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[Cheerilee]

Who stacked the Board with a bunch of yes-men and is purchasing stock to prevent a hostile takeover! Maybe Iwata isn't as much of a clown as you think he is...at least regarding his reign of tyranny.

As well as starring in Nintendo Direct, Iwata Asks, and all of Nintendo's industry conference appearances (he even "took Reggie's name" onstage, right after that became Reggie's thing).

 

[Hale-XF11]

Captain Obvious strikes again. Too bad that they can't establish 3rd party relations in the west well ahead of their handheld hardware releases. So much lip service, Iwata. I'll believe that they're jumping on board when I see it, but damn man, we're already way into the life cycle of the 3DS and support is still lacking. *sigh*

 

[Sandfox]

Wait for some third parties to release some of their AAA games for Wii U,at least for now it is not a good idea and won't change anything.

The deal that Nintendo did with Platinum was unsuspected and brilliant. For now Nintendo should do the same. Reach some studios like Sega, mainly because of Atlus, Square, Capcom, Konami and try to put their popular IPs on WIi U.

That didn't really help the Gamecube much and would have even less of an effect on the Wii U. Another issue is that it would take a while for those deals to come to fruition and by then Nintendo will be focusing on future things.

 

[Aaronrules380]

When you are lacking in expertise or understanding of something, you go and get people who do have what you lack, not throw up your hands and act like there's no other solution to the problem.

Which costs a ton of money and is by no means guaranteed to help. Aside from which, those markets are already pretty much cornered and I feel like it would be extremely hard to break into them. New ips can't really compete with giants like CoD or Battlefield. Especially since the shooter market is based on online multiplayer, which requires your friends and others to have the console in order for it to work. At this point, I'm not convinced there is a solution for the wii u. The best solution is to try and work on establishing better relations and such for next gen while trying to ride out the rest of the wii u's lifespan as best as possible

 

[TreasureHunterG]

And I'm willing to put this all on Iwata. Yamauchi was a dick in the NES days, and he lost 50% marketshare with the SNES, but those failings can be ignored. The big failure, and the beginning of Nintendo's irrelevance, was the N64. That was the one to learn from. And that's when Yamauchi brought Iwata in, to help with management. Nintendo, with Iwata's involvement (or bumbling), tried to rebuild following the N64, did a half-assed job, and failed. But Iwata's takeaway from that failure was "don't try". Iwata can see the flaws in Nintendo, but he does nothing to fix them. And he was rewarded for that miserable attitude with the Wii, which might have been the worst thing that could've happened to Nintendo's management. And it seems Iwata has learned nothing from the failure of the Wii U. The guy is poison for Nintendo.

Nintendo's kiddy image was way more determinant for it's loss of market share in the western ground during the SNES/Genesis days. Sega exposed Nintendo's practices which managed to antagonize their image thanks to the "Sega does what Nintendon't" campaign. Nintendo's censorship policies like the infamous no blood for Mortal Kombat didn't help it, either. It was incompetence from NoA rather than Yamauchi being a dick in the NES days. Sure, his business practices were very unfriendly and alienated companies like Namco and Hudson to support the NEC PC-Engine, but in Japan, the N64 was Nintendo's downfall. Genesis never had significant marketshare around there, even PC-Engine managed to outsell it. Sony learned well from Sega of America's strategy in the west, follow it, and grabbed even more Nintendo's market share. This time it wasn't west only, but also in Japan, and worked. Nintendo going cart with N64 helped even more to spread anti-Nintendo sentiment across the industry.

 

[Aquamarine]

Considering the abysmal support...how much longer can the Wii U be supported in retail? It almost looks to me that after the 2014 holiday they'll be forced to pull the plug.

Depends on retailer relationships with the company.

We know that Nintendo is providing incentives to keep the Wii U on the shelf in some capacity (especially in markets like the UK).

It depends on how much effort Nintendo wants to put into propping up its dead system.

Presumably they would want to keep stock in stores as long as possible in an attempt recoup all of the sunk costs they've poured into it, but not to the point where the costs to reimburse retailers exceed the benefit of Wii U staying on store shelves, or if Nintendo decides to move onto the 3DS / QOL platform / next big thing.

 

[Ollie Pooch]

Which costs a ton of money and is by no means guaranteed to help. Aside from which, those markets are already pretty much cornered and I feel like it would be extremely hard to break into them. New ips can't really compete with giants like CoD or Battlefield. Especially since the shooter market is based on online multiplayer, which requires your friends and others to have the console in order for it to work. At this point, I'm not convinced there is a solution for the wii u. The best solution is to try and work on establishing better relations and such for next gen while trying to ride out the rest of the wii u's lifespan as best as possible

I think you're probably right with regards to the fate of the Wii U, but it's pretty crazy they haven't consulted any outside parties for help with their OS/Online/Account/eShop aspects, which are (IMO) extremely lacking. They seem to think they're up to par, so.. there's that. All these things add up to repel potential customers, especially given how downright awful the Wii was in that regard.

 

[Sylvrfonic]

Say, what are the great western made 3DS games? (I genuinely want to know, also I don't need the whole list lets say top 5)

 

[koutoru]

New thread, same problems.

