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[Mihael Mello Keehl]

Comparing handhelds and consoles. Smh.
Nintendo gets great third party support on handhelds.
Nintendo gets shitty third party support on consoles.
Sony gets shitty third party support on handhelds.
Sony gets amazing third party support on consoles.

HANDHELDS AND CONSOLE MARKETS ARE NOT THE SAME. The expectations are different. Nintendo fucked up the 3DS launch and it's lack of success freaked Nintendo out enough to give 20! Free games to early adopters and slash the price. combined with these moves AND good software it started to sell. Still selling shitty in the West and Nintendo has confirmed as such.

The 3DS also wasn't competing with another dedicated system (other than the DS) for a year. The Wii U should have had similar success but Nintendo once again fucked up. The difference now is it's competing with a 150 million tag team juggernaut AND will be competing with another tag team juggernaut in 6 months.

Microsoft and Sony are giving publishers and devs what they want AND are doing it on TWO consoles. Nintendo didn't give pubs and devs what THEY wanted and did it on one console. Devs and pubs WILL support two consoles cs one just like last gen.

Nintendo fucked up. It's trying to replicate it's emergency escape from the 3DS on to the Wii U and the markets and situations are entirely different. Nintendo was competing against itself with the 3DS way before the Vita and it ended up succeeding (the Vita flopping didn't hurt). Nintendo is now competig against Microsoft and Sony for the next 5+ years and it's doing it without the Wiimote and without third party support. The same situation it found itself in pre Wii.

Yea, Nintendo is going to need a MIRACLE and unfortunately miracles don't usually happen to the same company in back to back products.

No. Consoles and handhelds are different beasts altogether. You don't play handheld games to experience virtual presence and a story with forward momentum, it's really inconvenient if you have to remember at which stop to get out of the train. Handheld games are more about gameplay than immersion and therefore place a lower strain on the hardware capabilities. It is actually precisely this that Sony have gotten wrong two times in a row in trying to 'bring the console experience to handheld gaming'.

Well if you want to talk about 3rd party then go ahead. There is some people who talk lowly of the first party titles because they could have looked better. People always say consoles arent the same as handheld well you are crazy its all video game consoles.

 

[wsippel]

Underpowered compared to PS4/720, I doubt people would think the WiiU, a console that is out more than 6 years after the start of the current generation is underpowered compared to PS3/360.

It may be underpowered compared to PS4, yet still more powerful than most people think. That's most likely what he's talking about. Also, read my edited post for an answer to the "special sauce" thing.

 

[Unknown One]

There is a reason why Nintendo isn't telling us the full specs. If they were proud of it I bet they would leak the whole spec.

 

[wsippel]

There is a reason why Nintendo isn't telling us the full specs. If they were proud of it I bet they would leak the whole spec.

They don't release the specs because they don't matter and because nobody would understand them to begin with. Sony and MS release specs as marketing stunts, and those "specs" are usually misleading, highly theoretical bullshit figures. Remember when the PS3 supposedly had 2TFLOPS? Now it appears that not even the PS4 will have 2TFLOPS. I wonder how Sony plans to spin this.

 

[JordanN]

They don't release the specs because they don't matter

Wtf?

Specs matter about anything involving technology.

 

[Forsaken82]

Wtf?

Specs matter about anything involving technology.

I think he means to the press.

 

[JordanN]

I think he means to the press.

I don't see press mentioned anywhere.

 

[wsippel]

Wtf?

Specs matter about anything involving technology.

The developers need to know. The consumers don't. Do you know how many MHz the CPU in your car entertainment system has? Probably not. And you probably don't give a fuck either, as long as it does what it's intended to do. Same thing with game consoles. Those are embedded, fixed configuration devices, designed for a specific purpose. All that ultimately matters is that they're strong enough to do what they were created for.

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

They don't release the specs because they don't matter and because nobody would understand them to begin with. Sony and MS release specs as marketing stunts, and those "specs" are usually misleading, highly theoretical bullshit figures. Remember when the PS3 supposedly had 2TFLOPS? Now it appears that not even the PS4 will have 2TFLOPS. I wonder how Sony plans to spin this.

