Imagine a sliding scale, with GameCube at the extreme left (lifetime sales: 20 million) and Wii at the extreme right (sales to date: around 100 million). Now, place your marker where you believe Wii Us sales achievements will sit in five years time. Is your prediction closer to GameCube or to Wii?
Nintendo strategists clearly believe the companys new machine, due to arrive in the U.S. on November 18, will perform well enough to place it in the right half of the scale, because anything to the left will surely be seen as a failure and this would be a seriously unwelcome prospect for the likes of Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime and Nintendo supremo Satoru Iwata.
And yet, there are plenty of ways Wii U can fail. The handheld GamePad screen is based on Nintendos characteristic understanding of human behavior - we all touch small screens, even when confronted by a large screen - and yet it is a gamble, something with unknown appeal, its possibilities are still to be fully revealed to us.
Nintendo may focus too heavily on the mass-market which served so well during the Wii years, but this is a fickle audience, and Wii U has way less instant OMG appeal than its predecessor.
TVii and Miiverse, as pointed out a recent editorial by IGNs Richard George, have come to the fore as peculiarly Nintendo-esque innovations. But it remains to be seen if they will persuade folk to part with $300-$350 in the big-box outlets of the United States.
Exclusive launch games like ZombiU, Nintendo Land and New Super Mario Bros. U will keep the faithful happy, and have yielded strong pre-orders for the machine, but day one sell-outs do not make for a successful console. Just ask SEGA.
Then there are external factors like the economy and competitive activity from rivals, likely to be cutting prices on established and still-desirable consoles like PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Not to mention new console launches from those same companies.
But like Messrs Iwata and Fils-Aime, those of us who care about Nintendo and who care about the future of gaming as a whole, must hold fast to the view that Wii U will be a commercial success. Because even with a second-string business in the handheld market, Nintendo simply cannot afford to mess this one up. And gaming without a strong, powerful Nintendo is much the poorer.
Many IGN readers will have powerful feelings for Nintendo based on decades of amazing gaming experiences through formative years. We call for old franchises to be reborn. We share stories about long-ago boxes, unwrapped on Christmas Day, frantically cabled to TV sets, satisfied relatives in the background, slightly baffled. These emotional ties last forever. But Nintendo is really not about the past, its about the future. Nintendo has no interest in hanging around as a relic of a bygone golden age. It must remain at the center of play and home entertainment in the years to come.
Why? Because no-one does it better. No-one has ever done it better. Nintendo makes mistakes, few companies in gaming have made more dumb-moves than Nintendo, but it also innovates stronger, harder and faster than any other hardware manufacturer.
Take a look at the last six years. Since Wii was revealed, Microsoft and Sony have spent the entire time, with various degrees of success, trying to catch up on the notion of controller-less play. And now they are vaguely seeking to figure out the handheld-screen-to-TV nexus, something which Nintendo will be bringing to fruition as a mass market consumer product in a matter of weeks.
Sensing, perhaps, that the GamePad might not be enough, Nintendo has focused on Miiverse, an in-game social network that looks like nothing we have seen before. Its not even clear if Nintendo understands what its doing, but at least its seeking a way to progress online gaming away from combat zones and leaderboards, to connect Game with Self with Brand with Friends. Its not an easy trick.
Pulling together TV with games consoles and a handheld screen, Nintendo is offering up TVii, an alternative to the samey app-grid iterations of rivals and smart TV manufacturers.
Sony and Microsoft do innovate, they contribute new ideas. But they do so at a slower pace and without the sharp daring of Nintendo. They are the trundling tank corps in gamings victories over other forms of entertainment, but Nintendo is the screaming dive-bomber.
For years, perhaps your entire lifetime, Nintendos whole focus has been on putting game-boxes in living spaces and connecting people through games. It does not manufacture television sets or market PC operating systems. This is Nintendos entire reason to exist.
Now we have arrived at a time when the games console as a concept is being threatened by new technologies and new behaviors. Does this mean that Nintendo is about to become obsolete? It means exactly the opposite. Whatever the future looks like, it needs Nintendo to be there, innovating, gambling, making mistakes, understanding the fundamentals of human play, being a leader.
It isnt enough for Nintendo to become merely another provider of software, feeding games-IP and cute characters into the roaring mill of some console-less future. It is impossible to disconnect Nintendo games with Nintendo consoles, impossible to imagine the NES separate from Super Mario Bros or the Wii divorced from Wii Sports. In the future, Nintendo needs to be doing more than merely making games.
The success of Wii U allows Nintendo to play a big role in the future and to shape gaming as it enters an age of great uncertainty. Anything less is unthinkable.
