No surprise that he would try to spin this in a positive way. A lot of this is directly his fault because he withheld the Operation Rainfall games right when Wii needed them the most.

I don't think XenoBlade would have sold systems, and The Last Story and Pandora's Tower aren't even out in Europe yet so they wouldn't have been 2011 releases anyway.

I'm not so sure if that was Reggie's call necessarily. Maybe partially, but there was no way he was the only force at work.


More importantly though, remember that we're talking about sales here. Maybe if Nintendo brought them over and put a bit of advertising behind them, the games could sell fairly decent (albeit modestly), but how many consoles would be sold because Nintendo gave in to Operation Rainfall? If these are the types of games that would push you into getting a Wii, I feel like you would have purchased a Wii by now. And even if I'm incorrect about that, I can almost guarantee that an American release of any of these games wouldn't offer sales of more than 150,000 apiece (and that's fairly generous). If Pandoras Tower, The Last Story, and Xenoblade all sold even 200,000 copies, and every one of those people purchased a Wii, would 600,000 Wiis added to the 4 million units already sold erase that quote from existence?

The fact of the matter is just about any game can sell systems if there is enough of an advertising campaign behind it. You are right that Xenoblade won't, but that's just because there will be no ad campaign for it whatsoever, and only one place will have it and even then you would probably have to ask for it because its probably hidden somewhere in the back.

The fact of the matter?  I'd say , please.

Mario Kart or Super Mario Bros is a system seller.  Even Wii Fit or Nintendogs can be a system seller if the price is right.  But not just any game is going to sell systems on a significant level.

OK, taking the B.S. out of Reggie's response...and...translation:

"Well, we thought we'd sold all the Wiis we were ever really going to sell, so who cares about supporting the Wii in its last few years?  We've gotten our money, suckers."

facepalm.jpg

Nintendo has to shift their resources to support their new platforms. I can understand them taking resources away from the Wii if they want to make sure that their Wii U launch goes better than the 3DS launch.

Sometimes I wonder why PR people say so much stuff that clearly isn't true and that they're trying to completely spin.  Reading his attempt at spinning the Wii's massive dropoff to a positive thing just makes me less likely to believe anything he says in the future.

Oh come on, you guys are just hating to be hating. I've seen Nintendo pull some really outrageous spin, but to me this is more like "this is how it is and our resources have moved on." Just mad to be mad.

Just because you are moving on into a new generation doesn't mean you have to abruptly pull the plug on your current console months and months before that new generation even begins. Has Sony done that with the PS1 or PS2 when the next system came out? But Nintendo has done this with every one of their systems since the N64. With the N64 and Gamecube it could be excused I guess because those systems didn't sell so hot, but with the Wii being the market leader and still selling a huge amount of hardware, there is just no excuse to have abandoned it like Nintendo did.

Its not like the Wii U is even out yet anyway. It's still many months away, but the Wii has been a dead corpse drifting downstream for quite awhile now (except for the small breath of life it got from Skyward Sword). If the Wii U had launched already I guess this would be okay, but it hasn't.

Chozo, none of the Rainfall games are system sellers. They would have had little to no impact on hardware sales.

Precisely.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: I wouldn't mind NoA not bringing over the Rainfall games last year if it meant they put something worth buying out in their place.  But instead they decided to abandon the platform until the year was nearly over.  This year doesn't look much better, with only Xenoblade and Rhythm Heaven out this year IIRC.  And there's no reason to think the Wii will see any other 1st party software this year, not with how Nintendo's been focusing on Wii U.  The Wii U isn't out yet.  We should still be seeing Wii games.  This is a problem none of the other platform holders seems to be having.  Once the Wii U is out, then the Wii can bow out with grace.

I'm not saying this excuses what's going on, because they really need to give the Wii at least some support, but Nintendo has finite development resources. They're trying to cover the Wii, 3DS and Wii U all at the same time, and I don't blame them for putting most of their money into the platforms that still have life left in them.

If anything, this just makes their refusal to bring over games that are already finished even more puzzling. Maybe they just feel (rightfully so, in my opinion) that whether they release them or not doesn't have any real bearing on whether people will buy the Wii U, meaning there isn't much upside and a very real downside to porting over what will be low-selling games.

There's also Mario Party 9 and PokéPark 2, though I'm not surprised those were forgotten (I'm probably the only person anticipating Mario Party 9). However, we don't always know about Nintendo releases far in advance, so there could always be surprise announcements.

Yeah, I'm not accepting that excuse anymore.  Sony and Microsoft don't seem to have any problems ensuring that their consoles have support until the next one arrives (with the exception of the PSP, but considering that device has had better 3rd party support than the Wii has had and continues to do so, I can forgive that).  Nintendo has spent this entire console generation making games on the cheap that have sold tremendously well.  They've built up a tremendous war chest of cash from the Wii and DS.  While they've dumped a lot of that back into R&D, I can't help but wonder how they still can't manage to "have the resources" to support their platforms.  Nintendo of all companies has no excuse on that.

Microsoft openly abandoned the Xbox a good 5 or 6 months before Xbox 360 released (I think they even said they were ceasing support), and third parties followed suit. Sony was different with the PS2 because it dominated and was close enough to GCN and XBX to get easy ports.

Sony and Microsoft don't have the problem because they're not as dependent on first party releases as Nintendo's consoles are (or at least have been the last three generations). Also, Microsoft doesn't have a handheld, and Sony doesn't seem to do as much with theirs as Nintendo does. And money doesn't seem to be the issue; Nintendo clearly has tons of it, but they don't have the internal studios to do more than they currently are.

They unfortunately seem to be reluctant to use any of the money they've built up to create/buy new development studios, and I can't imagine it's easy to find third party studios with enough experience with the Wii and who would actually want to make games for the platform to farm them out to.

Alright, let's compare and contrast then, shall we?  You say Microsoft checked out on the original Xbox 5-6 months before the 360 launched.  Nintendo, by comparison, checked out on the Wii early last year, and by the time the Wii U likely launches it'll be nearly 2 years.

