Topic: What COULD (have) save(d) the Wii U?

[Triforce Hermit]

Also, I don't think it's necessary to defend my viewpoint on Splatoon, but I will anyway: Nintendo's first foray features no friend matchmaking, no custom rule sets, no voice chat, already-confirmed DLC and gated Amiibo content, and a decidedly in-Nintendo aesthetic outside of having colors. It's a novel concept but delivered with mediocrity, likely a result of the game being rushed to have a title for May.

I disagree. It's delivered poorly because it's Nintendo. I usually wouldn't use that excuse, but their reasons for no voice chat support it.

[Enner]

So the gist of what I'm getting from the above posts is that the Wii U could have been saved if Nintendo wasn't the Nintendo it has been since N64 and was instead some amalgamation of the successful aspects of their competitors :p
Yeah, that's spot on for me.

I am dismayed by the poor forecast and belittlement given to Splatoon, but I come from a position of being enamored and excited by Splatoon and its prospects. While time will soon tell whether my beliefs will lead to folly, I believe that Splatoon is unquestionably the most important game for Nintendo to make in the past five years, maybe eight. I see it doing so many things fans and critics have asked from Nintendo: a new world with new characters, a genre they have never made a game in, a best-selling type of game that never had first-party representation, and a big, bold bet of a retail product that has the highest amount of weight behind it for a new gamble. I will admit that it is because of these conditions that every misstep that Splatoon makes is greatly magnified. It will be unfortunate when Splatoon comes out and its offerings compare woefully to those of Gears of War 3 or the latest Call of Duty. But Nintendo is behind in this curve and they have to start somewhere.

"Nintendo is behind the curve."

Heh, I think that sums up all our frustrations and criticism of the company and many of their products and services, eh?

[Evan_B]

Where Nintendo has been behind the curve for some time, the blow was cushioned during the Wii days because third parties wanted to develop for the system and, whether you liked it or not, Nintendo tried many things to make their games interesting via motion control.

[Triforce Hermit]

I genuinely believe Splatoon will be a good game, but it is not going to garner Mario Kart or Smash popularity. Also, a lot of bad decisions are being made which will hold it back because it is trying to enter the online FPS genre and it is missing a lot of which every other franchise already offers.

In other words, it will be a Nintendo game.

[Adrock]

So the gist of what I'm getting from the above posts is that the Wii U could have been saved if Nintendo wasn't the Nintendo it has been since N64 and was instead some amalgamation of the successful aspects of their competitors :p
Yeah, that's spot on for me.

In a sense, maybe. I think the worst part is Nintendo wasn't even being Nintendo well so the things Nintendo always got right it suddenly got wrong. What's a Nintendo console without Nintendo games? What's a Nintendo console that's a pain in the ass to navigate? We used insert the cartridges and play right away. With Wii U, Nintendo was like, "We have one first party game for the first eight months or so and it's a sequel to a game that came out three months ago. Also, it takes 30 seconds to get to the start screen. Enjoy." What the hell is that? Why did Nintendo think that was a winning combination? On top of getting just about everything else wrong, Nintendo forgot how to Nintendo.

[UncleBob]

Wii U Super amiibo bundle.

Wii U System + 5 amiibo - Villager, Mewtwo, Lucas, Little Mac and Peach.  Villager is a female deco, Little Mac is wire frame deco, Peach is Daisy deco, Lucas and Mewtwo are exclusive to this bundle.

Face it - people are already paying $100+ for figures.  Nintendo might as well get in on that action too.

[Soren]

Wii U Super amiibo bundle.

Wii U System + 5 amiibo - Villager, Mewtwo, Lucas, Little Mac and Peach.  Villager is a female deco, Little Mac is wire frame deco, Peach is Daisy deco, Lucas and Mewtwo are exclusive to this bundle.

Face it - people are already paying $100+ for figures.  Nintendo might as well get in on that action too.

/thread.

[Luigi Dude]

I genuinely believe Splatoon will be a good game, but it is not going to garner Mario Kart or Smash popularity. Also, a lot of bad decisions are being made which will hold it back because it is trying to enter the online FPS genre and it is missing a lot of which every other franchise already offers.

