Topic: Switchmas Eve Rumors and Speculations Thread

[ThePerm]

Nintendo does indeed operate in a bubble, but doesn't also seem like the other part of the industry operate in a bubble too?

Nintendo's bubble has always been off-putting, but it's also been off-putting that since Xbox came out the industry has always thought of the industry as XBOX vs PLAYSTATION. Even during the years where Wii was dominant in sales, Nintendo would have their section(which was always smaller) tucked in the back of Gamestop, or always eclipsed in Best Buy.

[Stratos]

Wasn't that just retailers following the demands of the market? Wiis sold well, along with maybe only a dozen games. Other systems had more games that consistently sold, justifying the extra shelf space.


More importantly, Nintendo was notoriously a jerk to retail partners. While other companies consistently sent reps to stores and helped in numerous ways, Nintendo made unreasonable demands such as dropping the MSRP on merchandise without warning stores. Retailers responded by giving less shelf space to Nintendo products.

[Adrock]

Nintendo's entire strategy has to change. The Japanese console market is on life support. Nintendo should court Japanese third party support with its 3DS successor. Get the handheld right and Nintendo will keep that support. Western third parties generally don't care about handhelds. They make games for consoles and PC. Get the console right and Nintendo merely gets their attention. Nintendo can get everything right about the hardware and that still isn't enough. Outside of just flat-out putting Steam on NX, Nintendo will have to reach out to each Western third party individually and prove NX is worth supporting. That requires Nintendo to rethink its culture from the ground up. Not everything gets tossed as Nintendo has good ideas. Miiverse, for example, is a really great idea even if it hasn't reached its full potential. However, Nintendo will have to relinquish some control, something it has historically been resistant towards. Can it, for example, deal with the fact that some people are going to be vicious cunts on its servers just to include universal voice chat, Swapnote, and Flipnote? Nintendo can't keep trying to police people's behavior for the supposed greater good if it wants to catch up with the rest of the world.

[michaelbaysuperfan616]

I am a little behind on my responses, been busy at work.

Nickmitch, sorry if I offended you or misrepresented what you were saying, somehow I misread your post.


Personally I think there is literally nothing Nintendo can ever do to get back to the SNES days of control, third party support, and originality. The SNES was probably the last time Nintendo launched as many franchises that have stuck around since the NES.

Launching new franchises means squat when all they do is cater to the same crowd though. As much fun as Spaltoon is, it is probably the most Nintendo like game to come along. On the NES and SNES they were not just known for one type of game like they are now, they had a very broad range.

They occasionally branch out using partners but the reality is they rarely take the chances like they once did. This is the problem they have gotten themselves into. The real issue is they didn't know the NES was going to take off so they did everything they could to make sure it had every type of game that was required to sell the system. When the market accepted them then their partners flocked to release games on the system to cash in.

Nintendo needs to accept they do not NEED third parties, they need games. They need variety and they desperately need more than just a token effort in each franchise. They need to get a proper fighting game franchise on their system that satisfies the fighting game fans that attracts other fighting games to market to to compete. They need a new Killer Instinct to compete with the MK, SF, Tekken, Soul Calibur, etc, games of the world. They have Smash Bros, great I love it, we all do who doesn't? But that is not enough. They can't loan out Link to a 3rd party, stick him in a game that the other guys also have and call it a day, they need their own Eternal Champions, they need their own Virtua Fighter, they need a flagship 1 on 1 marshal arts game that has all the token gameplay and features that fighting game fans expect, set in a very not-Nintendo world that you could pick up and play and not know it wasn't a Playstation game.

Up until GameCube Nintendo also released their own line of sports games, where are those? They don't have 2K or EA so they should step things up and buy a smaller studio that does sports and re-launch some forgotten franchises or start up some new ones. Hell they missed out on this with Wii and Wii Sports was what sold the damn thing. If they had continued to focus on that maybe other companies would have followed suit.