The whole thing with NoA just strikes me as analogous to something you sometimes see in sports: the team that tanks the rest of the season, deliberately not putting their best talent on the floor.  Sometimes it's to rest that talent for the playoffs (i.e. preparing for the next console).  Sometimes it's to secure a better draft pick because their season has gone so poorly that there's no real point to winning anymore (i.e. "not having the resources" to keep games coming out on a platform you think it's pointless to support").

At least in sports, though, teams don't have the luxury of always putting the team they want on the floor.  Rain or shine, you put the team you have on the floor.  Nintendo of America, though, at game time prefers to walk over to the other team and forfeit because they don't believe they have the talent to win (i.e. the resources to make new Wii games), and they don't want to put out the team they have (i.e. release games that may not be the most profitable, but are all they have to release just to keep the system alive).

Sure, there may be benefit in the end to the team that tanks, but that puts an awful lot of pressure on your fans to have faith that the benefit will be worth the sacrifice.  You sometimes lose fans that way, and sometimes the management is too incompetent to make the most of that benefit.

And if you're wondering why I introduced that rather tortured sports analogy, the NBA season's going on right now and my team doesn't exactly have the greatest talent on paper in the league right now.  Despite that, they're still fighting, which is all I ask from them.  :)

For as bad as 2011 was for NIntendo of America, Reggie needs to go. If he had any kind of spine, he should have been making phone calls to get some more titles of relevance to the Wii platform. Someone's gotta pay, and frankly it should be him.

Off with his head!

Sales of the Operation Rainfall games would have been magnified by the fact there was nothing substantial to compete with them. The argument I've heard for why Nintendo has held back on its own games was so they won't compete with the 3rd party games and trounce the hell out of them. Well, in the last 2-3 years of the Wiis life Nintendo has held back on its own offerings, but the 3rd party support never materialized anyway. So even if holding back 1st party games does somehow help 3rd party game sales along, there is no 3rd party games (except Just Dance and stuff like that) so what is the point?

With that being the case, Nintendo should have went full throttle with 1st party game support. Every game they had in Japan that didn't come out here should have been brought over here and Nintendo should have pushed the hell out of it with advertising campaigns the likes of which would rival that of the presidential candidates in the November election. That's what needed to have been done. With the combination of such a massive ad campaign and the fact there was not much else to compete with, why wouldn't those games have sold? The Wii has a massive install base and 500k was sold on black friday, and that was only two months ago. So the audience is there. The potential customers are there. They just weren't given anything.

I agree with Broodwars; whether the games would have sold or not the important thing would have been if Reggie and NOA tried and did everything they could with what they had, but instead of trying and making use of what there was Reggie abandoned the system and gave it nothing at all. You can say these games might not have sold, but you know what is guaranteed not to sell? Nothing. If all you supply is nothing then you won't get any sales because no one will buy nothing from you. That is exactly what Reggie gave the Wii, though. He could have been like the heroes at the Alamo and made sure every last bullet was used in a fight to the death, but instead he surrendered to the enemy with no fight whatsoever. If Reggie was leading the defense of the Alamo it would not be remembered today as a heroic part of American history, but rather it would be an embarrassment. But this is exactly how he is running NOA.

As bad as things were in 2011? Nintendo sold more than 12 million systems last year. Even with it's "failed" launch the 3DS outsold the Wii in it's first 9 months on the market back in 2006, and speaking of the Wii, that sold more than 4.5 million units in 2011.

Reggie was instrumental in the Nintendo DS effectively crushing the PSP, which was once upon a time simply accepted amongst the "experts" to be the system that would destroy Nintendo's portable legacy, and positioning the Wii, all on its own, to sell more than 10 million units more than what was previously considered TOTAL MARKET SATURATION for the entire home game console category without even considering the many millions of consoles sold by Sony and Microsoft.

And Reggie "needs to pay" for this? You think that Reggie "abandoned the Wii"?

I think a lot of Nintendo gamers simply don't have a realistic conception of Reggie's role at Nintendo of America. He's not some dictator who can simply localize fan-coveted Japanese and European games by pressing a button and is simply "withholding" them because he "hates the fans".

Nor can he simply "make a couple of calls" to 3rd parties and magically get a lineup of high profile Wii games heading to their system.

The fact is the only calls anyone at Nintendo has been making have been to developers is to get them on board for Wii U and 3DS software. Face it, at this point the overwhelming majority of gamers save for small children and casual newcomers with any interest in what the Wii has to offer have already brought one, years ago in fact, if not in the last year for Skyward Sword.

Wii is coasting on its dozen or so "evergreen" titles while resources are dedicated to 3DS and Wii U development. Even if all the Rainfall games, which are the only "blockbuster" Wii games yet to came to North America, I'd be amazed if they managed to sell more than a few thousand new Wii consoles.

Heck, even NOA themselves are positioning Xenogears to be a niche release for the hardcore fans, rather than a chart sweeping, system selling powerhouse. I'm surprised this notion that Nintendo somehow hates gamers outside of Japan for not localizing EVERY SINGLE Japanese Nintendo published Wii game has persisted considering the Xenogears release is almost nothing but a courtesy release.

Given the way Nintendo published games have dominated the Wii (with the exception of successful 3rd party casual offerings like Just Dance), does it even make sense at this point in the game for a 3rd party to pour their resources and put a whole hearted effort into a "hardcore" Wii game having known for perhaps a full calendar year by now that the Wii is a lame duck system in the waning phase of its lifespan as Nintendo's flagship home console?

This may be hard to believe, but Nintendo doesn't base their business strategy on gambling on what might appease the fanbase and hoping they make some profit in the process.

I fully understand that. I also understand it takes 2 years or so for a game to be developed. That's why at this point now anything coming out for the Wii has to be games that started out in development 1-2 years ago, and its unlikely anything new is going to be created except third party shovelware designed to exploit the enormous casual installed base.

