Surely the best part of E3? Oh, right, the games...

It is getting difficult to ignore now. Nintendo are beginning to struggle. A games line-up which is emptier than David Beckham's head, sales about to dip below 100k, and with no confirmed release date for any of their big games, and with the ominous shadow of Cafe looming over the Wii, just what can Nintendo do to become the market leader again?

Well, here, I'm going to list 5 things Nintendo can do at and around E3 to become the market leader again:

1. GET SOME DAMN GAMES OUT!!!

First things first- ALL of Nintendo's consoles needs some games. The Wii and 3DS have Zelda in the pipeline, 3DS has StarFox, Professor Layton, Resident Evil and more from Nintendo in the pipeline. The Wii has...well...Wii Play 2, Kirby Wii, Xenoblade and maybe Dragon Quest X, but none of these (bar the first) have confirmed release dates. And, for two years left in the Wii, that's not good enough.

The Wii needs more games, and we know they'll come. We want more DK, more Mario, Pikmin, StarFox, F-Zero, Metroid, and something new, NOT Wii___ though (but I will come back to that later...)

2. LOCALISE JAPAN-ONLY GAMES! ¬.¬

Nintendo are sitting on a potential treasure trove of great games. Xenoblade, The Last Story, Earth Seeker, Tales Of Graces, Pandora's Tower...the list goes on. So, why not localiise some of them Nintendo?  At this year's E3, I hope to see AT LEAST Dragon Quest X and The Last Story get confirmed release dates in the West. The Wii has no real pure JRPG's over here, yet it has plenty in Japan. Why don't we get the love? We like Japanese games too!!!

By doing this, Nintendo could release games with relatively low cost but with great return, keep the fans happy for some time, and have plenty of man-power for producing more games. It's a win-win situation overall.

3. ADVERTISE THE MARIO KART BUNDLE!!!

A new bundled game? A game which has sold nearly 25,000,000 units un-bundled, and is still regularly in the Top 40 games every week? A world-wide price cut? What could possibly go wrong?

Well, I think I can answer that. Lack of advertising. Have any of you seen any hints of a price-cut or a new bundle in any of your game stores, despite the fact it's only days away? I know I haven't. Nintendo need to go out, spread the word about the Wii, all the great games it has (both hardcore and casual) and really hammer home to the consumer that THIS is the console you NEED to buy. Not later, NOW. And I don't think they'll do that. 

But, E3 would be the perfect time to set out a new advertising policy. We saw Sony and Microsoft do it last year at E3, why can't Nintendo do it? A $199 console will fly off the shelves. That is, if people know it exsists...

4. GET A NEW SYSTEM-SELLER!!!

You may not like them, but there's no denying that Wii Sports, Wii Play, Wii Party and Wii Fit have really shifted some units. As well as Mario Kart and New Super Mario Bros. Wii. But what does Nintendo have now? I don't see Wii Play 2 shifting millions of units, personally. Nintendo need to do something new for the casual crowd. So, at E3, why not finally announce the Vitality Sensor for the holiday (November 11th? Yeah...) and also a new system seller. Why not Wii Relax? That seems to be almost confirmed. By double-teaming with either NSMBWii2 or Wii Music 2 (PLEASE the first one...) Nintendo should be able to own the holiday again.

5. SURPRISE US!!!

Ah Nintendo, always there to surprise us. Motion controls, Epic Yarn, Goldeneye, 3DS...you name it, Nintendo have likely surprised us with it. So, just because the 3DS and Cafe are coming out, it doesn't mean the Wii should be neglected. Infact, Cafe is AT LEADT 15 months away. If anything, just like with the PS2, now is the time to surprise us, release some great game for the Wii in its twilight years. Who here fancies some F-Zero? Starfox? Pikmin 3? Metroid Dread? Something completely new? I know I do. 

So, at E3, how about you show us what we all want? Give us the Marios, the Zeldas, and we'll be happy. But give us something new, surprising, shocking, and do everything else I've said, and we'll love you forever. Promise!

So, what do you guys reckon? What can Nintendo do? What WILL Nintendo do? Am I too optimistic? Will Nintendo disappoint us, again? Probably. But we can hope, right? 

Can Nintendo save the Wii? Will they bother? Answer below...

All 5 are at least fairly likely to happen IMO.

1. I highly doubt Nintendo will leave the Wii with just SS on the 1st party this Christmas, I'm thinking a lower profile IP as well (am I too optimistic when I say Pikmin 3?).  That new Kirby platformer will probably be early 2012 and as well as a couple of new games announced at E3 (F-Zero and Wave Race perhaps?)

2.  Given what NoE are doing with the DS as of late, I expect this will happen in the run up and after the release of Cafe.  For the DS, after the launch of it's successor we've seen Nintendo localising 3rd party games such as DQVI and Solatorobo (both due for European release soon).  I expect Nintendo to do the say to a slightly lesser degree with the Wii, maybe with the likes of The Last Story, Earth Seeker, etc.

