Topic: Miyamoto Wanted the Wii to Be HD

[Shaymin]

The Xbox 1 sold 24 million which isn't much more than the Gamecube and they went all in on the HD era and did extremely well.

Nintendo doesn't sell the world's largest computer OS or office productivity suite at insane margins.

[NWR_insanolord]

Also, Microsoft lost a ridiculous amount of money on the original Xbox. And they knew that going in. They were fine with losing money for a while in order to gain a foothold in the market. In contrast, intentionally doing something you know will cause you to lose money is the last thing Nintendo would ever do.

[lolmonade]

Also, Microsoft lost a ridiculous amount of money on the original Xbox. And they knew that going in. They were fine with losing money for a while in order to gain a foothold in the market. In contrast, intentionally doing something you know will cause you to lose money is the last thing Nintendo would ever do.

People here are also failing to remember that Microsoft is a large, large corporation with products in all sorts of different categories.  They have deep pockets to be able to take a loss on Xbox to not only increase market share for the next generation, but also use Xbox as a platform to integrate with their other services.


Nintendo is a video games company, plain and simple.

[smallsharkbigbite]

The xbox 360 was profitable.  They weren't planning on subsidizing the product forever. 


Nintendo maintains more than $10 billion cash on hand.  Let's not try to pretend they are a mom and pop store competing against the big boys.  It's a 65 billion dollar industry that through the NES/SNES Nintendo had a big hand in building. 


Nintendo has the hugely profitable handheld hardware and software markets to offset their home console development.


If they don't want to put into effort to make hardware that the market wants or spend money to build a market then maybe they should go third party.  Nobody said they have to make hardware.  Their low hardware sales will limit their sales of first party software and the way it's going will likely not make them a profit. 

[smallsharkbigbite]

Also, I'm not saying do it exactly like Microsoft.  The xbox wasn't HD which is what we were talking about.  Microsoft decided to subsidize third parties to a large extent while they built up a solid market share and built up a strong 1st party library.  Nintendo already maintained a large portion of the market and had some third party relations and wouldn't have needed to go about it the same way.


But this is an example of a long term strategy vs. a short term strategy.  Microsoft went into the market to make money no doubt about it.  They knew the xbox would hemorrhage, but the 360 was profitable and the Xbox One should be as well.   They aren't going to be in another XBox 1 loss position.  Vs. Nintendo which is focused on annually showing a profit so they never extend themselves.  But as they do they they miss opportunities in the market and the market continues to move away from their products.  When I see the declining sales generation over generation that makes think they are ignoring the market demands, not that they need to cut costs to the bone in case things keep getting worse.  They are in a downward market cycle and cutting costs isn't going to get them out of it. 

[smallsharkbigbite]

Sorry, one last thought.  I'd edit it into a previous reply if possible.


The new argument seems to be that because of size Microsoft and Sony can do things that Nintendo can't leading Nintendo to develop inferior hardware.  Does everyone really believe that Nintendo can't compete with Microsoft and Sony?


Very rarely does size alone mean a company can win a market.  Companies that win do because they develop the best product for the market.  This is a combination of things, never one thing they could do different. 

[MagicCow64]

Between the lack of HD and the single gyro, I think leaving out the single gyro was the bigger mistake. If the motion controls had worked as well as the motion plus out of the box, I think we'd be looking at a different picture now.

[NWR_insanolord]

If Nintendo had any idea how huge the Wii would be they'd have upped the specs and put Motion+ in the box and charged $100 more for it, which, it seems pretty clear from how things played out, people would have paid. But that's like saying if they knew what they know now Microsoft would have used a different soldering technique; it's easy to say now.

[Ceric]

You have to remember this is the ONLY thing Nintendo does at any meaningful level.  You can't say that for Microsoft and Sony.  Its one thing when a DIVISION isn't profitable its a whole other thing when a COMPANY isn't profitable.  So yes because of the diversification of Sony and Microsoft they can assume more risk in ONE division over another.

4 years in for a Wii HD 2010 that would get them to PS360 level but just that.  Then 2014-15 Wii U after seeing Sony and MS's hand.  They would have righted them to the generations at that point.

[Luigi Dude]

4 years in for a Wii HD 2010 that would get them to PS360 level but just that.  Then 2014-15 Wii U after seeing Sony and MS's hand.  They would have righted them to the generations at that point.

In order to have had a Wii HD ready for 2010, Nintendo would have had to start serious development back in 2008.  2008 was when the Wii had its record sales where it was selling over a million systems every month worldwide on non-holiday months.  Hell in 2009 the system still ended up putting huge numbers that put most previous systems to shame as well. 

No company making the money Nintendo was would have cut the systems life that short at the time.  If they knew Wii sales would crash like they did in 2011 then they might have, but once again nobody back in 2008/2009 knew that would happen.

