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This Wii U doom forecast is absolutely toxic

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Astral/H3X

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I think at this point, the Wii U might be absolutely beyond saving due to the absolutely horrid word of mouth that games journalists are putting out on it. I honestly think that has been the single most damaging factor on this whole situation.
I say this because the other day, a friend of mine said that they could pick up a Wii for $150, and was asking if this was a good deal or not. It didn't come with any games, and I'm not sure if it came with controllers or not. Now, I'm not aware that $150 is a good price or not, but that's beyond the actual point. When he posted this, this was the day that the $200 Nintendoland Deluxe bundle was shown to be $200. I suggested that he consider that, as Nintendoland is an AMAZING couch multiplayer game, the system could play all Wii games, and he'd effectively be getting a better system for just the cost of the game he'd be playing.

His response? There was no way in hell he would ever get a Wii U, citing reasons like "Wii has cheaper local multiplayer (...wut?), and the system was already abandoned (...wasn't the Wii literally abandoned like 3 years ago, instead of being on Nintendo-only life support?).
Nevermind the fact that neither of those reasons make any sense, this guy was completely against getting a Wii U even though it's just a completely better buy given the price he was considering. And no, he never once mentioned Gamecube support, nor have I ever heard him mention one. He didn't want one, even though it would do -everything- he wanted it to do, and then some.

This is absolutely shocking to me -- Nintendo's problem isn't wholly marketing, it's that the entire gaming journalism scene has it out to completely destroy Nintendo's reputation, to the point where a no brainer purchase becomes completely out of the picture. What the hell happened here? I seriously hope that "Nintendoomed" doesn't end up being a self fulfilling prophecy, because that would be some major bullshit, as the Wii U is, IMO, a wonderful machine.
 
The "deathwatch" discussion overpowering every other discussion around the system in every thread is kind of tiring.

It's a fair discussion, I just wish it wasn't the only one.
 
Completely agree in the same way that I feel negative press about the recession made it worse. People hear times are bad and then say times are bad and start to believe it. Maybe nothing has otherwise changed for them, they have jobs and everything is the same but they stop spending money because times are bad, making the issue worse for everyone.
 
$150 for a Wii with no games is a terrible bargain. You can find a $99 bundle almost everywhere.

But yeah, shitty results = toxic name. There's nothing that can be done at this point.
 
It's a difficult balance, it is their responsibility to report the poor position it's in, they're meant to be providing consumer purchasing advice.

Personally, I would tell someone not to buy it because it's going to die, and prices are going to crash.
 
I love my Wii U and I completely agree with you. With that said, I think negative word of mouth is a bigger problem amongst gamers and that the larger problem is still the fact that no one knows what a Wii U is or that it exists.
 
Wasn't there a reviewer who mentioned Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze sales potential as a negative point for the game?

Shit like that needs to go
 
H3XAntiStyle said:
This is absolutely shocking to me -- Nintendo's problem isn't wholly marketing, it's that the entire gaming journalism scene has it out to completely destroy Nintendo's reputation, to the point where a no brainer purchase becomes completely out of the picture. What the hell happened here? I seriously hope that "Nintendoomed" doesn't end up being a self fulfilling prophecy, because that would be some major bullshit, as the Wii U is, IMO, a wonderful machine.
Click to expand...

To be fair, it's hard to tell people that Wii U is a great investment and will get tons of support, because that's not true. I also stopped telling people that a Wii U is a great console to buy. 'Only if you want to have some great Nintendo games with a some indies and aren't hoping for third party stuff, I'd reccommend one to you' is what I say these days.

That being said, the Nintendoom articles are of course a bit of hyperbole from journo's, so that's something that needs to stop. Riding on the negativity train to get clicks is a bit lame imo. And as Nibel said, stating stuff like that in a review is just completely unprofessional. That has nothing to do with the game and experience.
 
For what it's worth (probably nothing), the WiiU has been gaining some serious ground in our store. It's probably the best selling console right now (PS4's are still out of stock...so). Obviously this nothing but anecdotal evidence, but it's a far cry from what it was like (people ignoring it, not knowing what it was etc.). I'm very interested in seeing what MK8 can do, the WiiU seems to finally be a thing to the maistream.
 
I agree with this. There's has been a lot of FUD spread about the device since it launched. For example, take the supposed Wii/Wii U E3 unveiling "confusion"... This was despite the fact that Nintendo had specifically announced to the press that they'd show a new system - the successor to the Wii - months beforehand.

