When you said that, I immediately thought of Galaki's whole "second first christmas" thread.

So what was the MAIN thing about the DS? If casuals won't buy a console JUST for Mario, how did the DS versions of New Super Mario Bros, Mario Kart, etc sell so well compared to previous iterations -- even compared to Wii iterations? What games were THEY piggybacking off of?

Think really hard on that, and give me whatever bogus answer you come up with. Then tell me what games are responsible for the 3DS's success. And explain again how "casuals" won't buy a console for Mario, or convince me that handhelds and home consoles are so dramatically different that these situations are entirely inapplicable to one another.

Because the handheld market is a completely different market from the home console market. As is pretty obvious by the fact that the Game Boy/GBA outsold the N64 and GameCube by several times and even the DS outsold the Wii rather easily. Nintendo always tends to have an easier time with the handheld market ever since the SNES cycle ended.

Handhelds tend to skew more towards the kids audience, and Nintendo is one of the few publishers in the world that actually really tries with their handheld software. Arguably they're the only non-iOS/Android publisher that takes handheld gaming as seriously as console gaming. So they stand out a lot more in that market.

Sony tried to market the whole "handheld for teenagers and 20-somethings" concept with the PSP and ultimately it ran out of gas because older teenagers and adults don't want to carry around a gaming portable. And now that there are smartphones and tablets, it's wiped out whatever there was of the PSP audience pretty much entirely.

If people were willing to buy a console for Mario, there's no reason to wait. The Wii U already has NSMBU, the sequel to the 27 million selling NSMB Wii, which is the second best selling Mario platformer ever and probably the best quality NSMB that Nintendo has released to date.

The casual audience doesn't go crazy about Mario alone. They're not going to buy a completely seperate $200-$300 console just to play the 5 or 6 really big Nintendo franchises. Wii Sports and motion gaming is what drove people crazy in 2006. I had like 10 casual friends buy a Wii back then, some of them who had never bought a game console before or hadn't had one in ages and they were driving to like 8-9 stores and waiting in line in the freezing cold to get one.

Today, none of them have even uttered a peep about the Wii U and when I try to explain the concept to them it just illicts a polite "oh that's neat" and on to the next thing. No real interest whatsoever.

People need to understand motion gaming and Wii Sports was not just "one feature" about the Wii.

It is a combo of things. From the fact that they built up this tremendous image in the regular wii which is still available and rather cheap. It is because the wii u don't really have its own identity or one that is bringing in the original wii owners and making them want to up grade. It could also be the fact that many wii owners were new to gaming and now are looking to more powerful systems like the ps4 and xbox one. 

I can't believe how Nintendo fans are completely friggin obstinate in being dellusionned EVEN when the facts are here.

NO, NO and NO the Wii U will not be a commercial success like the Wii, the PS360 or PSBone : it will fail.

And NO, NO and NO, it has nothing to do with games, there will surely be a few good games but they WON'T change anything because the problems comes from somethig you can't change : the console, the concept, the hardware ITSELF.

WHAT don't you fucfriggining get? Another 6 months of lame excuses for the Wii U not selling because "this" and "that" ?

Yeah, you gon get banned. When did sales change for the PS3? Right, when it got games.

Though, the PS3 is in no way a commercial success.

1. No. The Wii is not "still selling" unline the PS3 and X360, the sales are down 20,000 a week because nobody is interested in it anymore. The problem is that, they aren't interested by the Wii U either. If anything, the Wii won this generation by numbers, and in 2006 it brought the best model and innovation, but because of the weak hardware it quickly became obsolete and the numerous cheap/bad games releases, it ended up loosing image

2. Maybe. I believe that the maturation of the casual public over 6 years and the fact that people are aiming toward more "spectacular" entertainment (when there's recession, people turn to fictions and drugs...), make it so that people want to have a big screen with a powerful console or PC.

"Though, the PS3 is in no way a commercial success"

Troll alert

~

Edit : User has been moderated by TruckOSaurus for this post

As someone who's followed the game industry the PS3 is the one rare "doomed" console that was able to un-doom itself as it were. And I remember even back in the mid-90s when rabid Sega fans were swear to me the Saturn was going to bounce back on the strength of a 3-free-game holiday giveaway with the system and NiGHTs and what not, lol.

The PS3 is different though because it had pretty much 100% third party support. Developers couldn't make games exclusive to the XBox 360, because they already had commited to PS3 versions, so at worst, PS3 lost some "exclusives" like FFXIII, but it still got all those games in the end.

The Saturn, Dreamcast, GameCube, and Wii U would be the other "just wait for game X/Y/Z/price cut/ads/etc.!!!!!!" consoles, but the difference is they don't have the luxury of pretty much unanimous support from the third party community. That's what saved Sony's bacon with the PS3, all they had to do was slide the price down to a more reasonable level.

Last I heard, commercial success = making lots of money. The PS3 erased all the PS1 and PS2 profits, and has only started making money recently.

@Soundwave: The Saturn had much more problems than just games. It fought a much more powerful company, was more expensive than the PS1, was disliked by some retailers, etc etc etc. I have one, though. The Japanese support it got is nothing short of amazing - many exclusives from the only territory where it treated correctly (and sold in close numbers to the PS1 for a long time).

Dreamcast had a massive PS2 looming over it. Along with a continuation of retalier dislike after SEGA simply killed the Saturn.

Devs expected the PS3 to dominate, and didn't drop projects they started. Luckily, by the time mid-generation development started or was starting, the PS3 was pulling itself out.

The Gamecube had decent 3rd party support. Frankly, the best since the SNES. It didn't sell much, but was easy to develop for. Nintendo however, is not the only one to blame for lack of 3rd party support for the Wii U. Many companies simply don't want to support it. Nintendo is bringing the games that need to carry the Wii U this winter, and it's Nintendo's job to carry it far enough for there to be a significant userbase that can't be ignored by third parties. The console is powerful enough for downports.