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[RobFox64tm]

You answered your own question.


These are all nintendo's fault, though?

Ultamately, what I'm talking about spans the last TWO years, but the period in which we were discussing was only the year between the Wii U's release and the release of the PS4 and Xbox One. After the mistakes Nintendo made that predicated when the console actually made it to market, their bed was already made, and that was the point I was trying to make.

 

[bigmf]

I don't think they were dealt a bad hand either. I think they started off with a faulty premise and it's been all bad since then. Their premise was that they can compete with a much lower powered console because they did it with the Wii. What they didn't factor in is that HDTV adoption rates were somewhere around 20% then and somewhere around 80% when the Wii U was launched (numbers pulled from the back of my pants). This puts the Wii U at six years late to the PS3/360 generation, rather than 1 year early to the PS4/XBOne generation.

 

[Steve Youngblood]

Ultamately, what I'm talking about spans the last TWO years, but the period in which we were discussing was only the year between the Wii U's release and the release of the PS4 and Xbox One. After the mistakes Nintendo made that predicated when the console actually made it to market, their bed was already made, and that was the point I was trying to make.

Well, ok. But I don't really see the point of making this distinction, personally. Whether things started to unhinge last year, ten years ago, or 100 years ago, the argument at hand is that this first year certainly didn't appear to be a well-oiled machine. What caused that to occur strikes me as largely beside the point.

 

[zewone]

I feel like this question ignores the full contents of my post. Again, I argued that if this is just a "you have to play the hand your dealt" argument, then okay. Maybe there's an argument that a lot of things didn't go their way and they did the best they could. But let's ignore all that for a second. I'm distanced from the situation. I'm just doing an objective look at most of that first year and making a qualitative judgement with no interest in excuses. Can you really tell me that they couldn't have done anything better?

I think they could have done slightly better, but I feel the writing was on the wall.

They misinterpreted the market and thought that they would be able to sell an under-powered console with a gimmick again, not realizing the market that bought the Wii had moved on.

Again, I feel they could have received maybe a few ports from 3rd parties, but even that wasn't enough. Not many people are looking to buy a console that's almost twice as much as the competition with no visual benefits and in many cases, ran worse.

They would need one hell of a commercial to make that seem appealing.

 

[KillerTravis]

We need an updated one of these

This is missing the GBA and N-Gage man.

 

[mechphree]

I wish Nintendo would want to speak to me and by me my demographic of a gamer. I feel like i'm not viable or interesting to Nintendo as a target audience anymore. They seem to go more and more casual while alienating people like me. The writing is on the wall, Wii U is a failure currently and no new Zelda or Mario will help. Unless Nintendo changes it's strategy on who they want the Wii U to be for they will loose this gen.

 

[zewone]

...I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you just putting all of Nintendo's past mistakes out of the equation? I think you're arguing that...

ASSUMING
]1) Nintendo does nothing to prepare for developing an adequate supply of games for the Wii U and 3DS;
2) Nintendo abandons all interest in Western developers;
3) Nintendo abandons motion controls,
4) Nintendo decides the most important thing for its next gen box is to be tiny and use a small amount of electricity ;
5) Nintendo completely fails at marketing its products (not advertising - everything from the question of "Who is our customer?" to "What do we sell?");
6) Nintendo fails to secure important multi-platform releases for its console; and
7) Nintendo fails to advertise its products

THEN there is nothing Nintendo could do. Well.... yeah?

Well, no, I felt as if we're discussing only the year 2013 and that it was squandered by Nintendo.

I don't personally agree that 2013 could have gone much better for them because I feel the system was set to fail way before that when they decided to the release the Wii U as-is instead of something more appealing to consumers.

 

[Nightstick11]

To every weirdo and college-age armchair CEO harping about Nintendo's "past mistakes" "dating back" to the N64: Just stahp.You're 100% wrong. For every year between 2006-2011, Nintendo pulled in more profit than the entire history of hardware manufacturers combined, including all of Sega, Sony, and Microsoft's platforms.

