Did Wii Sports effectively save Nintendo?

Did Wii Sports save nintendo?

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Calverz

Calverz

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As the title says? It seems like nintendos fortune really changed with the wii and and genius decision to include the greatest game ever made.
This was on the back of the gamecube and N64, both of which I loved, but commercially didn't set the world alight.

Or was it the DS that saved nintendo??
Wii music anyone??
wii curling GIF
 
GB, GBC and GBA were all killing it in sales even when their consoles weren't doing as well. They never needed saving.
 
Depends on what you mean by 'saved' I guess. The Wii and DS was definitely a huge boom in terms of both market share and financial success for them.

But even before the Wii and DS the GBA was killing it and the GameCube, despite selling very few units, still made a profit for them iirc.
 
AV said:
GB, GBC and GBA were all killing it in sales even when their consoles weren't doing as well. They never needed saving.
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This is the right answer.
Nintendo always managed to make a profit, you could argue that the wii gave them mindshare in the console space that was dwindling since N64/GC.
 
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Kind of an oddly phrased title, as if Wii Sports was some third party entity that swooped in and "saved Nintendo." In fact, we know it was just a game that was thought up, created, and then distributed by Nintendo themselves. So Nintendo boosted their own fortunes, yes.
 
Imagine in the context of another company today. Youre making traditional consoles. Then a bigger company swoops in and takes the majority share of your audience in a few short years. You lose all your third party games. You can't financially compete on HD development.

What do you do? Sell the company? Merger?

No. You put out a underpowered system with a completely new way to play and market it to people that have never even purchased a console.

Nintendo has the largest balls in the entire industry. Not just circumference but mass as well. Huge, heavy balls and a commitment to trying new and innovative things.

Iwata and their trust in innovation saved them.
 
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Punished Miku said:
Imagine in the context of another company today. Youre making traditional consoles. Then a bigger company swoops in and takes the majority share of your audience in a few short years. You lose all your third party games. You can't financially compete on HD development.

What do you do? Sell the company? Merger?

No. You put out a underpowered system with a completely new way to play and market it to people that have never even purchased a console.

Nintendo has the largest balls in the entire industry. Not just circumference but mass as well. Huge, heavy balls and a commitment to trying new and innovative things.

Iwata and their trust in innovation saved them.
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Best post on NeoGAF.
 
Deerock71 said:
DS sold neck and neck with the PS2. The Wii just got the bronze that gen.
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Id class Wii as a competitor to PS3 and 360 ( if that ) so Id say it took 1st place
PS2 sold against the Gamecube And OG Xbox

DS I count as a handheld so some people wanna say its a console regardless
 
Wii sports was a contribution but it wasnt a factor. The wii in general along with the ds sold like gangbusters and kept nintendo healthy.

This was a point in time they didnt need saving. The switch after the wii u was a saving grace, this isnt.
 
Kokoloko85 said:
Id class Wii as a competitor to PS3 and 360 ( if that ) so Id say it took 1st place
PS2 sold against the Gamecube And OG Xbox

DS I count as a handheld so some people wanna say its a console regardless
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Ugh. You're right, of course. I need moar coffee.
 
Nintendo was never in trouble. Get this stupid lie out of your head.
 
No, but the Switch kinda did.

The 3DS sold decently, but as a whole, the company was posting losses yearly at that point. That was a little concerning.

When the Gamecube came, they were still profitable..
 
I still remember E3 2010, when both Microsoft (Kinect) and Sony (Move) were out there proudly showing off their own Wii-sports-like motion experiences to catch up... Illustrating how Nintendo completely set the agenda during those years, massively expanding the market.





This is just a few years after the Wii launched. Everyone wanted a piece of that pie.
 
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It didn't save Nintendo but it was one of the greatest system sellers in history. That can't be denied.

ResurrectedContrarian said:
I still remember E3 2010, when both Microsoft (Kinect) and Sony (Move) were out there proudly showing off their own Wii-sports-like motion experiences to catch up... Illustrating how Nintendo completely set the agenda during those years, massively expanding the market.





This is just a few years after the Wii launched. Everyone wanted a piece of that pie.
Click to expand...


I think Nintendo expected them to do this in 2008 which was why they propped up Wii Music as their "tentpole" that year. In that context (and only that context), Wii Music made sense.
 
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Nintendo was nowhere close to going the Sega route, if that's what you're suggesting.

Breath of the Wild didn't "save" Nintendo, either. Nintendo has always been hit and miss, but they've never been in real danger of closing up shop.
 
I wasn't under the impression that Nintendo was ever on the brink of collapse or anything. They've always kept tons of money in their warchest haven't they?
 