[marty]

Oh jeez, and I thought it was weird when Miyamoto started taking credit for Virtual Boy...

[Superlameblood]

I am glad the Wii was not HD as I only got an HD TV this year.  :-P

[Ian Sane]

A console has a typical shelf life of five years.  So maybe HD wasn't the standard in 2006.  Maybe it wasn't going to be in 2007.  But did Nintendo honestly think that by 2009 or 2010 that that was still going to be the case?  They weren't making a product that was going to be replaced by the time HD became standard.  It was a five year product only future-proofed for two years at best.  Hell, I was pissed about their attitude towards online gaming on the Cube for the same reason.  In 2003 they told us that not enough people were online but I didn't know ANYONE at the time that wasn't and clearly the internet was the future and that by 2006 when a Cube successor was due an offline console was going to look extremely archaic.

A console is not a product of its time.  Some sort of educated guess has to be made of where things are going within the next five years.  Nintendo still hasn't learned that, releasing a console seemingly designed to match up against the PS3 and Xbox 360 a mere year before those consoles get replaced.

Ironically when they launched the Famicom, it was the most advanced console hardware ever at that point while Sega released a product of it time, the SG-1000, which was about on par with a Colecovision and got creamed.  Nintendo were the ones with the future-proof console thinking beyond the exact time the product was released.  They KNEW how to do this at one point and then seemingly unlearned it over time.

I didn't have an HDTV at the time the Wii came out and only got one last year.  My beef was largely with the inferior hardware that I figured would screw up ports between consoles which is EXACTLY what happened.  It's funny to think of Nintendo not knowing the Wii would be such a runaway success because I cannot think of any other way that it would have succeeded.  It grossly overachieved for the product it was.  Take away the mainstream fad element of it and you get... the Wii U.  If it didn't catch on as a big fad with the mainstream how was a glorified last gen console with slippery imprecise controls and embarassingly poor third party support going to go anywhere?  I see it either catching on in a big way with the mainstream or bombing huge.  Going for the mainstream was always the goal, Nintendo was not caught off guard by that.

[Luigi Dude]

Ironically when they launched the Famicom, it was the most advanced console hardware ever at that point while Sega released a product of it time, the SG-1000, which was about on par with a Colecovision and got creamed.  Nintendo were the ones with the future-proof console thinking beyond the exact time the product was released.  They KNEW how to do this at one point and then seemingly unlearned it over time.

Because they could afford to do it back then.  The industry was much cheaper to create hardware and software and can not be compared at all to the modern industry.  Something like the Famicom that was the most advanced system in the early 80's didn't cost billions to create and wouldn't sink the company if it failed.  Once again, Microsoft and Sony changed the game by being willing to lose billions to create super consoles.  Both companies lost billions on the 360/PS3 in their early years and their gaming divisions have yet to make any of that money back, despite having much better sales and making money the last several years.  Nintendo only profits off videogames and so losing billions on the Wii like Microsoft and Sony did with the 360/PS3 was not an option since they don't have other non-gaming divisions making money to fall back on.

[Mop it up]

What I wonder is why Nintendo didn't even allow for higher resolutions on the Wii. The Xbox has some 720p and 1080i games, and even the PS2 has a handful of 1080i games, so the Wii should be able to handle those two options under certain conditions.

[smallsharkbigbite]

If Nintendo had any idea how huge the Wii would be they'd have upped the specs and put Motion+ in the box and charged $100 more for it, which, it seems pretty clear from how things played out, people would have paid. But that's like saying if they knew what they know now Microsoft would have used a different soldering technique; it's easy to say now.

But alot of the gaming industry was saying that they made a mistake then and I remember being really disappointed at the time.  Microsoft had a manufacturing defect, they didn't chose to offer faulty hardware.  Yes, they deserve alot of blame for that debacle, but it's much different than what Nintendo did.  Nintendo chose to offer inferior hardware.  The funny thing is the Gamecube should have shown them that the market wanted technical specs since they brought the Gamecube in $100 cheaper than the competition and it didn't make the Gamecube a good seller.  I remember Nintendo being lambasted at the time for lack of HD and that was assuming fewer sales.   Much different than a hindsight is 20/20 situation. 

[Adrock]

Microsoft had a manufacturing defect, they didn't chose to offer faulty hardware.

They kind of did according to this article.. Basically, it contends that Microsoft knew about the high defect rate (mainly due to continually adding features after the hardware was locked down), but opted to launch anyway to beat Sony (and to a lesser extent, Nintendo) to market which, quite honestly, is pretty crummy of them. Sure, Microsoft's intent wasn't to launch broken hardware, but it's pretty dishonest to launch broken hardware knowing it's broken.