3.  Nintendo are going to advertise the hell out of this in the run up to Christmas.  Whether Nintendo will up their level of standard normal advertising  during ordinary weeks is the main question.

4.  This is the least likely to occur IMO.  We almost certainly  won't see something with the sales potential of NSMBWii or DKCR, unless Nintendo announce Wii Music 2 or similar.  SS will sell probably about TP numbers, if not more.  DQX will also be a 4m plus seller.

5.  This is the wild card.  I've been surprised by every Nintendo conference at E3 as long as I can remember and with the exception of the frankely embarrasing 'performance' at E3 2008, they've all been very good surprises.  For the Wii, we can expect some little surprises, but they will be constantly overshadowed by the Cafe megatonne.

Save??

no need to save anything, wii already did its job

Pretty much what I think. After all, this IS an ideal scenario.

As for the last part...I can barely wait to see what Cafe has in store for us, I hope I'm not disappointed...

TBH, get some games from Japan, as well as Zelda, Mario and Pikmin out this year with some sort of surprise, and the Wii will have done its job for me.

I think most of that is likely to happen.  Kirby Star (whatever it's called) would be the most likely partner for Zelda:SS for the holidays although Wii Relax could be one as well. 

I'm not holding my breathe on the Japanese games.  I think NoE is much more likely to bring them over (as seen with Another Code R, Disaster and Xenoblade already) than NoA which has always seemed to be more focused on casual than more niche core games.  And these days JRPGs are becoming more niche, especially for a system that hasn't really had any to begin with.   However, I would be greatly pleased to be dead wrong on this one.

I know it seems likely NoA will release Xenoblade, but then again, they had planned to release Disaster but never did so I'm not counting it until I see it.   They might wait for European sales to decide.

Nintendo has pretty much always surprised us as of late at E3's with unexpected games so some more NSMB or DCKR type surprise would be most welcome and I'm looking forward to (hopefully) seeing Wii go out with a bang.

momentum, once lost, is really difficult to get back.  i honestly don't think there is anything nintendo can do for the wii that will do anything but slow the decline.

with project cafe announced third parties won't green light any new games most likely.

nintendo themselves are going to have to dedicate resources to project cafe so that it has a good launch not to mention try and gain some momentum for the 3ds.

you can't just come out and release games at the drop of the hat.  it takes at least a year, generally longer, to create one so short term game releases isn't really isn't an option.

if the price cut doesn't help, i don't think nintendo has any option left other than to try and kick-start the next gen as soon as possible.  at least with cafe they are likely to get a lot of third party support in the form of ps360 ports.  i'm not sure that is going to be a successful strategy because of the 100Mish existing ps360 owners but it has got to be at least a better situation then where they are now.

nintendo's greatest failure ... when they were making 1 billion dollar profits they should have invested that back into the platform.  farm some games out to 2nd party to guarantee a wide range of good software.

You are too optimistic.

THIS^

I don't think Nintendo wants to save Wii. Nintendo just wants to extend Wii's lifespan till Cafe launches next year. Look what is happening with DS and 3DS the DS is canabolizing sales that could have gone to 3DS. Nintendo typically allows their prior platform to die before or at the time of releasing new hardware.

Nintendo just wants to sell existing stock. I wouldn't be suprised if Nintendo actually ceased manufacturing next year and allowed Cafe to kill Wii off. I wonder is Wii doing worse then PS2 was at this point in its life (Too lazy to check).

In the end Nintendo isn't stupid, look at the last year of the GameCube. Nintendo fans got DK:JB and what else? LOZ:TP was the last hurrah, I wouldn't be suprised if Nintendo announces 2-3 more games to carry the system till fall 2012 and then its all over for Wii, Cafe will come and the generation will be at its end.

Also I don't think their is anything Nintendo could do that they aren't doing right now. Launch yet another Mario game (NSMBW2) I suspect Nintendo will want to launch a Mario title on Cafe they don't want to saturate the market with Mario titles. Launch a new StarFox, Pikmin etc...etc... its possible but Nintendo may be saving these IP for Cafe as well. Cut the Wii's price (Nintendo is already doing that) Advertise the MarioKart bundle , yah I guess Nintendo could do that but why bother its not going to shift many more units Wii has reached saturation levels!

In the end I just want Nintendo to support Wii up until Cafe comes, then I guess Nintendo should just let it die.

Probably, but still, you can hope, right? It hasn't been completely rejected yet, so you can hope...

DQX may not be at E3, but it most certainly needs to be announced this year, with a release date either in the Holidays or Q1 2012, to catch the biggest Wii audience possible, sorta like with DQIX and Pokemon Black...

kitler53 said:

nintendo's greatest failure ... when they were making 1 billion dollar profits they should have invested that back into the platform.  farm some games out to 2nd party to guarantee a wide range of good software.

Again, this is a very key and important point. Why not do this? Who knows, maybe they did. But they needed to do more, to maintain that momentum they had. They aren't doing terribly, not by a long way, but they aren't doing as well as they should be.