| RolStoppable said: The problem is that the way Nintendo talks now is very different from five years ago. The Wii was about tearing down (psychological) barriers and now the Wii U comes with a monster controller. Nintendo also uses industry words like "hardcore" and "casual" which are utter nonsense. But most importantly, there's no push to grow gaming beyond the known boundaries anymore. The 3DS had two E3s already, but nothing new was announced at all. The Wii U is explicitly aimed at the "hardcore gamer" demographic and on the side emulating old ideas that fell flat with the Gamecube/GBA connectivity. Chase Mii is more or less just a simple variation of Pacman Vs. Also frightning is Nintendo's disinterest to continue hit games of the Wii and DS. No new Super Mario Bros. announced yet and it's probable that a sequel to the Wii Sports series won't get the necessary attention. If the 3DS is any indication, then Nintendo is going right back to where they were before the Wii with their software and that was the Gamecube. Heck, Luigi's Mansion 2 was announced just a few weeks ago. What makes it worse is that unlike the GC/GBA days, now both the home console and the handheld will be full of Gamecube-esque games and we know how they sell. Nintendo is carelessly throwing all the gains they made with the Wii and DS out of the window by going this direction. Neither the 3DS nor the Wii U are about expanding the existing gaming population, rather they are taking the exact opposite path. Nintendo talks about 3D, HD, hardcore gaming, third parties while forgetting about everything that made them successful in the first place. As a result, the upcoming generation will be one of massive decline for Nintendo. |
Umm I have to agree and disagree. A) yes Nintendo is neglecting the casual market and not reaching out to non-gamers. However your statement that developers or publishers shouldn't differentiate hardcore and casual is lunacy. Your very post proves that the casual and hardcore markets are totally different demographics and that Nintendo should target both individually.
Rol I'm pretty dissapointed in the second paragraph. I hope your joking, but this is the launch year of 3DS and the WiiU has no announced games other then SmashBros. Yet your expecting Nintendo to have announced a New Super Mario Bros and WiiSports. Miyamoto already commented last year about making another 2D Mario game so its likely coming, just not officially confirmed. Then WiiSports well since their was a WiiSports demo shown at Nintendo's E3 conferance I'd suspect that a WiiSports related title will most definatly launch on WiiU.
As for your knock on GameCube, Nintendo made several great games for GameCube. The quality of the games did not go up from GameCube to Wii. If anything I'd say game quality went down. For gamers Nintendo returning to GameCube style games (Hardcore and Innovative) is great and if Nintendo gives casuals some games then the 3DS and WiiU should be the best systems to date. Also Luigi's Mansion 2 was a given we all knew it was coming I mean Nintendo said their first experiments with 3D were on Luigi's Mansion for GameCube, it only makes sense for them to produce the product they wanted to produce now. I don't know how as a gamer you could be against the return of Pikmin and Luigi's Mansion or other GameCube era properties, they were some of the best games of last gen.
Again your talking about the casual demographic. I agree Nintendo by not releasing casual games and launching at a cheaper price tag are throwing alot of their gains away. Nintendo is forgetting that the majority of the buyers for Wii and DS were not regular gamers and that Nintendo needs to do something big to get those gamers to upgrade. I think Nintendo's names 3DS and WiiU will not help in the slightest as casuals will not see the need to upgrade. I already know casuals who thought 3DS was a 3D DS and didn't care to buy one because they thought that DS could do everything 3DS could. Nintendo isn't marketing their products right with WiiU how many casuals are going to think its just another Wii and not want to upgrade? Also the advertising where is the advertising I don't see 3DS ads much on TV or in magazines like I saw with DS. Heck I remember seeing ads in Men's health magazines and Maxim and other magazines. I remember the ads all over the internet and tv. But with 3DS I see very little, Nintendo isn't doing enough to get its product noticed.
Now as for the topic. Your wrong DS broke sales records not far out of the gate. Nintendogs and Mario64 both sold over a million shortly after launch. The hardware sold amazingly well. 3DS on the other hand has yet to have a game reach one million in sales, its hardware is sometimes at the very bottom of the charts. Nintendo is about to release some games but can the games really pick the 3DS up to where DS was shortly after its launch? The DS flew off shelves the first year or so of its release. I remember picking mine up for pre-order and a friend desperatly trying to find one in stock for himself because he didn't pre-order. Nintendo had huge success with the DS compared to 3DS.
3DS is currently bombing it is being beaten some weeks by the PSP. No the DS didn't do nearly as bad as 3DS at launch. The lack of marketing lack of fresh new IP targetting casuals or many other titles targetting casuals. The high price point, Nintendo set 3DS up to fail. If the new games coming this year don't boost 3DS sales back to DS levels then I think Nintendo will need to launch a massive ad campaign and cut the price of 3DS by 50$ to 199.99$. Then maybe 3DS will have a fighting chance.
With WiiU will Nintendo run into the same problem as 3DS? Possibly and if they do then they will need to fix the problems ASAP. Nintendo used to do such a great job in marketing and releasing software for casuals and hardcore. They are dropping the ball big time by neglecting the casuals and not marketing their products enough. I mean Reggie announced Nintendo was out sourcing marketing big mistake!
-JC7
"In God We Trust - In Games We Play " - Joel Reimer