That's not the point, though. The Rainfall games are already completed and done. We aren't arguing for Nintendo to start development on new Wii games from scratch at this point. But these games are already done and ready, so there's no excuse.

And while it is far too late to get 3rd parties on board with the Wii now because its dead, this is something that should have been done in the years 2006-2009 or so. Games which started development in 2009 would have been ready and completed right around now, so there wouldn't be this drought that there is. No one is saying that can be changed now, but its something that should have been worked on years ago and the fact it wasn't done back then when there was still time is a legitimate cause for criticism. If its the 3rd parties fault then they should be criticized for it, and if its Nintendo's fault for not doing more to get them on board then they should be criticized for it also. Most likely both are to blame to some extent.

Nothing can be done to help the Wii now, but the negligence that led to the abysmal software droughts is a lesson that needs to be learned so this won't be repeated again on the Wii U. I hope that while Reggie tries to spin this software drought in a positive way he deep down acknowledges that it really is not a good thing, because if he truly sincerely thinks the way the Wii is being neglected is a great thing then that means he doesn't see anything wrong with it and will probably repeat that again on the Wii U. In order to avoid a drought in the future the seeds have to be planted right now. Games that are to be released a few years from now needs to start entering development right now.

Have you considered that the "Operation Rainfall" titles may have had a NEGATIVE impact on Wii sales?

If Nintendo had released it in the states and pumped the airwaves full of advertisements for it... "hardcore" gamers would have still ignored the kiddie/casual Wii.  It's what they do.

Meanwhile, the casual/family gamers would have been confused by this new direction of the Wii.  What is this complicated, confusing RPG?  Is this what we can expect to see from Nintendo here out?  Oh, look at this pretty, easy to use Kinect with the fluffy animals...

When was the last time any J/RPG or RPG was given a huge advertising budget here in the states?

Never mind the fact that, as it has been pointed out to you already, only ONE of the "Operation Rainfall" titles had a chance at being released this past year (Xenoblade)...

Final Fantasy XIII, I believe.

With that being over a year ago, I don't particularly recall it... I jumped onto Youtube to look at the single commercial that popped up... not something I really remember seeing - although I've really gotten away from watching commercials on TV, so I may not be the best one to judge that comment. :D

If we're getting Xenoblade this year whats the problem? The other 2 rain fall games I suppose. But what is Nintendo supposed to do?

I don't mind getting Xenoblade as a sign off if all their resources are now being put into Wii U and 3DS. There is only so much they can do all alone without any 3rd party support while trying to get their next gen out the door and running.

I don't remember seeing much on TV, either, but FF XIII got a lot of internet-based advertising (so has its sequel, for that matter).  I also remember them throwing out quite a few lengthy, very carefully-crafted trailers for it, and they also probably spent a fair amount of money paying Leona Lewis for the rights to her song "My Hands" (which is not the theme song in the original Japanese version of the game).  I'd throw that under marketing as well.

Everytime I see this thread from the Forum Index is says
"Reggie Fils-Aime Res..."

I alwasy finish it with "igns" in my head so it would say

"Reggie Fils-Aime Resigns"
then I click and realize that it was just this thread again and I continually let me fool myself.

Hm.  Again, as I pretty much manage to avoid all advertising, I'm not the best one to comment on this, but... I just don't put a lot of faith into internet advertising.  But, you seem to know more about this than I do - so I'll concede to your point -  the most recent J/RPG to get a huge marking push was Freakin' Final Fantasy.  A year ago.  Via Internet ads.

And we're being told that a massive advertising campaign behind Xenoblade (a.k.a. that game most people can't even figure out how to pronounce, vs. the biggest RPG franchise outside of Japan) would have had any useful repercussions?

Two years ago, actually. It released in 2010.  :P:  I let the first time you said that go, but you just had to say it again.  ;)

In all fairness, there are few marketing machines in gaming more effective than Nintendo's (relatively speaking, I'd put Atlus, Blizzard, and Valve's ahead of them).  If anyone could make Xenoblade a major mass-market title (which, given some of the World of WarCraft influences Xenoblade has, it's meant to be), it would be Nintendo.  But I do see where you're coming from.

I was thinking it came out in December 2010... Looking it up, looks like it came out in NA during March... dunno why I was thinking the Japanese release date. :D

Okay, so two years ago. :D

Personally, I've always thought Nintendo couldn't market themselves out of a wet paper bag...

Nintendo's kiddie/casual image is a serious problem and it needs to be addressed. Its something that isn't going to go away over night, and it would probably take quite a determined effort by Nintendo to do that. The Operation Rainfall games would be a step in the right direction, though. Would they by themselves succeed in shaking off that image of Nintendo? No, probably not, but its a step in the right direction. More steps would have to follow. As Lao Tzu said, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. But the problem is Reggie doesn't have the guts it takes to even do that.

faceplam.jpg

Reggie was supposed to be a bad ass who was all about kicking ass and taking names. Here we are this many years later and none of that has ever happened.  Why can't the real Reggie be more like the mythical Chuck Norris style Reggie we used to idolize? Why does he have to be this corporate shill who only cares about what investors think?

While I may disagree with some decisions made by Reggie, he's simply one man running a subsidiary of NCL - he's pretty much at their beck and call.

But, aside from that, when Reggie took over, Nintendo was easily in a distant 3rd place.  Now, they're clearly in first place and have launched three TOP SELLING systems (one of which may still surpass the LTD sales of the PS2 - and one of which is on record to surpass the sales of that one).  This, of course, comes after the market failures of the N64, Virtual Boy and GameCube.

Like it or hate it, Nintendo has sold a lot of systems (and a lot of games) since Reggie came along.  How much of that is him, vs. how much is from other aspects of the market, I won't venture a guess... 

JRPG? Dragon Quest IX last year.
RPG in general? The Skyrim beta... two months ago.