Nobody would understand the specs to begin with? lol my gawd.

 

[JordanN]

The developers need to know. The consumers don't. Do you know how many MHz the CPU in your car entertainment system has? Probably not. And you probably don't give a fuck either, as long as it does what it's intended to do. Same thing with game consoles.

Why shouldn't consumers know? They're buying a product, knowing what's inside shouldn't be seen as a great offense.

Comparing a car system to a console seems farfetch. It's always expected it will play music whereas games can be held back if there isn't sufficient processing power.

Although I've seen specs for car systems before so I guess consumers do care?

 

[TunaLover]

I've been preaching about the importance of co-developments before as a good measure the fill the voids in genres and droughts, in fact I can see those as the only viable way that Nintendo can get quality software from external developers, I hope we hear more about these in the future, even if they are not system sellers they help to consolidate and open the system demography, is up to Nintendo to go after developers, after all they still have good realationships with Japanese developers. But Nintendo is so conservative, they want a succesfully platform without throwing too much money on it.

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

Why shouldn't consumers know? They're buying a product, knowing what's inside shouldn't be seen as a great offense.

Comparing a car system to a console seems farfetch. It's always expected it will play music whereas games can be held back if there isn't sufficient processing power.

Although I've seen specs for car systems before so I guess consumers do care?

Apparently consumers are morons. Wait. You mean Apple, Amazon, Google, Sony, Microsoft, Samsung all release specs? They must have some rocket scientists consumers.

 

[wsippel]

Nobody would understand the specs to begin with? lol my gawd.

Yes, nobody understands, because you can't compare vastly different systems based on a few arbitrary figures. That's why we have benchmarks. And because different software has different requirements, we have a whole lot of different benchmark suites. Problem is: There is no standard benchmark suite for consoles.

 

[Mithos]

Although I've seen specs for car systems before so I guess consumers do care?

Reading those "specs".. Hmm did Nintendo make this? That's how specified those specs are.

 

[Maztorre]

Nintendo really should have abandoned courting 3rd parties after multiple generations of poor support whether the hardware was capable (Gamecube) or not (Wii). The interests of AAA publishers like EA and Acti aren't really aligned with Nintendo much anymore, and Nintendo just cannot make an offer that Sony or MS won't beat them on when it comes to Western 3rd parties on even terms.

What Nintendo should have been doing from about 09/10 onwards (they could still conceivably do it now) was:

1) Establishing multiple 1st party studios across Japan/US/Europe, each large enough in size to support development across eShop, handheld and home console releases simultaneously.
2) Create an international tech-focused team of middleware coders (similar to Sony Santa Monica/Naughty Dog's role providing tech and documentation for both 1st and interested 3rd parties)
3) Take steps to cover gaps in their lineup by starting new IP in Sports, FPS and "mature" open-world games (and I mean any kind of open world variant from RDR to Assassin's Creed to GTA, just any kind of big exclusive presence in that genre would be major - NOT Lego). Undercut their 3rd party competitors in these genres by taking advantage of the traits of Nintendo software (ie release 1 soccer game per generation and use bundling, DLC and Nintendo's long tail of software sales to keep sales of a single piece of software high over years)
4) Allow indies to round out the lineup as they are naturally enticed to markets (like Vita) ill-served by AAA publishers where they can thrive with the "free" shelf space. Set up a distribution scheme where "proven" indie titles above a certain sales threshold can be distributed as retail discs through Nintendo, formalising a process similar to Minecraft's disc release on 360.

None of this requires pushing hardware costs up, none of this requires moneyhatting 3rd parties, and it fills the huge fucking scheduling gaps Nintendo have experienced for at least 3 back to back hardware generations.

They would probably have had a killer launch app in Europe if they took the Wii Sports brand, spun it off into a standalone "WiiU Sports Football", and made a 5 player co-op football/soccer game where up to 4 players can play co-op as a team on the TV and the gamepad user is controlling the remaining players to make plays in a high-speed quasi-RTS mode.