There are just too many to name, Nintendo, when they are at their peak and all their core franchises are getting their fair shake, can carry any console on their own, they have done it before. What they need is to step away from Mario and Zelda and really ramp up 1, all their forgotten franchises, and 2, starting up brand new ones in genres they are lacking. They need their own Castlevania type game, not a clone but some sort of Golden Axe or something like Sega used to do, find a game that was not on their system and make their own.

But they desperately need to expand while they are at it. Merging the two machines into a single platform, however they manage to do that, is a start but still not enough. They don't need to stop making the quirky, fun, exotic stuff that makes them who they are, but they really need to focus on getting some games that their console is missing, and Bayonetta was not the right call that was at best a start but they should have had their own team making their own big scale God of War, Assassin's Creed, Prince of Persia clone. Why is Microsoft so successful because they see what games the market is pining for and if they can't get a 3rd party game in a genre they just make one, where would they be without Halo. Sure Metroid Prime is a MUST, but they also need a real gritty, violent, and epic space shooter FPS that can cater to that crowd.

And as lame as it sounds they need the fan service people keep begging for, Mario Paintball, some sort of World of Nintendo rpg dungeon crawler that makes use of Amiibo, a new F-Zero game, a proper Pokemon console RPG, a Kirby game that plays like Kirby, and the list goes on.

I guess bottom line is there is nothing they can do but what they already do and they know it. They need to expand or get help.

[Ian Sane]

Clearly Nintendo needs to change in some way.  I think the one thing more than anything else that they need to change is their bizarre insistence of doing everything a specific Nintendo way.  I want to see creativity like that in the games themselves and they should always be looking at industry conventions and thinking "how can we make this better?"  Those Nintendo qualities are fantastic and are the reason they even have a fanbase in the first place.

But with most things people just want something practical and intuitive and often someone else comes up with those ideas first because they're, frankly, pretty damn obvious.  There is no need to reinvent the wheel in these situations.  Customers typically don't want you to because you're mucking with something that already works great.  A truly great company would recognize when to reinvent the wheel and when to just go with the great idea someone else thought of.

Nintendo also is slow to adapt technology.  Last to use discs, last to go online, last to go HD.  So they're behind and then refuse to use other's ideas but by staying behind that all but ensures that someone else will establish the industry standard.  The two ideologies clash.  Either be the leader and set the standard that everyone else follows or play it conservatively and improve on the ideas of others.  Nintendo's approach is like operating in some alternate universe where everything everyone else did didn't happen.  But customers don't live in the same bubble.  So Nintendo is "discovering" online for example and a way to do it in a world where these discoveries were already made by other companies years before and customer expectations have adapted accordingly.  It is delusional for Nintendo to assume that customers will even tolerate, let alone accept, such an approach.

[michaelbaysuperfan616]

I agree with your general sentiment Ian, that Nintendo is out of touch, but I disagree entirely that they need to be like everyone else to be successful. The evidence suggest they are their most successful when they aren't following what everyone else is doing. Their strength has always been their games, their weakness is primarily not enough games fast enough.

To be FAIR, completely honest and really as objective as possible, nobody expected CD rom to take off when it did, every single machine that relied on CD Rom up to Playstation, including it's direct competitors 3DO and Saturn, were all failures. PSX was a damn fluke it was the Wii of it's time. The problem is Sony saw their success and realized that in order to keep it they just needed to keep doing what they were. Nintendo is doing what they have always done, it's just the consumer have changed, the times have changed, and frankly, nobody knows what will sell anymore anyways.

I think you are also making the same mistake many of us, myself included, often make, and forget to look at Nintendo holistically instead of individual branches. As a company they are successful they are making money giving their customers what they want, they are keeping customers happy. What they are failing to do is bring in new customers to their console division. Their handheld's have always been just fine and in pretty much every way their handhelds have always been behind the times also.

