Topic: The Wii U and next Gen: What can Nintendo do?

[pokepal148]

The general consensus seems to be that the Wii U is underpowered. whether this claim holds 100% true or not is still uncertain but it will hurt the Wii U's image nonetheless. How can Nintendo handle this situation. What do you think?

[Toruresu]

Bring on the games! I have a feeling this next gen will be like the GC era again, (It's under powered! It's for kids! The control is weird! etc.) But we will get some 3rd party support, some multiplatform games, some exclusives from 3rd parties, but it won't be the same as PS4 or Durango.

All Nintendo can do is bring on the games.

[shingi_70]

Nothing they really can do. At this point its life even the PS3 didn't have such low sales or lack of any real software support. The Wii U while being the first next gen console is stuck in such a weird position because Nintendo didn't want to take a loss. So now they're stuck in this position of being slightly more powerful than the last generation of consoles, but not on par with the other two. Not only that but irrc both PS4/Durango are using an X86 architecture.


Compounding that is most developers either ae giving the minimal amount of support or even none at all. Nintendo's only real hopes is too try and get the more Niche Japanese companies on its development side of things and relying on Indies to feel in the gap. Even that might not work since MSFT/Sony will probably go hard to get indies on they're platform as well.


That and Nintendo could have used its cash reserves to open more development studios and stretch its development arms to more regions. SUrely the current Nintendo leadership saw how this approach payed out well for SOny who invested deep in multiple first party experiences after having several rough patches early on in the PS3 life. Not all these efforts were good with a lot being Average or Bad but it showed that SOny cared about supporting its own platform. Now were seeing MIcrosoft doing the same thing with adding a ton of development studios from Canada (still think they should have scooped up THQ Montreal) as well as restructuring their European and American studios. While its yet to fully pay off its a promising look.


Nintendo on the other hand has only acquired two studios being Monolith (really good with expanding the studio as well) and Project Sora which I think closed down after finishing KId ICarus meaning a waste of resources and talent. Yet beyond all of this Nintendo is obviously having problems supporting both the 3DS and Wii U. I saw this coming right when we knew the power of the 3dS so nintendo had too know that when putting a **** ton of 3DS projects in the pipeline they wouldn't have the man power to adequately support both systems at the same time. They could have alleviated this problem by putting eshop projects for WIi U early in the pipeline and staffing up hardcore during the Wii era. When a project as small as a mario kart game for 3ds needs retro to come in and help.


So honestly Nintendo is in this mess fro their own doing. I guess I should wait till after the ND to expound more on the third party support stuff.

[Adrock]

I don't expect a 3DS-esque turn around. 3DS has things going for it that Wii U does not and will not have namely that Nintendo has always performed well in the handheld space and handhelds are just more popular in Japan so third parties want to support it.

Wii U will begin performing better in the latter part of the year as its main problem is lack of software. Nintendo has also finally rolled out the Virtual Console and improved the loading issues.

Third party support is likely to remain anemic. A few multiplatform games while PS3/360 are alive and kicking then the occasional exclusive that Nintendo seeks out themselves (e.g. Bayontta 2). I don't know if there's a way to fix this. Third parties don't care that Sony and Microsoft lost money on hardware with PS3/360. They didn't have to shoulder any of that responsibility. Since Nintendo is unwilling to do that, support for their home consoles are going to suffer. Things may get better in the future when graphics plateau, but still not a guarantee.

[shingi_70]

Welp exclusive Sonic and Scribblenauts means i'm getting a Wii U.

[Fatty The Hutt]

Welp exclusive Sonic and Scribblenauts means i'm getting a Wii U.

Good for you, Shingi! I look forward to "friending" you.

I think more games will keep the Wii U generally afloat.
It will be interesting to see what happens when the Sony and Microsoft consoles come out. They will get a decent splash of sales off the top, I am sure. But those rising dev costs could mean that, instead of going bankrupt, some mid-tier devs will make "current gen", reasonably costed games that can run on all 3 systems. Or not. I'm no Nostradamus.