I won't even start about the Virtual Console, where Nintendo are literally sitting on an "iTunes for games" sized store while Sony gets there first despite shaky on-again-off-again backwards compatibility.

 

[wsippel]

Why shouldn't consumers know? They're buying a product, knowing what's inside shouldn't be seen as a great offense.

Comparing a car system to a console seems farfetch. It's always expected it will play music whereas games can be held back if there isn't sufficient processing power.

Although I've seen specs for car systems before so I guess consumers do care?

It's fine to hand out specs, but they don't really matter, so there's no real reason to do it.

And I'm not sure what the DMP site is supposed to prove. You do realize DMP doesn't sell anything to endusers? Their customers obviously need to know the details, just like game developers need the details.

 

[Unknown One]

Of course it matters. Having customers informed on what they are buying is important. People don't understand food labels yet it's mandated. People should know what they are buying.

People don't understand phone specs, yet it's there. If they want to know there is the internet.

 

[wsippel]

Of course it matters. Having customers informed on what they are buying is important. People don't understand food labels yet it's mandated. People should know what they are buying.

People don't understand phone specs, yet it's there. If they want to know there is the internet.

Here you go then:

CPU: IBM Espresso, three cores, 1.25GHz, 3MB L2 cache, 45nm
GPU: AMD Latte, 550MHz, DX10.1+, UVD, 40nm
RAM: 2GB DDR3, 34MB eDRAM, 1MB eSRAM

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

Here you go then:

CPU: IBM Espresso, three cores, 1.25GHz, 3MB L2 cache, 45nm
GPU: AMD Latte, 550MHz, DX10.1+, UVD, 40nm
RAM: 2GB DDR3, 34MB eDRAM, 1MB eSRAM

Sorry but I still laugh at 2GB of DDR3 ram.

 

[Refreshment.01]

Why shouldn't consumers know? They're buying a product, knowing what's inside shouldn't be seen as a great offense.

Comparing a car system to a console seems farfetch. It's always expected it will play music whereas games can be held back if there isn't sufficient processing power.

Although I've seen specs for car systems before so I guess consumers do care?

What is wrong with you?!! When you buy a tablet, smarphone, Laptop, Desktop do you care about specs? No, you just care that it runs an OS and you can make phone calls.

No one cares, there hasn't been any Wii U speculation/specs threads like ever. Or people getting die photos, etc.

Spoiler

Besides CUSTOM... SAUCE

 

[Unknown One]

Now if only Nintendo release full specs and not have people revenge engineer the product for it.

 

[ProfessorMoran]

They don't release the specs because they don't matter and because nobody would understand them to begin with. Sony and MS release specs as marketing stunts, and because it's really just marketing, they give out highly theoretical bullshit figures. Remember when the PS3 supposedly had 2TFLOPS? Now it appears that not even the PS4 will have 2TFLOPS. I wonder how Sony plans to spin this.

Specs matter, while we don't always know how well theoretically specs can translate into results due to a number of factors such as familiarity with the architecture and how developers have their development pipeline set up to take advantage of the hardware, are you seriously going to tell me that having 8GB of RAM is not better than 4GB of the same RAM? Or that it doesn't matter that the WiiU has much less RAM than the next generation and that the RAM in the WiiU is a slower type of RAM?

The problem is that while Nintendo hasn't shown the specs, they don't have the games to show that they belong to the next generation instead of just being somewhat equal to the current generation, and more importantly developers will be transitioning towards tools like UE4 which don't support the WiiU, your average grandma might not understand the specs, but Epic certainly does and not giving the WiiU UE4 support is suggesting that the hardware is a generation behind.

 

[Chindogg]

Specs matter, while we don't always know how well theoretically specs can translate into results due to a number of factors such as familiarity with the architecture and how developers have their development pipeline set up to take advantage of the hardware, are you seriously going to tell me that having 8GB of RAM is not better than 4GB of the same RAM? Or that it doesn't matter that the WiiU has much less RAM than the next generation and that the RAM in the WiiU is a slower type of RAM?

