Support NeoGAF

[megabytecr]

BS

they do make games for kids and casuals
FIFA is a game that can be played by Adults and Kids
Mass Effect 3, they sabotage the ME3 release on Wii U.
while the Wii and Wii U are viewed as a kids console, there are a lot of adults that actually buy and play the system. OR Am I alone?

 

[MYE]

Why exactly leave out the Wii?

Just cuz

 

[RMS Gigantic]

That was back in the 80s, we're in 2014, 3rd Parties can publish whatever they wan't.

I know that, but the person I was responding to claimed that Nintendo only went kid-friendly due to Pokémon. They started that concept back in the NES era, but they started trying to shake the "kiddie" label that Sega gave them starting with, oh, say, the late Gamecube era/early Wii era or so, because it was at about that point where the label was really starting to get annoying.

 

[Kimawolf]

Because he's saying the Wii was an anomaly and that there's a trend with Nintendo's hardware sales once it's taken out of the equation.

The only console maker not on a downard trend is MS. The PS3 trails behind the. PS2 and the Vita behind the PSP. And if this gen ends in 5 years the PS4 will continue downwards.

 

[RayMaker]

The majority Nintendo franchises are aimed at kids, From the colour pallette to marios silly little noises appeals to a younger audience, though it does not mean adults cant enjoy them!

I like these things

but they are marketed towards kids, it does not make them a bad product.

 

[DeuceGamer]

I thought it was a decent article. The main points are Nintendo needs to figure out where they plan on taking the company and I can agree with that. It's a critical time and despite all the cash reserves the decisions made right now are going to determine the future for Nintendo, IMO. Will be interesting to see which way they go this time.

 

[Captain Smoker]

I don't understand why the Wii is always taken out of those graphs.

"See? If we take out the company's most successful console, and one of the most successful consoles in the industry, they've been on a downward trend!"

 

[EatinOlives]

Because EA's impeccable reputation in recent years would ensure that WiiUs would fly off the shelves.

Like it or not, they bring in the dough. Their software sales, despite shit like SimCity, Dead Space 3 and BF4, are still selling far more than Nintendo's own first party efforts.

It's silly to indignantly claim that Nintendo doesn't "need" X company. The reality is that they do. They need whatever help they can get. That mentality may have flown in the Wii days, but it's woefully ignorant today.

 

[1.21Gigawatts]

Why exactly leave out the Wii?

Wii captured a casual market that is gone now. Thats why it was an anomaly.

 

[Lucid07]

Nintendo must not have let them monetise gameplay videos of EA games on their system.

 

[Wickerbasket]

Just cuz

Because it was a one time fad, and Nintendo aren't getting that audience back unless some sort of miracle happens.

 

[7threst]

No one cares about EA anyway. Console is better off without them.

I care though, and Nintendo should too.

 

[Jachaos]

Kids games ? Really ? Sigh.

EA, get those damn ads out of my NHL loading screens, pause menus and the likes. I wouldn't have bought the game this year if not for a trade-in offer that was too good to pass up, but for those that already pay 60$ for updated rosters and a few new features, slapping ads everywhere onto a full-price game that also throws microtransaction offers at your face all the time is ridiculous.

Also, don't fuck up games and launches fans were awaiting for like SimCity, Plants vs Zombies 2 and Battlefield 4. Also applies to games people were not waiting for as well (NBA Live). Also, don't lay-off and shut down an entire studio right as a game is being shipped/before giving the staff their paid vacations/compensation for all the crunch time. Also, don't have games be designed by a focus group (Fuse).

I'm not even going to address that franchise comment other than I'm really eager to give money to Ubisoft for Child of Light and Valiant Hearts and to Sony for Hohokum, etc.

There's much more wrong with EA than Nintendo on the software side of things. It's worlds apart. Nintendo games are much more enjoyable to me as an adult and they're also not broken inside out.

 

[10k]

Pretty much.