It doesn't need to in order to be a success though.  Mario Kart 8 is already at round 5 million copies sold with Smash Bros probably closer to 4 million and both games continue to grow every month.  Nintendo isn't trying to appeal to the Call of Duty/Halo audience, they're trying to appeal to their own Mario/Smash, where the lack of things like voice chat aren't going to be that big a deal. 

Yeah Splatoon isn't going to reach those numbers but just appealing to a small fraction of that audience can still give it a good chance of being a million seller in the end which will be great considering it's a new IP and all.

[Ian Sane]

So the gist of what I'm getting from the above posts is that the Wii U could have been saved if Nintendo wasn't the Nintendo it has been since N64 and was instead some amalgamation of the successful aspects of their competitors :p
Yeah, that's spot on for me.

N64 Nintendo was a better Nintendo than Wii U Nintendo.  I feel like since the N64 the company has just steadily gotten worse.  They never seem to learn from their mistakes and keep introducing new bad habits.  It's a company that has never made any serious attempt at self-improvement so they just dig themselves deeper and deeper into a hole.  And with the Wii they made tons of mistakes but the system was so successful it didn't affect their bottom line.  Don't try that hard + **** up a bunch = $$$$$$$$?  That's not a good "lesson" for a company to learn, particularly one that already had a very deluded sense of their own infallibility.

The plan for the Wii U should just be to survive until a successor is released.  Now to actually do the NX right is going to take tons of work.  They need to do a very humble and honest self-assessment where they determine which mistakes of the last 20 years were made and what they should have done instead and what they would logically be doing today if they hadn't made that mistake.  What would Nintendo be like in 2015 if they actually addressed mistakes along the way?  I don't think they would be Sony.  They should have elements of Sony.  Like some stuff is just so obvious that any company with half-a-brain would do it that way and Nintendo need not do things in some weird ass Nintendo way just because everyone else came across the obvious way to do to it first.  Nintendo's true identity is in the things they do (or did) well, not in the things they do poorly.  Having terrible third party support or outdated crappy online for example isn't some key part of Nintendo where we would lose Nintendo's identity if they fixed it.  If Nintendo's faults are part of why you like them you're nuts and Nintendo will go broke catering to your insanity.  Making great games?  Making creative games?  Yeah, those are parts of Nintendo's identity that shouldn't be messed with.  Those should stay the same but the stupid **** no one likes should go.

Part of how the hybrid idea appeals to me is that I feel that Nintendo needs up-to-date hardware but they clearly don't WANT to do that.  It feels like with the Gamecube Nintendo found their hardware comfort zone.  I don't think outdated hardware is going to sell on a console.  Nintendo probably won't go third party.  They like the weaker hardware of a handheld and they clearly get that side of the business better than consoles but since I prefer to play on consoles Nintendo as a handheld-only company doesn't work well for me.  The hybrid lets them be effectively handheld-only while I still can hook things up to my TV.  It's a good compromise between what I want out of Nintendo and what Nintendo seems to want to do.  I also think the first successful implementation of that concept will change the industry.  My rationale for that is entirely that the hardware improvements become less obvious with each generation so each generation gets longer and has less justification for even existing.  Handhelds need "inferior" tech so it can be shrunk down and use less energy so they fall behind in the arms race with consoles.  But if console hardware plateaus then handhelds have a chance to catch up and if both are technologically the same it is arbitrary that they are different at all.  Might as well make them the same.  The first company to deliver that will reap the rewards.

[nickmitch]

I genuinely believe Splatoon will be a good game, but it is not going to garner Mario Kart or Smash popularity. Also, a lot of bad decisions are being made which will hold it back because it is trying to enter the online FPS genre and it is missing a lot of which every other franchise already offers.

It doesn't need to in order to be a success though.  Mario Kart 8 is already at round 5 million copies sold with Smash Bros probably closer to 4 million and both games continue to grow every month.  Nintendo isn't trying to appeal to the Call of Duty/Halo audience, they're trying to appeal to their own Mario/Smash, where the lack of things like voice chat aren't going to be that big a deal. 