 

[Glass Joe]

On the other hand, software publishers are not necessarily keen on making games in genres that have weaker affinity with audiences that Nintendo has not been as strong with, where making a huge investment does not guarantee a sufficient return. With regard to Wii U, we first need to create a strong foundation in areas Nintendo excels at and achieve a sufficient sales volume. If we manage to do so, those publishers in the overseas markets who are currently not interested in Wii U will be attracted to the Wii U platform, as they were to Nintendo 3DS. This is going to be our approach in the near future.

Build the Wii U audience to spark 3rd party interest. The problem with that is that's what Iwata said last time and even existing 3rd parties have jumped ship since then.

Then there's the problem of how Nintendo is going to drive the userbase, which is Mario Kart 8 and Smash Bros. This doesn't scream for anything but a kid friendly environment. What's the plan to get "games in genres that have weaker affinity with audiences"? There isn't one. And that doesn't even have to be M-Rated stuff, not even sim sports games appear to be the proper environment.

3DS doesn't really get western 3rd party support either, even with 7x the overall userbase. If 3rd parties won't take risk, Nintendo needs to take interest in certain titles and certain publishers and take the risk for them, at least until they show that the investment is worthwhile.

Wii U isn't selling because there aren't enough games. There aren't enough games because the Wii U isn't selling. I doubt Mario Kart and Smash can really fix that (it didn't for Gamecube).

 

[Poimandres]

Remember a few years back when Iwata said "... we are thinking of creating an environment where software from other companies will become hits. Please understand that Nintendo is prepared to invest in order to make this a reality."

This doesn't sound as... optimistic.

 

[VariantX]

Which costs a ton of money and is by no means guaranteed to help. Aside from which, those markets are already pretty much cornered and I feel like it would be extremely hard to break into them. New ips can't really compete with giants like CoD or Battlefield. Especially since the shooter market is based on online multiplayer, which requires your friends and others to have the console in order for it to work. At this point, I'm not convinced there is a solution for the wii u. The best solution is to try and work on establishing better relations and such for next gen while trying to ride out the rest of the wii u's lifespan as best as possible

Nothing I said has to apply strictly to the Wii U hardware. If they want better relationships with 3rd parties in the future, then at least they can build hardware that can address their needs in a reasonable fashion.

 

[Ollie Pooch]

Remember a few years back when Iwata said "... we are thinking of creating an environment where software from other companies will become hits. Please understand that Nintendo is prepared to invest in order to make this a reality."

This doesn't sound as... optimistic.

"We've tried nothin'... and we're all outta ideas!"

 

[wildfire]

the fact that Nintendo 3DS has now sold over 10 million units in both the U.S. and Europe seems to be news for third-party publishers,

Straight up incompetence and negligence right there.

 

[shinra-bansho]

Who stacked the Board with a bunch of yes-men and is purchasing stock to prevent a hostile takeover! Maybe Iwata isn't as much of a clown as you think he is...at least regarding his reign of tyranny.

He's also managed to build a cult of personality around himself such that it becomes difficult to separate Nintendo from Iwata and for some the prospect of a Nintendo without him at the helm is inconceivable.

It's why it's hard to believe he actually believes much of what he says, ridiculous forecasts etc, as opposed to just playing everyone for fools.

 

[Father_Brain]

Remember a few years back when Iwata said "... we are thinking of creating an environment where software from other companies will become hits. Please understand that Nintendo is prepared to invest in order to make this a reality."

This doesn't sound as... optimistic.

Haha, yeah. If Nintendo sold a Wii U for every time Iwata made a promise at one of these briefings that didn't pan out... well, they'd have sold a few dozen more Wii Us, at least.

 

[gogojira]

He could have just showed us the picture of him looking at bananas and it would have made as much sense.

 

[CapNBritain]

Man it's crazy how Nintendo (via Iwata) still believe that they can just do whatever they want and then magically build a userbase that will attract everyone to their system. They act as if they still control the market. Even when the Wii was outselling the other systems combined the market did not follow their lead. It simply does not work that way.

Nintendo need to be a part of the market and work with other companies. They need to make a console that 3rd parties will want to work with and develop for. They need to build those developer relationships that Sony (another Japanese company) has been able to do with ease.

This isn't about Nintendo not making Mario games and instead trying to make the next CoD. This is about Nintendo allowing the next CoD to be made on their systems.

 

[TreasureHunterG]

Who stacked the Board with a bunch of yes-men and is purchasing stock to prevent a hostile takeover! Maybe Iwata isn't as much of a clown as you think he is...at least regarding his reign of tyranny.

Which is why Nintendo needs to organize an internal revolt led by shareholders and developers unhappy with Iwata/Miyamoto/Takeda reign and force him and his allies to leave the company. There's no other way. It's already clear he won't resign by any means and he's very power lust, given his management methods.

His promises are probably maneuvers to stay more time in the power and he's actually not compromised to fulfill them at all.

 

[Biker19]

Well if the Japanese market is so great we can all be happy there's no region-locking, so that all the games of these (Japanese) developers can be enjoyed in the West as well.

This. Definitely this.

One of the very reasons that made PS3, PS4, PSP, & PS Vita very attractive to people like myself is that those platforms are region free (also love PS1 & PS2 as well).