Oh yeah, I forgot about 2010's DQ 9 (hey, it's DQ. I couldn't care less), and I forgot about Western RPGs altogether.  Both Dragon Age 2 and Skyrim had fairly big advertising budgets IIRC.  Mass Effect 2 had a pretty big push in 2010 as well, and I have no doubt that Mass Effect 3's is going to be huge also.

DQ9?  There we go... A well celebrated RPG series from one of the highest rated RPG developers with some of the best reviews of ANY game genre, all on a Nintendo system with a huge marketing push.

I bet it TORE UP THE charts like a teenage virgin on his prom night, eh?

The Super Nintendo was a very RPG friendly console. Granted, almost none of those RPGs were 1st party games, but still...

It was the best selling game in the series (both in the US and worldwide) and did really good numbers.

While DQ9 pushed some great sales in Japan, to some extent the UK (oh, hey, look who got Xenoblade/Last Story without rebellion from the fan base) and overall world-wide, I don't recall it being a huge seller here in the states.  Someone go find the sales-week numbers for DQ9's release in regards to systems sold...

Yeah, IIRC DQ IX kind of flopped in the U.S.  If you believe VGChartz (I can't find long-term NPD data on the game), the game only sold 448, 218 units in NA.  By comparison, it sold 607, 547 copies in Europe and 4,346, 548 copies in Japan.  I don't usually trust VGChartz numbers, but that sounds fairly accurate from what I remember of the monthly NPD numbers on the game.  It sold better than previous DQ games in NA, but that's a really low bar to overcome.

To play Devil's Advocate, though, there is and there never will be a reason for a DQ game to sell well in NA, IMO.  That series is just too archaic, too stubborn to update to interests beyond Japan, and because it sells so (IMO) sickeningly well in Japan it will never have to.  For some people, that's its greatest selling point, and if it's yours good for you.  But that series will probably never sell huge in NA, which is why I'm constantly bewildered as to why NoA gives that series special treatment (aside from courting future Square-Enix projects).

It was in the top 10 on the NPD charts the months it came out (I think #6 overall and around 132K copies). I would have to look for it, but I remember Square Enix also saying it was the ebst selling Dragon Quest game in the US.

Through December 31/10, DQIX had sold 1.02 million "outside of Japan" (source: Nintendo financials by way of Siliconera).

That seems to match up fairly close to the numbers previously posted from VGChartz.

While a million units is pretty good for your typical game, we're talking about a Nintendo Published title with high acclaim from one of the top tier developers that had a huge marketing push behind it.

That million units (and the ~600,000+ units from the US) really starts to pale in comparison to other AAA DS title sales...

But it was profitable nonetheless, and shows what can be possible if Nintendo gives a game the proper backing it needs.

Simply because something is profitable doesn't mean it's a worthy investment.

I tell you what, give me $1,000.  In two months, I'll give you $1,001.  You just made $1 profit, so that was worth it, right?

"ROI" - or "Return on Investment".  It's about maximizing your profit, or return.  Nintendo could spend $1,000 marketing Xenoblade or they could save that towards marking the 3DS, a particular 3DS title or even towards the Wii U.  Meanwhile, the same crowd is likely to buy Xenoblade - the funky sounding game with a gameplay style no one likes anyway - and Nintendo just blew their entire advertising budget (that $1,000) for the year.

If Nintendo of America's "proper backing" pushes a game just barely above 600,000 units... well, that's pretty pathetic.  Who was it that was freaking out because Skyward Sword only sold ~600,000 units within its first week on the market?  Now, we're suddenly supposed to be throwing a parade for a game that managed to barely squeak that much during its total life span on a system that has a far larger install base?

Point taken, but I'm sure the profit margin was much greater than that. How much does a $50 game have to sell to break even? Maybe 50k or something? That would be your dollar profit there. Something that sells 100k units should be worth while, and something 500 or 600k is doing very well.

And doesn't making the fanbase happy mean anything at all? Even if a game just breaks even or only makes a tiny profit, isn't it a good investment to make your customers happy in the long term? A happy customer is one who is likely to buy from you again in the future, but an unhappy customer is one who might sell their Wii and buy a PS360. Clearly it is more to Nintendo's advantage to have happy customers.

Also remember Nintendo has made a huge amount of money this last generation. They can afford to take some risks.

Millions of happy NEs customers didn't stop anyone from jumping ship to the Genesis. Millions of happy SNES customers didn't stop anyone from jumping over to the USS PlayStation.  Hell, millions of happy PS2 customers didn't stop anyone from going to the 360 or the Wii.
Face it - with a few exceptions from outliers, most gamers buy the system with the games on it they want to play.  Parents buy the system that has the games on it their children want.  There's little-to-no brand loyality when it comes to these things.  If anything, it's going to be the exact opposite and not work in Nintendo's favor - Nintendo is teh kiddie and that's as far as some folks will consider them.  One token game (an RPG at that, one that isn't even Fallout/Mass Effect "mature") isn't going to make a dent in that shell any more than having an exclusive, M-rated GTA title on the handheld did.

That's why I said it would be the first step in that direction, but many more steps are required. You can't just release one game and then wash your hands and expect that single game to completely change your image. I'm not saying after Nintendo releases all the Rainfall games (which hopefully they will) they can just rest on their laurels and go back to their 80% casual focus and expect everything to be just fine. I'd like to see it flip around and Nintendo to have only a 20% casual focus, and everything else be for traditional video games. If that's out of the question then maybe 60/40 or in a worse case 50/50. It pains me to see casual games getting the lion's share of Nintendo's attention.

Do you realize that the overwhelming majority of what Nintendo themselves published and marketed for Wii consisted of titles and genres that were already a hit with Nintendo's traditional "hardcore" market prior to their audience expansion campaign?

In terms of the Mii games and their sequels and spin offs that's perhaps only a dozen explicitly casual offerings from Nintendo, and you may or may not consider the Mario Party games we would have gotten regardless of the casual push part of that as well.