Yeah Splatoon isn't going to reach those numbers but just appealing to a small fraction of that audience can still give it a good chance of being a million seller in the end which will be great considering it's a new IP and all.

But isn't going for only Nintendo's audience a problem?  Shouldn't the goal of major software releases be to move hardware units as well? At least in some small capacity?

[NWR_insanolord]

N64 Nintendo was a better Nintendo than Wii U Nintendo.

This is just complete rose-tinted nostalgia. This is a Nintendo that pissed off everyone by going with cartridges instead of CDs, and went out of their way to drive away third parties. This is what Nintendo has always been, even when they were successful. They haven't gotten worse, they just lost the ability to get away with ****.

[Ian Sane]

N64 Nintendo was a better Nintendo than Wii U Nintendo.

This is just complete rose-tinted nostalgia. This is a Nintendo that pissed off everyone by going with cartridges instead of CDs, and went out of their way to drive away third parties. This is what Nintendo has always been, even when they were successful. They haven't gotten worse, they just lost the ability to get away with ****.

Nah, Nintendo made better first party games then.  The N64 launched with Super Mario 64 and the Wii U launched with NSMB U.

Regardless, being an asshole who burns all their bridges isn't a distinctive part of Nintendo's identity that needs to be preserved.

[NWR_insanolord]

The N64 library's certainly more groundbreaking, but in terms of quality I'd argue the Wii U's pretty close to it. And I agree that's an aspect of Nintendo that they really need to fix, but it's got nothing to do with them getting worse, or Iwata, or attempts to expand into the casual market.

[Luigi Dude]

Nah, Nintendo made better first party games then.  The N64 launched with Super Mario 64 and the Wii U launched with NSMB U.

NSMB U is a much better game then Mario 64 so you're not exactly helping your argument.

[Adrock]

Are we really doing this now?

You had a nice thread going for a while, Evan...

[Ian Sane]

The N64 library's certainly more groundbreaking, but in terms of quality I'd argue the Wii U's pretty close to it. And I agree that's an aspect of Nintendo that they really need to fix, but it's got nothing to do with them getting worse, or Iwata, or attempts to expand into the casual market.

Groundbreaking games carry a lot of weight though.  The N64 and the Wii both launched with games where there was really no other game released prior that played like them.  Meanwhile the Wii U, as someone pointed out above, had a very similar 3DS game steal its thunder.  It seems that people will put up with a fair bit of bullshit to gain access to some exclusive gameplay experience that no one else offers.  But when you're not offering that they'll rightly reject you.

So when you think about it like that, Nintendo really needs a console that can stand on its own even if they're making good but fairly conventional games.  Making groundbreaking games like Super Mario 64 is hard to do.  No one can just effortlessly bust those out.  But Nintendo has no safety net.  If they don't deliver on those games then it's just a pretty unexceptional console with a lot of problems.

This is why the PS4 has done well and why Sony in general has done well.  No their peaks are never as high as Nintendo's but you know that the general stuff will be done competently.  And if Nintendo had a console where the general stuff is done well is there some reason why they couldn't still deliver the odd groundbreaking work of genius?  Games as good as Nintendo's best stuff gets made on non-Nintendo systems too.  Nintendo's weird stew of goofiness and stupidity isn't a requirement for great original games to be made.  They slack off on the little details and cheap out and jerk around their associates and exploit their customers and avoid admitting mistakes because they're confident that they can pull the next Wii Sports out of their ass at any time and it will make up for everything else.  Yet if they did the stuff right that everyone else gets right while also utilizing their talents to make consistently great first party games and the occasional industry-changing masterpiece wouldn't they be the absolute kings of the industry?

[Evan_B]

The PS4 has barely any conventional, good games.

The Wii U has a number of titles that are equal or better in quality than the titles on the N64, the only think is that the N64 had them first.

Splatoon is not going to do well unless Nintendo cancels all other SKUs aside from the Splatoon bundle. An atop that, it's not even a good game.

Glad we all agree!

[NWR_insanolord]

Since you apparently have an advance copy of Splatoon, can you expand a bit on your very informed opinion of the quality of the game?

