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Pachter: Wii U a "mistake Nintendo may never recover from"

Couldn't the same prediction have been made 3 months into the 3DS's lifespan? And now I don't think anyone would be declaring it doomed now. For fucks sake, people are chomping at the bit to declare Nintendo dead-but for some reason the Vita is surely going to miracously correct course ANY DAY NOW.
 
Gilby said:
Desperate Nintendo is best Nintendo, I'm thinking there's gonna be a lot of experimental games on the Wii U over its lifetime from smaller teams. If they can get their online crap together sooner rather than later it could become a really great platform for indie devs.
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Desperate Nintendo gave us the Wii, one of the worst consoles of all time. Yes it had SMG2. But it was still one of the worst consoles of all time.
 
miksar said:
A real gamer is someone who considers video games to be more than just a futile exercise in jumping from one platform to another. Someone who realizes its potential as an art form, someone who supports constant innovation and ingenuity shown by the best artists in the industry. Unfortunately such companies as Nintendo keep thinking that video games are for man children unable to distinguish real works from cheap reproductions. But as the numbers lately show, they are a dying breed. Soon they will be an insignificant minority forever trapped in their own unfullfilled fantasies of plumbers having an affair with dumb-looking blond girls.

Of course you can simultaneously have a Nintendo console and be a real gamer as most likely you own at least one since childhood. But when you reach puberty, you realize there is more to life and upgrade to better, more mature gaming systems that show the potential of gaming in its true form.
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Hall of fame post right here. So ambiguous.
 
Terrell said:
3 months. Dead in 3 months.

If I could just the future of anything that quickly, I'd have a lot of free time on my hands.

Heck, I didn't even judge the Vita that quickly, I gave that a whole year before I declared time of death. And that is arguably a worse situation than Wii U by a country mile.
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I don't understand the public service of naysaying speculation. You think 3 months is too early to start making predictions. And I agree strictly in the sense of making predictions with the weight of certainty behind them. Assuming I had a good reputation to begin with, I wouldn't stake my reputation on the assurance that the Wii U is going to end up being an abject failure at this stage in the game. It's too early for that.

But in terms of just making a prediction with the understanding that the worst that happens is that I'm wrong and someone can find me being wrong in my post history? Yeah, I'm not uncomfortable being down on the Wii U's future right now. Yeah, we only have three months of data, but that third month is fucking terrible, and isn't going to be turning around anytime soon before software gets here, or they do something major. It's going to hover at the "abhorrent" mark for some time before things get better, and as such, my feeling is that it may wind up being too late before the platforms potential saviors arrive, particularly up against new, more powerful hardware, and stuff like GTA V that isn't coming out on the Wii U.

I don't understand what's so dangerous about such analysis.
 
C.Monkey said:
Desperate Nintendo gave us the Wii, one of the worst consoles of all time. Yes it had SMG2. But it was still one of the worst consoles of all time.
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I take it that you're not an executive.
 
Chinpoko_Master said:
Casuals don't really give a shit about upgrading their console. Wii Fit U probably won't change their minds.
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Depends on how they market it. A Wii Fit with extra games/yoga/muscle exercises that a Mum can use on the pad leaving her kid's or husband's telly unaffected could be a major selling point. You also have the fact that her weight won't be displayed on the telly for all the world to see. I can see it selling consoles if they market it properly.
 
C.Monkey said:
Nope, I'm a gamer™
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No offense, but I thought the Wii had more entertaining games than 360. Let's stop this "gamer" stuff.

Also, Wii Fit U will do nothing to sales--especially without a huge change in marketing,
 
Nintendo is in a hurt. The company that was worth over $83billion at the Wii's zenith is now worth $12billion.

9cUOgnT.png


The Wii U does smell like a misstep to me and honestly I sure as fuck wouldn't recommend that any of my friends buy Nintendo stock right now.
 
Cheebo said:
3DS hasn't hit a single sales target, is on a year over year downward trajectory hardware sales wises and software sales completely collapsed over the past year.

3Ds is in a bad place right now in the west.