The Wii U is a supreme squandering of a stranglehold on the dollars of the video-game market that we hadn't seen one company hold since the NES days. In particular, it boggles my mind how Nintendo let Sony not only stay in this industry, but successfully launch the PS4. Sony was hemorrhaging billions from the PSP, PS3, and PSV, and if we are using a boxing analogy, it was the puffy-faced, bleeding-nose, two-black eyes fighter who just scored a TKO on the here-to-fore unblemished champion.

The Wii U has failed colossally. Historically so, if Pachter's numbers are anywhere, anywhere close to reality.

For the next upcoming cycle, I hope Nintendo wakes up and realizes money isn't something to be hoarded; money is a weapon. If they haven't already done so, they need to at least triple the manpower behind their first-party and second-party studios. NoA and NoE need full autonomy to greenlight their own projects with homegrown second-party studios in both the USA and Europe (Nintendo's refusal to foster relations with European studios is an eye-popping incompetence.)

 

[Petrae]

I just had to share this article: Here

It starts off great, everything seems normal, then with three paragraphs left takes a sharp right turn into insanity.

It seems mostly on topic, and references Pachter's estimate.

I'd like to think that Usher is trolling with those last three paragraphs, but I fear he's crazy enough to be serious.

WiiU has to start dominating before it can continue to dominate-- and, well, that's just not going to happen. A platform with sparse third-party support (missing at least 3-4 yearly best-selling IP) and having to rely almost exclusively on what first-party games it can muster is not exactly a formula for domination.

 

[Kazuma Kiryu]

This is missing the GBA and N-Gage man.

It's not missing the GBA or N-Gage because those aren't home consoles.

 

[PhoenixDark]

There's nothing they could have done better.

Nintendo knew they were launching first, yet didn't plan accordingly. They were unprepared for the leap in technology apparently, or didn't have an adequate amount of manpower. Launching a console without a single noteworthy "big" game being released for a year equals disaster. Nintendo could have and should have done better.

 

[RobFox64tm]

Well, ok. But I don't really see the point of making this distinction, personally. Whether things started to unhinge last year, ten years ago, or 100 years ago, the argument at hand is that this first year certainly didn't appear to be a well-oiled machine. What caused that to occur strikes me as largely beside the point.

Well, YOU were the one talking about how marketing earlier in 2013 might have made a difference, were you not? I was arguing that the mistakes Nintendo made before that had limited thier options, so I think it is, for the sake of the arguement, important to note the when in this case. Nintendo dealt themselves a bad hand basically.

 

[McHuj]

Well they should have started in 2010 to ensure maximum use of the year advantage.

I guess I don't understand this line of reasoning? You're saying they couldn't do anything to change the Wii U's performance, but then list a bunch of things they did to sabotage the system's chances.

I'm saying that they should have done stuff in 2010/11 that they didn't do. By 2013, it's too late.

 

[Steve Youngblood]

Well, YOU were the one talking about how marketing earlier in 2013 might have made a difference, were you not? I was arguing that the mistakes Nintendo made before that had limited thier options, so I think it is, for the sake of the arguement, important to note the when in this case. Nintendo dealt themselves a bad hand basically.

I noted that there was both a lack of games and marketing. I did not hint at all that I think a stellar marketing campaign would have turned the tide. I was just noting that they didn't appear to be doing anything at all in the public spotlight in terms of trying to turn things around. And we agree. I'm not in any way, shape, or form suggesting that after the November launch Nintendo had everything ready to go and only terrible management post release has lead us to this point. All I argued is that it's bizarre to me to look back at this past year and surmise that it couldn't have gone any better. It just seems like there's this compulsion to interject a clarification that to me was entirely unnecessary.

 

[Randolph Freelander]

Doing better this year is not constrained to decisions made this year. This year is simply a result of years of prior planning and performance. To say Nintendo could not have done better this year is letting them off the hook.

 

[RobFox64tm]

I noted that there was both a lack of games and marketing. And we agree. I'm not in any way, shape, or form suggesting that after the November launch Nintendo had everything ready to go and only terrible management post release has lead us to this point. All I argued is that it's bizarre to me to look back at this past year and surmise that it couldn't have gone any better. It just seems like there's this compulsion to interject a clarification that to me was entirely unnecessary.