Online was also brand new and Sony was barely online in the PS2 era. Dreamcast was the first to make online a central focus and it was a quick failure too. Nintendo needed to make more of an effort up front but Xbox Live was not something even Sony could match so expecting Nintendo do be able to is insane. Microsoft had the tools to go online, they had the knowledge, the infrastructure, they had the money, experience, the equipment, and they already had online gaming on the PC front. Nintendo barely had network games, in Japan, before Game Cube. Yes they should have tried harder but hell if they had gone all in online on Game Cube they would have gone the way of Sega because there was just no way to get there in 2001 with as little money and experience as they had. Even Sony struggled and it cost them dearly to do so.


Game Cube struggled for the same reason N64 did, lack of quality games. The difference was it also had fierce competition from Xbox which N64 only had Playstation to contend with, Saturn was pretty much out of the picture by the time the 64 hit it's stride. Now Game Cube might have gotten more games if not for the DVD fiasco but that was about the only thing they could have implemented without sinking their profits. Online was not even really a full market thing until Wii. Yes with Wii they should have improved but damn these things take time. It was not Nintendo's fault Microsoft did online better than them, for all intents and purposes Microsoft friggin invented online gaming.

The fact that we all go in circles trying to figure out what is wrong should be telling of how weird things have gotten, it is no wonder the people in charge can't figure it out either because we are probably the most irritatingly irrational fanbase on the planet, and that is including comparing us to the Star Wars fans.


What we can all agree on is Nintendo isn't catering to everyone's needs and we all want them to change to cater to ours. We just disagree on what is broken and thus what needs to be fixed. How they hell can they figure out how to sell to us, they are probably just glad Amiibo worked because with the way this fanbase is Amiibo should have sunk them into the depth of Amiga, Sega, and Atari by now.


I think it is us who are wrong and Nintendo who has it all figured out, We hold onto this myth they are a video game company, like Playstation, but they are not they are a toy company and they work best when they are selling toys, not interactive movies. The gaming culture has changed beyond what Nintendo can reach so they best they can do is keep their costs down so they can get as many of their own, top quality, games as they can.

Wii U was a fantastic machine, for about a year, but it stayed ridiculously over priced far longer than it should have. If it was in line with past generations in pricing it might be inline with past generations sales.

Also SNES gets brought up, but we all tend to forget that they basically had companies tied to SNES under restrictive contracts left over from the NES days when they were literally the only game in town.

[ThePerm]

I think what it is with Nintendo is pride. They tend to play the leader when they are not the leader.  If you look at it from leader follower theory everything makes sense. Nintendo can't be a follower so they do weird **** just to go down their own path. They need to learn how to be contenders. Contender's will push people out of the way to control the path. Sometimes obviously some paths lead to peril. Nintendo is good at seeing those paths generally. Though they have gone down paths filled with thorns. They haven't fallen off a cliff yet though.

[Ian Sane]

michaelbaysuperfan I read a lot of your response as "please understand".  Lots of excuses for why Nintendo didn't do this and that.  But this is fiercely competitive market.  Excuses don't matter.  The average videogame customer is not going to care why Nintendo didn't do this or that.  They see that brand X has this and brand Y does not so they pick brand X.  And Nintendo has been behind on a LOT of stuff.  It's enough of a trend to say that Nintendo clearly is not on top of adopting industry trends when the rest of the market is.

Who thought CD would catch on?  Sony and Sega!  Every competitor in the market except Nintendo!  Who thought online would catch on?  Sega, Sony and Microsoft!  I understand if Nintendo misses the boat when almost everyone does but they're the only ones that do.  Who thought motion control could be successful?  Just Nintendo.  You can understand how Sony and MS had to play catch up there because there was only one company trying something.  But Nintendo is never behind because one trailblazer left the rest of the industry in the dust.  No, it's always everyone else going in a new direction and Nintendo refusing to go along with them.  That's a company that doesn't keep with the times.

