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[DECK'ARD]

This generation did show that Nintendo can't rely on the casual market, unless they want a console that's only really viable for 2D Mario, Mario Kart, Sport minigames and rhythm games.
Differentiating themselves from the hardcore focused competition was definitely a good idea, even if it damaged third party relations. Nonetheless, they should have tried harder to keep 3rd parties happy. Perhaps more modern architecture was the way to go, but hindsight is 20/20. Wii looks to me like it was a console designed so as not to damage the company too badly were it to end up being Nintendo's final home console.

Content is king, and the broader your content the more appealing your product and the safer your strategy.

Lessons will have been learnt from the Wii, but at the same time the arms-race mentality has been damaging to the industry as well. An increasingly polarised industry. It's all about striking the right balance as well as ideally brining something new to the table as well.

It's a complicated recipe to get right, which is why Wii U fell flat last year as it was all half-baked. They need to do a lot this E3, but the fact it's been AWOL so long is good because they realise that. Nintendo need a eye on future-proofing the console but also presenting something that solidifies the whole concept in the way Wii Sports did. Easy to understand, appealing and something genuinely new. Chase Mii, Battle Mii, NSMB Mii, none of that cut it.

Also the one controller limitation better be gone and shown to be gone, as from a game design perspective you open up so many more possibilities. Things get much more interesting and exciting then, as well as far easier for people to understand the concept. Pricing issues and everything can be worked with, but it's making the Wii U's concept compelling and easy for people to grasp like the Wii which is key.

 

[GameplayWhore]

If the Wii U is not atleast a Dreamcast like step up technically from the PS360 then Wii U is pathetic IMO. I'm sure people in the Nintendo cult won't agrea and drink the kool aid no matter what.

I would appreciate hearing the things that you would specifically like for the system to have, perhaps in addition with what you think the system is most likely to have, but it'd be really awesome if you could dial down any ad hominems, because all they do is make other posters want to rage at you. It's why I try to say things like "I am not interested in online gamine" instead of "I think people who play games online are losers" on these boards -- the former gets folks chatting, while the latter gets folks attacking.


edit: I don't actually think that people who play online games are losers

 

[MisterHero]

I am curious: What can investors do other than sell their stock? Can they call for Iwata's removal? What are the actual negative implications of Nintendo (whose stock is, I've heard but don't know for sure possibly owned in the majority by current employees as well as the Yamauchi family) deciding to keep tight lipped about their secret operations to the financial world?

The Board of Directors can call for motions like ousting execs. Shareholders can only vote.

Nintendo is one of Japan's top-performing corporation since they introduced the Famicom. Nintendo's longer-lasting investors, hopefully, have learned to not interfere with the people that know what they're doing (Nintendo's game designers).

 

[Nibel]

If the Wii U is not atleast a Dreamcast like step up technically from the PS360 then Wii U is pathetic IMO. I'm sure people in the Nintendo cult won't agrea and drink the kool aid no matter what.

As far as we know it wont be a Dreamcast like step up from current gen - but we know that Nintendo will Dreamcast themselves. I hope that helps you to understand the situation.

And yeah, fuck that Nintendo cult people. They should stay in their wooden shacks and leave us alone with their Nintendogs bullcrap!

 

[AceBandage]

The Board of Directors can call for motions like ousting execs. Shareholders can only vote.

Nintendo is one of Japan's top-performing corporation since they introduced the Famicom. Nintendo's longer-lasting investors, hopefully, have learned to not interfere with the people that know what they're doing (Nintendo's game designers).

I doubt Iwata is ever going to be in danger of being kicked out. I know that people have really bad knee jerk reactions, but the man made the company a house hold name again and shot their brands through the roof.

 

[-Pyromaniac-]

How could third party relations have been any worse after GC? It's not like Nintendo goes out of their way to thumb their noses at third parties. There's not a company-wide conspiracy to trick third parties into going bankrupt or anything crazy like that.

And speaking of reputations, how about some third parties put some skin in the game and admit they fucked up most of their Wii games because they tried to cash in? Is it so hard to believe that this time, third parties wronged Nintendo? Which they obviously did this generation, what with all those mealy-mouthed platitudes, outright horrible games, and borderline trolling like EA's Dead Space:Extraction, and confusing and conflicting reasons for lack of support, the best of which was EA, who stated that Nintendo made too many games for them to compete, and then later stated Nintendo wasn't making enough games.