I'll agree with you that Nintendo could've been more proactive, certainly. I just don't feel it would've made too much of a difference because of the pre-existing factors I mentioned.

 

[TreasureHunterG]

 

[Totaly a Duder]

150k would mean it was almost TRIPLED by the GC in a similar November post-launch period. That's sub-Dreamcast numbers.

Didn't know the Gamecube struggled as much as well.

 

[freenudemacusers]

I'll agree with you that Nintendo could've been more proactive, certainly. I just don't feel it would've made too much of a difference because of the pre-existing factors I mentioned.

but part of being proactive is addressing pre-existing factors.

 

[Calamari41]

Half of the problem is that Nintendo is shit with planning game development and releases. I mean, just look at some of the games that released on Wii after the DKCR holiday to limp fanfare and disappointing sales. Xenoblade. The Last Story. Pandora's Tower. Kirby: Return to Dreamland. Zelda: Skyward Sword. Dragon Quest X. Mario Party 9. Pikmin 3 was going to be one of them, but that one got plucked out and re-made for Wii U. Why Pikmin alone and none of these other ones? Moving those games, or some of them, to become Wii U launch window (I'm talking true launch window) games in HD may not have made the Wii U into the PS2 or OG Wii, but you have to imagine that it would have helped a lot. It would have helped with the hype alone at the very least. They certainly didn't do jack shit on the Wii, with the exception of maybe Kirby and Zelda, both of which still saw very disappointing sales.

 

[thepotatoman]

OK. For all you "it's a marathon, not a sprint" types...you are simply wrong.

Right now, Nintendo needs to start sprinting their ass off.

Consider this: Your brick-and-mortar retailers. If this number is the number, and not even including Amazon or any online sales, (So the "total sales" number could be 10-20% higher and still we're looking at the same situation) that would mean among the approx. 14,000 stores of the major game retailers (GameStop, Walmart, Target, K-Mart, Best Buy, Toys-r-Us, Sam's, Costco) each store would be averaging only one WiiU console sale every three days. In fucking November.

How long do you think these retailers will devote shelf/display space to a product that is already a low-margin item by nature, (all consoles are for retailers) when the sales volume is so utterly abysmal, even in November?

The answer is: Not very long. Retailers have a tendency to bail on products like that.

You can talk about marathons all you want, but if these are even close to the real November number...Nintendo's going to run out of road for the WiiU to run on.

But like I said before, even if Pachter is wrong by 1/2...it's still one-foot-in-the-grave kinda news.

I'd like to add that Nintendo isn't solely looking for console sales. They need to sell games too. Both sales from their own games and royalties from third parties. There's not really much point to 30 million sales if you get them all at the end of the generation before there's time to sell any games. How long can nintendo handle just "good for a wii u game" sales numbers on every game they put out?

 

[Steve Youngblood]

I'll agree with you that Nintendo could've been more proactive, certainly. I just don't feel it would've made too much of a difference because of the pre-existing factors I mentioned.

But the pre-existing factors also count in terms of assessing -- in my book -- that they didn't have a good year. When somebody asserts "I don't see how this year could have gone any better," and I disagree based on how spectacularly awful the year has gone, the basis of my disagreement does not have to be entirely limited to specifically what occurred post-launch. I guess you can argue that the context of his post was that he was specifically looking only at decisions made this year and surmising that past mistakes precluded any chance of success at all, and that's fine I suppose. But I don't understand why you would want to limit it to only this past year.

If I argue that there's an alternate reality where things could have gone better, I don't know why it's unfair to rewind further back than just this year.

 

[Calamari41]

If I argue that there's an alternate reality where things could have gone better, I don't know why it's unfair to rewind further back than just this year.

That's it entirely. Look at the list I posted earlier. From the release of Donkey Kong Country Returns to the release of New Super Mario Bros U, those were the only games Nintendo released. And that was over the course of two solid years. Then you go another solid year with the release of only NSMBU and Pikmin 3. That shows a severe deficiency in planning ability going back half a decade. They had to know that there would be a total of, what, six games releasing over the course of three years way back then, and they were ok with it. That's the crux of their problem.

