of a son, the Kinect.

 
Sat, 16 Feb 2013 03:47:22

Ummm... what games were worth owning for Eye Toy...?

 
Sat, 16 Feb 2013 03:51:01
phantom_leo said:

Ummm... what games were worth owning for Eye Toy...?

The best two are EyeToy Play, which alone justifies the EyeToy (the hardware was only $40) and SEGA Superstars.

If you want to stretch and give it a third game, it would be EyeToy Groove.

People seem to have truly gotten into Eye of Judgement on the PS3 -- I never tried it.

 
Sat, 16 Feb 2013 04:40:05
You're completely overthinking it.  Wii U has a novel concept.  Possibly not as novel as the DS or Wii, but still something somewhat different for a dedicated gaming system.  It simply lacks a huge title to drive majority sales.

As much as I really think it's critical to industry growth and even survivability for there to be significantly new ideas, this has to be coupled with a game to really be the benchmark. The DS took off with Nintendogs, then followed up with Brain Training.  Wii had Wii Sports from the get-go.

If we even look at systems with lesser success, what kept them from completely diving?  Xbox survived purely on Halo, GameCube got Smash Bros. relatively early in its life.  PSP slowly picked up support in Japan through Monster Hunter.  We can go way back and say NES had Super Mario Bros., SNES had Super Mario World, N64 Super Mario 64.  What does Wii U have?  What's iconic there?  What captures either the core gaming market, or drives sales in new markets?

tl;dr it needs Miyamoto magic.
 
Sat, 16 Feb 2013 04:55:17
Ravenprose said:

I think the Wii U will be fine in the long run. Yeah, it probably won't be any where near as sucessful as the Wii, but it will make money.

Nintendo needs to forget the hardcore gamers, and focus on Visual Novels. Those are a freakin' gold mine! Both casual and hardcore gamers enjoy them! And Japan as a billion of them just waiting to be released to the world. Nintendo could make their own too. Imagine a Zelda, Luigi and Metroid visual novels with 32 different endings each! Gold, I say! Gold!

http://cdn.chud.com/8/8a/8a19d890_THATS-GOLD-JERRY-GOLD.gif

 
Sat, 16 Feb 2013 05:15:39
travo said:

You hit the nail on the head.  I wonder if Nintendo will jettison the Wii U and start from scratch, building a console with powerful graphics.  That seems pretty extreme and far fetched , but I wonder what kind of regrets do NoJ have at the moment?  People blame Reggie, but is it his fault or Iwata's? Does he get to make a lot of big decisions regarding what kinds of game the US receives or is he a yes man?  

Well he is supposed to market it well to the US and he has clearly failed.

 
Sat, 16 Feb 2013 05:18:57
phantom_leo said:

I have been sitting back for the last week, reading all this doom and gloom, and deciding I am not phased by it in the least.

People are looking at the U now like I was looking at the 3DS last year, and at the moment the 3DS is the system I am holding most near and dear. (Yeah, Fire Emblem is that good.)

The system isn't old enough to pronounce it dead. I find it odd that people are saying "Just wait 'til the next Xbox and PS4 come out!" When all we know about 4 is a decidedly UGLY controller, and the little we've heard about next box has hardly been promising. Kinect? Always online? Games tied to one system?

Everyone is focusing on the negative press surrounding the Wii, when previous designers of the Xbox have been saying how unfocused MS has been about their system and how it's become a mess of ideas that have less and less to do with gaming as time goes by.

Another interesting bit of info I've heard lately is just how close in power both the systems are going to be --AND-- how few console exclusives will exist next gen. Less than THIS GEN?! Is that even possible?!

When it comes down to it, if third parties are going to be the same on all the systems, the thing that will define consoles in the next gen is the quality of the FIRST PARTIES. Ummm... even in this day and age, who tops Nintendo in that?

People are running hotter and colder than a woman in menopause these days. First it was "AWESOME! I GOT A Wii U!" Then it was "WHERE ARE ALL THE GAMES?" Then we got an awesome Nintendo Direct showing Epic Yoshi, Fire Emblem X Shin Megami, the next Xeno game, and announcing the next Mario game, the next Kart game, the pair of Smash games and everyone one was like "THIS IS BETTER THAN E3! NINTENDO IS AWESOME!" A few weeks later Rayman is delayed and it's back to "OH NOES! WHERE ARE ALL THE GAMES?! Wii U is teh FLOPZ!" Did we all forget the Nintendo Direct so quickly?


Nintendo is not the problem, I know we will get some great games for it. It is simply not enough. The Wii U wont be getting the third party games, that is the problem. Everyone will pick between Sony and MS and only those that enjoy Nintendo games will get a Wii U. So once again it will look like GC, but this time it will be left all alone in third place cause neither PS4 nor Xbox will sell that poorly. There will be a huge gap between sales I think.

 
Sat, 16 Feb 2013 05:24:45
Yodariquo said:
You're completely overthinking it.  Wii U has a novel concept.  Possibly not as novel as the DS or Wii, but still something somewhat different for a dedicated gaming system.  It simply lacks a huge title to drive majority sales.


As much as I really think it's critical to industry growth and even survivability for there to be significantly new ideas, this has to be coupled with a game to really be the benchmark. The DS took off with Nintendogs, then followed up with Brain Training.  Wii had Wii Sports from the get-go.


If we even look at systems with lesser success, what kept them from completely diving?  Xbox survived purely on Halo, GameCube got Smash Bros. relatively early in its life.  PSP slowly picked up support in Japan through Monster Hunter.  We can go way back and say NES had Super Mario Bros., SNES had Super Mario World, N64 Super Mario 64.  What does Wii U have?  What's iconic there?  What captures either the core gaming market, or drives sales in new markets?


tl;dr it needs Miyamoto magic.

This is a great point. Everyone is saying Iwata should step down, fire Reggie... um where is the real man in charge of Nintendo. Where is the man that comes up with all the ideas, the one that has made them who they are. What the hell is Miyamoto doing?

 
Sat, 16 Feb 2013 05:28:45

BTW I think Sony will reclaim the thrown. They have everyones attention, everyone is excited. They can really knock it out of the park next week.

 
Sat, 16 Feb 2013 05:36:25
Dvader said:

What the hell is Miyamoto doing?

Retiring.

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