People who dismiss specs with the "Graphics don't matter"-argument miss the point. Developers already moved their development processes and tools from current-gen to next-gen (and probably mobile). Long-term support for another current-gen system like the Wii U would disrupt this organizational situation and introduce unproportional costs. Entire games had to be redesigned from scratch to be implementable on the Wii U, since even core gameplay of next-gen games will rely on the processing power and memory capacity of those systems. Why would any developer do that?

Yup. I love Nintendo and want to see them succeed but they fucked themselves over by making the Wii U weak (I'm sure they didn't Expect Sony to go with 8GB of RAM) and not expecting most devs to make their new engines ready for much more powerful hardware. Nintendo guessed wrong in what the specs of their competitors would be and now they are paying the price for it.

Nobody will develop for it except themselves because it shifts away too much resources and people to develop a whole new version of a game just for one specific platform.

 

[2+2=5]

The silent implication that you have to make M-rated games in order to appeal to a mature audience is indeed fallacious. The Metroid Prime series and games like Zelda:OoT are good examples. Matureness in games doesn't come with blood, gore and violence.

In any case, I don't think that Nintendo has an inherent image that is repulsive to the "hardcore gamer" and that they cannot possibly shake off. If Nintendo had all the thrid-party games that Sony and Microsoft have, the image of their first-party games would not matter.

They would "just" have to make a console that doesn't look like a toy (the Wii U looks pretty good in that department) and "do a PS4-Sony", like the article suggested, instead of releasing a hopelessly underpowered platform and give western developers the cold shoulder.

I don't think you got the point, i was not talking about the maturity of a game or any other aspect of the game itself, but about the market it aims to.
Adults enjoy Pokemon? It's totally natural because it's aimed to everyone, it has elements to appeal to everyone, kids and adults.
Kids enjoy COD? Ok, but they are not supposed to play it, even if the truth is that 18+ games count on kids sales they are not the primary target so 18+ games have mostly elements that appeal to adults.
Sorry but this story that "mature" games have just blood is pure bullshit, "mature" games can be heavy on a deep tragic and psychological story, complicate controls or gameplay etc, all things that most of the Nintendo games lack.

 

[cyberheater]

Announcing a better deal on other platforms helped sooooooooo much.

It doesn't matter. If WiiU had great sales then publishers would have made it work with Nintendo. Instead, they (publishers) are completely ignoring it now.

The more I think about it, the more I've come to the conclusion that the failure on Nintendo to successfully launch WiiU came down to these three things:-

- They should never have called it Wii(U). It just lead to confusion to the general public.
- It should never have had the screen. It should have been a basic box with a gamepad.
- It should have launched with a big Mario 3D title. Even if Nintendo had to swallow their pride and work with another 3rd party to make it happen. And then follow up with great titles every 3rd month.

 

[tebunker]

The Wii really was an anomaly.

I know the story left wii out to make a point but it fell short of any smart analysis on the lowering sales. Any company would experience the same things in this market if they had been around as long as Nintendo. Heck sony had it happen on their third console.

Look at the changing competitive landscape for each if those systems. You will see increasing levels of stronger and stronger competition. So the graph would always look like that as new companies enter and leave the market. The graph proves nothing other than the facts that a; Nintendo faces more competition now than ever whether the admit it or not and b; they have failed to secure the same # of users/consoles sold but what about their percentage if the market place. We also have to include the handheld systems in this too.

 

[gogosox8]

Mass Effect 3 on Wii U was most certainly NOT a solid effort. It came out as the other platforms were getting Mass Effect Trilogy for a LOWER price. Fuck EA.

This is exactly what I was thinking. Why would anyone buy ME3 on the WiiU for full price when you could've got the trilogy on the ps3, 360, or pc for half that?

 

[antronoid]

In the article, he was trying to point out that the Wii was an anomaly because, according to a Nintendo spokesman, they were fighting a losing battle with 3 competitors in the race after the Gamecube, so they targeted a completely different audience. It specifically abandoned their strategy from previous generations.

Now they're trying to grab both casual and core again, it shows a trend in the constant decrease of console sales over the years when they do that.