2010 should have been the swan song for the Wii. Instead, they left it unsupported on the market for two years while they prepped a new console that wouldn't be ready with games for three. This is a complete inability to plan.

 

[Kai Dracon]

To every weirdo and college-age armchair CEO harping about Nintendo's "past mistakes" "dating back" to the N64: Just stahp.You're 100% wrong. For every year between 2006-2011, Nintendo pulled in more profit than the entire history of hardware manufacturers combined, including all of Sega, Sony, and Microsoft's platforms.

The Wii U is a supreme squandering of a stranglehold on the dollars of the video-game market that we hadn't seen one company hold since the NES days. In particular, it boggles my mind how Nintendo let Sony not only stay in this industry, but successfully launch the PS4. Sony was hemorrhaging billions from the PSP, PS3, and PSV, and if we are using a boxing analogy, it was the puffy-faced, bleeding-nose, two-black eyes fighter who just scored a TKO on the here-to-fore unblemished champion.

The Wii U has failed colossally. Historically so, if Pachter's numbers are anywhere, anywhere close to reality.

For the next upcoming cycle, I hope Nintendo wakes up and realizes money isn't something to be hoarded; money is a weapon. If they haven't already done so, they need to at least triple the manpower behind their first-party and second-party studios. NoA and NoE need full autonomy to greenlight their own projects with homegrown second-party studios in both the USA and Europe (Nintendo's refusal to foster relations with European studios is an eye-popping incompetence.)

The one problem here is you're confusing Nintendo's "past mistakes" with "but they still made money so it doesn't matter".

Nintendo did lose the pulse of the entire, so-called core, game market and core-oriented 3rd party publishers over a decade ago. They have no machine in place to keep making their traditional big money in this market. But yeah, one could imagine a variety of scenarios where they threw billions of dollars right at this problem to try and fix that. Their past mistakes though, put them at a real disadvantage there. They might not have had to spend those billions to claw their way back to relevancy and 3rd party relationship parity had stuff like the N64 never happened.

 

[Lambda Pie]

Didn't know the Gamecube struggled as much as well.

Gamecube was BOPPED by PS2 at the time. they all were, to be honest.

 

[grkazan12]

For the next upcoming cycle, I hope Nintendo wakes up and realizes money isn't something to be hoarded; money is a weapon. If they haven't already done so, they need to at least triple the manpower behind their first-party and second-party studios. NoA and NoE need full autonomy to greenlight their own projects with homegrown second-party studios in both the USA and Europe (Nintendo's refusal to foster relations with European studios is an eye-popping incompetence.)

True. To add to that, I would say that they also need to invest more in an online infrastructure. They should partner with a 3rd party who is well versed in server/cloud solutions. IMO not having a universal account system across everything they make is a massive oversight.

They need to have parity with at least every online feature that the 360 came out with in 2005. Cross buy for every Virtual Console title is a must in this day and age. I'm not an expert on porting, but there absolutely should be NES,SNES,N64 titles playable across their handheld and home console products.

Not investing in a better online experience (friend codes in 2013?!?!?) was such a bone headed decision. It might be a little too late, but they need to capture users who become invested in their online accounts and purchases. Hell, steal the IGC idea from PS Plus and give out a bundle of three free VC games for every month.

 

[ViciousDS]

the most pachter has been off has been about 315k.............its still barely 500k units for november........thats sad for a mario launch, cheaper price and more marketing.

If its under 500k.....this ship is done and Leonardo is dead again.

 

[Graphics Horse]

the most pachter has been off has been about 315k.............its still barely 500k units for november........thats sad for a mario launch, cheaper price and more marketing.

If its under 500k.....this ship is done and Leonardo is dead again.

I'm going to guess it will be more like 300kish like neogaf's more successful clairvoyants believe, I don't know if Pachter is more often way off with nintendo than others, or if I've just selectively noticed that in the past.

