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Will Super Mario 3D World be the beginning of the turnaround for Wii U?

Kangi

Member
The franchise has never before
Mario Kart DS - 23.34 million units sold.

and will never again come even close to this kind of sales.
Mario Kart 8 - 8.08 million units sold, on a console with lots of life to go.

Mario platformers on both systems also performed even better. But if you write off the past ten years as "unprecedented, impossible-to-reach peak" and then say "nobody's cared about Mario in the past ten years", then... well, congratulations. You can do that logical one-two with literally anything.
 

AOC83

Banned
Mario Kart DS - 23.34 million units sold.


Mario Kart 8 - 8.08 million units sold
, on a console with lots of life to go.

Mario platformers on both systems also performed even better. But if you write off the past ten years as "unprecedented, impossible-to-reach peak" and then say "nobody's cared about Mario in the past ten years", then... well, congratulations. You can do that logical one-two with literally anything.

Consoles, not handhelds. That´s a completely different market i´m absolutely not discussing here.
 

marc^o^

Nintendo's Pro Bono PR Firm
Some hope for it, some don't see it and some fear it.

I believe the market doesn't know they want a Wii U yet. Nintendo's marketing campaign absolutely needs to be stellar this time. This fall will be all about new console upgrades, the hype for videogames will be huge. With the price advantage and the power of big franchises/brands, there are millions of people who may consider a Wii U. Again, marketing will be key.
 

Kangi

Member
Consoles, not handhelds. That´s a completely different market i´m absolutely not discussing here.

You made a generalization about an entire franchise's sales potentials, and I showed you that Mario Kart Wii's sales were not a unique phenomenon.

You seem to be uninterested in doing anything but going "that doesn't count" to every bit of the loads of information that shows that console gamers still SORTA do care about Mario, so if that's your game, then I give up. Every Wii owner wasn't a "console gamer", that game doesn't count because x, etc. etc.



And to the OP so that my posts here weren't a complete waste of time: no, SM3DW won't provide anything more than a temporary spike until the Wii U actually has a healthy ecosystem of games. That won't come until at least when Smash arrives, I don't think.
 

Neff

Member
Judging by comments on here and other boards I visit, it's more than apparent that Wii U turned a big, big corner after the last Direct.
 

AOC83

Banned
You made a generalization about an entire franchise's sales potentials, and I showed you that Mario Kart Wii's sales were not a unique phenomenon.

You seem to be uninterested in doing anything but going "that doesn't count" to every bit of the loads of information that shows that console gamers still SORTA do care about Mario, so if that's your game, then I give up.



And to the OP so that my posts here weren't a complete waste of time: no, SM3DW won't provide anything more than a temporary spike until the Wii U actually has a healthy ecosystem of games. That won't come until at least when Smash arrives, I don't think.

I was strictly talking about home consoles and i made that very clear. The handheld stuff has absolutely zero relevance for this discussion because those devices targets a very different audience compared to home consoles.

So you can stop bringing it up, it makes absolutely no sense at all.
 

marc^o^

Nintendo's Pro Bono PR Firm
And some laugh their asses off when they read stuff like this.
Perhaps I used the wrong word: how would you personally feel should the Wii U turn things around? Like -fiction- imagine it did become successful. Would that satisfy you?
 

AOC83

Banned
Perhaps I used the wrong word: how would you personally feel should the Wii U turn things around? Like -fiction- imagine it did become successful. Would that satisfy you?

Depends on how it turns things around. If it´s through a lage amount of diverse, ambitious games with a high quality i´d feel good.
If it´s through lots of unambitious rehashes and shovelware not so much.
 

Velcro Fly

Member
Well for the first time in 10 months I actually want one. Although being able to stomach one this holiday is mostly because I never owned a Wii and I could probably get a ton of Mario/Zelda games right off the bat and be set for a long time.

But really I loved 3D Land. 3D World makes 3D Land look like it is the handheld version of the series.