As long as Nintendo keeps putting out the occasional/quarterly good game and there are some interesting e-shop or other releases in the gaps, I'll be fine. I really like the Wii U and don't yet have a yen to pick up anything else. We'll see. If awesome Star Wars games start showing up for other platforms, I may be forced to bite.

[Ian Sane]

If it isn't really that underpowered Nintendo needs to demonstrate it.  Nintendo Land and NSMB U are not visually impressive at all.  There is nothing that makes it obvious that the Wii U is even more powerful than a PS3.

If it is truly underpowered in a big enough way then Nintendo either has to hold down the fort until the end of the generation, which would involve more developers as they suck at providing the system with games now and that would only continue unless they expanded.  Or if the sales are going to stay as poor as they have been they need to kill the damn thing off and replace it with something that actually comes across as current.  If they make it backwards compatible then there is a slightly smoother transition for existing Wii U owners.  I figure it would piss off a lot Wii U owners to have their console die out so fast but, well, it ain't like there are many of them to begin with and those that actually bought a Wii U are going to be more the Nintendo diehards that will likely remain loyal.

I wonder if there is a way they could make a new console to replace the Wii U that can also be sold as an add-on to the Wii U.  So the bulk of the marketing is on the standalone system but a Wii U owner can buy the cheaper add-on to turn their Wii U into this new system, so they won't feel to ripped off by a DOA product.  But that's probably not feasible.

The decision to stay with the Wii U or kill it will ultimately be decided by the market.  Nintendo will probably stay if it remains profitable and only kill it if they feel they absolutely have to.

The Wii U comes across to me as Nintendo's Atari 7800 - a console that is so out-of-date from day one that there is no real market for it.

[Adrock]

I wonder if there is a way they could make a new console to replace the Wii U that can also be sold as an add-on to the Wii U.  So the bulk of the marketing is on the standalone system but a Wii U owner can buy the cheaper add-on to turn their Wii U into this new system, so they won't feel to ripped off by a DOA product.  But that's probably not feasible.

[ThePerm]

People will look down on Wii U until a triad of things happens. People see the price tag of ps4/durango and smarten up, the good games roll out, wii u itself has a price cut. Wii U is going to have a slow burn to popularity. The big thing is 3rd parties, well you know I've had a love hate relationship with third parties for 15 years.

and the wii u can easily be upgraded. All they have to do is make a controller that has some extra juice. about 3.5 years into the system when you can really tell the difference in graphics Nintendo could just release a controller with a processor and extra ram and do an update on the operating system. At that point some of the load would be taken off the main box. Also by this time portable processors and memory will have a huge price advantage thanks to cell phone manufacturers.

[pokepal148]

shingi, you must have excellent sources on the power of the PS4/720, last i checked all we knew was that the PS4 had 8 cores running on a CPU designed for tablets...

honestly i think the gap is small enough that nintendo can find ways to work around it,
at worst we will see something like this

coming soon,

Wii U version

[Ian Sane]

My suggestion for an add-on is entirely to please the existing Wii U owners.  Like it isn't really an add-on, it's a new console and is marketed as a new console and the games are branded as such.  It's just that instead of making Wii U owners pay for a whole new system they can pay a lower price to upgrade their existing console to the new one.

Think of it like the Wii existed and that was what was in the ads and in the stores but there was also an add-on you could buy from Nintendo's web site that would turn your Gamecube into a Wii.  I have no idea if this is feasible from a technology standpoint.  So don't think of it as an add-on and all the problems that come from add-ons but rather as a new console that provides a cheaper way for Wii U owners to upgrade.

Or let's say this new console also uses the Wii U Gamepad with no updates to the controller itself and you can buy it with the new system or buy a special package that doesn't come with the controller and saves existing Wii U owners some money.

[Adrock]

I know what you meant; it's still a horrible idea. More importantly, there's still no way Nintendo can offer more powerful hardware in any fashion and sell it at a mass market price without absorbing losses like Sony and Microsoft do. Nintendo didn't go with the hardware they did just to **** with you. The sooner you accept that, the better we'll all be.

