It outsold Saturn in half the time. Yes, it was still a failure, but it's pretty clear that "consumer confidence" was seeing a modest rebound after the Saturn. But a modest rebound couldn't sustain Sega, they were hoping against hope for a much better performance out of it. I'm not overestimating anything, I even said it was a very modest increase in their market share over Saturn.
And, as I just demonstrated, leaning on "consumer confidence" like you are and using Dreamcast as your example is false when they can outsell your previous hardware in half the time after your worst failure ever.
Dreamcast outsold Sega Saturn by only a million margin, which is, almost, a tie, as the difference is minimal. DC sold 10.6M vs. 9.5 from SS. You talk like Dreamcast outsold SS by a significant margin, it didn't. Anyway, despite how great DC was, Sega never managed to recover their market share at it's prime with Genesis, which sold 40 million.
Splatoon's surprising sales are an indication that Splatoon is a great game. Mario Kart is still likely to outsell it, and that's part of the "same old" mentality you just derided.
People want great games to buy a system for, but they're not willing to wait until a year or two after launch for them to appear. Consumers aren't required to be patient that way. So why would you risk a scenario where you're pleasing your small user base at the potential expense of having less to offer to a potentially larger user base for new hardware? In either scenario, you're robbing Peter to pay Paul, so if you're going to do that, do it in the way that offers the better option.
I didn't said they should stop investing into their legacy titles, but give more room for new IPs and genres, which is demonstrating results when they put and effort in both quality and advertising, as Splatoon, a great game indeed, plus an investment into a new genre which Nintendo never tried to invest before, making fresh and attractive for new audiences. Sure, Mario, Zelda, Smash, Pokemon etc, can stay relevant as always, but not at cost of library diversification with countless spin-offs and safe games related to these IPs.
But why change their mentality NOW, on a platform that people aren't really paying any attention to? It's not like a few extra big games is going to magically turn things around. They might have had a better E3, but having a better E3 last year certainly hasn't turned things around for them so far, has it? People liking them better for it isn't translating into people buying the hardware in any significant numbers, so you have to ask: what's the point? If you're not going to get a current sale and no one is even paying attention, what does it matter?
Again, Sega cut the Saturn's life short, released the Dreamcast and, again, while it didn't do GREAT, it still outsold Saturn in half the time.
Consumer confidence is not some big deal that you're making it out to be.
Yes, NOW, on Wii U. Yeah, Wii U is doomed and there's no way to turn things around at this point right now. Price slashing at this point would be worthless as the damage is already made. But there's room for investment, as Splatoon demonstrated. Even on a "doomed platform" they can still manage to succeed at creating new IPs and expand their audience, something they should do more instead of fatigued spin-offs and safe games that no longer fire it's fanbase, as this E3 demonstrated.
The 3DS was saved by pushing it down from "profitable" into losses that didn't go crazy. Iwata had a reality check and realized 3DS was in trouble and it was time for aggression, not greed. Also note, the lack of 3DS profits made Nintendo unable to instantly absorb Wii U losses (they'd have to break the piggy bank).
The Wii U started with "not too crazy losses". A $100 price drop on top of that is absolutely reckless, and I'm saying that as someone who thinks Nintendo is 20 years behind in embracing "selling at a loss". The Wii U is the wrong console to be doubling-down on. Nintendo can admit that they screwed up. It wouldn't be the first time. Virtual Boy, anyone? They don't need to sink billions into saving face, when they could spend those billions (who am I kidding, they won't) making sure NX gets things right from the start. The Virtual Boy's widely-mocked failure didn't hurt the GameBoy Color, because people knew the difference. The Virtual Boy was Nintendo being weird and experimental, the GameBoy Color was Nintendo being simple and giving gamers what they wanted. And the Wii U has so-far done a pretty great job of saving face by keeping up the flow of quality games. It's no Virtual Boy.
The PS3 lost a ton of money thanks to things like Blu-Ray and Cell, and Ken Kutaragi was fired over that, but then Sony made a realistic plan to climb out of the hole (mixing various price drops and price increases with bumping up the size of the rapidly-cheaper hard drive, until the Slim cut a lot of costs from the unit). The Wii U failed because it was a last-gen console (more or less) with a tablet controller, but your plan is to get Nintendo out of failure by digging a much deeper hole.
Yes, you demonstrated how badly Iwata fucked up with his price policy, his bet on 3D as selling point and further reason to overprice 3DS, and in result put the entire company's financial health, even market share, at risk, which actually happened in the worst way possible.
Still, your Virtual Boy example doesn't hold up for my argument because Nintendo was after a completely new market and different approach from the home console and portable they were already in. Virtual Boy was never made to be GameBoy's successor, it was mostly an epic fail attempt to be what Oculus VR wants to be in the future. That's why Nintendo's image left unnarmed on their home console and portable front, because Virtual Boy wasn't an investment into those segments. They fucked up Nintendo's plans to stablish a VR market, instead.
Anyway, my opinion keeps on, Nintendo should have slashed the price to 250 in mid 2013 when Wii U still had the 1 year gap over PS4 and XBO. They would loose a lot of money? Hell yeah, they certainly would, but probably would boost Wii U sales significantly in a time when was still hope for a turn around, expectations for it's major prospects and being the only "next-gen" system avaliable on the market when PS3/360 was already showing it's age and PS4/XBO would arrive later in the year. Not only it could double up hardware sales as software sales as well, a very important source of income (remember GCN managed to be profitable thanks to software sales which managed to cover hardware losses?). Even third-party games could have gained a (somewhat) boost and the mass abandonment situation could have been avoided. Anyway, it would be enough to force Nintendo to change it's fucked up casual/family-friendly approach they tried at Wii U's launch with Nintendoland and NSBMU as their bets for this audience (and failed badly at that), thereof making them loose a lot of money.
Yes, I wholeheartedly agree it would hurt them badly short term. But, as a long term strategy, it would work and they could recover the losses in time. Even on a doomed Wii U and underwhelming 3DS situation, they managed to be profitable in the last fiscal year, being the amiibo strategy a major contribution. Wii U would bleed money in my 100$ price cut solution, no doubt, but would bring better software and amiibo profits with a bigger userbase in result, and given how Nintendo managed to recover it's profits with such adverse situation it's facing right now, they could recover the profits faster than you believe. It would definitively create a better scenario for a successor, reduce the doubts and uncertainty sparked on the current situation and build the ground for NX. PS4 got a very successful release thanks to how well Sony managed to turn around PS3 and keep it's image and confidence intact, despite the massive financial blow they had with it.
You often hear many fanboys claiming Nintendo should keep it's current direction, avoiding third-parties and bet on it's first-party titles only, because they "can't compete". Not only this would be toxic, as being isolated isn't being of any help on their current position, as would be a death wish for the company. They can't survive by themselves. This results from alienation and skepticism generated from Wii U's failure and Nintendo's mismanagement. Prior to this, on Wii days, even if you had a valid criticism toward Nintendo, you would be shot down by fans under the excuse of profits, now the speech changed completely.
I understand what Terrell means now though, that Nintendo hasn't said they "don't care" about higher specs, so I chose my words wrong. The manifestation of what Nintendo values about hardware/software design though, lead me to think "don't care" applied to specs, but "don't care" is a stronger phrase than they ever used about specs. It more had to do with designing their machines with different values than how the other console makers design their machines.