The problem is that while Nintendo hasn't shown the specs, they don't have the games to graphically impress either, and more importantly developers will be transitioning towards tools like UE4 which don't support the WiiU.

UE4's supported, just not officially.

 

[Darryl]

Apparently consumers are morons. Wait. You mean Apple, Amazon, Google, Sony, Microsoft, Samsung all release specs? They must have some rocket scientists consumers.

cellphones/tablets/desktops are easily comparable devices with parts that have very standardized improvements. wii u is a niche device. it is highly popular but it is not released to a similar competing environment.

just wait till the competition comes out and i'm sure nintendo will find some good buzzwords to describe their hardware just like Sony/MS will. "nintendo wii u with high-res photorealistic patented technology delivering 5 trillion pixels of megalight per second". they'll find some marketing term to wrap around so consumers eat it up just as technology giants have been doing as long as i can remember

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

UE4's supported, just not officially.

Which basically means that no UE4 games will show up on the Wii U. Sorry.

 

[Mithos]

Which basically means that no UE4 games will show up on the Wii U. Sorry.

You mean like no UE2 games showed up on Gamecube or Wii ?

Oh, wait they did....

 

[StevieP]

Sorry but I still laugh at 2GB of DDR3 ram.

The console achieves what Nintendo wanted to do with it, which is why it was signed off on.

The issue that yourself and others in this thread and others fail to grasp is that even if Nintendo put out a ps4 (which you would be paying at or near cost, like the Wii u - leading to even poorer sales, IMO) third parties would not be bending over backwards to put software on it. The issues are not related to hardware for the most part. Parity would not bring Nintendo parity. I'm not sure why that needs to be clarified.

 

[ProfessorMoran]

You mean like no UE2 games showed up on Gamecube or Wii ?

Oh, wait they did....

By now there is a rather large visual gap between a UE2 game and a UE3 game, and Wii games by and large are visually inferior to what we are now seeing on PS3/360.

 

[ProfessorMoran]

The console achieves what Nintendo wanted to do with it, which is why it was signed off on.

The issue that yourself and others in this thread and others fail to grasp is that even if Nintendo put out a ps4 (which you would be paying at or near cost, like the Wii u - leading to even poorer sales, IMO) third parties would not be bending over backwards to put software on it. The issues are not related to hardware for the most part. Parity would not bring Nintendo parity. I'm not sure why that needs to be clarified.

So Nintendo wanted the WiiU to be basically a machine mostly for first-party hardware and for now a platform for the occasional PS3/360 ports which will dry up when the next generation launches at the end of this year? Not having parity also hurts those first-party developers that would have benefited from being able to compete in terms of visuals.

While Nintendo still has poor third-party support on the console side, not having hardware parity is going to make it even harder for them to get third-party support.

 

[H_Prestige]

So Nintendo wanted the WiiU to be basically a machine mostly for first-party hardware and for now a platform for the occasional PS3/360 ports which will dry up when the next generation launches at the end of this year?

While Nintendo still has poor third-party support on the console side, not having hardware parity is going to make it even harder for them to get third-party support.

Yes. This was all according to plan. Please understand.

 

[phosphor112]

It isn't meant to. It's not even primarily aimed at game developers, it's what Street View and Netflix are based on.

Well Nintendo (and some people here) are trying to use this an example of them mending 3rd party relationships, and it really isn't going to do that. It's incorrect to say that or even assume it.

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

The console achieves what Nintendo wanted to do with it, which is why it was signed off on.

The issue that yourself and others in this thread and others fail to grasp is that even if Nintendo put out a ps4 (which you would be paying at or near cost, like the Wii u - leading to even poorer sales, IMO) third parties would not be bending over backwards to put software on it. The issues are not related to hardware for the most part. Parity would not bring Nintendo parity. I'm not sure why that needs to be clarified.

Ugh. Here we go again.