Codes 208 said:
This was a point in time they didnt need saving. The switch after the wii u was a saving grace, this isnt.
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If I need to pin down Nintendo's darkest time period since the Famicom/NES I would pick up the GC/GBA era.
You may wonder why since the above chart clearly shows that Nintendo was always profitable during that era (even more profitable than the PlayStation division) whereas during the WiiU/3DS era Nintendo had three consecutive years in the red.
The reason is that money was never the biggest problem for Nintendo after Yamauchi managed to save the company from the banks' loans (with the Game & Watch) and struck gold with the Famicom/NES, the company simply kept accumulating money year after year and in the early 2000s had billions of dollars in the bank.
However at the beginning of the new century Nintendo, while filthy rich, was risking to become obsolete because their peculiar way to interpret the role of a platform holder (first-party driven) seemed to be uncompetitive compared to PlayStation business model (third-party driven).
They were under an existential threat and if they couldn't prove why Nintendo's peculiar hardware and software integration strategy could be attractive for consumers at large they could have been forced to migrate to greener pastures down the road (to tackle businesses other than consoles), before burning all the cash they had.
With DS and Wii, Nintendo doubled down on their approach based on provide unique values and that proved to be a hugely successful.
When Nintendo screwed up with 3DS and WiiU, they lost some money sure, yet their general strategy was never put in doubt.
In fact their next platform was revolutionary and catapulted Nintendo into their most profitable era yet.
 
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Nintendo barely loses money compared to their gains, always have enough money in hands, definitely enough in assets and their "debt" is basically nothing. While the GameCube was not a greatest hit, they were busy selling a lot of games, Gameboys and DS. Define "save"
 
I don't think it "saved" them but it definitely helped with getting the Wii to absolutely dominate that gen.

Wii Sports is great, still play a few rounds of Wii Golf every year.
 
Probably, as it caused them to sell a ton of consoles to non-gamers, while gamers by and large gave up on Nintendo.

The argument could be made it directly led to them doing so poorly with the Wii U, as casuals weren't interested/didn't know, and their core audience left them at that point.

I consider the Wii and Wii U the dark point of Nintendo. I guess you could also argue most of the GC as well.
 
Dream-Knife said:
The argument could be made it directly led to them doing so poorly with the Wii U, as casuals weren't interested/didn't know, and their core audience left them at that point.
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I don't think that was the main issue.

Main issue was faulty marketing, unclear direction (that phablet was certainly meant for the masses, but it didn't appeal to them... and was a nuisance to core gamers as well) and price.

If they price dropped the console console right after launch, like they did with the 3DS and dropped the controller with a screen like Microsoft did with Xbox One and Kinect, lifespan and success of the console could be different, even if spec-wise they drove themselves into a corner.

They did drive themselves into basically the same corner with Switch, might I add.


Of course though, the main problem with the Wii U is that the Wii Sports people didn't buy it, seeing that's what drove the Wii into a viable platform.
 
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lostinblue said:
I don't think that was the main issue.

Main issue was faulty marketing, unclear direction (that phablet was certainly meant for the masses, but it didn't appeal to them... and was a nuisance to core gamers as well) and price.

If they price dropped the console console right after launch, like they did with the 3DS and dropped the controller with a screen like Microsoft did with Xbox One and Kinect, lifespan and success of the console could be different, even if spec-wise they drove themselves into a corner.

They did drive themselves into basically the same corner with Switch, might I add.


Of course though, the main problem with the Wii U is that the Wii Sports people didn't buy it, seeing that's what drove the Wii into a viable platform.
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How did they drive themselves into a corner with the Switch though? It seems like a logical progression with Nintendo as game development costs increase.

I do think it's very unfortunate we don't get 3ds tier games anymore, but then again people complain about Switch graphics.

I can see Nintendo doing some sort of triple hybrid next gen with portable, tv, and VR.
 
If there's one game that "saved" Nintendo even if this doesn't mean anything it's Breath of the Wild. It's the game that put them back on the forefront of the industry as game designers, gave new life to one of their historical series that started to become a non entity and launched their new system that ended up being a Wii level success but with a far healthier consumer base.

The entire Wii series of games and more broadly the Touch Generations era was the definition of a fad, something that made Nintendo a ton of money but didn't translate into a sustainable business model. The new players Nintendo brought in left the ecosystem after a few years to play on smartphones as evidenced by the complete collapse of sales between Nintendogs and its sequel. The Switch's success is based on Nintendo's traditional IPs. There's almost no chance BotW2 is going to lose 20 million players like what happened with Nintendogs.
 
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