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/04/25/wii-successor-2012/

Similarly, we now have articles suggesting that Nintendo will abandon the Wii U for the QoL platform, despite the fact that Iwata already stated otherwise.
 
maxcriden said:
I love my Wii U and I completely agree with you. With that said, I think negative word of mouth is a bigger problem amongst gamers and that the larger problem is still the fact that no one knows what a Wii U is or that it exists.
Click to expand...

from personal experience, the controller itself is the biggest negative aspect.

my brother refused to play it because the controller was too big.

that's why i want to see a no gamepad Wii U SKU before it is abandoned. there's a possibility that it could actually help more than what people think.
 
I think your friend needs to get a Gaf account to learn the truth.

But yeah, the whole "Wii U is dead" conversation gets so fucking old after the fiftieth time you've seen the same points brought up again and again and again. At this point it's just console bashing. I've gotten used to avoiding threads where any of the three main consoles, both handhelds, and pc are bashed by people who don't even own them.
 
H3XAntiStyle said:
This is absolutely shocking to me -- Nintendo's problem isn't wholly marketing, it's that the entire gaming journalism scene has it out to completely destroy Nintendo's reputation, to the point where a no brainer purchase becomes completely out of the picture. What the hell happened here? I seriously hope that "Nintendoomed" doesn't end up being a self fulfilling prophecy, because that would be some major bullshit, as the Wii U is, IMO, a wonderful machine.
Click to expand...

Nintendo hasn't cared for the gaming press for a while now and the gaming press acts like little babies and starts going on and on and on about how Nintendo and the Wii U sucks in return. The Wii U is doomed unless Nintendo starts making BIG announcements that the journalists are allowed to announce, but Nintendo won't do that as they prefer their Nintendo Direct's.

That being said, stuff like this only affects some of the gamers. The real hardcore gamers will purchase a Wii U no matter what because they know it has good games. Then there are the few on sites like here and others that only wanna bet on the horse that they know are going to win, so when they hear that the Wii U could possibly flop, they hold out and thus help it flop. However, the biggest issue is Nintendo's marketing and the casual adult gamers and child gamers who have moved onto cellphones, tablets, and Facebook games.
 
axisofweevils said:
Similarly, we now have articles suggesting that Nintendo will abandon the Wii U for the QoL platform, despite the fact that Iwata already stated otherwise.
Click to expand...

There's some precedent in this with how they referred to the DS as a third pillar at the time of its unveiling, though with the DS we knew exactly what it was and how transparent the third pillar moniker was. We don't even know what the QoL platform is supposed to be.
 
How about it's just a system that no one wants or asked for, and the stories that are written reflect the mood of gamers. It's not a journalists job to sell a console that Nintendo ruined themselves
 
Remember the "it doesn't output in HD" BS we got for all Wii games?
We'll get "But the sales are going to be tepid" in reviews now.
Not that I should care since I don't read reviews anymore...and look at that! I miss the funny stuffs like SimCity but overall it's all ok now.

gcubed said:
How about it's just a system that no one wants or asked for, and the stories that are written reflect the mood of gamers. It's not a journalists job to sell a console that Nintendo ruined themselves
Click to expand...

I would agree with you if we didn't have years and years of "Wii sucks and all who like them are shitheads" before going in this gen...
 
H3XAntiStyle said:
This is absolutely shocking to me -- Nintendo's problem isn't wholly marketing, it's that the entire gaming journalism scene has it out to completely destroy Nintendo's reputation, to the point where a no brainer purchase becomes completely out of the picture. What the hell happened here? I seriously hope that "Nintendoomed" doesn't end up being a self fulfilling prophecy, because that would be some major bullshit, as the Wii U is, IMO, a wonderful machine.
Click to expand...

The doomed stories didn't start until after the horrid sales numbers and the decline of third party support. This situation is nobody's fault but Nintendo's.
 
ElectricBlanketFire said:
There's no way of knowing how toxic the Wii U is because Nintendo doesn't release their data to Greenpeace.
Click to expand...

giphy.gif
 
foxuzamaki said:
Did you correct your friend?
Click to expand...

Wait a second I know you...

Phazon said:
To be fair, it's hard to tell people that Wii U is a great investment and will get tons of support, because that's not true. I also stopped telling people that a Wii U is a great console to buy. 'Only if you want to have some great Nintendo games with a some indies and aren't hoping for third party stuff, I'd reccommend one to you' is what I say these days.
Click to expand...

And a Wii is a better investment with tons of future support? That's the point here. He was asking about a Wii, at a given price, but was unwilling to even consider a Wii U because of how toxic the journalism is on it.