He is right about the 3Ds, its a mess in the west and struggling. Last months sales in Jan were lower than DS ever was. And lower than 3ds was last year.
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You are talking like if the 3DS has 4 years in the market, when in march will comply just 2 years, yes the 3ds didn't have a good 2012 in the west as they did in Japan, but that doesn't mean the 3DS is struggling, is not like the content of the 3DS in 2012 was the same in Japan as in the West, considering the content they released in 2012 the sales are fine. In the moment the 3DS will have big hitters and doesn't sell, in that moment the 3DS will be struggling.
 
C.Monkey said:
You have to be pretty desperate to totally shaft core gamers and cater to non-gamers for 6 years.
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Well core gamers gave a shaft to nintendo first. They simply searched and found another userbase.
Plinko said:
No offense, but I thought the Wii had more entertaining games than 360. Let's stop this "gamer" stuff.

Also, Wii Fit U will do nothing to sales--especially without a huge change in marketing,
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something tells me that they will market the shit out of that thing
 
Beer Monkey said:
Nintendo is in a hurt. The company that was worth over $83billion at the Wii's zenith is now worth $12billion.

9cUOgnT.png


The Wii U does smell like a misstep to me and honestly I sure as fuck wouldn't recommend that any of my friends buy Nintendo stock right now.
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RIP Iwata & Reggie
 
farnham said:
Well core gamers gave a shaft to nintendo first. They simply searched and found another userbase.
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Then that userbase also also given Nintendo the shaft in kind. "Its not me... its you..."
 
MDavis360 said:
Couldn't the same prediction have been made 3 months into the 3DS's lifespan? And now I don't think anyone would be declaring it doomed now
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I take it you haven't been following the NPD threads or reading any of Nintendo's financial reports. 3DS software sales in the west collapsed after winter 2011 and hardware sales have been falling all year, to the point Nintendo had to revise their hardware forecasts downward for 3DS twice and drop their software forecast from 75 mil to 50 mil.

3DS is not doing good at all right now. It started to fall back towards it's pre-price cut level of hardware sales in the west.

Nintendo turned around 3DS in Japan but nowhere else.
 
C.Monkey said:
You have to be pretty desperate to totally shaft core gamers and cater to non-gamers for 6 years.
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Nintendo shafted the average gamer long before the DS. The N64 and GameCube lost out on many third party titles because Nintendo used outdated hardware (cartridges, mini discs, etc.).
 
kodt said:
If GAF hates Patcher so much, why do you keep making threads about him?
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GAF LOVES to hate on Pachter almost as much as Pachter loves to troll Nintendo.
Beyond that, Pachter gets off on GAF hating on him.
The haters give Pachter exactly what he wants whereas the people that ignore him are doing the exact opposite.

It's simple psychology in play.
 
Couldn't agree more with what he says here.


Just cause someone was wrong in the past, doesn't mean everything they say is wrong.


Clearly The Big N faces a hard uphill battle, anyone who thinks otherwise is just delusional.
 
Beer Monkey said:
Nintendo is in a hurt. The company that was worth over $83billion at the Wii's zenith is now worth $12billion.

9cUOgnT.png


The Wii U does smell like a misstep to me and honestly I sure as fuck wouldn't recommend that any of my friends buy Nintendo stock right now.
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Pay no mind to that; it's just market noise.
 
Cheebo said:
I take it you haven't been following the NPD threads or reading any of Nintendo's financial reports. 3DS software sales in the west collapsed after winter 2011 and hardware sales have been falling all year, to the point Nintendo had to revise their hardware forecasts downward for 3DS twice and drop their software forecast from 75 mil to 50 mil.

3DS is not doing good at all right now. It started to fall back towards it's pre-price cut level of hardware sales in the west.

Nintendo turned around 3DS in Japan but nowhere else.
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Is there any portable software not priced $1 selling well right now?
 
Plinko said:
To be honest, they should have been fired a week ago.
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Iwata won't be CEO this time next year, I don't think many think he will be. And when he goes most of the senior staff (like Reggie) will be replaced by whoever is the new CEO.
Plinko said:
Is there any portable software not priced $1 selling well right now?
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Well if WiiU is going to be another GCN (or worse) than Nintendo needs to revive the 3DS to be at least matching that of the GBA. Software sales wise 3DS is far below GBA and trending downward.