If it's true that reputation can hurt a product's chances, then I see no better proof than third party games on the Wii itself, which only furthered Nintendo's dominance on their own platform. Nintendo didn't point a gun at various third party heads and force them to make horrible, thoughtless products, but they did anyway. The end result is a console userbase that's 100 million strong that's crazy about Nintendo-branded games and thinks anything else was garbage, and they are right in thinking so, and third parties did NOTHING to correct this.

Maybe this time it might be the third parties who might want to try and repair their reputations? I mean they are in full control of their perceptions, right? And since they allowed themselves to be defined as low-class software makers to the majority console, it is their problem to fix, right?

I've said it before, but creating the hardware and assuming the devs will come is a mistake. Is it totally unfair that nintendo has to do more work to maintain 3rd party relationships while other companies simply get the games, yes it is unfair. But that's how the game is played for Nintendo. Creating the hardware is the base necessity. Now it's up to them to do whatever they need to do, which could be many things, to secure the shit they need to secure.

Unfair, but it's a dirty game and you gotta play dirty to win.

 

[Krev]

for the bold part, I know nintendo is clueless at times but there is no way they didn't know that releasing a console that much weaker was gonna cause a big problem for them in the end. I mean how does that not come up in meetings or something. I think they just didn't give a fuck, did what they did, collected their moniez, and now they're hoping everything works for the best. But they have a lot of hard work ahead of them.

When I say 'hindsight is 20/20', I'm referring to the Wii being the big success it was. I'm sure they realized that their strategy would cause problems with 3rd parties, but they were losing their support anyway, even when they were technologically competitive. I suspect that they were considering a future withdrawal from selling home consoles, should their next release fail. Rather than sinking money on a system that many thought would sell significantly less than the Gamecube, they focused on maximum profitability. No matter what eventuated, the company could stay strong in the face of an uncertain future.

 

[Akai]

And speaking of reputations, how about some third parties put some skin in the game and admit they fucked up most of their Wii games because they tried to cash in? Is it so hard to believe that this time, third parties wronged Nintendo? Which they obviously did this generation, what with all those mealy-mouthed platitudes, outright horrible games, and borderline trolling like EA's Dead Space:Extraction, and confusing and conflicting reasons for lack of support, the best of which was EA, who stated that Nintendo made too many games for them to compete, and then later stated Nintendo wasn't making enough games.

The best part was that third parties would complain that they couldn't compete with Ninty's games, yet refused to develop games in genres that Ninty tends not to hit upon. Because, you know, it's a lot easier to churn out minigame compilations and half-hearted spinoffs than actually put effort into a complete game...

 

[Shurayuki]

It's a complex situation. In terms of the buying habits of its userbase, PS2 was the ideal platform for the third party developers. Its one thing to follow Sony to PS3 on the assumption that this would be carried over, and another thing entirely to take stock of Wii's success and pledge early support for Wii U. Is there really anything indicating that that's where the money is? For the most part, Wii was not a platform conducive to third party success stories.

Honestly I was playing the "Nintendo-fan" card pretty heavily there, but as far as the 3rd parties don't sell on Nintendo is concerned, I don't believe it. It's just that Nintendo's success dwarfs these stories. We got data about 3rd party million sellers on Wii every E3 and they had huge success.
Sure going with Nintendo this time around isn't a no-brainer by any stretch, but that's mainly becaue they made no effort to position themselves on Wii in the first place, nothing inherently wrong with the Nintendo console.
To go with an often cited expression, I do believe certain 3rd parties have pretty thoroughly "poisoned the well" on Nintendo platforms, sometimes console/handheld specific and sometimes overall. But looking at companies like Capcom, they have started to transition and I'm sure some will follow. Since hardly anybody else shows signs to do that, I don't see the situation changing too much.

 

[GameplayWhore]

Also the one controller limitation better be gone and shown to be gone, as from a game design perspective you open up so many more possibilities. Things get much more interesting and exciting then, as well as far easier for people to understand the concept. Pricing issues and everything can be worked with, but it's making the Wii U's concept compelling and easy for people to grasp like the Wii which is key.

Very much this. When we heard about the display on a controller, my first impression was "Wow, when I play a first person shooter with all my friends, now our personal indicators -- like health, radar, ammo count, available guns, etc -- will be totally invisible to others, as they'll be on our private screens. That's awesome!". And then it was revealed that only one person could use the controller and that they might not even sell the controller separately! That seriously inhibited a lot of the interesting things you could do on the system.

It was helpful, though, when we learned that the video hardware itself was capable of doing multihead to four additional devices (I wish that I had a link to this!).

