And smartphones... I wonder when we should track game sales on those.
Regardless of what I think of most of the games that come out on phones, I hope we get some good tracking soon.
They're pretty obviously a huge part of the market nowadays, so not being able to see sales figures (or I guess more aptly, revenue figures given they're mostly f2p) is unfortunate.
I think also, they just haven't shown any software that could be attractive to the casual audience - nothing that demonstrates the pad in a unique way (which was always a tough sell when everything has a touch screen these days). It's really begs the question of who the target audience for the WiiU is, like they might be going for every demographic out there but actually appealing to none of them.
Yeah, I totally agree that going for the broadspectrum device pretty much tanked them.
They have a system without a clear focus, and only a few games for each of their potential audiences because they're trying to support so many.
I also agree on the gamepad. Most people have a tablet or have played a DS, so both the concepts of a touch screen and dual screen gaming aren't especially novel either.
I agree.
Previously, Nintendo consoles used to be a hit among both casual/hardcore crowd. It was specially seen in the Wii/DS era with games like Brain Age,Nintendo Dogs, Wii Fit and Wii Sports. Now casual audience has moved on to smart phones while hardcore audience seems to have lost interest after such a lackluster launch and support from Nintendo.
I feel they kind of lost a lot of the core audience with the SNES -> PS1 transition, since that's when their third party home console support really started to tank, and they never regained it.
I think they still had strong appeal to Nintendo enthusiasts and kids though, but the 3DS covers those audiences even for 3D games these days, and you get third parties to boot.