3DS software sales in fall 2012 were downright alarmingly awful in America. Not just bad but extremely bad.
 
C.Monkey said:
Desperate Nintendo gave us the Wii, one of the worst consoles of all time. Yes it had SMG2. But it was still one of the worst consoles of all time.
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Well that's like your opinion man. Games like Xenoblade, Last Story, Little King's Story, Rune Factory, DKC, among others are some of my favorite games this generation.
 
Reminds me of the early PS3 doom and gloom articles that were around shortly after the console's launch.

Three months is far too soon to make any assumptions on how a console is going to last unless it was a Virtual Boy level flop.
 
Beer Monkey said:
Nintendo is in a hurt. The company that was worth over $83billion at the Wii's zenith is now worth $12billion.

9cUOgnT.png


The Wii U does smell like a misstep to me and honestly I sure as fuck wouldn't recommend that any of my friends buy Nintendo stock right now.
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But you're suppose to buy low...
 
Terrell said:
Heck, I didn't even judge the Vita that quickly, I gave that a whole year before I declared time of death. And that is arguably a worse situation than Wii U by a country mile.
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I seem to remember hearing 'WAIT UNTIL VITA HEAVEN/P4:G/COD/AC:L/CHRISTMAS!!' quite a lot during the Vita's early stages, some people who said it was 'dead' or 'dying' were jumped upon for judging it too early. Apparently this doesn't apply to a system which, unlike the Vita, has guaranteed system sellers coming up, it's pretty weird.

Hoodbury said:
But you're suppose to buy low...
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I know, I keep telling people, BUY BUY BUY!
 
Huff said:
And then that userbase went elsewhere.

So now it's looking like nintendo is on the road to fucked
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Well if they cant capture them again or a different userbase then yes they are f'ed. The core gamer is definately not going to buy nintendo games again.
 
Hesemonni said:
You know it's bad when people are coining for Wii Fit U to save your system.
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Copies sold:

Wii Fit: 23 million

Call of Duty: Black Ops II (all platforms combined): ~ 9 million


There's nothing bad about it at all. Even if it only does 1/4 of what it's predecessor did, it would be roughly on par with Halo 4. Even if it only does 1/10th it would still be a big hit.
 
maquiladora said:
You might want to read Evilore's stickied thread about attacking people for their positions.
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If that's ban-worthy, i don't understand. I probably did more research than Pachter, lol. But whatever.


Steve Youngblood said:
So, do you think the Wii U is well-positioned and destined for great sales?
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Well let's see. The system has hardly been promoted. Is only out for 3 months. Has no real platform sellers out yet... So your guess is as good as mine. But i do somehow think that labeling it "a mistake they might not recover from", seems... a bit rich, to say the least.
 
Diablos54 said:
I seem to remember hearing 'WAIT UNTIL VITA HEAVEN/P4:G/COD/AC:L/CHRISTMAS!!' quite a lot during the Vita's early stages, some people who said it was 'dead' or 'dying' were jumped upon for judging it too early. Apparently this doesn't apply to a system which, unlike the Vita, has guaranteed system sellers coming up, it's pretty weird.
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What system sellers? Pikmin? Nintendo can't even give a release date on that one.
 
Cisce said:
Reminds me of the early PS3 doom and gloom articles that were around shortly after the console's launch.

Three months is far too soon to make any assumptions on how a console is going to last unless it was a Virtual Boy level flop.
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Do you think those assessments are unfair simply because the PS3 is doing all right now? Granted, even in a worst case scenario, Nintendo won't lose money like Sony did, but it's my understanding that they lost more money on the PS3 than they ever made on the PS2 long before it started to finally turn a profit. I don't think you can look at it now and conclude that Sony sure showed the naysayers back in the day.
 
Plinko said:
Everybody keeps making the same statement about poor 3D software sales.

Can we all agree that portable games are overpriced and the public has rejected the pricing structure?

Is that a thread-worthy topic?
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I think it is.

I do think 3DS software is probably superior to 99 cent software on phones but $40 is just too much when you consider the price of HD console/PC games which most also think are overpriced.
 
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