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DarthVolod on 25 January 2012
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Legend11 said:
DarthVolod said:

These Xbox 360 vs. PS3 arguments over exclusives leave me wondering about the future when Nintendo will, presumably, enter the HD market on equal footing with Microsoft and Sony with the WiiU. This gen has seen Nintendo largely written off from the exclusive debates because motion controls and non-HD graphics put their games into a different category in the eyes of core gamers.

Equal footing?  So you're saying that Nintendo's online offering when the WiiU launches will rival Xbox Live?  That the WiiU will have an online community day one (or even year one) of tens of millions of core gamers that rivals what Microsoft and Sony have managed to develop over the past 5-10 years at a cost of billions of dollar?  So are we to expect the next Call of Duty game to sell 10 million+ on WiiU?

Seriously I keep seeing people saying how much of a threat WiiU will be but I don't think they understand just how hard it is to take an audience when another company has them.  I mean look at Microsoft and their efforts to gain the casual audience.  Even after a half a billion dollars in advertising and a continuous stream of big games with the biggest entertainment IPs around they still struggle to get even 10-20% sales in a casual title like Just Dance 2.

Unless Microsoft and Sony seriously stumble (which I don't think they will) they will have an incredible uphill struggle to win over an audience that they have pretty much ignored for an entire console generation (arguably two console generations).


You make a good point about building an audience over time. I guess we can't expect gamers to jump ship and switch to WIIU and pretend that their Xbox Live and PSN accounts which they have invested in don't exist.

I still have faith that Nintendo will win back some of the core gamers. People still love their Marios and Zeldas as the numbers continue to show. As you said, casuals still love Nintendo. If they throw everything they have into core audiences via things like third party titles (which they have never been good at) maybe they can gain some ground this gen and win back a sizable portion of the audience in another gen or two. 

If this generation taught us nothing else, it is that with each passing gen anything can happen. Sales king Sony went from the undisputed winner of the last two gens in sales to dead last with a real struggle to remain viable. Nintendo went from last place to a very secure number one spot with a gimmick system that everyone scoffed at (myself included) prior to its launch.

Maybe online has change things though and people will stick with their brands cross generation in order to access all of the content/DLC/ extras and perks that online accounts now offer which is a very new thing for this gen.