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)
<< prevnext >>
 
Sat, 16 Feb 2013 05:39:24
Ravenprose said:

Retiring.

Good then that will inspire him to make some game about retirement that will be genius and sell millions of copies.

 
Sat, 16 Feb 2013 05:44:58
Dvader said:

Good then that will inspire him to make some game about retirement that will be genius and sell millions of copies.

Finally a Matlock game.

 
Sat, 16 Feb 2013 12:21:47
Dvader said:

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.

Yes, because after PS3 pricing, Home, Removal of Backwards Compatability, Move, PSP Go, Playstation Store Security, 3D Televisions, Skyrim and Call of Duty, Wonderbook, Vita and Next to nothing to play for most of 2012 (except for Playstation All Stars) they are clearly on a roll lately.



 
Sat, 16 Feb 2013 12:33:44

I am just playing Devil's Advocate here, by the way, with EVERYTHING I am posting. Nintendo's not showing much to inspire confidence, unless you read between the lines (which, with Nintendo, usually turns out to be wrong) ---BUT--- everyone's arguments that EVERYONE else will be better next generation is complatetly flawed based on THIS generation's mistakes and the fact that we currently know NOTHING about MS and Sony's machines yet.

Examples: What games is everyone looking forward to that we know 100% are coming? What will the gimmicks be or will there be no gimmicks? What are the ACTUAL specs of these machines?

You shouldn't be excited yet, if you don't know ANYTHING yet! Saying Nintendo is in trouble based on knowing NOTHING about Next Gen is kinda silly.



 
Sat, 16 Feb 2013 12:45:10

It is too early to say if Nintendo is in trouble, and while they're going to suck ass for a while I think they'll bounce back into a N64 role once again. You'll have great first party games and Platinum taking the place of Rare.

And really I have a feeling every console is going to have some trouble next gen. As I've said, developers still can't get a game out on time for the PS3 right now. I don't see that getting better for the PS4. The entire casual market pretty much looks like it's left the console world, and I don't see them coming back. So the entire gaming market is going to shrink around the board.  And when ever system doesn't sell quite as much Patcher and every other analyst will start painting illogical doomsday scenarios that will make all 3 of the companies (and Ouya) look like fools for not filing bankruptsy .

 
Sat, 16 Feb 2013 12:47:56

I say it's NOT time to fire Iwata or Reggie, but it's time to fire Pachter!

Seriously... everyone was loving them (Wata and Reg) last month, now everyone wants them fired?

Talk about fickle!  Nyaa

 
Sat, 16 Feb 2013 12:50:05

In all fairness I don't think anyone has really loved Reggie for a while. He lost my fan support at E3 last year for general douchebaggery.

 
Sun, 17 Feb 2013 00:59:10
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.

 
Sun, 17 Feb 2013 12:51:32
This system won't be as popular as Wii simply because it costs more and the casual market that Wii had has lost interest in gaming IMO.

I think it could easily sell around the same as the other new consoles though. Once Nintendo starts breaking out the major titles, it will sell. They may not have Resident Evil exclusive like the Cube days, but they have other 2nd and 3rd party exclusives with likely many more to follow, since as they said, they are looking to collaborate.
They could easily end up with more exclusives than the Gamecube had...my only question is....is the system going to get the multi-platform support that Cube had?

People seem to forget the Cube actually had decent multi-platform support. That's an area I could see Wii U lacking in.

But exclusives? There won't be a problem there.

Don't forget, Nintendo will also be developing more of those crappy casual games and the Wii U still supports motion controls as well.
 
Mon, 18 Feb 2013 02:12:29

Why do people think the "casual" market has lost interest when Dance Central and the like still crap all over "hardcore" games. Sure sales aren't so great for "hardcore" games, but then it's still obviously a market people would want to go after if the alternate is even worse.

<< prevnext >>
Log in or Register for free to comment
Recently Spotted:
*crickets*
Login @ The VG Press
Username:
Password:
Remember me?