Wii never maxed out?

[gumby_trucker]

happydolphin said:

This is all such wishful thinking. The HD twins surpassed the Wii in marketshare from the get-go. The businesses had their business models shaped around the promise of the PS3, not the GC's successor. The Wii was a HUGE business risk and 3rd parties were not ready to invest on the platform. Fast-forward 2-3 years when the Wii proved itself, here is what you have:

1) Their legwork is already done on the HD twins, and their market is established.

2) The Wii market is now shaped to look for non-gamer and casual experiences, NOT the type of consumer that is looking for cutting edge necessarily.

I mean, I know there are people that like both approachable games and high-end graphics such as Smash Bros and Mario Galaxy. But that was not a very big market this gen. Hopefully gen8 Nintendo will be able to lead the pack as 3rd parties are more ready to embrace them as a manufacturer, but to expect people to max out the Wii is tremendously counter-market! Yes, there were exceptions as there should naturally have been (Capcom, Monolith, which is 1st party, Nintendo), but that was the nature of this gen and the product of Nintendo's low-end disruption strategy and poor 3rd party relations.

 

Nothing, absolutely NOTHING to cry over. BLAME NINTENDO DAMNIT. And If you're gonna ask "Youman, bro?", the answer is YES I AM. I am damn ennerved by the sheer denial on this forum, plain and simple. Nintendo made a mistake, call it! Don't start asking for the unexpectable.

 

I expect Nintendo to regain its place in the market, but that is something possible, something I believe that if they make their wrongs right again, they will succeed. To blame 3rd parties is to miss where the true problem lies, and it was in Nintendo's horrible 3rd party past. They needed a gen to fix that, now it's time for the future. Call in the WiiU.

You know what? If Nintendo needed to scrap high-end this gen so as to become #1 on a manufacturer basis and kick ass gen 8, then bring it on.

I don't think we are in disagreement here. I definitely agree that Nintendo could have done much more to avoid this situation, if not at the hardware planning stage then at the very least with more support of developers like Factor 5, who had the knowledge and will to make good looking games on Wii.

Personally if I had to change one thing, it would have been to add motion plus to the console from day one, assuming that was technically possible. People were obviously willing to pay a bit more for a Wii during its first 2 years on the market, and having accurate motion recognition right out of the box would have made the device seem less like a "fad" that can be dismissed until it's no longer possible to ignore it.

But let me ask you this: if factor 5 can pump out a game like Rougue Squadron in a single year with such a small team, doesn't that mean that perhaps it's not the most insanely difficult thing to do? It seems to be far more difficult to maximize the performance of PS3 games, which Eggebrecht learned the hard way, along with others like Free Radical.
And it didn't take 3 years to realize the Wii would be a success, the writing was on the wall by the end of year one, even if Nintendo themselves were too blind to see it and run with it full speed. The fact that they didn't fully capitalize on their own success could have been seen as a blessing if you are a clever CEO of a 3rd party developer.

It's true that even a clever CEO might have trouble convincing the board of directors or shareholders to invest heavily in Nintendo, considering they have previously been either a hostile territory or an unknown. Nobody is arguing against that. This thread is more about lamenting over missed oportunities than pointing fingers at any particular culprit. But I do agree 100% Nintendo are just as responsible as anybody else. Personally I think it has to do with the man in charge of the company being too inexperienced to recognize what he had on his hands at an early stage.