Nintendo's gamer strategy and why they could take it all this next gen

[MaxwellGT2000]

Michael-5 said:

MaxwellGT2000 said:

Michael-5 said:

The last time Nintendo released a home console with strong third party support, it leaded in sales (NES/SNES). If the Wii U manages to get 3rd party developers to make PS360 games for the Wii U, and maybe even use the Wii U as a base platform for the next gen (similar to how developers used PS2 as a base platform last gen), then not only will Wii U be the cheapest system, which gets all the third party support, but it will also be the first on the market.

If Nintendo plays their cards right, they will have a huge lead this gen. However I've read that the PS4 and NextBox might not be that much of a graphical jumo next gen, and it's likely that the NextBox will get strong sales in the USA being an American brand, and PS4 will likely hold a lot of loyal customers.

So I'm only counting on the Wii U to dominate in Japan. I'm hoping this gets a good majority of JRPG's on the Wii U and we get to live in another SNES era of RPG bliss. We already have Dragon Quest X and Mass Effect 3 coming to the Wii U, and there are rumors that FFXIII Versus has become FFXV, which is now a PS3/Wii U title. It would be nice to see another core Final Fantasy on a Nintendo console.

Great response and yes I feel the same way on all accounts.  Nintendo is already dominating Japan, which makes Wii U a good base for Japanese home console games.  Those have huge followings even in the west, so even if a base stays loyal to Sony or Microsoft, that brings up the point of Japanese developer fans who might get a Wii U just for those games.  And no I don't think that Sony and Microsoft will die off, they have their gamer public image going strong, on that note Nintendo has to do the winning over and not those guys, it's true they have a lot of barriers to overcome, but if they can surmount it they could get higher console numbers this gen and only marginally impact Sony and MS console sales next gen (10m - 20m off what the PS3 and 360 got this gen is what I'd say, much like SNES to N64 and then N64 to GC, a 30m and 10m drop respectfully cause Sony and then Microsoft successfully pulled off this strategy)

I don't know if PS4 sales and NExtBox sales will be smaller then PS3 and 360 sales respectively. The gaming industry is growing. If you combine Wii/PS3/360 sales this gen you're going to be looking at over 250 million consoles sold. Last gen it was under 200 million, and the gen before that was about 150 million. However if PS4/NextBox sales don't grow over PS360 sales, and Wii U sales grow (stronger software support means prolonged hardware sales, just like the PS2) then Nintendo will have a larger share and do better.

Also how many Japanese developer fans are there outside of Japan? Japanese console games never sell well, Lost Odyssey and XenoBlade didn't even break 1 million despite being two of the best RPG's this gen, but games like Mass Effect, FallOut and Elder Scrolls sell in excess of 3 million on the 360 alone. Also games like Vanquish, Bayonetta, and Catherine just don't do that well either.

However if Wii U can get a good 3rd party support backing, and somehow convince CoD fans to switch over...then this could steal the non loyal fans of MS and Sony, just like PS1 did to SNES.

Well I have a theory behind that growth, part of it is the mainsteam demographic, the other part is a combination of owners who own multiple consoles because of various reasons, failures being a big issue, other being people who own PS3/Wii or 360/Wii cause it rounds out the game library, if the Wii U fulfills the needs of both demographics it cuts out the need for a second console for example, so we might see console sales go down, but it's not actually reflecting the number of gamers out there.

On the other hand bringing more mainstream casual gamers into the core fold means they could invest in other consoles because they want to get more into the hobby.  So I see the industry maybe even growing but I don't see console hardware going up per se, though I respect the view that it really could.