Topic: What Nintendo must avoid at the Wii launch...

[NWR_pap64]

I was thinking about this just now...

If Nintendo plans for a succesful launch and a strong period of sales...

They MUST avoid doing the same thing they did with the N64 launch and the Nintendo DS launch and that is release everything at launch then release nothing for 2 or 3 months.

Nintendo has to keep a steady flow of titles coming after the release of the Wii. The DS had this same problem. Not only was the launch line up weaker than usual there wasn't anything released till spring 2005.

If Nintendo decides to stay like 2 months without releasing anything it could hurt the Wii's chances of being a success.

What other stuff do you think Nintendo must avoid at launch?

[slacker]

A lack of variety and steady flow of games in the system's early life will set it up for premature death or it will be handicapped by it. Its like a small child who is growing. If the child gets fed well and is well cared for, then it will flourish and grow big and strong. If it doesn't, then if it survives, it will be small and plague with health problems until some miracle cure or cures come along to over come those problems. Its survival of the fitest, and right now Nintendo don't have the best genes. That belongs to Sony.

[Mario]

Dude, the games we already know about will be more than enough, this launch is going to be absolutely massive.

What does Sony have for the PS3 launch? Ridge Racer 7? Untold Legends 3? Wii is going to absolutely wipe the floor with the PS3 gameswise unless Sony has some surprises up their sleeve.  

[TrueNerd]

Actually, it won't matter to me one bit if the Wii has a software drought after launch, as that will just give me time to download all the classic games I missed the first time around. But is this even a worry? We certainly expect Red Steel, Madden and Smash Bros to be launch titles and we somewhat assume games like Metroid Prim3 to be there and this is not even taking into consideration the Wii-enabled Twilight Princess which will probably drop around the time of the Wii's launch. It'll be April before I need something new to play.  

[wandering]

Nintendo has said there won't be a drought after launch. I'm fully expecting there to be way more must-have games than I can buy. Mainly because motion control elevates all games to must-have status, including SpongeBob Wii.

I think the biggest thing I want out of the launch is another Mario 64. We haven't had an epic Miyamoto masterpiece in too long, and I'll be really dissapointed if the launch is filled with nothing but better-than-good-but-less-than-great games.

[Avinash_Tyagi]

I'm really starting to have faith that the Wii isn't going to have any drought issues, the games that have been announced so far are awesome, and if they get spaced out nicely we'll be looking at months of excellent releases.

[Kairon]

Either way...it's perhaps a tad late to start talking about this when launch is supposed to be in... what? 5 or 6 months. Or maybe not... a 9 month dev schedule (the amount of time it took to make Rogue Leader) could have games here in time for February!

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[PaLaDiN]

Forget great games, I want to see one outstanding game.

Metroid Prime 3 should be it, provided they don't screw it up.

[Fro]

George Harrison in Game Informer, talking about what they've learned from the GC launch:

"The other thing we recognize is that you really make your reputation in the first year.  You've got to deliver software, not just at launch, but you have to deliver software in the first six months to nine months after launch.  It has to be solid software."

He goes on to talk about how the GC had a drought after launch and how it really killed the system and hurt it's reputation.

[Crimm]

Nintendo insists there will be no droughts, and they accept that the premature deaths of the N64 and the GC are on their hands.  The drought of the DS was "okay" simply because the PSP managed an even more epic drought.  They wont be so lucky here.

I want to trust them that the drought days are over; they also said this around GC launch time.  They've got some trust to earn back...says the guy with a Tingle avatar.

[Artimus]

Has any recent system not had this drought?

[Smash_Brother]

I'd very much love it if the Wii didn't suffer the same drought as seemingly every console does, especially since the 360 is probably coming out of its drought right about now.

[Mario]

Quote
Originally posted by: Artimus
Has any recent system not had this drought?

No.

I didn't mind the GC launch drought because GC wasn't even out here during that drought, we ended up getting about 30 games for launch 8 months later. Plus, with a game like SSBM, I wouldn't even have noticed.

[jasonditz]

Quote
Originally posted by: Artimus
Has any recent system not had this drought?

How about the Dreamcast?

Seems like their only drought was at the very end.

[Spak-Spang]

I think Nintendo needs to avoid a few things.

1)Gaming Droughts.  Nintendo needs to make sure for the first year that at least 1-2 games are released each month from either them or third parties.  I would do whatever I could to help accomplish this...even negotiate better rates from companies that will release games in desired time slots.

2)Have a strong launch.  I know people do not want Nintendo to blow there wad of first party games early.  But the launch is important.  At least 5 Nintendo created games need to be out on the market by December.

3)Support online.  Ask third parties if they are doing online and most are saying no.  This is because Nintendo hasn't proven themselves to truly support online play.  Nintendo needs to at launch show all the developers that Wii online will be supported and strong.

4)Be careful releasing the nongamer games.  These games need to be timed carefully.  They can not truly take the place of traditional games, but your entire market strategy is also based on reaching new people.  Well timed releases are important.

5)The Virtual System must not suck at day one.  It doesn't have to be perfect, or have all the killer games at first.  But it must not suck.  The virtual system needs to completely blow Xbox Arcade out of the water with content.  

Do I think all of these will happen for launch.  Possibly...but I expect a few fumbles.  I will still be buying a system at launch.  I this will be Nintendo's best launch since the Super Nintendo.

Why?

1)Great launch lineup.  I believe Nintendo is going to be extremely strong with its opening lineup, and I believe several games that have disappeared for the Cube are actually being prepped for the Wii.