 

[Moral Panic]

Horrible name.

Horrible marketing.

Second screen incredibly conservative to the idea of motion controls.

Gamepad having 23059823503825 buttons, more intimidating than ever to get an aunt to play at Thanksgiving.

Still not having a game that resonates like Wii Sports does.

Attempting to cater more towards hardcore players,

Whatever the catatonic "unprecedented EA partnership" was.

It's hard to say which of these were the tipping of failure, but every single one of these goes a long way coming off of the Wii.

It still has the only announced next gen games I'm looking forward to, but they're really in a terrible corner until Mario Kart and Smash come out.

I was gonna highlight one of these and say this, but you hit the head on all of them. Whoever decided to go after hardcore gamers destroyed the WiiU. The Gamepad isn't suitable for just dance and all the other games like that which still to this day sell incredibly well on Wii. They should've gone for a Kinect type system, where the system is a camera.

 

[The Maverick]

Consider this: Your brick-and-mortar retailers. If this number is the number, and not even including Amazon or any online sales, (So the "total sales" number could be 10-20% higher and still we're looking at the same situation) that would mean among the approx. 14,000 stores of the major game retailers (GameStop, Walmart, Target, K-Mart, Best Buy, Toys-r-Us, Sam's, Costco) each store would be averaging only one WiiU console sale every three days. In fucking November.

Wouldn't that be close to 10 Wii U consoles a month per store? And Nintendo had the gall to send Reggie out there with Cranky Kong and a pin. Out of their minds. They deserve to be where they are at.

 

[Breemin]

If the goal is to top the sales of mobile "games" like Candy Crush then I weep for the future.

I doubt that is Nintendo's goal.

Nintendo is doing quite well selling $40 games on a handheld device for people who know quality which is plenty of people.

Please Nooooo! Candy Crush is not a gamers game, it is a game for non gamers. My wife and mother play it for gods sake!

I personally do not like 99% of all games that can be played on phones.

 

[onipex]

Wow, that is pretty bad if Wii U sales is around that amount. It's been in the top 5 best sellers on GameStop and other retailer so I had hope it would at least do close to 600k this holiday. That's not great either but I didn't think anything more was realistic.

 

[Xun]

True. To add to that, I would say that they also need to invest more in an online infrastructure. They should partner with a 3rd party who is well versed in server/cloud solutions. IMO not having a universal account system across everything they make is a massive oversight.

They need to have parity with at least every online feature that the 360 came out with in 2005. Cross buy for every Virtual Console title is a must in this day and age. I'm not an expert on porting, but there absolutely should be NES,SNES,N64 titles playable across their handheld and home console products.

Not investing in a better online experience (friend codes in 2013?!?!?) was such a bone headed decision. It might be a little too late, but they need to capture users who become invested in their online accounts and purchases. Hell, steal the IGC idea from PS Plus and give out a bundle of three free VC games for every month.

The Wii U uses an account system, not Friendcodes.

 

[Nightstick11]

The one problem here is you're confusing Nintendo's "past mistakes" with "but they still made money so it doesn't matter".

Nintendo did lose the pulse of the entire, so-called core, game market and core-oriented 3rd party publishers over a decade ago. They have no machine in place to keep making their traditional big money in this market. But yeah, one could imagine a variety of scenarios where they threw billions of dollars right at this problem to try and fix that. Their past mistakes though, put them at a real disadvantage there. They might not have had to spend those billions to claw their way back to relevancy and 3rd party relationship parity had stuff like the N64 never happened.

But to argue against the bolded is absurdist at best, delusional at worst.

The point of a corporation is to make profits.

During the N64, Gamecube, and especially the Wii generations, Nintendo made a lot of money. Certainly more money than every hardware manufacturer combined. A sizable chunk of the total profits made of every company involved in the console industry. To argue that Nintendo "lost the pulse" of whatever segment of the market flies in the face of reality just looking at the sheer money they made.

The problem in my opinion is where did that money go. Why wasn't Nintendo using that money to strengthen their position and kill competitors off like in the Yamauchi days. I'm not going to fault them for making money however they made it; that is absurd.

