The Wii U will be in 3rd place next gen

[Mr Khan]

Kresnik said:

Hibern81 said:

     I think everyone is missing something very important here, and that is everyone owns a Nintendo to play first party exclusives.  If Nintendo does everything right with the Wii U (which so far it sounds like they are) and third party titles become a constant fixture on the system, Nintendo has pretty much cut out the middle men (Sony and Microsoft).  There are just not enough first party games on the other systems that I would consider must owns to constitute buying a second system in the next generation.  I see Nintendo running away with the next gneration, or at worst coming in a strong second.

That strategy didn't really work out for the gamecube though, did it? (Although the gamecube had a whole heap of problems of its own).

Also, I'm not sure how true that second part is either.  Depends who you are I guess.  For example, I've grown slightly tired of Nintendo first-party franchises because they don't change very much between installments (best example of this: Animal Crossing).  They'll show flashes of brilliance here and there (Metroid Prime, Super Mario Galaxy) and that's great, but it's not enough for me to invest in a console.

To clarify - I'm not saying that Nintendo first-party franchises aren't strong - of course they are, they're the best in the business.  But more and more people, especially among people I know (although this is just colloqial), have no interest in playing slightly tweaked versions of 20 year old formulas.

By comparison, I think especially Sony - but to some degree Microsoft - have been better at providing new IP's with first-party franchises, and that's what I buy into a lot more.  Sony is pretty self-explanatory, but Microsoft too did very well at the start of this generation with providing console exclusives.  I guess we'll have to see what the next gen holds.

If anything Nintendo needs to revert to older formulas of their games if they want their games to sell more consoles. NSMBWii is almost case in point here, while Sony struggles to build real system-sellers, even as they have a strong and diverse base of software.