Nintendo hardware engineer: We could include much faster processors and more RAM with minimal extra cost.
Satoru Iwata: No. **** Ian Sane.
Shigeru Miyamoto: I know, right? What an asshole.
Satoru Iwata: (laughs)

[Ceric]

Sony isn't taking a lost on the PS4.

[Fatty The Hutt]

Nintendo hardware engineer: We could include much faster processors and more RAM with minimal extra cost.
Satoru Iwata: No. **** Ian Sane.
Shigeru Miyamoto: I know, right? What an asshole.
Satoru Iwata: (laughs)

So funny. I laughed hard. 

[Ian Sane]

I know what you meant; it's still a horrible idea. More importantly, there's still no way Nintendo can offer more powerful hardware in any fashion and sell it at a mass market price without absorbing losses like Sony and Microsoft do. Nintendo didn't go with the hardware they did just to **** with you. The sooner you accept that, the better we'll all be.

Well since the market doesn't seem to want to buy a "PS360 but made by Nintendo and released six years later" is Nintendo's future on the console front just fucked then?  I don't think Nintendo should match specs to personally please me but to release a product that people actually want and actually has some logical reason for existing.  Without the widespread casual appeal their is no real market for contemporary consoles with glorified last gen hardware.  If Nintendo can't match the other guys, then they can't make consoles anymore.  They can either get with the times or quit and the market will force them in one of those directions.  The Wii was a once-in-a-lifetime perfect storm of the right product, game and audience all coming together at the right time.  Nintendo needs to realize that (if they haven't already).

[pokepal148]

neogaf seems to have found something...

Time to clear up what i said here, here and in some other messages a few months ago, as i've already revealed it on IRC.

One of the Wii U core wasn't used throughout the development of several launch window games. It's an "engine related issue", meaning it's the way the teams behind those titles have programmed their engine for the Wii U CPU. It wasn't widespread, not universally seen on all the games, but witnessed on at least a few of those. The developers found and resolved this problem mere months/weeks prior release, and most of them gained a nice increase in FPS. It's one the origin of the huge boost in framerate i reported a long time ago that some studios managed to get (from 30 fps to 60 fps for some games), along with new dev kits, etc.

You heard it right, a whole core of the Wii U CPU wasn't put in use for most of the dev cycle of several titles, before it was fixed.

It's rather telling either: - on the crucial need of studios, accustomed to the HD-Twins framework, to adapt their code to the Wiii U specifics - or the perfectible state of documentation/dev kit/SDK's at the time - or [insert your own conclusion/guess derived from this info]

Interesting. That would actually explain a LOT.

This actually makes me even more impressed with the Wii U hardware given that they able to get performance equal to the last gen consoles with only 2 cores of the CPU. I feel that this needs to be covered by major game journalists. This would clear a lot of misconceptions from the launch period.

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?p=57894968

[Adrock]

Sony isn't taking a lost on the PS4.

I had a feeling someone was going to reference this which is why I said:

there's still no way Nintendo can offer more powerful hardware in any fashion and sell it at a mass market price without absorbing losses like Sony and Microsoft do.

The last rumor I read had PS4 at $430 on the low end. That's not mass market to me. $350 was pushing it for Wii U.

And do you even know what you linked?

Sony didn't specifically say they would break even or that losses would be minimal. "Not planning a major loss." What does that even mean? That statement from Sony is just vague enough to placate investors at an earnings call. What's a "major loss" to Sony? With PS3, Sony lost something like $300 per unit. Is anything below that not a major loss?

Nintendo is selling Wii U at a loss, but makes it back after a single piece of software is sold. I consider that minimal. I highly doubt that's anywhere close to what Sony means. Being generous, let's say Sony takes $100 loss on PS4. That's still not something Nintendo would do. The only thing Nintendo can really do in the future to offer slightly more powerful hardware while keeping costs down is not use custom chips. How much more powerful would that be? Apparently, Sony and Microsoft are both doing that so if they take a loss, Nintendo would have to take a loss to match their hardware. This isn't magic. To match hardware power, they would have to do what Sony and Microsoft do.

