Come on people.
The reason why sales for the WiiU are not great because the majority of core gamers
are taking a wait and see approach with the system. Why? Because they know Nintendo consoles do not get the majority of third party support.
And guess what, since its reveal, third party support has been lackluster, from the negative comments about the console, the types of games being developed, to the number of titles planned for the console.
So obviously, without third party support, the only real reason to get a Nintendo console is for Nintendo games. But that goes for any console! So what should third parties really be betting on? How good the first party titles will be! So no excuse to not support Nintendo.
And when they do support consoles equally, you get a situation like with this generation, the HD twins, with similar sale numbers. All three consoles could potentially sell around the same amount if third parties supported all the consoles equally.
Are you really saying that third parties should support everyone 'equally' because it's the nice thing to do, or am I just too tired?
There's plenty of reasons to not support the Wii U right now. It's launch has been to put it kindly, rough. Nintendo could not deliver a significant title that could drive sales at launch, which makes the system less exciting to the loyalists. Third parties didn't actually do so hot on the Wii in general (and like everything there's always exceptions), and Nintendo obviously didn't do a lot to convince publishers to stick to the Wii U.
There's also the fact that next gen consoles that were designed around developer requests are just around the corner. Before we even get into the DRM thing, the new consoles have more memory, are more powerful, and both MS and Sony have proven online networks that are used by literally tens of millions. The feature set provided by the Xbone and the PS4 exceeds what the Wii U is capable of by a significant amount.
Nintendo has struggled with third party relations as far back as the SNES. It was bad enough that not only did their split with Sony over the CD add-on create their greatest competitor yet, they also drove a lot of japanese developers to climb aboard the PS-wagon, securing from Nintendo vital exclusives and important IPs across multiple generations of consoles.
Nintendo is a company that, up until the Wii, was seeing every single one of its home consoles sell fewer and fewer units in every generation. It was especially bad for the N64, the GameCube, both were crushed by their competition by a significant degree. They have long struggled with the competition for gamer mindshare. The Wii was a hit because it DID NOT place so much emphasis on a market that they essentially had lost the majority of by the time the Gamecube rolled around. Third party developers have long seen other platforms as a place where they can find success. Nintendo has done an extremely poor job of doing away with that notion people have of them.
So here we are, six months after the launch of the Wii U, and it is currently selling so poorly in its home market it's become the butt of all the jokes the Vita once was. It's suffered a barren lineup from Nintendo as major titles have been repeatedly delayed. Third parties don't need a lack of DRM to look at the sales numbers to tell them that they may as well shift their focus elsewhere for the moment. The 360 and the PS3 are ending their shelf-lives creeping up on the Wii, which once looked as though it was unapproachable by either in terms of sales.
Speaking of the Wii, the system was essentially killed off early. Despite all of its sales, for some reason the support for the Wii dried up significantly two years ago. We had to practically BEG for Xenoblade, one of the best games of the generation to get a release outside of Japan. After Skyward Sword, Nintendo had no other swan song for their console to sing (and SS is a divisive game, ironically because it finally delivered on Nintendo's ideas about motion control in a Zelda game, only for it to fall flat in the eyes of many, not that I agreed with them).
By contrast, the PS3 is seeing some of the best games of its life this year, and while its successor isn't backward compatible, the fact that the system is ending on a fairly strong note is actually pretty damned good marketing for the PS4. It gives gamers a sense that Sony knows how to get things done on their systems.
At this point, Nintendo needs to hope that not only will everything they announce next week drives up sales for the Wii U significantly, they have to hope that MS keeps screwing the CoDog (likely), and that Sony has the worst E3 ever, then follows it up with months of negative PR. Then they have to hope that every third party developer who has left them out to dry sees the error of their ways and comes running back and brings some amazing games that can draw in a broad audience.
Next week should be fun to watch, that's for sure.