And yeah the Donkey Kong crap is bullshit. "AMAAAAAZING GAME that'll sell crap 3.5".

EDIT: I'm not saying that it's the only factor, but it is definitely impacting it. It went unknown, and now it's only known for being doomed. This is just the point that completely annoys me, because it's caused almost entirely by journalists. Yes, people on GAF run around screaming doomed everywhere, but the average gamer isn't on GAF. Yes, they had poor marketing.
 
I think game journalism is getting more bipolar and shares more similarities with messageboards than it ever has (probably because of the heavy influence of social media). This effectively makes things very black and white, either you're the best thing ever or the most awful thing to befall the Earth.
 
I actually agree. I've been saying this for a while. I know of a few people who were interested in Wii U games, but then the Wii U hate in the media went on and on and on and on and on and on and on that they stopped wanting it, despite the many games.

okayfrog said:
Nintendo hasn't cared for the gaming press for a while now and the gaming press acts like little babies and starts going on and on and on about how Nintendo and the Wii U sucks in return. The Wii U is doomed unless Nintendo starts making BIG announcements that the journalists are allowed to announce, but Nintendo won't do that as they prefer their Nintendo Direct's.

That being said, stuff like this only affects some of the gamers. The real hardcore gamers will purchase a Wii U no matter what because they know it has good games. Then there are the few on sites like here and others that only wanna bet on the horse that they know are going to win, so when they hear that the Wii U could possibly flop, they hold out and thus help it flop. However, the biggest issue is Nintendo's marketing and the casual adult gamers and child gamers who have moved onto cellphones, tablets, and Facebook games.
Click to expand...

I argue that Nintendo don't necessarily prefer Directs, but they created the Directs to deal with that situation, with journalists twisting Nintendo's words to suit their agenda and/or ignoring game announcements in the first place. Iwata has mentioned things like this in Q&As in Investor Meetings.
 
The Wii U's problem is that it appeals to a very narrow group of people and Nintendo has done little to try to expand that group. That's not on journalists, that's on Nintendo. To think that the vast majority of the blame for Wii U's failure doesn't belong to Nintendo is foolish in my opinion.
 
the general public doesn't give a shit about gaming journalists, articles, sites, doom and gloom, luckly. Still, it doesnt about the WiiU either, but hopefully things will improve a bit with MK
 
It says a lot that he would not want to spend the extra 50 dollars for the Tablet controller, ability to play new games, and a pack in game.

The more I think about it, the less I think WiiU needs a price drop. Realistically, if they cut it down to 250 or even 200, how many more would they sell? Most people just don't want one at all- it doesn't really matter what the price actually is, unless it is so low that it starts competing with things like the 99 dollar Roku as a bedroom Netflix device.

This last console generation was so long that many people are satisfied in just keeping their old console as there gaming system of choice. If people want to upgrade, they want something that is more powerful than what they currently have- something the WiiU can't claim over the Xbox One and PS4.
 
Nintendo is just a joke these days(has been for a long time tbh) for the gaming community/press and they only have themselves to blame really.
 
H3XAntiStyle said:
I think at this point, the Wii U might be absolutely beyond saving due to the absolutely horrid word of mouth that games journalists are putting out on it. I honestly think that has been the single most damaging factor on this whole situation.
I say this because the other day, a friend of mine said that they could pick up a Wii for $150, and was asking if this was a good deal or not. It didn't come with any games, and I'm not sure if it came with controllers or not. Now, I'm not aware that $150 is a good price or not, but that's beyond the actual point. When he posted this, this was the day that the $200 Nintendoland Deluxe bundle was shown to be $200. I suggested that he consider that, as Nintendoland is an AMAZING couch multiplayer game, the system could play all Wii games, and he'd effectively be getting a better system for just the cost of the game he'd be playing.

His response? There was no way in hell he would ever get a Wii U, citing reasons like "Wii has cheaper local multiplayer (...wut?), and the system was already abandoned (...wasn't the Wii literally abandoned like 3 years ago, instead of being on Nintendo-only life support?).
Nevermind the fact that neither of those reasons make any sense, this guy was completely against getting a Wii U even though it's just a completely better buy given the price he was considering. And no, he never once mentioned Gamecube support, nor have I ever heard him mention one. He didn't want one, even though it would do -everything- he wanted it to do, and then some.