Perm's dead on with the leader stuff.  Hell the Wii felt like a child being upset that they're losing at a sport so they create their own sport that they're the best at because they're the only one playing.  Nintendo always talks about all this "we're not in competition" stuff which is insane.  Of course they're competing with Sony and MS!  They don't even really get to decide that, the market does.  Nintendo needs to face that reality and then make decisions based on that.  If they can admit that they're in competition, whether they like it or not, they can think "how can we compete with these guys" and strategize accordingly.

[Evan_B]

As long as Nintendo keeps making video games, I'm okay. So I just want them to do what will enable them to do just that. And I don't really care about how they do it. The Wii was fine, with me. I get that SOME PEOPLE think it was the worst thing to happen in the history of their stint as video game developers but I thought there were tons of great ideas and third party support that did a good job of communicating the use of motion controls. It's still being used, even in subtle ways like Splatoon, that justify its existence.

Anyway, have fun continuing to say the exact same stuff. I'm sure Nintendo is looking at their recent failure and saying they need to do the same thing they've always done in the same way.

[nickmitch]

Honestly, I think Nintendo would be better off if they didn't half-ass their own ideas.  With Wii, everyone hoped it would have 1:1 controls, but instead we got waggle.  With Wii U, people immediately asked if there would be support for two gamepads, and that completely caught Nintendo off guard.  Nintendo was able to add M+, but it put devs in a tight spot they couldn't count on everyone having it.  They don't seem like they're doing something similar with Wii U.  In fact, Nintendo has barely been able to execute on the one gamepad.

Nintendo could be the leader, if they showed people ideas that pan out.  Not everything can be joysticks, rumble packs, or the GameBoy Camera, but they need to not be so conservative.  The half-assed risks are costing them as much as a full-assed risk would.

[nickmitch]

As a company they are successful they are making money giving their customers what they want, they are keeping customers happy.

Not to be too contrarian, but from 2012 to 2015, Nintendo had a positive EBITDA (Earnings) once. Same for their Free Cash Flow.  To be fair, 2015 was the positive year, and 2016 may work out positive too, but they're living and dying by amiibo now.

[Adrock]

Honestly, I think Nintendo would be better off if they didn't half-ass their own ideas.  With Wii, everyone hoped it would have 1:1 controls, but instead we got waggle.  With Wii U, people immediately asked if there would be support for two gamepads, and that completely caught Nintendo off guard.  Nintendo was able to add M+, but it put devs in a tight spot they couldn't count on everyone having it.  They don't seem like they're doing something similar with Wii U.  In fact, Nintendo has barely been able to execute on the one gamepad.

There's merit to each of these points which, admittedly, have been brought up before. It's difficult to argue any of them. The GamePad is a great idea (for certain games) executed poorly. I can't play Splatoon's best mode (turf war) locally which is partially why I can't get into it. Launching yourself to your teammates is a big part of that mode and it can only be done with the GamePad. Removing the GamePad requirement would actually change the integrity of the game. This is one of those instances where the hardware severely limited game design. Had Nintendo not half-assed its own idea, it'd have a much better game.

I hope Nintendo truly and completely commits to whatever "new concept" it has planned with NX. Go all in or stay the hell home. Nintendo doesn't have a lot of room for error here. If it's going to tease a new idea for nearly a year, it better deliver. This is likely Nintendo's last chance as a console maker (not hardware in general, however). NX doesn't have to beat PS4, but it has to be compelling enough to keep Nintendo in the conversation which is a tall order in and of itself.