SNES/NES Nintendo had the best third party support due to their bully position and the hardware was capable.
N64/GC Nintendo had bad/terrible third party support even though the consoles were comparable to the competition in power. They had bad third party support for the N64 due to cartridges and their terrible dictatorial attitude. Same with the GC.
Wii had terrible third party support due to how terrible the hardware was. It didn't make sense for publishers to put out a version of a game for PS3/360 and one for the Wii. Nintendo still behaved in a dictatorial manner. No options for DLC, terrible online store, friend codes, etc.
Wii U Terrible third party support but why. Is it due to third parties hating Nintendo? NO. Is it because Nintendo doesn't allow DLC? They do. Is it because Nintendo doesn't offer a capable DD model? They do. Is it because of friend codes? No as Nintendo scrapped those.

Why is it then? The only answer is a total lack of power in comparison to the coming PS4/XBox 3 and a terrible install base. The install base is an issue in part due to the low power of the hardware.

Before you say 'Well, these pubs don't mind putting their games on the PS3/360 which are weaker than the Wii U' argument. These two consoles have an install base of 150 million. Nintendo Wii U is hampered right now due to a terrible install base and a very underpowered system compared to the PS4/Xbox 3. They literally made the system to be the third wheel AGAIN.

Going forward Nintendo will have to money hat for third party support/exclusives. Acting as if the power issue isn't contributing to the current problems of the Wii U is simply living in a fantasy world.

 

[JordanN]

The issue that yourself and others in this thread and others fail to grasp is that even if Nintendo put out a ps4 (which you would be paying at or near cost, like the Wii u - leading to even poorer sales, IMO) third parties would not be bending over backwards to put software on it. The issues are not related to hardware for the most part. Parity would not bring Nintendo parity. I'm not sure why that needs to be clarified.

Gamecube's third party support was more at parity than any future Nintendo console has ever been.

Ironically, it had more problems compared to Wii and Wii U (small disc, no online,lunchbox handle).

It also cost cheaper than a Wii U.

 

[StevieP]

Ugh here we go again: it's not a power issue. It comes from bean counters, from a perceived lack of ROI, it comes from a perceived audience. And it most definitely is not worth he opportunity cost to many publishers at this point. The fact that the console isn't selling software doesn't help at all, and is why there is software on indefinite hold. That doesn't have anything to do with hardware power.

 

[wsippel]

Now if only Nintendo release full specs and not have people revenge engineer the product for it.

Nintendo released some specs, though not even the additional stuff we've managed to figure out through reverse engineering tells us much about the actual performance of the system. And that's the main issue with specs in general.

For example, we're pretty sure the system has either 160 or 320 shader units, and since we know the clockspeed, we can extrapolate that it can do either 176 or 352GFLOPS. While that seems like a useful figure, it's not as definitive as one might believe, because we don't know the instruction set. Nintendo apparently requested some changes and additions. Rumor has it that the modifications weren't even done by AMD, which might explain why they went with an older design.

 

[JordanN]

Ugh here we go again: it's not a power issue.

Can you point me to Unreal Engine 3 for Wii? Do you also know how many games used it?


So how is it not an issue?

 

[Mithos]

By now there is a rather large visual gap between a UE2 game and a UE3 game, and Wii games by and large are visually inferior to what we are now seeing on PS3/360.

I was talking about back then when UE2 was supported on PS2 and Xbox but not on Gamecube or then later not on Wii either.
If you wanted to make a game that ran UE2 on Gamecube you had to port it yourself, just like Epic are saying about UE4 for Wii U, want it do it yourself.

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

Ugh here we go again: it's not a power issue. It comes from bean counters, from a perceived lack of ROI, it comes from a perceived audience. And it most definitely is not worth he opportunity cost to many publishers at this point. The fact that the console isn't selling software doesn't help at all, and is why there is software on indefinite hold. That doesn't have anything to do with hardware power.

If the system was more capable Nintendo would be in a much better position to get third party support in the coming years. Would you agree with that? As is, the Wii U will have 25% of the ram of the PS4/Xbox 3 (assuming rumors are accurate). Good luck getting devs to port a game to a console with 1/4th the ram.

 

[royalan]

The console achieves what Nintendo wanted to do with it, which is why it was signed off on.

