We need to talk about the Wii U sales, what happened?

[trestres]

RolStoppable said:

trestres said:

Not really saying that it's due to Nintendo shifting away from the core, because I did point out the many flaws that are ongoing. I'm saying that Nintendo lost a fragile audience, which is the casual player. There's no doubt that there's 2 different kind of gamers, even Iwata using the word core, as he knows that the difference exists, as most people do. Nintendo has indeed lost touch with them and there's no more Nintendo in the headlines anymore, as their new product isn't provoking any curiosity among people, it's just more of the same in the eyes of the common consumer.

It's not a shallow analysis by any means, you should try to read it again without the bias you have against me, I know you do :) and rightfully so. I may sound a bit harsh on Nintendo, but they are in a bad position right now aren't they? And what problems do you say Nintendo is trying to adress that don't really exist?

I've seen a lot of Nintendo supporters changing their opinions about Nintendo and their strategy as of late 2010, and though I'm sure I overcriticized Nintendo before then, time proved me right on many of my concerns.

If there are two different kinds of gamers, which category would you say I belong to?

One suppposed major problem that Nintendo tried to address was the lack of big name third party games on the Wii. The sales of the launch batch of Wii U games makes it already clear that this wasn't too much of a problem on the Wii. At least not a big enough problem to abandon the Wii and start over with a new console. There was no need for a new console when it comes to Nintendo games. Pretty much everything they are going to do on the Wii U could have been done on the Wii. The main controller of the console was changed to appease third parties, not to continue what was started with the Wii. In short, much of the Wii U's design doesn't fall in line with what consumers wanted.

You kept criticizing Nintendo for abandoning core gamers and predicted their sales will suffer in the future. You were only right about the sales, but not the reasons.

You clearly belong to the core audience, or the more enthusiastic, news seeking player, who cares about franchises and knows a lot about videogames. I don't think however that the label can be used to categorize games. I would believe that games are games, not core or casual. Some may attract some audiences more than others, in the sense of getting noticed. I think the problem comes when people label games as casual or core.

I think that Nintendo are hereby trying to recapture that lost audience, with more complex games and cannot do it by themselves, therefore resorting to third parties. However, core gamers will be difficult to attract when the other two HD consoles have secured greater support and the Wii U is relegated to second tier multiplatform products, late ports or a few exclusive games in more niche series. Big budget games of popular series will be skipping the Wii U, hence there will be no need for core gamers to upgrade to a new console that isn't getting such games.

Casual players at the same time, probably got tired of the same products and no disruptive games after 2009 which were new or captivating enough to make it into the headlines and keep the hype machine going on. Nintendo games were too few and in between, many of them extremely similar to their predecessors in the eyes of the casual cosnumer and not appealing at all to core gamers seeking for different, much richer experiences. (Not saying a game like Wii Sports won't catter to a core gamer, because it has a lot of challenge in it, however, other genres like action/adventure/RPG's demand higher attention and provide more immersive experiences to a player seeking it. Not to say that Wii Sports or Mario Kart may provide less fun, because they do provide fun and becoming an expert in such games is difficult and a feat a core gamer would go after, not just a guy trying to pass time and have some fun)

Let's just say that some genres are more appealing to a certain audience that other, but both audiences play all games, being their objectives somewhat different (mastering a games difficulty, completing the game 100% challenges and finding all secrets, becoming the best in multiplayer; vs. playing some rounds for fun, careless for details and not in extensive sessions) and of course these definitions are the extremes, there's obviously room for people in the middle, but most will be closer to one extreme than to the middle.

Nintendo had to move on from the Wii, they ran out of disruptive content for the casual audience. People were not talking about the Wii anymore like they were at the start of its life. They knew that without a new product they would be out of the race, which finally happened, as the Wii had provided most of what they could come about with. Consumers being now more tech savvy and knowledgeable about HD and being HD LCD TV's now in everyone's home, they had to make the upgrade. Of course, this time trying to be equally fair to both audiences and third parties who had dismissed Nintendo as a company to develop for, by giving them what they thought would be the perfect platform.

However they forgot that their image was already severely damaged among all of them, and that the battle would be difficult. They kept their plans secretely guarded and with their stubborn ways and greed, they thought that launching a console with just 1 big game (NSMBU, which in my opinion is a quick, last time endeavour) would have kept sales up for a long time. They did the same they did with the Wii, big game droughts based on hopes, instead of making sure that everyone would have something to look after. Same as with the 3DS, but one thought they'd have learnt the lesson, after 2 consecutive failures.

All in all, I think my given reasons for Nintendo's demise were quite close to what actually happened. Prolongued droughts of games, rehashed concepts, lack of new IP's and disruptive games, sending smaller projects to die, impression of a dire schedule due to an exaggerated degree of secrecy,  denial and ignoring of the core audience. They are just seeing the results now. They can turn things around, but not without a high cost, both monetary and brand related.