[michaelbaysuperfan616]

Ian, no you misread what I wrote. I am not saying they deserve a pass on those things or that those are not mistakes, but those are things we see in hindsight, I was saying to be fair they couldn't have predicted CD would take off when every CD console that came before, INCLUDING the Saturn, were all failures. Yes they probably had a lot of reasons for not sticking to CD but there were other companies still doing carts too, not successful either but nobody can say that is what mattered. Yes you can point to a dozen reasons why each of those early cd machines failed but when you had, Turbo CD, Sega CD, Neo Geo CD, CD-i (something Nintendo had a small hand in) CDX, CD32, 3DO, Saturn, Jaguar CD, and I am sure one or two more I am forgetting, ALL be complete duds in a three to four year span, you can understand why Nintendo was hesitant. Sega didn't go with CD on Saturn because they saw it as the future, they already did that with Sega CD and took a hit on that, they were already invested in the technology they already had drives, suppliers, etc, things Nintendo didn't have. Sony, give me a break of all the companies that could take a hit on CD it was them, they hold half the patents on the technology so for them it was much cheaper than it would have been for Nintendo.


Dreamcast was the first console to do online out of the box, but Sony and Nintendo had the same strategy at first, wait and see. Sony was better prepared because hey once again they were already invested in it, they had Sony Online before Playstation 2 came along. Sega also had online with Saturn so again they already had investments. Yes it is Nintendo's fault for not investing in those technologies earlier if they wanted to stay relevant but again, Sega died doing those things you praise them for doing, MS almost died, hell Sony ALMOST died doing what they did to topple Nintendo.

These last couple years they were not so profitable, but that was mostly Wii U's fault. I was not apologizing for them just saying that we have hindsight now, they didn't have that then. In the mid 90's everyone, including Nintendo, thought VR was the future and investing in that hurt Atari and Sega and lead Nintendo to their biggest true failure in their video game history.

[Luigi Dude]

Not to be too contrarian, but from 2012 to 2015, Nintendo had a positive EBITDA (Earnings) once. Same for their Free Cash Flow.  To be fair, 2015 was the positive year, and 2016 may work out positive too, but they're living and dying by amiibo now.

The main reason for their losses for the 2012-2014 fiscal year was because they were spending a shitload of money to do the biggest restructure the company had seen in over 20 years and the 3DS price cut really fucked them up for 2 years since they were selling that thing at a huge loss.  Then of course they spend a lot to buy back Yamauchi's stocks after he died. 

These weren't exactly the typical things that Nintendo usually has to deal with that caused the majority of these losses.

[Ian Sane]

Honestly, I think Nintendo would be better off if they didn't half-ass their own ideas.  With Wii, everyone hoped it would have 1:1 controls, but instead we got waggle.  With Wii U, people immediately asked if there would be support for two gamepads, and that completely caught Nintendo off guard.  Nintendo was able to add M+, but it put devs in a tight spot they couldn't count on everyone having it.  They don't seem like they're doing something similar with Wii U.  In fact, Nintendo has barely been able to execute on the one gamepad.

This is a great point.  The whole hook for the Wii U is the damn gamepad.  It has nothing else that consoles from the prior generation weren't already doing years ago.  So the Gamepad better be put to a lot of use or else why didn't we get better specs instead, right?  Now the idea of using the Gamepad extensively in every game freaks me out but that's only because I don't have faith in the concept so I assume that if they used it that much it would be forced and the games would suffer as a result.  I hated when motion control was the only option in a game on the Wii for example but that was because I felt the concept itself SUCKED.  Nintendo didn't half-ass implementing the analog stick on the N64 and it took off and became the industry standard but it was also great idea.

Nintendo's weak Gamepad usage suggests to me two things:
1. They don't have very many ideas for how to use it.
2. They don't have enough confidence in the feature to put it in every game without it ruining otherwise good titles.

But if you have squat for ideas for something and don't feel it is a good enough feature that it can be used all over the place then DON'T base a product around that feature!

[Evan_B]

Nice to see my post promptly ignored. I'm glad people keep trucking with their general disdain.

I wanted to touch on the implementation of the Gamepad and why it SHOULD be less "feared" by those who aren't sold on the concept.

