By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Nintendo Discussion - In retrospect, would it have been better off if Nintendo continued to support Wii?

Shadow1980 said:

The Wii was already in decline even when Nintendo was still heavily supporting it. It wasn't until 2011 until they started to draw down support for the system, obviously because they were focusing on developing games for the Wii U. Had they waited a year or two to release the Wii U and continued to heavily support the Wii in that time, they might have been able to boost the Wii's lifetime sales by a few million, but that's about it. The problem with the Wii was that it was reliant almost entirely on Nintendo's own first-party output, and a system simply cannot have strong legs solely on first-party games as the system's maker always quickly shift support to the system's successor.

The topic has much more to do with SW sales HW sales, that's where the money comes from. The last push Wii saw was late 2009, after that, there was not that much effort in the later releases, when it boils down to Nintendo's problem being bad software, not bad hardware. Yes, there were some decent to good releases after 09, but that's hardly a push, it's more like the games aside from Skyward Sword being only afterthoughts when Nintendo saw the late 09 games doing well on the market and Nintendo wanted them to have sequels or something like that. The bad late 2008 lost Nintendo a lot and Nintendo didn't give time for the people to regain their trust in Nintendo, once it could have been achieved, they jumped the next generation.



Ei Kiinasti.

Eikä Japanisti.

Vaan pannaan jalalla koreasti.

 

Nintendo games sell only on Nintendo system.

Around the Network

Wii HW sales had dried up by 2012 solely because software had virtually ceased. Wii was the best selling console of 2010, the end of which would see its last major first party title (DKC Returns) until Zelda:SS eleven months later, after which no big first party titles came out at all. Had there been no Wii U and the Wii's schedule throughout 2011-2014 had been peppered with titles like NSMBW2, Pikmin 3, Nintendoland (Wiimote based), Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon (Wii Edition), another Mario Kart, Super Mario 3D World, Splatoon (Wiimote based) etc., then two better things would have happened for Nintendo: those titles would have sold a lot more, and the decline of Wii hardware sales would have been slowed so considerably that they would surely have sold a lot more Wiis in those years than they managed to sell Wii Us. Nintendo kissed goodbye to a lot of profit by ditching the massive install base the Wii had and manufacturing an expensive and ultimately unpopular (commercially) successor.



Jranation said:
Maybe Nintendo should have released the Wii U much earlier? Like when the name "Wii" was still fresh in everyone's minds and maybe when the Smartphone market haven't exploaded?

The Wii HD with an improved Wii Remote in 2011, like Pachter said. In the end, he was not that off.



Proud to be the first cool Nintendo fan ever

Number ONE Zelda fan in the Universe

DKCTF didn't move consoles

Prediction: No Zelda HD for Wii U, quietly moved to the succesor

Predictions for Nintendo NX and Mobile


No, they need to improve there hardware and learn from their faults



NintenDomination [May 2015 - July 2017]
 

  - Official  VGChartz Tutorial Thread - 

NintenDomination [2015/05/19 - 2017/07/02]
 

          

 

 

Here lies the hidden threads. 

 | |

Nintendo Metascore | Official NintenDomination | VGC Tutorial Thread

| Best and Worst of Miiverse | Manga Discussion Thead |
[3DS] Winter Playtimes [Wii U]

It's not that the Wii needed more time on the market before a successor arrived, but it absolutely should have been supported better in its twilight years.

In 2011, the Wii's fifth year on the market, after the motion control craze had died down, after the "fad" had passed, the Wii still shipped 9.84m units that year. This was Nintendo's biggest selling console ever. It still lacked a Star Fox, it still lacked an F-Zero, and in my opinion, NSMBU should have been a Wii game titled "New Super Mario World" (because that's essentially what it was) with a new bundle and a price drop.

You don't take that kind of install base for granted. If Nintendo had just showed the Wii more respect toward the end of its life, it probably would have outsold the PS1 in the end. Alas, we'll never know.



Around the Network

People forget Kinect + XBox 360 was overtaking the Wii month to month by 2011. Why buy a SD console for motion games, when you can get the same type of experience + all the HD third party games.