 

[Sadist]

Hey hey hey Dead Space Extraction is a great game. To bad it's in a genre nobody cares for and overcrowded on the system.

 

[AceBandage]

Hey hey hey Dead Space Extraction is a great game. To bad it's in a genre nobody cares for and overcrowded on the system.

True.
It's really a shame, as well.
The Wii got so many lightgun games. It was insane.

 

[MisterHero]

True.
It's really a shame, as well.
The Wii got so many lightgun games. It was insane.

And no Point Blank (((

 

[-Pyromaniac-]

Anybody know how much Black Ops sold on the Wii, out of curiosity?

 

[DECK'ARD]

I've said it before, but creating the hardware and assuming the devs will come is a mistake. Is it totally unfair that nintendo has to do more work to maintain 3rd party relationships while other companies simply get the games, yes it is unfair. But that's how the game is played for Nintendo. Creating the hardware is the base necessity. Now it's up to them to do whatever they need to do, which could be many things, to secure the shit they need to secure.

Unfair, but it's a dirty game and you gotta play dirty to win.

I agree with that, again content will define the system. Once you get the content on it that attracts consumers, sets expectations and also affects what comes further down the line.

3rd parties won't need much encouragement to add an extra revenue stream, but it still requires work, time and taking resources from other things to do it. Help with say marketing would sweeten the deal considerably and it's something Nintendo should be aggressive with especially in the beginning.

 

[Akai]

Hey hey hey Dead Space Extraction is a great game. To bad it's in a genre nobody cares for and overcrowded on the system.

The problem is that no one asked for a Dead Space on-rails shooter. They wanted an actual Dead Space game...

 

[AceBandage]

Anybody know how much Black Ops sold on the Wii, out of curiosity?

I believe each CoD game since MW sold around a million on the Wii.
I don't think we have any hard numbers, though.

 

[BurntPork]

If the Wii U is not atleast a Dreamcast like step up technically from the PS360 then Wii U is pathetic IMO. I'm sure people in the Nintendo cult won't agrea and drink the kool aid no matter what.

Dreamcast was a full generational leap. In fact, a Dreamcast jump (~10x) is what you're going to get from Sony and Microsoft.

 

[nordique]

I know I spend too much time on the internet, you don't have to remind me...

Jerk!

Spoiler

But yes, I do. I'm French Canadian, so it only makes sense that I know the only french meme out there. That and ENKULER DE RIRE.

Spoiler

I never heard of that meme before. Though I usually browse English game sites. Also, let's hope the Nordiques return this year!

So about that Wii U news eh. By the way that Reggie baby head was completely unexpected. My image of Reggie being this guy who gets easily mistaken for a bouncer has been tainted now

 

[axisofweevils]

The poor 3DS launch, I put entirely down to third parties...

Nintendo: "Why don't you release games on our system?"
Third parties: "We can't compete with Mario / Zelda"
N: "OK, we'll delay Mario and Zelda and give you the launch window to yourself!"
TP: "OK"

Later

TP: "I knew it. The rushed ports Asphalt 3D and The Sims 3 didn't sell. Nintendo am doomed. As a result, we'll delay the other third party titles."

Without games, console doesn't sell. Price drop ensues.
Nintendo release Mario. Console sells.

Third parties, despite everything they've said, decide to directly compete with Mario by releasing their delayed games like "Gabriella's Ghostly Groove" at that moment....

The third party games flop....

 

[-Pyromaniac-]

I believe each CoD game since MW sold around a million on the Wii.
I don't think we have any hard numbers, though.

and those were competent ports were they not? Which I think aids in proving the point, that yes 3rd parties put out shit and sold shit, but for COD, selling around a mil on a console with an absofuckinglutely huge base like nintendo, is pretty damn bad. The Wii wasn't a place where the owners were buying games. It seems they were interested in a more narrow set of titles.

Which leads me back to what I've always been saying, nintendo needs to lure back the gamers who buy games, but it's gonna be hard for nintendo to market to them and market to the "mainstream/casual" market at the same time.

 

[Sadist]

The problem is that no one asked for a Dead Space on-rails shooter. They wanted an actual Dead Space game...

Well the Wii didn't ask for a Castlevania fighting game and a Soul Calibur action game, but they still got it. The Wii situation is done and we can over analyze to death, but it's done. Time to concentrate on next gen.

 

[Akai]

Dreamcast was a full generational leap. In fact, a Dreamcast jump (~10x) is what you're going to get from Sony and Microsoft.

I didn't want to open this can of worms again, but we're not going to see a 10X jump in specs from anyone. Period...