The issue that yourself and others in this thread and others fail to grasp is that even if Nintendo put out a ps4 (which you would be paying at or near cost, like the Wii u - leading to even poorer sales, IMO) third parties would not be bending over backwards to put software on it. The issues are not related to hardware for the most part. Parity would not bring Nintendo parity. I'm not sure why that needs to be clarified.

I think you're arguing something that we've yet to see. It's easy to turn this into an emotional argument and say that 3rd parties don't support Nintendo because they "just don't want to," but frankly I can't say that Nintendo's honestly courted 3rd party support with observable effort, especially in the face of two strong competitors who have realized the value of 3rd party support and bend over backwards for it. At the end of the day, that's what it comes down to.

Also, we need to stop thinking Nintendo downplayed graphics parity with other next gen consoles because the result would have been a super expensive machine. That's not true. The fact is Nintendo could have ended up with a much more graphically capable machine, but that's not what they chose to prioritize with the hardware. What they chose to prioritize was low power consumption and a small form factor, and so they commissioned a "relatively" expensive customized chip to achieve these goals. Only problem is people don't really care about these things to the degree Nintendo expected.

The Wii U isn't as underpowered as it is because this is all Nintendo could do and still keep the price low. The Wii U is underpowered because, like pretty much everything else having to do with this console, Nintendo made a bad bet on what consumers would care about.

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

I think you're arguing something that we've yet to see. It's easy to turn this into an emotional argument and say that 3rd parties don't support Nintendo because they "just don't want to," but frankly I can't say that Nintendo's honestly courted 3rd party support with observable effort, especially in the face of two strong competitors who have realized the value of 3rd party support and bend over backwards for it. At the end of the day, that's what it comes down to.

Also, we need to stop thinking Nintendo downplayed graphics parity with other next gen consoles because the result would have been a super expensive machine. That's not true. The fact is Nintendo could have ended up with a much more graphically capable machine, but that's not what they chose to prioritize with the hardware. What they chose to prioritize was low power consumption and a small form factor, and so they commissioned a "relatively" expensive customized chip to achieve these goals. Only problem is people don't really care about these things to the degree Nintendo expected.

The Wii U isn't as underpowered as it is because this is all Nintendo could do and still keep the price low. The Wii U is underpowered because, like pretty much everything else having to do with this console, Nintendo made a bad bet on what consumers would care about.

Not just that but a big chunk of the cost is thrown into the gamepad. Remove the gamepad and Nintendo could have improved the specs of the system while not charging anymore than what it is. Nintendo felt that the gamepad gimmick would replicate the success of the Wiimote and it hasn't.

 

[wsippel]

Well Nintendo (and some people here) are trying to use this an example of them mending 3rd party relationships, and it really isn't going to do that. It's incorrect to say that or even assume it.

There are a ton of 3rd parties, many of which certainly are interested in Web Framework and especially Unity. Iwata stated that they're not chasing ports, they want the next big thing on their platform. Nobody knows what that next big thing is going to be, but chances are it won't have an EA or Activision logo on the box. In fact, it probably won't even come in a box.

 

[Chindogg]

There are a ton of 3rd parties, many of which certainly are interested in Web Framework and especially Unity. Iwata stated that they're not chasing ports, they want the next big thing on their platform. Nobody knows what that next big thing is going to be, but chances are it won't have an EA or Activision logo on the box. In fact, it probably won't even come in a box.

Shhhh. Logic's not allowed around here.

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

Shhhh. Logic's not allowed around here.

Yes. Logic = turning down third party support and instead hoping for the new Minecraft leading your console to the promised land. Turn down BF4, turn down Destiny, turn down Elder Scrolls, turn down Fallout, turn down Grand Theft Auto all for the CHANCE at the next big thing.

Makes sense.

 

[royalan]

Yes. Logic = turning down third party support and instead hoping for the new Minecraft leading your console to the promised land. Turn down BF4, turn down Destiny, turn down Elder Scrolls, turn down Fallout, turn down Grand Theft Auto all for the CHANCE at the next big thing.

Makes sense.

Yep.