This is absolutely shocking to me -- Nintendo's problem isn't wholly marketing, it's that the entire gaming journalism scene has it out to completely destroy Nintendo's reputation, to the point where a no brainer purchase becomes completely out of the picture. What the hell happened here? I seriously hope that "Nintendoomed" doesn't end up being a self fulfilling prophecy, because that would be some major bullshit, as the Wii U is, IMO, a wonderful machine.
Click to expand...

You are 100% correct.

Nintendo cut ties with journos and never picked up the slack, both fatal errors. This is the reason Wii U is a failure. Pissed off journos and the competition were able to walk all over the Wii U.

Sure some hate spilled over from how bad waggle sucked, but that wasn't fatal, just catalyzed the other crap.
 
The sad thing is that even if Nintendo dropped the price, bundled Mario Kart with it and it raised sales of Wii U a couple of million, considering relations of developers and crucially (as implied above) the presses attitude with Nintendo and the Wii U coupled with the long development / planning time required to release titles - they'd STILL have a massive mountain to climb getting a steady stream of titles / making it viable as a proposition.

When a best fantasy scenario that invariably won't happen still leaves them kinda buggered if it did, I'm not sure what to suggest
 
Gaming journalists.....and gaming consumers. the wiiu is a laughing stock right now, EVERYONE has a joke and It's not because it doesn't have fantastic games.
 
okayfrog said:
Nintendo hasn't cared for the gaming press for a while now and the gaming press acts like little babies and starts going on and on and on about how Nintendo and the Wii U sucks in return. The Wii U is doomed unless Nintendo starts making BIG announcements that the journalists are allowed to announce, but Nintendo won't do that as they prefer their Nintendo Direct's.

That being said, stuff like this only affects some of the gamers. The real hardcore gamers will purchase a Wii U no matter what because they know it has good games. Then there are the few on sites like here and others that only wanna bet on the horse that they know are going to win, so when they hear that the Wii U could possibly flop, they hold out and thus help it flop. However, the biggest issue is Nintendo's marketing and the casual adult gamers and child gamers who have moved onto cellphones, tablets, and Facebook games.
Click to expand...

Basically all of this., overall tho it just depends on better marketing by nintendo.
 
The bad press is a major factor, but the number one thing hurting it is that it was marketed as if it were a tablet accessory, not a new system.
I know the point's been done to death, but it's still true - almost all of my family and friends were confused about it being a separate console when I got one, and they're not super out of touch with technology news.
 
H3XAntiStyle said:
I think at this point, the Wii U might be absolutely beyond saving due to the absolutely horrid word of mouth that games journalists are putting out on it. I honestly think that has been the single most damaging factor on this whole situation.
Click to expand...

Nintendo has to live through it and repair the shipwreck, no matter how unjustified the hate is. Sony did with PS3 early days. Nintendo can avoid bad press by giving us what we want.
 
But here's the question: What does the media want to achieve by "dooming" the Wii U?

You seem to speak of some sort of evil agenda, but fail to explain WHY. Why the Wii U, and why not the PS4 for example? Does the media actually win something by "killing" the Wii U? What's in it for them?
 
Nintendo brought this on themselves honestly. But I agree that this constant talk of nintendoom is pretty tiring to read. Even on this forum, there's a "can so and so save the wii u?" or "what's nintendo's next step" thread every damn day. It's definitely annoying, but you just have to ignore it and just enjoy the games. Nintendo screwed up with the Wii U, that's a fact,but as a consumer, it really isn't any of you're concern. As long as hey release quality titles for the system, you just buy them and enjoy yourself.
 
TheAngryMonkey said:
Completely agree in the same way that I feel negative press about the recession made it worse. People hear times are bad and then say times are bad and start to believe it. Maybe nothing has otherwise changed for them, they have jobs and everything is the same but they stop spending money because times are bad, making the issue worse for everyone.
Click to expand...

That's certainly true.

If there was a blanket media ban on all reports regarding the recession I doubt it would have been a tenth as bad. Most people would have gone about their day none the wiser, kept spending and would have been perfectly happy.
 
We need a chalkboard for the ever expanding list of people Nintendo fans blame for the WiiU failing.

Blame Nintendo

I bought one at UK launch and couldn't recommend it to a friend in good conscience.

Edit : Are the press to blame for devs and publishers not wanting to make games for it ?
 
gcubed said:
How about it's just a system that no one wants or asked for, and the stories that are written reflect the mood of gamers. It's not a journalists job to sell a console that Nintendo ruined themselves
Click to expand...

Huh? I want mine.... It's exagerated cynical dribble like this that is toxic.
 
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