 

[AceBandage]

and those were competent ports were they not? Which I think aids in proving the point, that yes 3rd parties put out shit and sold shit, but for COD, selling around a mil on a console with an absofuckinglutely huge base like nintendo, is pretty damn bad. The Wii wasn't a place where the owners were buying games. It seems they were interested in a more narrow set of titles.

Which leads me back to what I've always been saying, nintendo needs to lure back the gamers who buy games, but it's gonna be hard for nintendo to market to them and market to the "mainstream/casual" market at the same time.

Uhhh. I don't know if you could say that.
A lot of the early ones lacked content and had sloppy online. Not to mention that MW came out ages after the other versions.
They were good ports, things considered, but the Wii wasn't exactly the place to get CoD if you wanted the games.

 

[BurntPork]

Agreeing about what?

I'm not taking back my statement that Wii U is probably marginally more powerful than current-gen, I'm just saying using platitudes like "a console had limitations/challenges" to come to a conclusion about a console's capabilities is stupid.

Ah, okay.

And yeah, but it's pretty obvious that they had no clue what they were talking about.

 

[Anth0ny]

If the Wii U is not atleast a Dreamcast like step up technically from the PS360 then Wii U is pathetic IMO. I'm sure people in the Nintendo cult won't agrea and drink the kool aid no matter what.

He's not wrong.

 

[ShockingAlberto]

for the bold part, I know nintendo is clueless at times but there is no way they didn't know that releasing a console that much weaker was gonna cause a big problem for them in the end. I mean how does that not come up in meetings or something. I think they just didn't give a fuck, did what they did, collected their moniez, and now they're hoping everything works for the best. But they have a lot of hard work ahead of them.

The thing about the Wii is, in Nintendo's own weird bubble-like way, they thought having a system that is significantly weaker than the competition was helping third parties.

They've more or less directly said this! The interviews all leading up to the Wii reveal were "It's built on Gamecube architecture, so third parties should have no trouble with it." Or "It's not dissimilar to the Gamecube, so budgets will not increase a lot." It was very similar to the drum they were beating with the DS. Nintendo foresaw that the massive leap in graphical ceilings and budgets was going to harm the industry in seriously bad ways, but third parties rarely win by gambling on Nintendo and had already invested most of their top people and technologies in to the HD system.

And as much as no one wants to hear it, from a purely industry health perspective, they were probably right. We'll never know how things would have worked out if developers went all-in on the Wii this generation, or if Microsoft and Sony did not leap to where they leaped to. Would THQ not have chased the EA/Activision dragon? Would Capcom be outsourcing 90% of their output? Who knows. But I don't think it was simply a matter of Nintendo being cheap, so they made a cheap system. It was a third party pitch that failed.

Now, not being on feature parity (online, hard drives, etc.) with the other systems, that was Nintendo being cheap.

 

[Deguello]

I've said it before, but creating the hardware and assuming the devs will come is a mistake. Is it totally unfair that nintendo has to do more work to maintain 3rd party relationships while other companies simply get the games, yes it is unfair. But that's how the game is played for Nintendo. Creating the hardware is the base necessity. Now it's up to them to do whatever they need to do, which could be many things, to secure the shit they need to secure.

Unfair, but it's a dirty game and you gotta play dirty to win.

I don't think Nintendo just sat back and "expected" to get support, as evidenced by their finagling of Monster Hunter and Dragon Quest to the Wii (Bit late on the last one.) I bet most of the time they were just ignored until Wii exploded and investors went nuts, and by then it was too late.

Also, I think framing the playing field between third parties and Nintendo as "unfair" at its base setting isn't going to help. I mean it's basically saying even if Nintendo bent over backwards and even paid for mere equality, they'd still get a raw deal because, hey, you're Nintendo. Considering Nintendo is perfectly able to self-sustain, why would they give out money incentives if they're just going to get fucked over with it when all they have to really do is wait for the bubble to pop and be the last man standing?

 

[Akai]

Well the Wii didn't ask for a Castlevania fighting game and a Soul Calibur action game, but they still got it. The Wii situation is done and we can over analyze to death, but it's done. Time to concentrate on next gen.

Time for the next generation of third party "experiments" and rejects!

 

[nordique]

The fact is, Wii is the market leader, and if developers actually developed for it like they did for the PS2 then we wouldn't be having this discussion. I find it foolhardy to blame Ninty for not thinking developers would completely ignore the market leader after four straight generations of, well, using the most rudimentary concepts of business sense...