And the sad thing is that MS and Sony still have capable infrastructures to support indie games themselves. And, as competitive as they are and as fast as they move, if any anybody got even a vague hint that the next minecraft was about to happen on the Wii U, Sony and MS (and Apple and Google) wouldn't rest until it was in their ecosystems as well.

Courting indie games isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but Iwata is batshit crazy if he views it as any sort of solution to their 3rd party problem.

 

[JordanN]

The thing about third party support some may not realize is it hurts Nintendo more than it hurts third parties.

They lose out on royalties and they have to work twice as hard to fill in the software gaps.

It just looks foolish on everyones part if Nintendo sells a console only for it to take 5 whole years to match what the PS4/720 would likely have in the first 1 or 2 years.

If Iwata thinks this is the best for Nintendo, lets see how long it will last before the next shareholder revolt.

 

[wsippel]

Yes. Logic = turning down third party support and instead hoping for the new Minecraft leading your console to the promised land. Turn down BF4, turn down Destiny, turn down Elder Scrolls, turn down Fallout, turn down Grand Theft Auto all for the CHANCE at the next big thing.

Makes sense.

Except Nintendo never turned down any of those games. They're just not moneyhatting them.

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

Except Nintendo never turned down any of those games. They're just not moneyhatting them.

...

They refused to offer up a system that was competitive to the PS4/Xbox 3.
They screwed up the launch of the Wii U to the point that the install base isn't large enough for the publishers to spend money porting these games to the Wii U.

The games are coming to the PS3/360 due to 150 million install base
The games may be coming to the PS4/Xbox 3 because the versions will look significantly improved and help draw new buyers in to the new hardware.

Nintendo screwed up in a way to not get many of the games the 360/PS3 are getting AND won't be getting most of the games that the PS4/Xbox 3 will be getting.

But hey, I'm sure the indie community will carry it.

 

[H_Prestige]

There are a ton of 3rd parties, many of which certainly are interested in Web Framework and especially Unity. Iwata stated that they're not chasing ports, they want the next big thing on their platform. Nobody knows what that next big thing is going to be, but chances are it won't have an EA or Activision logo on the box. In fact, it probably won't even come in a box.

Yes, a downloadable indie that is exclusive to the Wii U is going to turn the industry upside down.

 

[Somnid]

Yes. Logic = turning down third party support and instead hoping for the new Minecraft leading your console to the promised land. Turn down BF4, turn down Destiny, turn down Elder Scrolls, turn down Fallout, turn down Grand Theft Auto all for the CHANCE at the next big thing.

Makes sense.

Third parties are third parties. You dig them up anywhere because being a good third party means you are on everything you can be. There's a lot to be said about content and politics of third party relations. But what I find interesting is the directions we're going. Third-parties are in rough shape on consoles with end-game install bases and end-game technical knowledge yet Square, Capcom and EA are getting their asses kicked harder than ever. I wonder how they're going to pull it off with smaller numbers and higher expenses. Nintendo's usually good about this but we'll probably need to cap development in the future. This means simply not putting more money into a game for graphics and polish, only if the concept truly needs it. The power race came to an end 6 years ago with DS, Wii, smartphones and tablets. What really matters is who is creating the next important game. Nintendo has an absurdly high batting average here but the indie pool is not to be underestimated. Third parties are still very important here, no Call of Duty would mean many fewer 360s but I guess you can ask yourself if you think the next big thing is coming from an indie or someone like EA. If you say EA then know that their ass is truly on the line for it. If Battlefield 4 underperforms I doubt the DICE people will get a second chance.

 

[Shaanyboi]

Not just that but a big chunk of the cost is thrown into the gamepad. Remove the gamepad and Nintendo could have improved the specs of the system while not charging anymore than what it is. Nintendo felt that the gamepad gimmick would replicate the success of the Wiimote and it hasn't.

To what end though? Another console without anything to differentiate it? What else then would they have to make console stand out for the non-enthusiasts? Tue wiimote thing again?

I'd say more devs have figured out the gamepad than they have the wii remote. And it's probably getting more support right now than it would if it was a next gen system with motion again