Fair enough, they probably would have done better to capitalize on the casual market with the Wii U, I think they tried by mixing up the controller as they saw tablets becoming more commonplace, though they probably have done much better with a Wii HD with wii-motes/controller as standard.

 

[Into]

So was the Wii U suppose to be something else when Nintendo and EA made their infamous "Unprecedented Partnership"?

Was there a misunderstanding?

When they made this deal, did EA expect Nintendo to make games with more "mature" aesthetics? Surely they knew that Pikmin, NSMB U etc were in production?


Yeah i know the questions surrounding the whole "deal" between them have been asked a million times, and nobody knows a damn thing. But its almost like:

1) EA misunderstood something - This is hard to believe, these are well educated professionals in both companies, so a misunderstanding seems like a silly explanation
2) Whatever the "Wii U" was at the time, is not the same console that is in stores today.

 

[MYE]

PS5 will sell NEGATIVE NUMBERS

 

[jdforge]

Nintendo are better off without EA. I've not bought an EA game in years and don't plan to ever again. S'long muthafukers

 

[Deus Ex Machina]

Wii captured a casual market that is gone now. Thats why it was an anomaly.

Yep, and casuals don't buy games on the regular. As I mention in another thread many of us could see the train wreck that was the wii in the making

 

[HyperHip]

I think they honestly hit a point where there will be no way to recover what little 3rd parties they had left.

Wonder if it would be best for them to start making their own IPs that target that 18-35 male demographic.

 

[MisterHero]

Did Rockstar purposely leave the Wii U out for GTA V or did Nintendo say no thanks to that very mature themed game? Manhunt 2 is available on the Wii....

Capcom published Resident Evil 4 on Wii and sold almost 2 million copies (~4 counting the GC version, ~6 with the PS2 version). They made REvelations on 3DS and are publishing it on multiple, more advanced platforms.

Rockstar could've published a GTA III/VC/SA collection for Wii, but they didn't. Instead they ported Manhunt, Bully, and Table Tennis (lolz the RAGE engine on Wii).

 

[LAA]

I know what they're saying really. I thought that about Nintendo for a long while that they're aiming at kids, and obviously that will be putting off developers making mature games.
A problem for Nintendo that won't be so easy to fix. They really need to try getting a lot more mature games onto the Wii U/3DS to demonstrate they're for mature gamers too.

Sometimes they've demonstrated mature games are wanted too though, such as Resident Evil Revelations, and MH3. I think it really is just Nintendo's place is being a secondary console mainly atm, and only the real gamers will be wanting it funnily enough. I don't think people will be looking at Wii U's for a primary console unless they're a pure hardcore Nintendo fan and simply nothing else interests them at all or just don't game so much that they don't need another console.

I'm just looking forward to how Nintendo try and fix this for next console, or whether they plead ignorance again and pretend every things fine. One thing's for sure, they just have a lot to prove to me, I probably won't buy at launch no matter what they show, cause Wii U seemed fine leading to launch, but that was because of lies too. I remember reading there was going to be an achievement system and there wasnt.

Nintendo did this to themselves really. I do love a lot what they do, but I also hate with a fiery passion what I don't like and most of the time its not such a difficult thing I'm asking. More so for a company of Nintendo's size. I think the Wii U will be cool at least for a Nintendo Box this gen, (Hell if it wasnt you'd know it was bad), but we got a few awesome 3rd parties too like Bayonetta 2 and X, which is at least a step for Nintendo.

 

[outunderthestars]

So was the Wii U suppose to be something else when Nintendo and EA made their infamous "Unprecedented Partnership"?

Was there a misunderstanding?

When they made this deal, did EA expect Nintendo to make games with more "mature" aesthetics? Surely they knew that Pikmin, NSMB U etc were in production?


Yeah i know the questions surrounding the whole "deal" between them have been asked a million times, and nobody knows a damn thing. But its almost like:

1) EA misunderstood something - This is hard to believe, these are well educated professionals in both companies, so a misunderstanding seems like a silly explanation
2) Whatever the "Wii U" was at the time, is not the same console that is in stores today.