For the most part, Wii was not a platform conducive to third party EFFORT...

Yes, this rings true. There were many things that happened this generation that changed a lot about how the business works.

 

[Aostia]

…huh, maybe I remembered something that never existed.

Closest I can find on short notice is this patent and this interview with Miyamoto, neither definitive announcements.

However, I think you can bank on it having a stand. It has to charge some way, and the 3DS has already paved the way for having a first-party charging cradle sold for Nintendo hardware.

About the stand, probably the Upad will have a charger stand like the 3ds, the cradle, like in the patent you showed.
If so, I think that this will be used to make the Upad stand while playing on it with the remote...
And I was wandering if this cradle will be used to put the Upad in "stand-by", allowing you to use it also console-free (with the console in stand by as for the Wiiconnect24 of the Wii) and not only TV-free

 

[Krev]

Honestly I was playing the "Nintendo-fan" card pretty heavily there, but as far as the 3rd parties don't sell on Nintendo is concerned, I don't believe it. It's just that Nintendo's success dwarfs these stories. We got data about 3rd party million sellers on Wii every E3 and they had huge success.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Wii_video_games
Look at the big third party successes here though. Music games and minigames, for the most part. The majority of developers don't want to work in these areas and there's no guarentee that Wii U will have an audience receptive to the type of games they want to make.

Content is king, and the broader your content the more appealing your product and the safer your strategy.

Lessons will have been learnt from the Wii, but at the same time the arms-race mentality has been damaging to the industry as well. An increasingly polarised industry. It's all about striking the right balance as well as ideally brining something new to the table as well.

Creating something that appeals to the casual base but also gaming enthusiasts who purchase a lot of games is the very tricky task Nintendo are faced with right now. I think they'll pull it off...in Japan, where the streaming feature will have big appeal and hardcore gamers aren't so demanding of bleeding edge tech.
What do people think they can do to achieve it in America? The 'Wii' brand is pretty toxic with this demographic.

It's a complicated recipe to get right, which is why Wii U fell flat last year as it was all half-baked. They need to do a lot this E3, but the fact it's been AWOL so long is good because they realise that. Nintendo need a eye on future-proofing the console but also presenting something that solidifies the whole concept in the way Wii Sports did. Easy to understand, appealing and something genuinely new. Chase Mii, Battle Mii, NSMB Mii, none of that cut it.

I think they were fantastic concepts, but they don't have that high concept spark that Wii Sports did. You're exactly right in that they need something that sells the tablet/screen interface instantly and completely, but it's a lot harder to do this with the strange Wii U concept than with motion controls.

Also the one controller limitation better be gone and shown to be gone, as from a game design perspective you open up so many more possibilities. Things get much more interesting and exciting then, as well as far easier for people to understand the concept. Pricing issues and everything can be worked with, but it's making the Wii U's concept compelling and easy for people to grasp like the Wii which is key.

Honestly, if the one controller limitation is gone and the tablet pad is sold in stores as the standard additional controller, my hype would go through the roof. I think it would be worth Nintendo's while to subsidise the additional controllers if need be so they can be sold at standard controller prices. It would do a lot for the system's perception in the long term.

 

[-Pyromaniac-]

Uhhh. I don't know if you could say that.
A lot of the early ones lacked content and had sloppy online. Not to mention that MW came out ages after the other versions.
They were good ports, things considered, but the Wii wasn't exactly the place to get CoD if you wanted the games.

I don't know I've read impressions on GAF that the later ones were well done, that's why I asked about black ops specifically, but either way, the best selling game of all time that is doing mind-numbingly ridiculous numbers only selling around a mil on the console with the biggest base is damning IMO. I think it says a lot more about the people who bought the Wii and Nintendo's marketing than it does about 3rd party developers.

The thing about the Wii is, in Nintendo's own weird bubble-like way, they thought having a system that is significantly weaker than the competition was helping third parties.

They've more or less directly said this! The interviews all leading up to the Wii reveal were "It's built on Gamecube architecture, so third parties should have no trouble with it." Or "It's not dissimilar to the Gamecube, so budgets will not increase a lot." It was very similar to the drum they were beating with the DS. Nintendo foresaw that the massive leap in graphical ceilings and budgets was going to harm the industry in seriously bad ways, but third parties rarely win by gambling on Nintendo and had already invested most of their top people and technologies in to the HD system.