How is that the "lion's share of Nintendo's attention" when on the other hand they've released DOZENS of traditional games to offset those Mii games?

http://supertrainstationh.com/hardcore_chart.jpg

These numbers only apply to North America of course, and fails to consider the 1% who were too busy partying in their penthouse apartments lording over their exploitation of the working class to take part in this chart.

Wow. A lot of chatter over a typical non-story. You don't really have to spin too hard when you have a console as successful as the Wii reaching the end of a typical life-cycle. 

Personally, Bit.Trip Complete, Kirby and Skyward Sword are still in their plastic wrap with about 7 other Wii games still on my backlog.  That should tied me over 'til DQX or Wii U - whichever comes first.

That is an awesome chart.

...It includes Animal Crossing in the "traditional hardcore" segment, right? I think the thing that really gets me sad is when people somehow make it out that Animal Crossing isn't a game for Nintendo's core of fans. The mere anticipation of that franchise is 50% of the reason why I own a 3DS.

/Pac-Man joke

When I plugged in the data and saw the result in pie chart form, a Pac-Man reference became mandatory.

And yes Kairon, that includes Animal Crossing under "traditional".

Good. ^_^

In what way is Animal Crossing a "traditional hardcore" game? It came out before the Wii, sure, but its still a casual game. I can't take your pie chart seriously, because I can't help but wonder what else you counted as hardcore.

The methodology of the chart states "genres, titles, and series popular with gamers prior to the Wii launch," which at least is a quantifiable, non-subjective way of categorizing games compared to "I say it's casual so it is, it just is."

And seriously, Animal Crossing dates from the N64 era in Japan, and America got it in the GC era. It wasn't the Wii's blue ocean gamers who played the game back then, it was those diehard purple lunchbox owners who were still standing by Nintendo at their lowest point in console history.

Someone take the list of Nintendo published Wii games and post them on the console forum.  Then, we can sort the list between "Core", "Casual", and "Disputed" and vote on the "Disputed" titles, then remake the Pac-Chart.

This is from Wikipedia:

        Wii Sports
        Excite Truck
        The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
        WarioWare: Smooth Moves
        Wii Play
        Super Paper Mario
        Mario Party 8
        Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree
        Pokémon Battle Revolution
        Mario Strikers Charged
        Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
        Donkey Kong Barrel Blast
        Battalion Wars 2
        Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
        Super Mario Galaxy
        Link's Crossbow Training
        Endless Ocean
        Super Smash Bros. Brawl
        Mario Kart Wii
        Wii Fit
        Wario Land: The Shake Dimension
        Wii Music
        Animal Crossing: City Folk
        Mario Super Sluggers (Japan and North America only)'
        New Play Control! Mario Power Tennis
        New Play Control! Pikmin
        New Play Control! Donkey Kong Jungle Beat
        Punch-Out!!
        Wii Sports Resort
        Metroid Prime: Trilogy
        Wii Fit Plus
        New Super Mario Bros. Wii
        Excitebots: Trick Racing (North America only)
        Endless Ocean 2: Adventures of the Deep
        Sin and Punishment: Star Successor
        Super Mario Galaxy 2
        Samurai Warriors 3 (Published by Nintendo outside of Japan)
        PokéPark Wii: Pikachu's Adventure
        Metroid: Other M
        Wii Party
        Kirby's Epic Yarn
        FlingSmash
        Donkey Kong Country Returns
        Super Mario All-Stars 25th Anniversary Edition
        Mario Sports Mix
        Wii Play Motion
        Mystery Case Files: The Malgrave Incident
        Xenoblade Chronicles
        Kirby's Return to Dream Land
        The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
        Fortune Street

    Announced for 2012
        Mario Party 9
        Rhythm Heaven Wii
        PokéPark 2: Beyond the World

Edit: Scaled back for Non-US.

This is how I'd sort them:


Casual
        Wii Sports
        Wii Play
        Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree
        Wii Fit
        Wii Music
        Wii Sports Resort
        Wii Fit Plus
        PokéPark Wii: Pikachu's Adventure
        Wii Party
        FlingSmash
        Mario Sports Mix
        Wii Play Motion
      *PokéPark 2: Beyond the World

Hardcore
        The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
        Super Paper Mario
        Mario Strikers Charged
        Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
        Battalion Wars 2
        Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
        Super Mario Galaxy
        Super Smash Bros. Brawl
        Mario Kart Wii
        Wario Land: The Shake Dimension
        Punch-Out!!
        Metroid Prime: Trilogy
        Excitebots: Trick Racing (North America only)
        Sin and Punishment: Star Successor
        Super Mario Galaxy 2
        Samurai Warriors 3 (Published by Nintendo outside of Japan)
        Metroid: Other M
        Kirby's Epic Yarn
        Donkey Kong Country Returns
        Super Mario All-Stars 25th Anniversary Edition
        Xenoblade Chronicles
        Kirby's Return to Dream Land
        The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
      *Rhythm Heaven Wii

Distputable
        Excite Truck
        WarioWare: Smooth Moves
        Mario Party 8
        Pokémon Battle Revolution
        Donkey Kong Barrel Blast
        Link's Crossbow Training
        Endless Ocean
        Animal Crossing: City Folk
        Mario Super Sluggers
        New Play Control! Mario Power Tennis
        New Play Control! Pikmin
        New Play Control! Donkey Kong Jungle Beat
        New Super Mario Bros. Wii
        Endless Ocean 2: Adventures of the Deep
        Mystery Case Files: The Malgrave Incident
        Fortune Street
      *Mario Party 9

The asterisk is for 2012 titles.

Why is Excite Truck disputable when Excitebots is hardcore?

Because the only people who would've known about Excitebots are hardcore gamers since it was released with zero marketing. Plus it technically had a prequel albeit on the same system.

Excite Truck I think could go either way, but is more likely hardcore.