I think EA simply expected the Wii U to do better in the marketplace. When their internal polling numbers began to show consumer apathy towards the platform they canceled all of their Wii U projects that were in early development as they didn't believe that they could make a return on the investment.

 

[Tom_Cody]

Part of a much larger (and great) piece on how Nintendo needs to reinvent itself from CVG, you can read more here: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/446277/blog/nintendo-must-reinvent-itself/

Why do EA people keep throwing fuel on this fire? I literally can't understand this. It seems to be at the very least unprofessional.

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

The Wii was just too big to ignore, but third parties still barely knew what to do with it. We wound up with a lot of minigame collections and "test" games from developers whose strongest efforts were released elsewhere. Though as I recall, the Plastic Instrument genre did quite well on the Wii right up until the market for music games imploded.

What people are ignoring is that the motion gaming market imploded as well, just a few years later. Did the new Wii Sports, Mario & Sonic, and Wii Fit even make a sound when they crash landed?

3rd parties were, in retrospect, wise to not invest too deeply in an unsustainable market.

Nintendo are better off without EA. I've not bought an EA game in years and don't plan to ever again. S'long muthafukers

By definition, no platform is better off in the marketplace with less games.

The two examples of consoles we have with zero EA support show that they are kind of important for a minimum level of interest.

 

[MagiusNecros]

Nintendo did this to themselves really. I do love a lot what they do, but I also hate with a fiery passion what I don't like and most of the time its not such a difficult thing I'm asking. More so for a company of Nintendo's size. I think the Wii U will be cool at least for a Nintendo Box this gen, (Hell if it wasnt you'd know it was bad), but we got a few awesome 3rd parties too like Bayonetta 2 and X, which is at least a step for Nintendo.

Project X is first party because MonolithSoft is also 1st party. It's owned by Nintendo now.

 

[Wishmaster92]

Mass Effect 3 on Wii U was most certainly NOT a solid effort. It came out as the other platforms were getting Mass Effect Trilogy for a LOWER price. Fuck EA.

Exactly, and they still charged full price for ME3.

 

[Wickerbasket]

No one can deny that there was a downward trend in console sales from each console released from the NES to the Gamecube.

The fact that the Wii happened doesn't change that, and neither does the fact that they've seemingly picked up right where the trend left off at with the Wii U.

 

[gogosox8]

The Wii really was an anomaly.

That chart doesn't really say anything though. All it proves is that the market has gotten more competitive and Nintendo has sold less consoles as a result. It doesn't really explain how Nintendo is "doomed" either. Yeah, the WiiU is doing poorly but they can turn that around by building a great system next time so that chart doesn't really support the author's claims.

 

[Deactivision]

I guess I'm part of the problem but as a Wii U owner I don't miss EA one bit. The games they produce generally do not interest me at all -- looking through the list of EA games on Wikipedia I don't see a single console game produced this decade that I care about. I do own NFSMWU, which is a fine game, but I could certainly live without it if I had to; it's hardly essential.

Still, it's difficult to recommend the system to people I know when I have to qualify it with "but don't expect any sports games or most AAA third party titles," so I understand the importance of their presence for the average buyer. Nintendo is screwed without these big games that appeal to the mainstream consumer, and I doubt they'll ever be able to capture more than a niche audience without them.

 

[koutoru]

What is that supposed to mean? The generation has barely started (not even 1/1/2 of 5 to 6 years).

Even if you added 15 million more to the Wii U, the trend in the graph won't change.

With the exception of the Wii, Nintendo's console sales have been steadily falling since NES.That's all.

 

[Piers]

Cinematic experiences. AAA game studios. Huge sports titles. Getting you laid. Balls-deep FPS shooters. Big boy racing.
EA, it's in the game.

 

[megabytecr]

Pretty much.