But the issue is why wasn't that money being used to build up an online infrastructure (I don't think this is even close to their biggest problem btw), why wasn't it used to secure exclusives, why wasn't it used to open a dozen western-oriented second-party developer studios in the US and Europe, etc.

Hell, why haven't they invested in a better VC channel? The Virtual Console should be something that blows PS+ straight out of the water. There is no excuse for why it is as shitty as it is right now.

 

[grkazan12]

My bad, thanks for the correction Xun. It's just there's not great community features like party chat, miiverse is cool though.

 

[bequietdrive]

Ha! This made me chuckle.

 

[Sethista]

This is the greatest thing since sliced bread

 

[The Maverick]

The problem in my opinion is where did that money go. Why wasn't Nintendo using that money to strengthen their position and kill competitors off like in the Yamauchi days. I'm not going to fault them for making money however they made it; that is absurd.

But the issue is why wasn't that money being used to build up an online infrastructure (I don't think this is even close to their biggest problem btw), why wasn't it used to secure exclusives, why wasn't it used to open a dozen western-oriented second-party developer studios in the US and Europe, etc.

Hell, why haven't they invested in a better VC channel? The Virtual Console should be something that blows PS+ straight out of the water. There is no excuse for why it is as shitty as it is right now.

I don't think you understand that you are making the case for why people say that the situation Nintendo is in today had 20 years in the making. Ever since the 64 and letting third parties walk on over to Sony, GC and just being largely overshadowed by the PS2, ignoring gaming trends and the difficulty of HD development in the days of the Wii, not dedicating anything to expanding Western development, it all comes crashing today.

Nintendo used to be able to justify everything with the same excuse that you're using, they are still profitable, so they are doing fine. The game has changed right underneath them. The cost of one game has ballooned, it takes more manpower to get games out in a reasonable time frame, and the competition in the home console space is tougher than ever. The Nintendo of today is living with an operating loss.

If the Wii U is in the ball park of 150k this November, it's already over.

 

[Graphics Horse]

Well to be fair they lose more money for every Wii U sold, so maybe it's not so bad for them anyway. How are the attach rates doing?

 

[Like the hat?]

I wonder how much sales would go up if they were available on amazon

 

[grkazan12]

I wonder how much sales would go up if they were available on amazon

I feel that a crazy Amazon flash sale during black Friday could have been exciting, but I don't know how influential it would have been.

 

[R0ckman]

I'm imagining a TV ad representing the new Nintendo console that should have been. It shows the typical casual crowd in their final round of Wii Sports Resort or some shit. It's getting late. They all laugh and giggle and end in a deep sigh. The elderly are hauled off back to their retirement homes by the parents and they leave through the front door. The younger kids are distracted by their phones via texts. They grab them and begin walking upstairs to their rooms.

The room is empty for a few moments. In walks a boy (mid late teens) with a box branded for the new console. He realizes no one is around and smiles. He begins the unboxing. A close up is shown of him pressing the power button. Cue all new 3D Mario (Mario Universe featuring a whole fully explorable universe with no breaks via a hub). He plays, bugged out of his fucking mind. Close up of his hands on the contorller, comfortable as fuck. Pulls up home screen and checks out the sleek but simple UI and goes to the coming soon video for Nintendo eshop, cue small clips of F-Zero ZX, Metroid Prime 4, Star Fox, X, Bayo. It does not give the titles of the games just footage to generate speculation and hype. He scrolls to indie and 3rd party section for a few clips from them. A couple of seconds of him pulling up stuff with friend, party, online video sharing, features.

He finally turns the console off. He notices the younger kids have come down confused. He Looks over at the now boxed Wii with a thoughtful look on his face he pulls out the Wii motes and Mario Kart Wii putting it in the new console. They all play in the dark laughing and shit. Screen blacks.

"New Console name"

"Nintendo is fully back."

 

[RiZ III]

We need an updated one of these

It's amazing how well DC did compared to XB and GC considering it was only out for two years.