And as much as no one wants to hear it, from a purely industry health perspective, they were probably right. We'll never know how things would have worked out if developers went all-in on the Wii this generation, or if Microsoft and Sony did not leap to where they leaped to. Would THQ not have chased the EA/Activision dragon? Would Capcom be outsourcing 90% of their output? Who knows. But I don't think it was simply a matter of Nintendo being cheap, so they made a cheap system. It was a third party pitch that failed.

Now, not being on feature parity (online, hard drives, etc.) with the other systems, that was Nintendo being cheap.

It's pretty fascinating when you think about what could have happened. I actually find it easy to believe that Nintendo might have thought that what they were doing was for the betterment of developers and even the future of the industry. But at the same time, I can find it just as easy to believe that it was 50/50, half because they thought it would help, and half because it was cheaper for them. They may have looked at it as a win-win, but they've made some HUGEEEE misreadings with the wii generation. Wasn't iwata in 2005 talking as if online was some sort of fad or or extreme niche or something. It's comments like that which remind me that this company is fallible and capable of being stupid/clueless, just like any company. Stupid might be harsh, but you see what I mean.

 

[AceBandage]

I don't know I've read impressions on GAF that the later ones were well done, that's why I asked about black ops specifically, but either way, the best selling game of all time that is doing mind-numbingly ridiculous numbers only selling around a mil on the console with the biggest base is damning IMO.




It's pretty fascinating when you think about what could have happened. I actually find it easy to believe that Nintendo might have thought that what they were doing was for the betterment of developers and even the future of the industry. But at the same time, I can find it just as easy to believe that it was 50/50, half because they thought it would help, and half because it was cheaper for them. They may have looked at it as a win-win, but they've made some HUGEEEE misreadings with the wii generation. Wasn't iwata in 2005 talking as if online was some sort of fad or or extreme niche or something. It's comments like that which remind me that this company is fallible and capable of being stupid/clueless, just like any company. Stupid might be harsh, but you see what I mean.

But consumers had no incentive to get Black Ops on the Wii at that point.
They had already been buying it on the PS3/360 for years. Why would they suddenly switch systems?

 

[axisofweevils]

Were people on here really confused about the Wii U E3 unveil (as opposed to just trolling)? It seems mad to me.

Rumours surface that Nintendo is working on a new HD console which has a tablet controller with screen built in.

Rumours say Nintendo will reveal it at E3.

Nintendo reveal their new HD console which has a tablet controller with screen built in at E3...

Then people saw this, saw the bird demo, and said "Is it just a Wii upgrade?!"

I can understand the general public being confused, but not those "in the know"....

 

[GameplayWhore]

I believe each CoD game since MW sold around a million on the Wii.
I don't think we have any hard numbers, though.

Correction: World at War preceded Modern Warfare on the Wii, and we know that it sold a million in the US. I also remember hearing somewhere (no, not there) that CoD3 eventually crawled past the million mark, worldwide. I certainly recall it outselling the PS3 version overall. That was a pretty big thing back then.

 

[Shurayuki]

The poor 3DS launch, I put entirely down to third parties...

Nintendo: "Why don't you release games on our system?"
Third parties: "We can't compete with Mario / Zelda"
N: "OK, we'll delay Mario and Zelda and give you the launch window to yourself!"
TP: "OK"

Later

TP: "I knew it. The rushed ports Asphalt 3D and The Sims 3 didn't sell. Nintendo am doomed. As a result, we'll delay the other third party titles."

Without games, console doesn't sell. Price drop ensues.
Nintendo release Mario. Console sells.

Third parties, despite everything they've said, decide to directly compete with Mario by releasing their delayed games like "Gabriella's Ghostly Groove" at that moment....

The third party games flop....

Mmmmh, I dunno. Nintendo absolutely knew what games would be coming and giving them space was nice, but really they should've had one game themselves that would drive sales. Overall I really hate the "we'll leave space for 3rd parties", it never worked for Nintendo, they should stop that. For all the moaning 3rd p's do about competing against Nintendo, they only seem to release games around Nintendo's releases, maybe they figure awareness and PR from Nintendo will push their own game?

Now speaking of Nintendo pushing for support by providing marketing, what happened with RE:R? I thought Nintendo would handle marketing in the west, but there wasn't really any, it was only "You want an RE game? Here's ORC for you, also did you hear about RE6, isn't that cool". Doing marketing deals is nice but then market it guys!

 

[-Pyromaniac-]

But consumers had no incentive to get Black Ops on the Wii at that point.
They had already been buying it on the PS3/360 for years. Why would they suddenly switch systems?

why get any 3rd party game for the wii when you can get it elsewhere with better visuals and great online. There is an excuse for everything, and it's totally valid. My point was nintendo is the one that put themselves in that position.