People who dismiss specs with the "Graphics don't matter"-argument miss the point. Developers already moved their development processes and tools from current-gen to next-gen (and probably mobile). Long-term support for another current-gen system like the Wii U would disrupt this organizational situation and introduce unproportional costs. Entire games had to be redesigned from scratch to be implementable on the Wii U, since even core gameplay of next-gen games will rely on the processing power and memory capacity of those systems. Why would any developer do that?

Really? So I had a dream that Crysis 3, Far Cry 3, Tomb Raider and Bioshock Infinite were released for the PS360. Engines are pretty scalable this days.

Most engines are scalable so I would expect at least 75% (actually more but..) of games to be scalable between PS4/XB1 and Wii U. I would expect just the more ambitious projects not possible on Wii U, I have yet to see one.

The issue is the profitability of the Ports in a console that has had a tough first year regarding sales and current owners don´t seem to be buying a lot of SW either.

 

[Deleted member 752119]

The Wii U is not going to outsell the GC at the rate it's selling now.

The graph just shows the downward trend of Nintendo's home console business when you leave out the anomaly that was the Wii.

Yep. And there's no way it gets a 5-6 year generation with the way its selling.

If Nintendo is determined to stay in the console hardware business, they'll put out another machine 2015, 2016 at the latest. With the Wii U dead in the water they can't just sit around and fade into irrelevance. At the same time, they can't rush something out too fast and piss off too many Wii U owners.

Late 2015 would be a good plan IMO. Gives them time to get current projects out, and a few more. And a 3 year generation, will piss off some of the few million who bought a Wii U, but probably not enough to worry about.

 

[SkylineRKR]

Nintendo are better off without EA. I've not bought an EA game in years and don't plan to ever again. S'long muthafukers

I think this is dumb. You might not need EA, but Nintendo needs EA if they want to expand their user base. If Nintendo can't offer an annual FIFA, they'll lose out on those consumers. They aren't better off without EA. In fact, Nintendo were quite a bit better off right now if they enjoyed support that matches Sony or MS. More support is more sales and vice versa, and that results in a better experience for hardcore Nintendo fans as well.

 

[RayMaker]

I know the story left wii out to make a point but it fell short of any smart analysis on the lowering sales. Any company would experience the same things in this market if they had been around as long as Nintendo. Heck sony had it happen on their third console.

Look at the changing competitive landscape for each if those systems. You will see increasing levels of stronger and stronger competition. So the graph would always look like that as new companies enter and leave the market. The graph proves nothing other than the facts that a; Nintendo faces more competition now than ever whether the admit it or not and b; they have failed to secure the same # of users/consoles sold but what about their percentage if the market place. We also have to include the handheld systems in this too.

The graph represents to me that aside from the wii Nintendo's home console business has been on a downward spiral, which is factually true despite the competition. The same cannot not be said about Microsoft or Sony to the same degree.

No matter how you look at it Nintendo are not in a good place at the moment. They have insulted gamers with there weak hardware and there unsuccessful attempt to get a competitive 3rd party lineup.

 

[GalacticaN7]

I don't blame EA. Even if they committed more games to the system, the core buyer of Nintendo products is more apt to purchase the staple games of the company. With a low install base, why allocate costly resources to develop on a system where returning a profit on your game is left to extreme chance.

And on the comment about kids, that's the demographic Nintendo shoots for, but it happens adults also like the games....but Nintendos target audience with handhelds and most console titles are for the younger crowd.

 

[BinaryPork2737]

Truly the most unprecedented relationship.

And saying that the "Mass Effect title on the Wii U... was a solid effort" is bull. It didn't even get all of the DLC and the Mass Effect Trilogy collection was announced right after it, completely snubbing the Wii U. I know some people straight up boycotted the Wii U ME3 port because of that.

The only game worth anything that EA put out on the Wii U was Need For Speed: Most Wanted U. Now that was a solid effort.

 

[evilromero]

I know that, but the person I was responding to claimed that Nintendo only went kid-friendly due to Pokémon. They started that concept back in the NES era, but they started trying to shake the "kiddie" label that Sega gave them starting with, oh, say, the late Gamecube era/early Wii era or so, because it was at about that point where the label was really starting to get annoying.