[Mop it up]

Nah, Nintendo made better first party games then.  The N64 launched with Super Mario 64 and the Wii U launched with NSMB U.

NSMB U is a much better game then Mario 64 so you're not exactly helping your argument.

Now them's fighting words! Put up your dukes!

[Triforce Hermit]

I genuinely believe Splatoon will be a good game, but it is not going to garner Mario Kart or Smash popularity. Also, a lot of bad decisions are being made which will hold it back because it is trying to enter the online FPS genre and it is missing a lot of which every other franchise already offers.

It doesn't need to in order to be a success though.  Mario Kart 8 is already at round 5 million copies sold with Smash Bros probably closer to 4 million and both games continue to grow every month.  Nintendo isn't trying to appeal to the Call of Duty/Halo audience, they're trying to appeal to their own Mario/Smash, where the lack of things like voice chat aren't going to be that big a deal. 

Yeah Splatoon isn't going to reach those numbers but just appealing to a small fraction of that audience can still give it a good chance of being a million seller in the end which will be great considering it's a new IP and all.

If you are trying to make people buy a Wii U, you try to appeal to people who don't already have one. This game is being hyped, which is fine. Its being hyped for the wrong reason though, which is to move hardware, which it won't.

[broodwars]

The PS4 has barely any conventional, good games.

*glances at his PS4 library*

Alien: Isolation
Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag
Axiom Verge
Bastion
Bloodborne
Borderlands: The Handsome Collection
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
Chariot
Counterspy
Contrast
DmC: Devil May Cry - Definitive Edition
Dragon Age Inquisition
Dust: An Elysian Tail
Entwined
Far Cry 4
Final Fantasy Type 0 HD
FF 15 demo
Flower
Telltale's Game of Thrones
Geometry Wars: Dimensions
Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams
Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-
Hand of Fate
Infamous: Second Son + Infamous: First Light
Injustice: Gods Among Us - Ultimate Edition
Killzone Shadow Fall
Life is Strange
LittleBigPlanet 3
Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
P.T.
Peggle 2
Rayman Legends
Resident Evil Revelations 2
Resident Evil HD
Resogun
Rogue Legacy
Saints Row 4: Re-Elected + Gat Out of Hell
Shovel Knight
Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition
Sniper Elite 3
Strider (Remake)
Strike Suit Zero: Director's Cut
Tales from the Borderlands
The Evil Within
The Last of Us: Remastered
The Last Tinker
The Order 1886 (yes, I liked it, despite its issues)
The Swapper
The Walking Dead - Seasons 1 & 2
The Wolf Among Us
Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition
Towerfall Ascension
Trine 1 & 2
Valiant Hearts: The Great War

Truly, that's hardly any "conventional, good games." And that's an edited version of the full list of PS4 games I own, btw.

Now if you want to add "exclusive" to that above quote, there's some truth to that. But as it stands right now I have plenty of good stuff to play on my PS4 right now.

Nah, Nintendo made better first party games then.  The N64 launched with Super Mario 64 and the Wii U launched with NSMB U.

NSMB U is a much better game then Mario 64 so you're not exactly helping your argument.

[nickmitch]

N64 Nintendo was a better Nintendo than Wii U Nintendo.

This is just complete rose-tinted nostalgia. This is a Nintendo that pissed off everyone by going with cartridges instead of CDs, and went out of their way to drive away third parties. This is what Nintendo has always been, even when they were successful. They haven't gotten worse, they just lost the ability to get away with ****.

Basically, Nintendo has always been a shitty company, and things have just been slowly catching up to them.

[Adrock]

Now, this thread has transitioned from a pissing contest about Mario launch titles to compiling game lists. It was a fun discussion while it lasted.

[UncleBob]

I'm not going to get into the debate over the quality of NSMBWiiU vs. SM64, but I will say this - for all the top-tier, high quality, groundbreaking frst-party titles the N64 had, it was still crushed by the competition in sales.

Meanwhile, for all the nay-saying against the Wii U, it's not too far behind the XBox One and only about half of the PS4 (yes, half isn't good, but compare N64 to PS1).  And I'd say there hasn't really been an amazing, revolutionary, ground-breakng Wii U release yet.