The problem with the Wii U was primarily marketing- Nintendo tried to play the Gamepad as "the next big thing" to justify its lack of power. Now, from a technology standpoint the Wii U is impressive- its streaming capabilities are top-notch and I think we won't see the time and effort Nintendo put into that go to waste. However, the Wii U is a more grounded and controlled look at the Wii's successful aspects- it implements "motion control" better than the previous console and uses it more for practical implementations, as well as adding touchscreen interface and dual display. For example, here are some of the "best" implementations of the Gamepad:
-User Interface Streamlining, Super Mario Maker, Xenoblade Chronicles X, and Zombi U
-Enhanced Map Control and detail, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Splatoon
-Split Screen Co-Op Streamlining, Call of Duty (BlOps 2?), Minecraft, Hyrule Warriors, etc
-Gyro Aiming, Splatoon, Nintendo Land, Zombi U, Fatal Frame, Sonic: Lost World, etc
-RTS Unit and Task management, Pikmin 3
-Spectator enhancements, Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, Scram Kitty and His Buddy on Rails, Nintendo Land, etc
-Touchscreen interfacing (primarily drawing), Art Academy, Super Smash Brothers, Super Mario Maker, various independent titles

Most of these are not "earth-shattering" concepts, but they are generally improvements to a gaming experience. But Nintendo, who situated themselves in a "masters of innovation" position after the success of the DS and Wii, boasted that the Gamepad would have many implementations. While it DOES, it's underused because of the lack of support the system is getting, which in turn causes Nintendo to cut corners on ideas and Gamepad implementation. Could we get a DND-like mapping game on Wii U? Maybe if people thought the market was healthy enough to justify a title like that, or if Nintendo had the time to properly think through a concept like that instead of just trying to put out games in the vacuum that is the Wii U release schedule. The sad thing is, even titles like Hex Heroes, a Kickstarter-cooked Wii U title, had to add PC as one of their platforms despite the game being designed for Wii U because the console was made for ideas like it.

But ultimately, Nintendo has toned down their gimmickry with the 3DS and Wii U, Amiibo non-withstanding. Their pitches with these two consoles have been focused more on presentation and gameplay streamlining, not introducing unnecessary aspects. I don't know why people hate on the Wii U's execution, especially when they buy up Xbone and PS4s which add little to the streamlining of any sort of gameplay. People expect Nintendo to make the next big thing, but are disappointed when they do or when their idea "doesn't live up" to their promise- i.e. being shoehorned into everything. It's awfully contrarian.

Of course, that's not the main issue. Blah blah third party relations, blah blah unconventional design, blah blah Nintendo doesn't make games for me anymore.

[Ian Sane]

Evan I feel like you've done a good job of selling the Gamepad features as a good compliment to gaming.  But the problem is that they had to cut corners in other areas to implement it and if they're going to do that then it HAS to be earth-shattering.  No one buys a console for something that is merely complimentary and a nice feature.  The whole design of the Wii and Wii U is that Feature X HAS to go over big because aside from it you're looking at a last gen console and you can buy one of those from one of the other guys at a discounted price.  Nintendo is essentially saying that the Gamepad, not specs, is the TRUE new generation so they have to deliver on that.

And I don't feel I'm being contrarian in feeling they need to use the concept all the time and not wanting it shoehorned in.  A good controller idea begs to be used in almost all games and is such a good concept it doesn't FEEL forced.  If it feels shoehorned in then the concept is too one-dimensional and therefore basing your whole console around it doesn't make sense.  There are two qualifications here.  If you're basing a console around a controller concept then you should be using the feature the vast majority of the time and the concept should be strong enough that doing so does not feel forced.

[nickmitch]

Evan, while you bring up great points, I have a few counterpoints.  For Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, the game is played and controlled on the gamepad, so if I'm playing alone, I can't fully enjoy the visuals.  (Not huge, but it bothers me.)  And the co-op examples would be great(er) if more than one gamepad would be supported.