2)Virtual Console will bring traditional older gamers back.

3)New Controller will spark more interest than imaginable.

[ThePerm]

10 EAD is huge..where are their games on gamecube?

[Ian Sane]

Maintaining momemtum is the most important thing for the first year of a console's life.  If Nintendo can completely avoid a drought it would do wonders for their momemtum.

Though that's hard to completely avoid.  They just have to do it right.  The Cube's flagship title was Luigi's Mansion.  It was good but I beat it in a weekend rental and actually felt ripped off because I paid extra to have it for three days and I only needed two.  So that kind of a short flagship title followed by a drought was really damaging.  The Xbox had a drought but it had Halo which was consistently played until the sequel came out.  The Xbox flagship game just lasted longer so the drought wasn't so bad.  If Nintendo has a drought but also has like THE game of the year as the flagship title it won't be so bad.

I think it's important that the flagship title be the big game of the year.  I'd argue that SSBM was just as good as Halo (or better) but people pay attention to the flagship title.  That gives them an impression of what the console will be like.  It's not good to have the REAL killer app hidden away while all the marketing goes towards an average game.  The flagship title usually sells the best of the launch games.  People have come to expect the flagship title to be the best game so thus it should be so they form an accurate opinion and not assume that an average title is the best the console has to offer.

The DS one was the worst though.  Not only was there a drought but the flagship title wasn't even a new game!  It would be like if Nintendo launched the Wii with Super Mario Sunshine: Special Edition and nothing else.

[couchmonkey]

All companies experience this drought to some degree, but looking at GameCube vs. Xbox, for example, I think the Xbox had a few things going for it during the drought period that GameCube did not:

1. Exclusive games (Wreckless and Bloodwake).  They may not have been the best games, but Microsoft still ran with them, advertising both like heck.  Meanwhile, all Nintendo had was that basketball game, which was half-heartedly advertised alongside Rogue Leader for like the whole first quarter of 2002.  Nintendo even eventually resorted to marketing third party games in an all-in-one commercial for Sonic Adventure 2, Agent Under Fire, and StarFox Adventures (which of course didn't come out for another half a year anyway).

2. Relatively big third-party support.  I remember all the way through the first half of 2001, the Xbox shelves were always more packed than the GameCube shelves thanks to better third party support.  Again, these weren't necessarily the best games, but all that mattered is that there WERE games.  I think GameCube had maybe 3 or 4 games released in the first two months of 2002, most of which were unremarkable.

3. Halo...for whatever reason that game was huge, and it was able to keep generating interest well into the new year.  While I think Halo was a little overrated, it goes to show the benefits of having a big flagship game.  What was GameCube's flagship?  SSB: Melee and Rogue Leader both seemed to be considered candidates, but neither game seemed to click that way at the time.  I think Luigi's Mansion  confused the issue, being the default substitute for Mario, but as much as I love it, there's no way it was a flagship title.  I think things might have been really different if a game like Metroid Prime or even Super Mario Sunshine had been available at launch.

P.S. It's too late to change this now anyway, but a big part of Wii's success will depend on just how good the motion control is.  If I feel like I'm really steering and controlling a car with my Wii, then why would I want to go back to ordinary video games?

[Magik]

Besides having a good launch, the launch needs to have a lot of variety.  Nintendo needs to avoid having too many games in the same genre since one title will definitely overshadow the others.

Also, Nintendo needs games that really show off the controller.  It's one thing to have a bunch of games at launch, but if those games don't show off the controller and its uniqueness... then its going to be a lot more difficult to sell the system.

[Spak-Spang]

You know about the drought issue.  All I can say is that alot of games for the Gamecube have gone missing...and can very easily be ramped or ramping up for the Wii.

Kirby GCN
Pennant Chase GCN

these are the two most notable.  Along with those games rumors of games being created have been around for awhile.  Which is where several of our list for Wii games comes from.  A great example of that is Camlot RPG.  

Basically what I am saying is there is plenty of Nintendo games that are coming out for the Wii that are probably in late production.  Nintendo can easily have a very strong launch and have plenty of games coming out into the future to avoid droughts.

I have no doubts that this launch will be big.

I wouldn't be surprised is Nintendo is prepping an RPG for launch...just to show developers and gamers that they are coming.

If Camelot's RPG for the Wii can be ready by launch.  That would allow Nintendo the time to get Pokemon Wii ready for next year.  

[Spak-Spang]

Well the Wii at launch will definately have:

A 3D Platformer/Adventure
A First Person Shooter
A FIrst Person Adventure
A Puzzle Game/ Party Game
A Football Game
A Fighting Game
A Flight Game
Traditional 2D Shooter

This is already pretty big support.

Note I tried to stick to definate genres I know will be launch games.

Finally, the Virtual System although they are older games will fill some of the void of genres with classics that people love.

[Kairon]

I wonder what will be the games to prevent us from draughting though? 3 months after puts the Rev in February territory, very quiet time gameswise ain't it? Maybe Pikmin 3 could go there, unless that's too GC - ish for your tastes. Or Mario Kart, now that we've got some slightly tempered hopes since we know nothing will ever match the first two.

Either way, I really hope that this fast, cheap, GC-like dev time means Nintendo can develop games quicker. And I hope they need less time to experiment too, they were working on MK: DD forever since they couldn't come up with anything new to do for it.

For no reason in particular, I think back to the N64. Every 6 months an awesome release, MK64, SF64, yeah... we need most of the major franchise IPs out in the first YEAR!

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com