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.

And that name certainly doesn't help.  From day one, since it was announced at E3 two years ago, I've felt like that name was gonna cause a lot of confusion.

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?

For some reason, I have some crazy idea that some of this may be according to Nintendo's plans too.

Everyone was panicking after Christmas and then we got an awesome Nintendo Direct out of nowhere.

Everyone is panicking again, and while Nintendo hasn't done or said anything to counter it this time, they just announced what effectively will be the "Year of Luigi."

Wee-Gee has always been seen as the underdog. He's always been second best, living in the shadow of Mario. I have a feeling Mansion 2 is going to kick some serious ass. Some people are expecting the Luigi DLC for NSMB 2 to be the kick in the pants that particular game always needed. Mario and Luigi for 3DS --REALLY-- should be titled Luigi and Mario if Nintendo was smart. The advertising for the game shows many of Mario's past titles re-imagined with Wee-gee as the star. The underlying theme is all about the underdog coming from behind and becoming the hero. What a better way to drive a point home than by making it appear like something is failing, only to do a complete turn-around in the eleventh hour and shock the shit out of everyone. A "Year of Luigi" having Luigi parody Mario may be Nintendo showing a keen sense of where they are falling in the market right now and the games they are producing may be a reflection of their mindset and their business plan. Far-fetched? Yes. Totally out of the realm of possibility? No.

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!

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!

Agreed.  So long as they are making money that's all that matters to me.  I've come to the realization that I'm not a fan of Nintendo's games or franchises, but I do love them, and I do love the unique games that third parties make for their systems (in the Wii era).

I've said it before, I'll say it in a different way again; I think that the gaming industry confused the generation of PS2 through Wii as a boom, when in fact, it was a bubble.  The industry needs to adjust back to their non-mass media status and carve out various niches.  There will still be plenty of money to go around.

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

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.

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?