Their mistake was making a successor to the Wii at all though, they should've just made an HD Wii model with a moderately updated chipset and instead of making a Wii U, they should've just made a New Nintendo system for 2012 with a top of the line chipset.



they should have released the Wii U a year earlier but with adjusting the software/games a year or two earlier in development too.

but we know what happened, Wii U is a good console, if it was released a year or two before its original release date, the PS360 games would have been good in Wii U. and NX would be just maybe a year late against PS4/X1.

:D



archbrix said:
...

You don't take that kind of install base for granted. If Nintendo had just showed the Wii more respect toward the end of its life, it probably would have outsold the PS1 in the end. Alas, we'll never know.

I don't think Nintendo cared to beat PS1 numbers, they only wanted to hit the 100M mark.  Nintendo could've had more aggressive price cuts throughout it's life if all they cared about was bigger numbers.

------

 With slowing sales PS1 also had to cut its price to clearence-like pricing (MSRP $49/£49) to get it's last ~13 Million sold.  

That's a cut of 1/6 of the PS1 launch price of $299.

Without it's official $49/£49 price points the PS1 likely would not have crossed the 100M mark before the end.

------

Nintendo also actually kept the Wii above the $199 USD price point for a longer period than Sony kept the PS2 above $199.

thus resulted,

Sony sold around 11 Million PS2s in the NA region before it dropped to $199, it ended up selling 50 Million plus there.  

So close to 80% of PS2 sold in that region were sold for $199 or less.

to compare,

Nintendo sold ~26 Million Wii in the America region before it dropped to $199, it ended up selling 48 Million plus there.  

So less than 50% of Wii sold in that region were sold for $199 or less.



foxtail said:
archbrix said:
...

You don't take that kind of install base for granted. If Nintendo had just showed the Wii more respect toward the end of its life, it probably would have outsold the PS1 in the end. Alas, we'll never know.

I don't think Nintendo cared to beat PS1 numbers, they only wanted to hit the 100M mark.  Nintendo could've had more aggressive price cuts throughout it's life if all they cared about was bigger numbers.

------

 With slowing sales PS1 also had to cut its price to clearence-like pricing (MSRP $49/£49) to get it's last ~13 Million sold.  

That's a cut of 1/6 of the PS1 launch price of $299.

Without it's official $49/£49 price points the PS1 likely would not have crossed the 100M mark before the end.

------

Nintendo also actually kept the Wii above the $199 USD price point for a longer period than Sony kept the PS2 above $199.

thus resulted,

Sony sold around 11 Million PS2s in the NA region before it dropped to $199, it ended up selling 50 Million plus there.  

So close to 80% of PS2 sold in that region were sold for $199 or less.

to compare,

Nintendo sold ~26 Million Wii in the America region before it dropped to $199, it ended up selling 48 Million plus there.  

So less than 50% of Wii sold in that region were sold for $199 or less.

I'm not saying that it was Nintendo's primary goal to out-ship the Playstation, only that it would have likely resulted in doing so had they supported the Wii better in its final years.

The sad thing is that if the WiiU had opened with a tremendous first year of Nintendo software then we could at least say there was some positive payoff for it, but we all know how that went.



archbrix said:

I'm not saying that it was Nintendo's primary goal to out-ship the Playstation, only that it would have likely resulted in doing so had they supported the Wii better in its final years.

The sad thing is that if the WiiU had opened with a tremendous first year of Nintendo software then we could at least say there was some positive payoff for it, but we all know how that went.

The chartz numbers for PS1 are wrong anyways though, the Production Shipments for PS1 ended at 102.49M according to last numbers released by Sony. - http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdataps_e.html">http://web.archive.org/web/20110524023857/www.scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdataps_e.html

Sony previously reported 102.54M as the final PS1 number in it's graph chart but has since adjusted FY97 from 19.37M to 19.32M.

4.3 + 9.2 + 19.32 + 21.6 + 18.5 + 9.31 + 7.4 + 6.78 + 3.31 + 2.77 = 102.49M

The Wii is currently at 101.63M and with the PS1 at 102.49M there's only a 0.86M difference between the Wii and PS1.

 

For the WiiU and all it's many mistakes.. let's just hope that Nintendo learned a lot.