Not to be too contrarian, but from 2012 to 2015, Nintendo had a positive EBITDA (Earnings) once. Same for their Free Cash Flow.  To be fair, 2015 was the positive year, and 2016 may work out positive too, but they're living and dying by amiibo now.

The main reason for their losses for the 2012-2014 fiscal year was because they were spending a shitload of money to do the biggest restructure the company had seen in over 20 years and the 3DS price cut really fucked them up for 2 years since they were selling that thing at a huge loss.  Then of course they spend a lot to buy back Yamauchi's stocks after he died. 

These weren't exactly the typical things that Nintendo usually has to deal with that caused the majority of these losses.

Stock buyback isn't an income statement transaction, but it does affect your cash flows. The restructuring costs are probably what took them into the red (if that what the non-operating expenses were those years).

[Evan_B]

There is no true new generation. Saying that the PS4 and the Xbone are "next-gen consoles" is not a valid descriptor. "Watered-down PCs" is a better function. Also, when I said "spectator enhancements" I meant: player two or a non-player gets an enhanced look at the game, where player ONE is the person holding the gamepad. Kirby's visuals are sadly sacrificed for the Gamepad player but player two gets a much nicer look at things. The other games I cited were perfect examples.

Now, I'd argue that most of the gamepad implementation is featured in a number of titles and is quite unobtrusive in most of them. I would agree that Nintendo's focus was on the Gamepad and it justified their lack of power in other areas, but I don't think that power matters all that much these days, considering the graphical difference between certain games is not as massive as the SD-HD comparison. We can argue that all we want, but I'll take a step back and call that one "my opinion". As for the Gamepad, I'mm done trying to sell it. But I think, in concept, it is a better controller than its competitors, and has more function and use than they do with its screen alone, but lacks the support.

When you look at a Wii U game, many of them perform better than their competitors and have better art design, too. The main problem with that, of course, is that Nintendo caters to a Japanese audience where those aspects are more important (though game performance should be a standard EVERYWHERE and I find it insulting that people justify low framerates, pop-in, and the like because it "looks better"). If they wanted to appeal to an American audience, their first online shooter would have been militaristic, or perhaps SMTxFE would have been a darker and more graphic RPG. Nintendo is catering to a niche audience- one that buys its games. I find it odd that third party publishers would have trouble selling games since many of them look so drastically different, but again, maybe it comes down to the quality of those titles. Or maybe even the style- I mean, I'd hardly call No More Heroes a polished experience but the art style and gameplay resonated with people and caused them to buy it.

Something relatively disturbing to me is how we've seen several examples of Nintendo diversifying their IP by making it MORE Japanese centric. Triforce Heroes and Federation Force, for example, feature staples of the Monster Hunter genre, and of course we've seen how Miitomo is an ideal product for the Japanese market but makes no sense to the rest of us. Even Splatoon's success is largely because of its function as a Japanese phenomenon. It's clear that we've reached a crossroads where Nintendo can either pinpoint their market or try to broaden it and I worry it's going the other way. Then again, they need to be in touch with Japanese third parties right now, who are begging for a console resurgence, and hopefully use that as a way to connect with Western audiences.

[MagicCow64]

I largely agree with Evan here, especially his points about the lackluster exploration of the Gamepad. Nintendo must have known pretty early that the WiiU was tanking. Had it done decently, the multipad support would have come. Had it done a respectable fraction of Wii sales, we'd have seen third party experimentation with the concept, like we saw with the Wii, with plenty of engaging results. But the WiiU was a bomb, and they had to pull back from the concept, and focus on features that are technically extraneous and/or will be replicatable without the pad in the future. This is part and parcel with the death of local multi-player, in my mind, as I had some enchanting play sessions with Nintendoland, and it's not hard to imagine how many of those use cases could've been expanded into full-on games. But the market wasn't there, and I don't think it can be blamed on marketing. The market for hand-drawn 2-D animation is largely gone, too. I've said this before, but markets are shitty mechanisms for determining the value and production of art.