If Nintendo can't match the other guys, then they can't make consoles anymore.

Sure, they can. Nintendo is the only company that publishes Nintendo games. The reason Wii U has performed so poorly thus far is because Nintendo itself have barely released any software for it. Their main draw so far is a New Super Mario Bros. game released mere months after a New Super Mario Bros. game on their more popular handheld. It'd be nice if Nintendo had third party games to supplement their own lineup, but Nintendo will be fine as a console maker as long as they continue making good games.

[the asylum]

From a hardware perspective, better hardware power. Any monkey could get games like Mass Effect or Crackdown to work with a wiimote. The reason why they didn't bother with it was because the Wii's hardware was vastly inferior. I wouldn't think remapping control input would be that much of a task.

Also, Nintendo needs to shake the kiddy stigma, and fast. Towards the end, pretty much the only people who bothered with the Wii were the casuals, exactly not the market to build a base on. There's still Wii owners who don't know what this newfangled "U Adapter" does. Yes, there were lots of M-rated titles for the Wii, but none of them sold well. What Nintendo needs is another Eternal Darkness. No, not Shadow of the Eternals, but a mature-targeted title made from within Nintendo. Not from a "come and go" studio like Rare or SK was, but one that pretty much is Nintendo, like HAL or even Retro. Now I'm not saying they should take Mario and turn it into GRIMDARK like Dark Knight Returns did to Batman, but a whole new IP geared towards older audiences.

If the EA snub and almost nonexistant big game release schedule is anything to go by, Nintendo's pandering to the casuals is seriously starting to hurt them

[azeke]

The price issue and lack of BC is the main reason why i think "next-gen" won't take off as high as people hope it will.

Both other consoles will be 400+$ something and that plus slew of cross-gen titles just leave no reason for regular gamer to upgrade. This year it's all gonna be about xbox/ps3 with 3ds joining on the fun between the two.

The only possibility changing that would be if Microsoft decides to go for jugular and will present really attractive subscription based plan.

[pokepal148]

were getting to a point, particularly with graphics of diminishing returns it seems, but did anybody read the thing i quoted, black ops 2 on two cores

[ShyGuy]

Nintendo could do software and firmware updates to help the performance of the system a little bit.

What it really needs is a killer app. A Goldeneye, A Smash Bros Melee, a Brain Training, a Wii Fit. Something that will grab the desire of a large group of people.

[Kytim89]

The rising cost of game development could work in Nintendo's favor. If game companies can not find a way to drive costs down of the next five to ten years then a significant portion of the game industry will go bankrupt. Many independent and mid-tier developers will look to consoles that are the cheapest to make games for. Unless Sony and Microsoft make their next consoles cheap to develop for then the Wii U being slightly weaker will make many developers turn to Nintendo and the Wii U out of necessity.  Companies like EA will eventually go bankrupt unless they change their habits.

[Spak-Spang]

ShyGuy:  Yes, we all know Nintendo needs that killer hit.  But Pikmin 3 is not that hit.  I believe that hit will be whatever Retro is working on...and I believe that game is being planned to release to compete with Microsoft and Sony's launch...but will that game be enough?  It depends on what that game is really. 

If Nintendo could get a cool Retro game that appeals to Core gamers, and an awesome casual/ Mario Kart like experience going...then Nintendo could pull around a great holiday season.  Next year, will be the year of Smash...which will help too.

[Kytim89]

I think that we will get Smash Brothers by April of 2014 because Nintendo will want all of its cannons on deck to compete with its rivals new consoles and whatever games they have for them when they do release.

[NWR_insanolord]

I think Nintendo's goal is to have Smash Bros. out by the end of the fiscal year, but I don't know that they'll hit that mark.