Someone needs to take that entire list and bust out the venn diagrams.

The way I see it, it should be phrased as "Would Nintendo have made this if they didn't have the new audience they got with the DS and Wii?" That cuts to the core of the debate: the people who are complaining that Nintendo has somehow changed. Under that definition, most of the disputable games fall under Hardcore, which probably shouldn't be called that.

BINGO.

This notion that anything Nintendo publishes that's not a platformer, action/adventure, or a shooter constitutes Nintendo "pandering to novices" is completely revisionist and is the complete inverse of what the so called "hardcore" demanded and expected from Nintendo prior to the launch of Wii.

Heck, the very definition of "hardcore" that's come into common use in the gaming community since the launch of the Wii is revisionist, and the fact that "hardcore" and "casual" are, even in this thread, are being treated as though they were ranks of distinction, quality, or legitimacy, rather than a simple description of a game's play style or the personal habits of gamers, is sad, even if the intention is to necessarily malign games that aren't targeted solely at the most active, passionate, players who play games as a main hobby.

FYI, that chart is derived from a YouTube video on the subject of the percentage of traditional as opposed to expanded audience titles Nintendo published for the Wii in North America, listing both types of games exactly as others have suggested be done.

The crux of everything I can expect to argue in this discussion is this:

In terms of what Nintendo themselves published and promoted for Wii, I genuinely can't understand how the lineup of titles and franchises has come to be interpreted by gamers as "Nintendo abandoning the hardcore" when nearly every single major Nintendo franchise loved by Nintendo gamers on Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, and Nintendo Gamecube has been represented over multiple titles on the Wii, including the first console Kirby game in more than a decade, significant revivals of classic Nintendo series, Punch-Out, Donkey Kong Country, and "Excite" racing, with Wii also becoming the first Nintendo console since the NES or arguably the Super NES to feature more than only one Super Mario platformer throughout its entire lifespan. The only significant Wii absentees from Nintendo I can think of are F Zero and Star Fox (EDIT: and Pikmin), which I haven't heard many gamers clamoring for in particular, and Pilotwings, which came out on the 3DS and was panned as "casual" merely for having Miis in it, in spite of that being exactly how the Pilotwings 64 characters looked back in 1996 anyway.

As for the absentees, Pikmin belongs on that list. I know it's coming, but it's skipping the Wii entirely. Also, it's fairly obscure, but I really would have liked a Custom Robo game. And Pilotwings Resort wasn't really panned for being casual as much as for being fairly lacking in content, which, although I loved the game, it was.

Pikmin 3 is another example of a game which could have come to the Wii, but instead it was transferred to the Wii U. I don't blame Reggie for that though because that was an NCL decision. I also don't disapprove of it either, because at least we will get that one eventually and the Wii U also needs games so that's fine. If Nintendo said the Rainfall games were going to come to the Wii U I would be okay with that also. I'm not so picky about which console they come to, just so long as they get there at some point.

But the fact remains that there is a huge gap between when the Wii started experiencing a software drought until whenever the Wii U launches. There should have been more game releases to fill in this void. I'm sure much of the cause of this drought was Nintendo pulling the plug on a lost of projects in order to recast them as Wii U launch titles. I guess that is fair. But there still should have been more available for the Wii. If Nintendo's resources are too limited to support all their platforms simultaneously then they need to expand and buy or create more studios like Retro. History has shown over and over again that they can't count on 3rd parties to fill that void for them, so they have to do it themselves with their 1st and 2nd parties. Retro does great work, but they are one studio and they alone can't do everything that needs to be done. Nintendo needs like 5 more Retros.

@insano

I think NPC Pikmin is being counted. I don't count it personally but that's the impression I got. Carry on with your discussion.

Counting NPC Pikmin is like counting the VC versions of Star Fox 64 and F-Zero X as entries in those franchises. I'm glad it (and those VC games) exists, but for the purpose of this discussion that can't be counted.

I didn't count the New Play Control series in my chart or video, though I believe I may have counted Metroid Prime Trilogy on the basis that it struck me as more of a "proper Wii product" than the stand alone NPC games did due to the fact that it did include a Wii game on the same disk and wasn't being marketed solely on the basis of it being a rerelease of a Gamecube game.

Also, as I've said before, the whole notion of choosing whether or not to "blame Reggie" for this specific decision or that specific decision doesn't really have anything to do with how Nintendo of America is actually run, especially in the realm of choosing which games are and aren't considered for release, which Reggie may possibly have the least say in out of all his roles at NOA.

I wonder if most of the people here that are critical of Nintendo are critical of them because the Wii is the only console they own. If so, then I can see why they would complain. Heck, my only console is the Wii. So, I totally understand when there is only ONE game that is worth looking forward to for all of 2012.

However, I have a feeling that most, if not all of you, own more than one console or are into PC games. So, I am not sure why it is so important to most of you to feel like Nintendo is not doing enough.  You have PLENTY of games to play. It's either because:

a) You are an old-school gamer and can remember the days when a Nintendo was all you needed for all genres and major franchises. We'll never go back to that, so good luck wishing for it.

b) You're expectations were probably a little too high when you first bought a Wii and are now feeling buyer's remorse. This is the most understandable. However, if you bought a Wii anytime from 2008 onward then that's on you. You should have known better.

c) You are a fan of Nintendo and want to see them succeed no matter what. I find these sorts of comments a little weird. Maybe it's based on nostalgia, but other than that- it's not like they are a football team. They're a company! Was anyone butt-hurt when SEGA stopped making consoles? No. Because two of the three last consoles they produced (SEGA CD, SATURN, and to some extent DC) sucked. We showed our loyalty (or lack of) with our wallets.

d) You are an armchair business consultant and see Nintendo's decisions in the past two years as poor. Okay, fine. Maybe they were. But, hindsight is 20/20. Why don't you go back and complain that Nintendo should have went to CD based technology in the 90s? Or made the Gamecube a multimedia hub? Or even as recent as 6 years ago when the Wii should have went HD. Sony has had two HOT consoles and one semi-dud console. MS hasn't been around enough to judge.  Atari had one. Sega had one. Ninty has had THREE (arguably five) great consoles! They will make mistakes, but they are doing just fine in comparison.

