Nintendo well positioned for 2013

[Player2]

Veknoid_Outcast said:

Legend11 said:

I agree with him and I think both the WiiU and 3DS have major problems in 2013 and beyond.

For starters the 1 year launch advantage (possibly even less depending on when the other consoles launch) is the WiiU's best chance of attracting core 360 and PS3 gamers. So for the first 2 months of that year we have hardware shortages in addition to multiplatform games that either look the same or slightly better or worse than the competition. That's not even close to being enough to have gamers drop $400 so that they can play Black Ops II on WiiU instead of 360.

Now we look at the remaining months and see that there are big multiplatform core games like Grand Theft Auto 5, Bioshock Infinite, Crysis 3, Dead Space 3, Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Solid:Revengeance, DmC: Devil May Cry, South Park: The Stick of Truth, Dead Island Riptide, etc that don't have a WIIU version or very likely won't have one at launch. That's not even including the exclusives like Gears of War Judgment, God of War, and Ascension, The Last of Us.

It's one of the most stacked first six months of the year ever for the 360 and PS3 and against it Nintendo will have as exclusives Pikmin 3 (which will obviously attract the Nintendo core but it remains to be seen if 360 and PS3 core gamers are screaming for it) and Rayman Legends, a series that hasn't been massive at all on 360 and PS3. So I can't see how anyone thinks that WiiU is in any way well positioned to attract millions of core gamers away from those consoles.

As for the 3DS it's kicking ass in Japan and nobody can deny that but for the rest of the World it's not likely going to be able to keep up the pace that was set by the DS much longer. Sure it has games like Monster Hunter 4 coming out next year but those games are unlikely to help it outside of Japan against growing threats like Apple.

I think Nintendo blundered by not taking even more risks and making significantly more powerful hardware and money hatting bigger AAA exclusives from third parties but I understand since it could backfire and bring Nintendo to its knees.

I wouldn't put too much stock in the ports and multiplatform titles that launched with Wii U, or the games that were already in development for different consoles when Wii U launched. Wii U will be OK in 2012-2013 with its tremendous first-party software, some third party exclusives, and enough general third party support to stay afloat. What really matters is 2014-2016.

I really think Nintendo upgraded its console to protect it against the future, not to steal consumers from Microsoft and Playstation. What I mean is that the Wii U is designed to win over old and new consumers, and KEEP them. The Wii was a revolution but it faded in the home stretch. Many Wii owners, I'm sure, tried out new video game platforms after the Wii began to decline. All serious video game enthusiasts, if they have the money and time, will by a Wii U so they can play its exclusives. The biggest and most important audience are those who are only marginally interested in video games -- the people who are now buying 360s and PS3s. If the Wii U is the cheapest option during the eighth generation, and it gets enough of the sexy third party games, it can definitely win over consumers and keep them happy until the ninth generation.

Like I said before, the key question is how powerful will the next generation systems be, and what choices will Rockstar, Bethesda, and others make. If the 720 and PS4 have incredible horsepower and third parties decide to develop specifically for those platforms, Wii U might be left behind. But if they have incredible horsepower they will be incredibly expensive (unless sold for a huge loss) and consumers might balk.

However, if they are close in horsepower to Wii U (which I suspect they will be), then there is no reason Wii U cannot earn those high-profile third party titles. Unless the developers don't think their games would do well on Wii U, which might be true of some games. But I'd be shocked if games like Grand Theft Auto and The Elder Scrolls sold poorly on any system.

It's not that third party games wouldn't do well on Wii U, it's that they would do worse than on PS4/X720 in a console where their games will have to face the strong indirect competition of its first party games and therefore sell less.

So no good third party support for Wii U unless porting is cheap, fast and easy, and it have sold enough (on its own, of course) to make up for the hypothetical losses caused by a Nintendo platform having a higher marketshare due to getting third party support. Even then some devs will prefer to take economical risks than put their games on a Nintendo platform.