[NWR_insanolord]

If Nintendo had any idea how huge the Wii would be they'd have upped the specs and put Motion+ in the box and charged $100 more for it, which, it seems pretty clear from how things played out, people would have paid. But that's like saying if they knew what they know now Microsoft would have used a different soldering technique; it's easy to say now.

But alot of the gaming industry was saying that they made a mistake then and I remember being really disappointed at the time.  Microsoft had a manufacturing defect, they didn't chose to offer faulty hardware.  Yes, they deserve alot of blame for that debacle, but it's much different than what Nintendo did.  Nintendo chose to offer inferior hardware.  The funny thing is the Gamecube should have shown them that the market wanted technical specs since they brought the Gamecube in $100 cheaper than the competition and it didn't make the Gamecube a good seller.  I remember Nintendo being lambasted at the time for lack of HD and that was assuming fewer sales.   Much different than a hindsight is 20/20 situation. 

I'm not sure what your point is with the GameCube analogy as it was technically on par with the Xbox and way ahead of the PS2. By your logic, that should have shown Nintendo that competing in terms of hardware power wasn't the way to win.

Nintendo chose to use weaker specs because the Wii was one hell of a gamble. Nintendo has always been very conservative as a company and they were going out on a limb with the Wii. What I'm saying is if they knew the Wii would be the insane success it was they could have played things a bit less safe and beefed up the hardware and improved the motion technology and held onto more of the gamer market.

[smallsharkbigbite]

My point with the Gamecube is price doesn't have much of an impact on the video game market.  Consumers either see the benefit of your product and want it or they don't. 


There are some extremes, like Sony pushing the PS3 out at $600 a full $200 higher than the xbox, but otherwise, $100 savings wasn't enough to convince consumers to pick up a Gamecube. 


While it was technically on the same level as Xbox/PS2, the perception was that it was a weaker console.  Instead of seeing that as a problem, Nintendo seemed to embrace the idea of a weaker console.  It was also weaker in online capability and disc capacity.  While those two items didn't lead to the failure of the Gamecube they continued the perception that it was not a fully featured console. 


I don't think the Wii was that big of a gamble.  Not many people thought it would sell 100 million, but Nintendo prices their consoles to make $ day one and Nintendo is often the leading publisher so there was always some minimum number of units it was going to sell.  Gamecube made Nintendo a profit and despite the Wii U looking like another Gamecube, very few people actually think Nintendo will lose money on it.  The industry didn't understand the Wii at first, but people that played Wii Sports got it immediately. 


I just don't get how skimping standard features will ever be a benefit to Nintendo.  Price the console to make a profit and give the market what it wants.  Then if you sell 20 million or 100 million you'll be okay. 

[TJ Spyke]

Actually, GameCube had the same online capability as PS2 (minus the external hard drive). It's just that developers pretty much chose not to do online for GameCube.

[Mop it up]

I don't think Nintendo needed to cheap out as much as they had with the Wii. Considering the GameCube was being sold at profit with the $99.99 pricepoint, they definitely could have beefed up the Wii at $249.99. That said, there's no way they could have matched the PS3 or even the Xbox 360. If 2006 Nintendo took a few billion-dollar loss like those companies did, it'd sink the company.

[smallsharkbigbite]

Actually, GameCube had the same online capability as PS2 (minus the external hard drive). It's just that developers pretty much chose not to do online for GameCube.

Nintendo never created an online game for it.  Actually, I believe Phantasy Star was the only US title to use online.  You can argue they are equal and from a technical standpoint you may be right, but you can't expect the market to find the experiences equal since other consoles made a point to use the features and Nintendo did not.  It would be like arguing because the Wii had online multiplayer that it was on-par with Xbox live and free. 

[size=0.85em]That said, there's no way they could have matched the PS3 or even the Xbox 360. If 2006 Nintendo took a few billion-dollar loss like those companies did, it'd sink the company.[/size]

[/size]
[/size][size=0.85em]I never said they needed to match, just needed to be in the same ballpark.  Nintendo is the third largest company in Japan sitting on over $10 B in cash.  It wouldn't have been preferable to lose $3 B, but it certainly wouldn't sink the company.  Also, they didn't have to sell the console at a loss like Sony/Microsoft did, or subsidize blu ray (PS3), or have massive RROD issues (360) pulling those consoles into the red.   [/size][/size][size=0.85em]

[Wah]

In australia all tv's have to be hd or you cannot watch tv as all tv stations have moved to digital!

[Wah]

Also we should get Miyamoto to join NWR that would attract a lot more users!

[TJ Spyke]

In australia all tv's have to be hd or you cannot watch tv as all tv stations have moved to digital!

Don't they have converter boxes like they do in the United States?