I think folks overestimate the impact of a "System Seller".  If I'm buying a $99 Game Boy, sure, Pokemon might do it.  But when we're talking about dropping a couple of Franklins... I just don't see a sizable amount of people doing that.

People buy systems based on one of three things:

A.) A fan of the manufacturer/their promises of future supprort
 -Nintendo has pretty much tapped this group out.
B) My friends have it and I want to be cool/play against them online.
 -Never going to get the first group and they really don't appear interested in the second.
C) Man, this system has a bunch of games I want that I can't play on the system(s) I already have and it's a good price.
 -This is the group they need to cater to now.  As was pointed out above, they've done a lot of damage putting out comparable titles on the 3DS (although Smash 3DS isn't in the same league as Smash U.  Mario Kart 7 plays better, imho, but 8 is getting amazing DLC)... but this is how they fix it.  One or two completely mind-blowing AAA titles isn't going to reverse their fortunes (aside from Pokemon MMO, but we already discussed that Nintendo isn't catering to an online demo).  They just need as many good-to-great AA-A titles as they can get.

With that said, they need to crank out more games like Hyrule Warriors, Captain Toad, etc.  They need to figure out WTF is going on with the virtual console (get every first-party NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, GB, GBC, GBA, and DS title on there tomorrow.  What, we can download Wii games?  Whoopte-f***in-doo.  I can pop the disc in and play it.  Hell, I can go buy a used Wii for $30, the game for $20, it's cheaper than buying a Wii U and I have more choices in VC titles...).  They need to get with third parties and get as many of their classic titles on the system as they can.  Not that I see SE getting on board, but could you imagine if they announced tomorrow that all of SE's SNES titles were coming to the Wii U?  There are folks that would buy a Wii U within hours of that announcement.

Face it, Wii U isn't going to get new third party support.  So, throw all the old stuff at it (F-Zero GX, AX, F-Zero X, and F-Zero X-DD coming to Wii U tomorrow!), throw some cool, new smaller titles at it (Mario Maker, Yoshi's Wooly World, Splatoon), and the occasional mega title (Zelda 201516) and it'll do just fine.

[Ian Sane]

Splatoon gives me a Paper Mario vibe.  I like Paper Mario so that could be read as a compliment but I'm not really remarking on either game's quality.

Paper Mario was one of literally two RPGs released for the N64.  RPGs were never bigger than they were that gen and the N64 had pretty much nothing representing the genre at all.  Paper Mario didn't feel like a typical RPG.  It felt like the anti-RPG that made fun of RPGs.  It felt like it was made specifically for N64 fanboys that crapped on RPGs.  RPGs were not a Nintendo thing so the Nintendo RPG was something that would pretty much not appeal at all to the RPG fans on competing consoles.

Splatoon gives me that vibe.  Nintendo does not do shooters.  Despite being undoubtedly the most popular type of game around these days (like RPGs were when Paper Mario came out) the genre is pretty damn unrepresented on Nintendo consoles.  Much like how RPGs got flack from Nintendo fans during the PS1 days, shooters get crapped on.  They're brown and for bro-gamers.  So here we have something that has essentially no appeal at all to shooter fans on competing consoles.  The main characters are children that turn into squids and shoot paint.  Any superficial element of today's shooters that make them hip has been stripped away.

It will not sell consoles and not just because the Wii U isn't doing very well.  People that will buy a console for a shooter are already going to buy a PS4 or XB1 as both have a much larger selection of those games.  How many people are interested in the genre but don't like the guns or violence?

With Paper Mario it felt odd at the time that Nintendo didn't try to give their audience something more conventional to give them a taste of what they had been missing out on.  Splatoon seems the same way.  Why have an alternate take on shooting if you're not even offering the traditional take?  But I don't think that was the idea.  I think in both cases the idea was to make a game for the existing userbase that doesn't necessarily like the genre in question and needs it presented in a different format.  After all if you wanted traditional shooters why they hell did you buy a Wii U over a PS4 or XB1?