It's already been said in this thread that the Rainfall games wouldn't make a dent. It is too late!  You want those games? That's understandable. You and about 500,000 people in a country of 300,000,000 want those games. Be happy you're getting one of them.

I think people need to get off of Reggie's back, go play Xenoblade when it comes out, and play the gazillion other games on the other consoles, or do like me and save up to buy the WiiU on day one!

Actually, yes.

*raises hand*

I'd rather have a head-to-head duel between Nintendo and Sega ANYDAY over this mess of a three-console war that's been going on for the last 10-12 years. I wanted so badly for the Dreamcast to succeed, but it just didn't happen. I think more creativity and innovation was sparked when it was just Nintendo and Sega, too. Maybe it was just all of the crazy IPs that came out, but whatever. The 16 to 64-bit era of games was absolutely incredible. I'll never forget all of the memories I had with Nintendo/Sega... or even Nintendo/Sony during the 64-bit wars.

I wish we could go back to that, though. Sure would be nice to have a head-to-head battle again -- I'm sure this is what most "dude-bro" gamers think is occurring now anyway. Nintendo doesn't really matter in their minds, as it's mainly Sony vs. Microsoft for them.

But anyway, yes, I was hurt when Sega decided to stop making consoles. Dreamcast was awesome... and Microsoft is NOT a good replacement for them.

There was only one 64-bit system and that was the N64, unless you happen to count the Atari Jaguar but that is debatable. The Sega Saturn and Playstation 1 and everything else during that generation was only 32-bit.

Oh, absolutely. I realize the PSX wasn't a 64-bit system, but I consider it in the same generation as the N64 because... because well, it was Sony's first (next?) generational console. To me, there wasn't a "32-bit" generation of consoles -- just a jump from 16-bit to 64-bit via Nintendo. Hey, I can't help it that Sony's console wasn't as powerful as the N64. :P Although, it is true Saturn was a 32-bit console. It failed to really materialize here in the States, though.

I consider the SNES in its final years to be Nintendo's 32-bit system. If you look at the SNES games that came out in the last few years of its life like DKC, Killer Instinct, Super Mario RPG, and so on the graphics really rivaled that of the Saturn or PS1. From what I understand Nintendo was able to make the SNES more powerful than 16-bit by putting special chips into the cartridges which made it more powerful. It was just very costly to do though... I remember SNES games sometimes being like $60 or $70. N64 carts were expensive too, and that's why it ended up in 2nd place even though it was technologically superior to the PS1.

What were those workstations used to develop some of the games from the last year or so of the SNES? SGIs? I think those were what allowed a lot of the 3D modeling for characters/backgrounds/etc.. I remember being so enamored with Killer Instinct and DKC. Crazy. I sure do miss that first time experience.

@defalcos

Don't forget they could also just play the unopened Wii games on their backlog.  Or the Wii gems they skipped because it came out at the same time as God of Assassins' Duty: World at Warcraft.

EDIT: I hate this forum's programming bugs with a burning passion. I had to copy and paste the following paragraphs into 3 separate programs before I could get them to display even close to correctly here (the forums kept wanting to bold everything).

If the Wii had gems I skipped, I probably would.  ;)  I've probably played nearly every game of note on the Wii.  If I didn't play it, it was likely because it didn't measure up to games I played on other other platforms.  That's kind of the story of the Wii to gamers like myself.

I suppose I would probably fall under your B category, thedefalcos.  When I begged my parents to get me a Wii for my birthday in April 2007, I truly believed in the dream of the Wii and the possibilities afforded by the Wii Remote.  I played Zack & Wiki, and I was astounded by the many different purposes you could put the Wii Remote to.  I praised this to my coworkers at work at the time, who were considering getting a Wii.

Then the years rolled on, and nothing further was really done to push the innovative uses of motion control in games, probably partially because the technology largely didn't work until Motion+.  I was frequently unsatisfied with the software library on the Wii.  With notable exceptions, I've found Nintendo's 1st party Wii releases lacking.  I won't go into the whole "core" and casual" nonsense.  I've moved on from that state of mind.  I just find the quality and quantity of their software largely lacking, as well as being notably shorter or overly-simplistic than I'd like.  Each year, fewer games that appeal to my sensibilities were released on Wii.  I got a PS3 and 360 to help me fill in those gaps, and I haven't regretted that decision since.

Personally, I'd love to be able to just have unconditional faith in Nintendo like I once did 5 years ago.  But I look at NoA, and I see a company that just doesn't want to release games I want to play.  It's not that those games aren't being made on Wii, as evidenced by the Operation Rainfall titles.  Nintendo of America just doesn't want to bring them over here, and that makes it really hard for me to support them.  And the games they do, they give a very lackluster marketing campaign (Sin & Punishment 2, Xenoblade, Metroid Prime 3, etc.).  And, sadly, Reggie has been in charge during this period of time.

I think of Sega, and then I turn to Nintendo and say, "please, for the love of god, stay profitable."

For the foreseeable future, you got nothing to worry about.

Yeah, I agree. It took Atari and Sega both 3 failed consoles in a row before they gave up.  Don't think Nintendo is going anywhere.

And that's a totally acceptable response. You bought the system early on and it failed to deliver. I agree with you to som extent. For example, I also think that it's full potential has yet to be reached. Real Time Strategies would AWESOME on the Wii, yet we haven't really seen any.  Rail shooters should have been a blast, but instead we got the two Resident Evil games and DS: Extraction which are great games, but that's it? Those and a bunch of old arcade ports? Goldeneye, Prime 3, and The Conduit showed that motion controls can bring freshness to a stale genre and what did Nintendo try to do with it? Outside of those games and the COD/MOH ports, nothing.  Red Steel 2 and Conduit 2 fell short. So, see, I am not without my complaints. But, all the great games that ARE there have kept me pretty happy.