Judging by the videos IGN put out the other day you can use whoever you want for single player. Totally pumped for this and may get a Wii U yet.
 
It will help flesh out the overall library, and if it's GOTY material it may lend the system more cred with enthusiasts, but it's going to take more than a 3D Mario to truly turn the system around. Mario Kart and Smash Bros. will have more impact, particularly if Nintendo can release them in close enough proximity to each other (although I highly suspect Smash Bros. will land in the second half of 2014). By the end of next year I'm of the opinion they need a one-two punch with something like Bayonetta 2 and a new first party IP, although the right re-imagining of an existing franchise could also help fill that niche.

That said, I do think the Wii U will slowly gain some ground over the next couple years. It's tough to extrapolate too far ahead with the way Nintendo often keeps software announcements close to their chest until relatively close to release, but I think some of the audience they cultivated with the Wii will eventually get on board with a proper mix of software and pricing. Even with a limp first year I don't see the sub-Gamecube scenarios a lot of people allude to, nor do I believe smartphones and tablets have gobbled up the entire market like conventional wisdom suggests. I do think the Wii U has an uphill battle though. It'll never reach anywhere near Wii's numbers, and would be lucky to do half. I'd hazard a guess it'll land somewhere between Gamecube and N64 in LTD sales, personally.
 

Neff

Member
New Super Mario Bros. on the Wii did phenomenal sales that blew away Mario Galaxy.

New Super Mario Bros. U on the Wii U has done considerably less, so if that failed to push systems, how can anyone expect 3D Mario World to do it?

The 'New' series doesn't sell systems. The first one gave the DS Lite a big, big push, but there were already a lot of DS units out there by 2006. NSMBW did so well mainly because of the massive Wii install base. As you note, NSMBU moved a decent but hardly amazing amount of Wii Us. It seems to me that most people bought the Wii U because it was a new Nintendo HD console, not particularly for NSMBU.

SM3DW is essentially a different, more enticing franchise. It's more dynamic, inventive, surprising, and features, ironically, way more new stuff than the 'New' games. It feels like a new Mario, basically. People were willing to buy hardware for the privilege of playing 3DLand, myself included, and they may be willing to do the same for 3DWorld. It'll outsell NSMBU, no problem, and will definitely move hardware units this Christmas.
 

ZSaberLink

Media Create Maven
I still don't entirely get some of the arguments with the ship has sailed, etc. I do agree that their first year's performance was pretty miserable. However, Nintendo actually had unprecedented sales for certain series (and their console) last generation. Doesn't that at least give some hope that they introduced Mario, etc. to a huge populace they didn't before, and that perhaps they impressed some portion of them?

Let's take a series like Mario Kart. If out of the 35 million sales, if you've impressed even 5% of those owners enough to buy the game's successor along with its successor's console, you would technically get 1,750,000 sales. Lower that to 1% and you still have 350,000 sales. It's at least a bunch larger base to tap into compared to what Nintendo had in the N64/GameCube days.

I still think that the biggest strength of the Wii U ironically is that basically no one knows about it. As such, there may be a chance that it can be made appealing to this audience now that it has games. Honestly at least to me the current-gen consoles have much more appealing libraries than any of the next-gen consoles will at this point, but at least of the PS4/XB1/Wii U, the Wii U at least carves out its own types of games. I'm still not sure how many people are actually going to buy the cross-gen games on the next-gen consoles. Sure if you have a PS4/XB1, you'll buy it there (assuming the price is about the same), but if you don't, I see most people buying Watch Dogs, etc. on the 360/PS3/PC.
 

KoopaTheCasual

Junior Member
no. not even close. the Wii U is a commercial failure, and will only stop being completely irrelevant when Mario Kart and Super Smash roll around. Hopefully those games will push it past the Dreamcast, and maybe (hopefully) put it within a few million units below the Gamecube by the end of it's life.
 