But the conversation is largely eliding how great the pad streaming works, and how great off-screen capabilities are for people sharing a TV. I got a lot of use out of that while I was sharing various living spaces. I had a multi-hour flight delay once and was able to play Toki Tori 2 on the pad out of my luggage, which was fucking boss, no matter how lame I must of looked doing it. Toward the actual dual technology, I find the map implementation in Xenoblade X to be pretty critical given how often it's used; you could easily rework the game to include a map on the main screen, but it would really blow comparatively. I think the same can be said of Splatoon.

Overall, I dunno what to say, other than to repeat the previous barb of wishing everyone joy repeating the same criticisms over and over again. I don't get the impulse. I feel like there are a number of folks who got called babies in middle school for playing Nintendo games and have never been able to get over it, while nonetheless subconsciously understanding that the company is the best in the business in terms of core gameplay. A closet, of sorts!

[Evan_B]

Nintendo wanted to bring people together with the Gamepad, for people to watch the TV and use the screen in the same room, while also create something that would function well for single player experiences. In not having the sales to justify multi-Gamepad implementation (which, at one point they said they were looking into), we can't have nice things like local Splatoon.

And yet, we CAN have nice things like Co-Op that isn't splitscreen, and a competitive fighter which drastically different camera angles that doesn't destroy the TV screen. But Nintendo couldn't please everyone with the way the Gamepad worked, which is unfortunate. We could have had decent local party games and healthy online ones. But the thing didn't sell.

[lolmonade]

To me, there are two BIG distinctions as to why the Wii was a rousing success compared to Wii U flailing despite having some great games (arguably better) comparably.


1) Wii Remote motion control's tapping into a casual market that otherwise wouldn't buy a console.  I've always seen jokes about how the Wii was a console for babies, but honestly, it wasn't, it was a console for your parents and grandparents so they could convince their kids & grandkits to come over & Wii Bowling.


2) Price - It's clear to me that the Wii U would have had a much better chance of success had there been one base model at the $299 price, or more ideally, the $249.99 price.  That casual market has moved on (I assume Nintendo knows this too, given their foray into mobile), they're fine with the Wii, and the dedicated gaming market didn't find the Wii U tablet a compelling enough accessory to justify a price tag so close to the competition that looks better and has distinctive features.  You can either be a premium product or a discount alternative, there isn't room for middle ground in this market, and Wii U tried to have discount graphics at a premium price, using a controller as justification for that premium price that didn't compel customers.




What I worry about is that Nintendo hasn't learned these lessons and they'll make the same error on bullet two.  I expect I'll get hyped about the NX at E3, but I'm going to temper my enthusiasm and wait out the initial sales period, I'm just not excited by the NX like I have been for previous Nintendo consoles.

[Evan_B]

As much as I hate to admit it, the Wii U name is also a reason casual gamers didn't attach. I have seen the horror of a customer not knowing the difference. It's true, and it's terrible.

I am surprised about the price remarks. I mean, I think it's absurd that the price hasn't been dropped since, but the Wii U is the least expensive console on the market. I hope, after the whole Nintendo Ambassador program thing, that Nintendo will be a little smarter about pricing their handhelds (which is what the NX is, by the way), and I don't really feel that the price was too high for Wii U. Initially. If it had taken off after that initial launch, with third parties flocking to it, it would have been a great price. But since then, we've seen the opposite, and the price isn't justifiable for a console with such a small library.

[lolmonade]

My argument isn't just "price too high", it's price compared to perceived value.  The Wii at $250 seemed like a good deal at the time because it was 1) Scarce, 2) cheap compared to their competitors, and 3) had an accessory that had a perceived value that justified its cost to the consumer despite a discrepancy in graphics and other features.


The Wii U was 1) in good supply, 2) almost same price at competitors, and 3) has an accessory that isn't valued enough to justify graphics & features that don't have parity with their competition.

[Evan_B]

Right, and I agree with you.