And you bought a PS3 and have been happy with it since.  So, that leads me to think you also fall under category one.  You still have faith in Nintendo to do what? Provide all the genres and franchises you want? That's impossible to do any more. Even in the SEGA/Nintendo rivalry days you had to buy TWO consoles to get all the great franchises. You're only two options should be either buy more than one console like you did or stick with just one and not complain about getting every single game you want which is what I did.

You know what really bugs me about that?  I am a middle and high school teacher and I hear waaaay too often that the Wii sucks because it doesn't have those games you mentioned.  I even heard one of them say, with agreement from others, "If it doesn't put a gun in my hand, I don't want to play it." Urgh! I even had one student sell his copy of Skyward Sword he got for Christmas (before he even opened it) for a pair a freakin' sunglasses. Didn't even care to know if the game was fun or not. And they're a bunch of hypocrites, too. Most of the time they will play Wii sports up at the school all the while loudly proclaiming that they never play the Wii. It's an image thing or something.

Unfortunately, most of the people who read this forum have already played the Wii backlog and everyone else wouldn't dare be caught reading something with Nintendo on it.  Remember when it was COOL to play a variety of games on a system no matter what genre it was? The same guys I hung out with as a kid would play Contra and Double Dragon with me one day and then the next day could sit for a spell and take turns playing Tecmo Bowl, Castlevania, or Dragon Warrior. It was all the same to us because it was ALL FUN.

So, did you buy a Sega CD?  A Saturn? the 32X?  That's what needed to happen for the Dreamcast to survive. Sega had no money and were in debt when the DC came out. That and some bad management missteps caused them to pull the plug on it too soon. But, if you didn't buy those other ones, you shouldn't feel so bad when Sega stopped making systems. And, if you didn't buy them, it would also prove my point. That your loyalty to a brand goes only so far as the last good product they produced. 

I loved the Genesis, but I am no fanboy. Those other systems stunk it up in my opinion. So I went the PS1 and later, the XBOX route. N64 was awesome but I was a broke bloke and couldn't afford it and the Gamecube had almost nothing on it that I wanted to play that wasn't already on the xbox, which had exclusives I DID want to play. I didn't get all bent out of shape about it, though. I just didn't buy it.

Didn't Nintendo just recently have its first unprofitable quarter in like 30 years or something like that? And this happened under Reggie/Iwata's watch, so... As senile as Yamauchi may have been in his final years, Nintendo never had an unprofitable quarter under his watch.

Well maybe cause there are no new games coming out...hmmm!

First two, actually.

Don't put too much stock (heh) into a bad quarter here or there.  While investors freak out about it, let's be fair - investors are fickle people.  They freak out over the smallest things...

That's the thing with sales performance - you can look at a history of a company and cut out various slivers of time where they may not have performed well - but that doesn't necessarily mean it's the end of the company because they have a rough patch.

I'll be interested in seeing how Nintendo's year-ending numbers are.

It's the law of averages, nobody bats a thousand.

Isn't it paradoxical that only when Nintendo has achieved unparallelled success with the Wii that now and only now do they suffer their first (in decades) quarter loss? How is that even possible?

Wait a quarter with less profits or no profits period?

@thedefalcos

You're failing those kids right?

I blame the weak American dollar. This isn't Nintendo's first unprofitable quarter in recent memory, but past quarters like this frequently had the exchange rate as a major reason too. I believe this is Nintendo's first annual posted loss? Well, a weak American dollar and strong yen for an entire year is a major factor cutting into their earnings I think, in conjunction with a pretty dangerous transition to two new platforms and probably some really expensive R&D costs trying to out innovate their own successes of the DS and Wii.

It's not just the dollar, even the Euro is at a 11-year low against the yen. Of course Nintendo has most of their sales in the US, so a stronger yen is actually bad for them.

Maybe that's why Reggie didn't want to release the Rainfall games in NA because the sales would have been in dollars.

Not really. Wii sales fell off slowly. Then the company's new best selling product had to be sold at a loss to move any units at all. It's just been a few bad business decisions.

In the most recent quarter, the bulk of the net loss is attributable a currency exchange loss, but both this and the previous quarters still had an operating loss, especially the quarter before which had a MASSIVE operating loss with a rather small currency exchange loss.

For clarity, Revenues are money you get. Subtract the cost of what you sell, and that's your gross. Gross minus operating expenses (salaries, R&D, etc) is the operating income. Non-operating income/expenses include various items that don't fall under operating expenses like interest and of course currency exchange loss. Factor in those and that's your earnings before taxes which I was using as a blanket term for loss.

A quarter with negative profits.

The 3DS isn't being sold at a loss.

Well, I don't have exact numbers on that, but Nintendo's gross profit margin went from about 32% (quarter ended March 31) to about 17% (quarter ended Sept 30) and was close to 11% in quarter in between. If not a loss, then they're certainly cutting it close.

From what I understand they were making $100 markup on the 3DS before the price drop. So since it was an $80 price drop there should still be a $20 profit on each 3DS sold.

If you're taking MSRP less the cost of materials, then a $20 difference is gonna result in Nintendo not making money on selling units. Hell, retailers would probably get the whole $20, leaving Nintendo breaking even before supply chain costs.

You hit the nail on the head, brother.  That was one of the best posts I've ever read ^_^

My "formative" years as a gamer with with the 2600 and the NES, but my gamer-hood was solidified during the SNES/Genesis era.  You know how I spent that console "war"? Half the time having my best friend come over and play Genesis, the other half going to his house to play SNES.

I think 1% of our game discussion was about whose platform was "better" and that was always completely playful banter.  The rest of the time we would just be saying how awesome our mutual collections were and telling each other what to buy so that the other one could reap the benefits!