MarkusRJR

Member
Some hope for it, some don't see it and some fear it.

I believe the market doesn't know they want a Wii U yet. Nintendo's marketing campaign absolutely needs to be stellar this time. This fall will be all about new console upgrades, the hype for videogames will be huge. With the price advantage and the power of big franchises/brands, there are millions of people who may consider a Wii U. Again, marketing will be key.
This reminds me of the blind fanboys on Crackberry. I see similar arguments being used (marketing will change things, new device/game on platform will change everything, people don't know that they want it, some people fear the potential success) and both companies are behind in a lot of similar aspects (third party software support, technically behind, stigmas around both brands, lack of consumer interest).
 

marc^o^

Nintendo's Pro Bono PR Firm
This reminds me of the blind fanboys on Crackberry. I see similar arguments being used and both companies are blind of the times.
That was gratuitous.Demonstrate what is wrong in the idea that 1. the amount of hype for consoles this fall will be huge, 2. games on Wii U will appeal to the mass market, 3. next gen consoles are expensive for the mass market, 4. yet gamers will make next gen a success and these consoles may be hard to find at retail, 5. Nintendo could make an effective ad campaign leveraging their franchises, 6. connecting these dots, Wii U has chances.
 

FDC1

Member
Problem is it releases at the same time than PS4 and X1 and you know all the media talk will be about them. I'm scared Mario release will almost be unnoticed outside from the Mario hardcore fans which probably already have a WiiU anyway. I think Mario Kart and Smash are in better positions to do that.
 

Coolwhip

Banned
Dont know. The kids that used to buy Mario are hooked on iOS shovelware now. And the Call of Doody fans will stick to their ps360 or might sell their grandma to buy a PS4. Nintendos audience just seems to be gone. Wii Fit wont do much either, everyone already has a Wii and that will do.
 
I've been playing Mario and Zelda since I was 5, it's time for Nintendo to bury those games.
I mean, it was fun and all, but he's appeared in over 200 games and not even that well designed... Whereas Chibi Robo has appeared in what, 2, and is actually well designed?

I think people are getting tired of Mario. The new two consoles are offering new experiences right off the bat.
 
Not really. It is kind of a stupid image, filled with straw men.

I don't think anyone seriously believed that those things would "save the WiiU"

WiiU's problems are born out of Nintendo being almost completely out of touch with both the casual and core market as well as Nintendo's complete lack of consideration of its competition. Somewhere down the line Nintendo convinced itself that it existed outside of the "console wars."

Nintendo should have a made a core console that would keep pace with PS4 or a casual console that was cheap. Either way, it should have taken online capabilities seriously instead of blindly following Miyamoto's insistence that multiplayer games MUST be played with people in the same room. None of Nintendo's first party games on the WiiU have online MP offerings. Why not both? Why not give us the option? Nope...Miyamoto says "this is the right way to enjoy our games" so that is that, consumer expectations be damned.

Nintendo needs new leadership. Western leadership IMO. Someone that isn't so stuck in the past and obsessed with meeting Japanese expectations that they will totally ignore 85% of their customer base.

Obviously you don't know enough insane Nintendo lovers.

My friend seriously said, multiple times, "Just wait for E3, they'll drop so many bombs"

Now your argument is invalid.
 

Coolwhip

Banned
I've been playing Mario and Zelda since I was 5, it's time for Nintendo to bury those games.
I mean, it was fun and all, but he's appeared in over 200 games and not even that well designed... Whereas Chibi Robo has appeared in what, 2, and is actually well designed?

I think people are getting tired of Mario. The new two consoles are offering new experiences right off the bat.

Yeah, they should not do that.
 

Nibiru

Banned
I don't know it could be. I literally don't give two shits about Mario usually but this one in particular looks really good and has made me consider getting a Wii U. So if it's influencing me then I'm sure it's going to grab a good few people because like I said I'm not into Mario at all usually.
 