Wrong. Started with Mortal Kombat 2 in 1994 being totally uncensored along with Doom.

 

[Rajack]

No, Nintendo died to you when you saw the specs of their hardware compared to Sony and microsofts dev kits and you knew the system would sell like shit.

I don't blame them for skipping the Wii U but don't use the kiddy excuse.

This is an incredibly conceited and egotistical mindset to have. Any development studio, and even publisher that are worth their salt would not solely rely on specs and hardware horsepower to dictate their next moves. With the increase of power in hardware specifications comes higher financial overhead, which means every game is riskier to make. EA is betting the farm on high stakes AAA title development, the costs of which could easily surpass the $1Billion mark at the rate they are inflating the budgets of their games. Obviously there is the small fact of greater risk bearing the fruit of greater reward, BUT the massively inflated costs of game development will compell EA's executives to force their studios to cut content for paid DLC more than they already do as well as take shortcuts in the development cycles of their most expensive titles. This here will have disastrous consequences for the games they release. For evidence of this you need not look any further than Battlefield 4. By this train of logic EA simply abandoned the Wii U because they have sunk all of their money into next gen development and have nothing left to spare for medium sized games or even downporting their next gen efforts.

 

[Evolution_1ne]

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

Exactly, and they still charged full price for ME3.

Aren't Square charging full price for Tomb RaiderE? Isn't Konami charging a $10 premium for the next gen versions of MGS5? I really doubt either of those games will sell as poorly as Wii U Mass Effect, Tekken Tag, CoD, or Assassin's Creed.

This is an incredibly conceited and egotistical mindset to have. Any development studio, and even publisher that are worth their salt would not solely rely on specs and hardware horsepower to dictate their next moves. With the increase of power in hardware specifications comes higher financial overhead, which means every game is riskier to make. EA is betting the farm on high stakes AAA title development, the costs of which could easily surpass the $1Billion mark at the rate they are inflating the budgets of their games. Obviously there is the small fact of greater risk bearing the fruit of greater reward, BUT the massively inflated costs of game development will compell EA's executives to force their studios to cut content for paid DLC more than they already do as well as take shortcuts in the development cycles of their most expensive titles. This here will have disastrous consequences for the games they release. For evidence of this you need not look any further than Battlefield 4. By this train of logic EA simply abandoned the Wii U because they have sunk all of their money into next gen development and have nothing left to spare for medium sized games or even downporting their next gen efforts.

Creating a AAA Wii U game from the ground up costs just as much as making a PS360 game, with a fraction of the intended audience.

 

[Ushiwaka]

It'll sell as good as other Platinum Games's IP

Bayonetta sold pretty well. So did MGR. Vanquish bombed but it was not as hard as TW101 or MadWorld which were the worst selling PG titles. And Sega fucked up Anarchy Reigns.
Bayonetta 2 is going to bomb hard. Even harder than TW101 maybe. And that is not because its a PG title, its because to Nintendo this game doesn't even exist. Just like TW101 but even worse.

 

[TheAngryMonkey]

BS

they do make games for kids and casuals
FIFA is a game that can be played by Adults and Kids
Mass Effect 3, they sabotage the ME3 release on Wii U.
while the Wii and Wii U are viewed as a kids console, there are a lot of adults that actually buy and play the system. OR Am I alone?

Apparently it's a pipe dream but I for one am with you. I want my Nintendo 1st party games AND multi plats on the same system. It makes me sad there isn't a "definitive version" of Tomb Raider coming to Wii U for example.

 

[Enosh]

Now can we agree that EA is the one being stubborn and irrational here?

because they don't want to support a bad selling system whose existing buyers wouldn't buy their products anyway due to userbase differences?

 

[RMS Gigantic]

Wrong. Started with Mortal Kombat 2 in 1994 bring totally uncensored along with Doom.

Whoops, I meant that they started trying to shake the label off in the late Gamecube/early Wii era. I know the label started in 1994, that's why I said it was the label "that Sega gave them."