 

[Tobor]

The root cause of every problem with the Wii U is a poor design. It's a series of contradictions. A mismatched jumble of style and function that doesn't fit into any category well. It's a bad design, executed badly, and has hamstrung Nintendo on price, software support, marketing, you name it.

Why was there no Wii Sports style killer app? Bad design. The tablet concept doesn't have an intrinsic killer app other than Off TV play. That's a nice option, not a system selling point. The Wii U Gamepad would have ironically been far more appealing sold to a core gaming audience, but the system is too underpowered, and Nintendo as a brand can't bring in that audience.

Why was the marketing so bad? It's hard, nearly impossible, to market such a poor design. I pity anyone who has to try. The tablet isn't exciting, or intuitive, or interesting. Good luck, marketing team!

Why is the price so high? A tablet concept that forces the system to be underpowered, yet leaves the price too high to compete.

The Wii U is the physical embodiment of a company that doesn't know where it's going anymore. They're truly lost.

 

[Manmademan]

It's amazing how well DC did compared to XB and GC considering it was only out for two years.

It was being blown out for firesale pricing for 99 dollars, then 50 dollars, or in some cases completely free after rebate when its primary competition was still $300

 

[Warm Machine]

The Wii U is the physical embodiment of a company that doesn't know where it's going anymore. They're truly lost.

It was "innovation" for "innovations" sake.

It seemed to have stemmed from the idea that they felt like they had to do something new that no one else was doing and that would lead them to success. The equivalent thinking of putting a steering wheel in the back seat of the car just because no other car company is doing it.

Having a screen on the controller is a decent idea. It didn't need to be massive though. A low res touch screen the size of the DS 4's touch pad would have sufficed. Great for Football, Poker, or an extra two or so buttons when the pad couldn't supply enough.

People loved the Wii because it was accessible and non threatening. Why did they not double down on that?

 

[Ponn]

They thought they had their casual crowd from the Wii and assumed they would glide right over reading them wrong. Despite forum goers wanting to argue against the term casual it IS a demographic. Not saying they aren't gamers, but they are a different beast that follow hype and trends much more, are flaky and have the attention span of goldfish. They were never going fall in line and jump to next consoles like regular video gamers. They already have the Wii in a closet and see no point of spending money on a new one that in their eyes does the same thing.

They didn't make a cheap console either, at $300 thats far from impulse and with graphics matching current gen they were competing with consoles that have already been on the market, cheaper and with much larger cheaper libraries.

They failed to push the only thing that set them apart, the pad. They failed to capitalize on Pokemon and the skylanders train by creating a Pokemon version to use with the pad. They failed to have any truly innovative games that capitalize on the pad. Where the flying fuck is Mario Paint?? Nope, lets push yet another platformer out the door, that will surely sell consoles.

 

[PhantomR]

I don't think you understand that you are making the case for why people say that the situation Nintendo is in today had 20 years in the making. Ever since the 64 and letting third parties walk on over to Sony, GC and just being largely overshadowed by the PS2, ignoring gaming trends and the difficulty of HD development in the days of the Wii, not dedicating anything to expanding Western development, it all comes crashing today.

Nintendo used to be able to justify everything with the same excuse that you're using, they are still profitable, so they are doing fine. The game has changed right underneath them. The cost of one game has ballooned, it takes more manpower to get games out in a reasonable time frame, and the competition in the home console space is tougher than ever. The Nintendo of today is living with an operating loss.

If the Wii U is in the ball park of 150k this November, it's already over.

I don't think you're really reading what it is he's saying. He didn't say that Nintendo is making money "so they are doing fine". He said that Nintendo was making lots of money and DIDN'T CAPITALIZE on it at all. There's a big difference.

 

[Biker19]

Please Nooooo! Candy Crush is not a gamers game, it is a game for non gamers. My wife and mother play it for gods sake!

I personally do not like 99% of all games that can be played on phones.

I play Candy Crush Saga, & I'm also a gamer.

 

[freenudemacusers]

I play Candy Crush Saga, & I'm also a gamer.

sorry you just can't be a real gamer. real gamers don't play games on phones like dragon quest.