 

[nordique]

The thing about the Wii is, in Nintendo's own weird bubble-like way, they thought having a system that is significantly weaker than the competition was helping third parties.

They've more or less directly said this! The interviews all leading up to the Wii reveal were "It's built on Gamecube architecture, so third parties should have no trouble with it." Or "It's not dissimilar to the Gamecube, so budgets will not increase a lot." It was very similar to the drum they were beating with the DS. Nintendo foresaw that the massive leap in graphical ceilings and budgets was going to harm the industry in seriously bad ways, but third parties rarely win by gambling on Nintendo and had already invested most of their top people and technologies in to the HD system.

And as much as no one wants to hear it, from a purely industry health perspective, they were probably right. We'll never know how things would have worked out if developers went all-in on the Wii this generation, or if Microsoft and Sony did not leap to where they leaped to. Would THQ not have chased the EA/Activision dragon? Would Capcom be outsourcing 90% of their output? Who knows. But I don't think it was simply a matter of Nintendo being cheap, so they made a cheap system. It was a third party pitch that failed.

Now, not being on feature parity (online, hard drives, etc.) with the other systems, that was Nintendo being cheap.

Well said. I agree with this line of thinking and I hope it works out for them next generation.

As a business, Nintendo is run so well it blows my mind how "in synch" they are as a entire company, specifically NCL. The Wii for me was a brilliant business move, the philosophy behind it surpassed my very high thoughts for other systems such as the DS and PS2.

Its a shame it didn't maintain steam as its competitors gained steam, even though it is selling OK all things considering currently, it was also good for Nintendo to learn from (i.e. much weaker hardware or less featured hardware is not always the best way to go for the home console)

I do wonder sometimes, had Nintendo made the Wii more powerful within their financial means, capable of receiving downports from the 360 or displaying HD, just how different the story would be with software sales. There surely are many gamers who would have never needed to purchase a 360 or PS3 had the Wii been able to receive ports of many games.

 

[Akai]

But consumers had no incentive to get Black Ops on the Wii at that point.
They had already been buying it on the PS3/360 for years. Why would they suddenly switch systems?

There's also the concept of "shitting the pool," where Activision and other third parties damaged their brand names on Wii by flooding the market with absolute garbage early on. Even casuals will put in the effort to find out who sold them a particularly crappy game...

 

[Sadist]

Were people on here really confused about the Wii U E3 unveil (as opposed to just trolling)? It seems mad to me.

The presentation last year was horrible. Poor choice of words, Iwata and Reggie couldn't find the words etc. They concentrated to much on just the controller.

 

[Shurayuki]

He's not wrong.

WE DO

WE DO!

 

[AceBandage]

why get any 3rd party game for the wii when you can get it elsewhere with better visuals and great online. There is an excuse for everything, and it's totally valid. My point was nintendo is the one that put themselves in that position.

No, third parties put themselves in that position when they treated the best selling system as second class and refused to put pretty much anything on it.
You have to foster a userbase for games, and third parties refused to do this.
So of course games like CoD, which came out late and lacked features, wouldn't sell the same as on other systems.

 

[Deguello]

It's pretty fascinating when you think about what could have happened. I actually find it easy to believe that Nintendo might have thought that what they were doing was for the betterment of developers and even the future of the industry. But at the same time, I can find it just as easy to believe that it was 50/50, half because they thought it would help, and half because it was cheaper for them.

Why would that be a problem? When they talked about development budgets for the Wii being cheaper for developers and easier to work with, I'm sure they might have also meant themselves as well. Because, you know, they make video games too and not, say, toasters. Just because they would benefit TOO doesn't make it a zero-sum Mexican standoff.

 

[GameplayWhore]

and those were competent ports were they not? Which I think aids in proving the point, that yes 3rd parties put out shit and sold shit, but for COD, selling around a mil on a console with an absofuckinglutely huge base like nintendo, is pretty damn bad. The Wii wasn't a place where the owners were buying games. It seems they were interested in a more narrow set of titles.

The first CoD on the Wii was terrible compared to the versions on the 360 and PS3, and not just in graphical flexibility (and it outsold at least the PS3 version, I recall). The second was skipped until years later, and that one was the one that catapulted the series into super stardom. The third was gimped in several ways, including missing modes (like that zombie thing that everybody apparently thought was the bees' knees). After that, after four terrible years, the CoD ports started being competent. By then, any chance of getting a decent audience on the system was gone.

