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HappySqurriel on 18 September 2012
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Gamerace said:
HappySqurriel said:


You have a very different memory that I do ...

Many people agreed with John Lucas in a large part because they saw the excitement that the Wii was causing. The people who agreed with John Lucas are disagreeing with you now, and the people who disagreed with John Lucas are in agreement with you now; some of this can be attributed to bind fanboys but there is more to it.

No one agreed with him at first except myself and Kirby007 (I think).  Once sales starting coming in and holding, people slowly began to come around.  When JL said Wii Fit would be massive few argued (except myself, his initial sales numbers were stupid high).

You're completely ignoring on of the key design choices behind the Wii and Wiimote ...

For casual gamers Nintendo wanted to design the Wiimote so that it would look and function in a similar fashion to something they were comfortable with; a television remote control. With the Wii U the controller has been designed to be similar to something people are already comfortable with (a tablet/touch-screen) so why is this a bad thing?

Because no one had a Wiimote. It was new and amazing.  Everyone has a touch screen device - and expectations of those devices which WiiU fail to meet.  Plus there were no damn dual analog controls with 16 buttons on a wiimote.  It's night and day different.

Beyond this, one of the key drivers for success of the Wii is something that used to be fairly common across all gaming devices but has now become the exlusive domain of Nintendo systems; local multiplayer and social gaming. Google, Apple, Microsoft and Sony still completely ignore this massive market and Nintendo continues to innovate in it.

MS sees this market.  Rumours suggest the next kinect will allow 4 player simulanteous.  Beyond that you might be correct but again, the complexity of the gamepad will hinder sales to non-gaming families.  I don't even want to use the gamepad. I'm sure my parents definitely won't even consider it.

You may not see any value in it but local multiplayer sells systems ...

Core Nintendo fans will buy their Wii U bundle at launch and bring it with them to dozens of parties over the holiday season. Their families and friends will paly Nintendoland and have a ton of fun and in the new year they will be looking to buy a system themselves. When they, or members of their family, have friends over they will pick up the Wii U to play games with it and their friends will want it.

They may want it, as long as someone else uses the gamepad controller.   If they have kids to play with, okay.  If not, then they'll let it pass as the gamepad with all it's sticks and buttons will scream 'I'm not for you old man/woman'.   I could see some grandparents getting it for when little Timothy is over but the appeal is far less than the Wii's for non-gamers.

We've seen the same basic pattern several times this generation for both the HD consoles and the Wii and yet everyone remains blind to it. With the HD consoles games like Rockband sold millions of systems because people actually buy systems after they have had positive experiences in real life with them.

I agree but again, I see the gamepad as the stumbling block.  They'd have done 100% better with an revised and improved Wiimote (possibly with touchscreen on it) than going backwards to dual analog.

In my opinion the only mistake Nintendo has made is they didn't allow 6 Wiimotes to be connected to the Wii U.




I would say that you're making the assumption that "casual" gamers are retards ...

Many of these gamers had no problem dealing with a DS, and the only thing that makes the Wii U controller more intimidating than a DS is a couple of analogue nubs which are no different than the one that is on the 3DS (which doesn't seem to be too intimidating to be selling amazingly well).

 

I'm of a completely different opinion on the nature of casual gamers than the vast majority of people, and that is because I actually play games with them and listen to them. I don't believe that there really is a hardware barrier, and I believe they have existed in very large numbers for quite some time, and what changed in the last generation was they were completely abandoned by two of the manufacturers. I remember playing You Don't Know Jack on the Playstation (and multiple games on the N64) with people who would never have been considered gamers in the mid 1990s, and they seemed to have no problem dealing with a controller, but for years after the release of the XBox 360 and PS3 there were no games designed for these gamers.

Gamers like this have existed since Pong they have just been ignored until recently. They won't just disappear, they won't just play smartphone games, and they will buy into the next generation; and currently there is only 1 company that has demonstrated any interest in producing a platform for them. Microsoft and Sony may try to capture this market but if their previous efforts are any indication they see these gamers in the sam negative fashion most people on this site do; and their lack of respect will ultimately cause them to struggle.