MarkusRJR

Member
That was gratuitous.Demonstrate what is wrong in the idea that 1. the amount of hype for consoles this fall will be huge, 2. games on Wii U will appeal to the mass market, 3. next gen consoles are expensive for the mass market, 4. yet gamers will make next gen a success and these consoles may be hard to find at retail, 5. Nintendo could make an effective ad campaign leveraging their franchises, 6. connecting these dots, Wii U has chances.
1. Yes. Both Sony and MS will be having a massive ad campaign and launches throughout NA/EU. There is no indication this hype will carry over to an already released and failing machine. You might as well say the hype will roll over to the Ouya ffs.

2. The games are designed to appeal to them, correct. Whether they actually reach the hands of said mass market is a different story completely. Every mass market game Nintendo has released since 2011 have bombed compared to the prior entries. Brain Age 3 sold 6k in it's first month in NA iirc. Fortune Street, Mystery Case Files Wii, Rhythm Heaven Fever, Nintendogs + Cats, Crosswords +, Sing Party, and Style Savvy all sold terribly as well. The only mass market products that have sold well involve popular IPs like Mario, and even then they aren't doing 2006-2010 Wii/DS software numbers. The mass market has moved onto other products like tablets and smartphones.

3. The mass market are usually late adopters when it comes to products. The first two years are usually the enthusiast and more casual gamer audience (not Wii Sports casual, mind you). Once the price goes down the more casual/mainstream consumers hop onto the console.

4. Correct. The Xbox One and PS4 will probably be really popular and hard to find.

5. That's implying that the two audiences (MS/Sony enthusiasts and Nintendo enthusiasts) overlap and that Nintendo has the line up and the marketing ability to reach either them or the mass market that has left them. Most game enthusiasts instantly ignore the Wii U due to it's near complete lack of third party support and technical inferiority. As an owner of said console, I have a lot of Xbox/PlayStation friends scoff at my owning one and make anecdotes to the massive game droughts and poor online infrastructure of the original Wii. My non-gamer friends who own the Wii put them away or only use them for Netflix, spending more time gaming on their iPhone or iPad. Anecdotal I know, but I hear similar stuff all over the internet. The overlapping audience just isn't that insanely large and the mass market isn't hopping onto the Wii I either. It's basically being supported by Nintendo enthusiasts and younger kids right now.

6. By connecting the dots you can imply that there is a ridiculously small chance of a recovery which highly depends on the holiday line up and marketing of the Wii U and the availability of other consoles. Even then, how often do you see people avoid purchasing an expensive electronic device and go with another because it's not in stock? Maybe for families who don't know better, but as someone who worked retail there were tons of families that just ended up buying a completely different category of device. If you go to a phone carrier looking for an iPhone, there's very little chance you'll leave with a Windows Phone for example.
 
It should certainly help. With 3D World in November, Donkey Kong in February and Mario Kart 8 in March or April (hopefully), more and more people are likely to start looking at the Wii U as something they'd like to own.
 
It should certainly help. With 3D World in November, Donkey Kong in February and Mario Kart 8 in March or April (hopefully), more and more people are likely to start looking at the Wii U as something they'd like to own.

Nintendo's first party release schedule looks pretty good for he next few months. Some extremely solid stuff in the pipe line. Makes you wonder what their big holiday title(s) will be for 2014. Maybe they will push the ever living heck out of X....

Nah, probably something else.
 

Shiggy

Member
There will be an increase in sales but nothing one would consider a turn around. The system simply has too many flaws, lacks too many features, and the software lineup for 2014 looks completely grim. A pricedrop back to previous levels (EUR 200) may be necessary but I cannot see Nintendo offering such discounts to retailers again, they seem to be overconfident in their lineup and system.
 
Nintendo's first party release schedule looks pretty good for he next few months. Some extremely solid stuff in the pipe line. Makes you wonder what their big holiday title(s) will be for 2014. Maybe they will push the ever living heck out of X....