There are game series that could be argued as being competent on the Wii yet not selling, but Call of Duty is a horrible example.

Which leads me back to what I've always been saying, nintendo needs to lure back the gamers who buy games, but it's gonna be hard for nintendo to market to them and market to the "mainstream/casual" market at the same time.

I will agree with this, though. Nintendo

Spoiler

always

has an uphill struggle in front of them.

 

[Shurayuki]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Wii_video_games
Look at the big third party successes here though. Music games and minigames, for the most part. The majority of developers don't want to work in these areas and there's no guarentee that Wii U will have an audience receptive to the type of games they want to make.

See, I expected that response, but that's just playing the Egg and Chicken game. 3rd parties say "our hardcore games don't sell on Nintendo" and only put out knock-offs, spin off's and the cheap stuff that you linked. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. Of course your "hardcore game" doesn't sell if you don't put it there. Also Wii users, we, aren't stupid. I'm not buying a game just because it says Resident Evil on the box. That doesn't mean I don't buy Resident Evil games.
There simply were no serious 3rd party efforts on Wii (or with stuff like COD, it's still an afterthought to what it is on PS360) to actually gauge performance.

It's a discussion that has been happening in MC and NPD threads now too, and I feel almost a bit bad about arguing with you because I don't really disagree with the baseline of your argument I think. BUT the problem isn't the userbase, it can never be the userbase. 3rd parties make the userbase, and if they can't sell their game on Nintendo platforms that's because they made people believe that everything they put there is shit. And that's hardly Nintendo's fault (what are they gonna do, not allow games to be made, we already had that), and Nintendo can't change that either.

I don't know I've read impressions on GAF that the later ones were well done, that's why I asked about black ops specifically, but either way, the best selling game of all time that is doing mind-numbingly ridiculous numbers only selling around a mil on the console with the biggest base is damning IMO. I think it says a lot more about the people who bought the Wii and Nintendo's marketing than it does about 3rd party developers.

Does it though. Most gamers don't live in a bubble where other games and platforms don't exist. So in a world where there is the full-feature COD on PS360, probably an earlier release too, would you buy a Wii version that has less features?
It's a slight moving of goalpost, though not evil minded. But first it's "there are no million sellers", then "yeah but those don't count" and "it should've done even better". Droves of people are willing to buy those pretty unarguably worse versions of games.

 

[DECK'ARD]

Were people on here really confused about the Wii U E3 unveil (as opposed to just trolling)? It seems mad to me.

Rumours surface that Nintendo is working on a new HD console which has a tablet controller with screen built in.

Rumours say Nintendo will reveal it at E3.

Nintendo reveal their new HD console which has a tablet controller with screen built in at E3...

Then people saw this, saw the bird demo, and said "Is it just a Wii upgrade?!"

I can understand the general public being confused, but not those "in the know"....

Well I can understand some people being confused, but for me mainly it was just a mess.

You had a lot of conflicting ideas:

- 2 displays vs. playing with the TV off in which case you'd only have one
- New wonder controller, but only one person gets that and everyone else has to make do
- Private information but only for one player goes against Nintendo's strength of social multiplayer, level playing fields and sharing the same thing
- Asymmetrical gaming trying to spin this limitation as an advantage, even though all the concepts shown would work better with multiple tablets even if only one was streaming video as you could switch master/slave on the fly. No waiting for a round/game to end and then passing the tablet.

Wii was very easy to grasp, Wii U isn't. Distilling it all down into something that is easy to grasp is the big thing they need to do at this E3, far more important than specs. Much of this comes down to them running with a concept which the technology isn't there to achieve what they want, which is streaming to more than one with no lag. But they can dump the streaming to more than one if needed and still keep HUD/item/play select which opens up an awful lot. As well as more casual boardgame like concepts.

A personal screen is of most advantage when everyone has one. Without that it's a nice addiction, but not a very compelling one.

 

[DragonSworne]

Nintendo needs to realize that hardcore needs more games.

You can't have 100 carnival and workout games and only have 1 shooter...

It needs to be the other way around.

 

[udivision]

Who put Fils-Aime on a train?
Who drives the fanboys all insane?

WE DO

WE DO!

Who posts page after page of crap?
Who wants a subscreen for a map?

WE DO

WE DOOOO!

 

[Akai]

Third parties need to realize that hardcore needs more games.

You can't have 100 carnival and workout games and only have 1 shooter...

It needs to be the other way around.

Fixed. Ninty's output is clearly "hardcore"-oriented, unless you are a fool who considers Mario to be a "casual" franchise now...