Nah, probably something else.

I'm thinking Smash Bros. will be one of their heavy hitters for the end of next year.
 

lefantome

Member
It will help for a short while but most of the buyers will be old Nintendo fants who still haven't got a Wii U, so not enough to be comparable to the other consoles
 

Klarax

Banned
I like Nintendo as much as the next gamer. But is anyone else getting fed up with all these mario games lately ?

Where's my Star Fox game !
 

Vaiim

Member
I could definitely see Mario starting the turnaround actually. It goes without saying that nothing will happen overnight, but I expect this holiday season the WiiU will start getting stronger and slowly building up to a reasonable level.
 

Robin64

Member
Not by itself, but between now and Christmas we have Wind Waker HD, Wii Karaoke U, Sonic Lost World, Wii Party U, Wii Fit U, Wii Sports Club and Super Mario 3D Land. That's a pretty decent lineup, something for everyone.
 

goomba

Banned
If anything is a turnaround then its wii party, wii fit and wii sports. Mario will primarily cater to the nintendo audience.

agreed though the fact that mario 3d world can be played with a wii remote makes it a lot more casual friendly than super mario galaxy
 
agreed though the fact that mario 3d world can be played with a wii remote makes it a lot more casual friendly than super mario galaxy

Well you could assist in smg with a wiimote.
Nope. Wii U will get a holiday bump, but January will be back to the doldrums. 3D World would've had better synergy with Donkey Kong to build an attractive holiday proposition. The line-up would've still been thin, but now let's look at the exclusives:

Mario 3D World
Wii Fit
Wii Party
2 download-only, remade Wii Sports games.

3D World might have some combined effect with Wii Party or the Wii Sports downloads, but even that's a maybe. I don't see the people willing to buy in for 3D World being the same as the Wii Fit crowd. Certainly the kids who like Mario aren't asking for Wii Fit. Probably their best bet is with families, but $300 is nothing to sneeze at and the iPad still exists.

The question is really if Wii Fit and Party will have any effect along with the promise of upcoming Wii Sports downloads. The cost is still higher than Wii was, and that came with a game. The Wii ____ games aren't going to be fresh experiences that capture the zeitgeist, and Wii Sports being locked away in the eShop makes it a harder sell (and a piecemeal remake isn't an easy sell anyway).

So then you have to look at Mario 3D World as a game that appeals more to the demographic that actually spends big money on games. To that demographic, are they going to be willing to buy in because of a single 3D platformer? When other consoles are on the shelves? And if they are traditional gamers, are they fine with having 3D Land on the 3DS?

Also the jury is out if Nintendo and the game itself can actually convince the general gaming press to generate the kind of free hype that accompanies a game like Galaxy. I'd guess their attention will be diverted elsewhere, leaving Nintendo to have no clear target. Their aim falling in a nebulous area between Wii Fit and a 3D platformer, which is uncoincidentally one of the key problems of the platform as a whole.

so you can step on your ipadto measure your weight now? Whats the weight limit?
 
From this week's Media Create thread.

.... What the WiiU needs is not big "system sellers" so much as a healthy consistent line-up so people don't feel like they're buying a dead system just for a few games.

As the mod I quoted above mentioned, consistency is the key. If they can keep (in this context perhaps start is much more pertinent) pumping those "big" hitters consistently, they might just carve out a comfortable segment that they can call their own and potentially double/triple those NPD monthly sales. W101 and Pikmin 3 do not count, what they need are titles that can achieve the 80+% atttach rate numbers they attained with NSMBU. Every month.

No more lulls like we've seen this year, this is a system going into it's second year soon enough and it's faithful should be looking forward to the 2nd gen titles with anticipation, not wondering about the prospects of the console that they sunk hundreds into.
 

goomba

Banned
Not by itself, but between now and Christmas we have Wind Waker HD, Wii Karaoke U, Sonic Lost World, Wii Party U, Wii Fit U, Wii Sports Club and Super Mario 3D Land. That's a pretty decent lineup, something for everyone.

plus ports of some big 3rd party games like batman, cod and asscreed .
 

AOC83

Banned
Not by itself, but between now and Christmas we have Wind Waker HD, Wii Karaoke U, Sonic Lost World, Wii Party U, Wii Fit U, Wii Sports Club and Super Mario 3D Land. That's a pretty decent lineup, something for everyone.

That´s 50% shovelware.
 

orioto

Good Art™
The hope is that this mario seems really mainstream oriented, almost a party game and multiplayer. So it could create some kind of massive appeal if it takes.. But there is really nothing automatic or sure.
 
I still don't entirely get some of the arguments with the ship has sailed, etc. I do agree that their first year's performance was pretty miserable. However, Nintendo actually had unprecedented sales for certain series (and their console) last generation. Doesn't that at least give some hope that they introduced Mario, etc. to a huge populace they didn't before, and that perhaps they impressed some portion of them?

Let's take a series like Mario Kart. If out of the 35 million sales, if you've impressed even 5% of those owners enough to buy the game's successor along with its successor's console, you would technically get 1,750,000 sales. Lower that to 1% and you still have 350,000 sales. It's at least a bunch larger base to tap into compared to what Nintendo had in the N64/GameCube days.

I still think that the biggest strength of the Wii U ironically is that basically no one knows about it. As such, there may be a chance that it can be made appealing to this audience now that it has games. Honestly at least to me the current-gen consoles have much more appealing libraries than any of the next-gen consoles will at this point, but at least of the PS4/XB1/Wii U, the Wii U at least carves out its own types of games. I'm still not sure how many people are actually going to buy the cross-gen games on the next-gen consoles. Sure if you have a PS4/XB1, you'll buy it there (assuming the price is about the same), but if you don't, I see most people buying Watch Dogs, etc. on the 360/PS3/PC.
The ship has sailed argument comes from an old rule in the industry that a console cant be succesful unless it has boomed in its first year. That rule has been broken by DS, PS3 and 3DS though.

Ofcourse it requires a lot of effort of the console manufacturer to heave said platform out of the misery. However nintendo has done it with two recent platforms in the past.
 
From this week's Media Create thread.



As the mod I quoted above mentioned, consistency is the key. If they can keep (in this context perhaps start is much more pertinent) pumping those "big" hitters consistently, they might just carve out a comfortable segment that they can call their own and potentially double/triple those NPD monthly sales. W101 and Pikmin 3 do not count, what they need are titles that can achieve the 80+% atttach rate numbers they attained with NSMBU. Every month.

No more lulls like we've seen this year, this is a system going into it's second year soon enough and it's faithful should be looking forward to the 2nd gen titles with anticipation, not wondering about the prospects of the console that they sunk hundreds into.
pikmin 3 did well for them especially in japan though

I agree that they need to be consistent.

Nintendo achieved this for a short period of time with the wii (2006-2009)..
 

marc^o^

Nintendo's Pro Bono PR Firm
II think people are getting tired of Mario.
Yeah, they should not do that.
That was >6 months ago:
i6dnvSJvxikcz.jpg

Mario 3D Land could be at 10 millions now, and it will never stop selling. It's a sizable increase vs Mario Galaxy 1&2 sales.

Besides sales, most people loved Mario 3D Land, as they loved previous 3D Mario games.

So factually, you're both wrong.
 

marc^o^

Nintendo's Pro Bono PR Firm
NSMB U is selling on par with what NSMB2 is selling on 3DS, all proportions aligned. 3D Land is selling better than NSMB2, and Mario 3D World is probably the most appealing/cute/kawaï Mario ever. Its recent trailer is acclaimed on every side of the internet, night and day with the reception of NSMBU prior to its release. I'll let you draw the conclusions on Mario 3D World sales potential.My take: high, as in system seller high.
 
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