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Gamerace on 23 March 2013
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JGarret said:
Gamerace said:
This is problematic for Nintendo.

One) retailers will not be reordering - or reordering in very small quanities or demanding price cuts to reorder. It's also likely to be relocated to back corners and smaller shelf space.

Two) It's creating a lower valuation in the minds of the public for the system. Once the big games do come, they'll be less willing to spend the original price knowing it's been cheaper for weeks/months? It also gives the impression that WiiU is a flop and who wants to buy a failing system?

If Lego City/Monster Hunter Ultimate/NFS don't lift sales, at least slightly for more than a week or two then I don't think Nintendo will have the luxury of waiting for big games. They'll be forced to spend on massive advertising or painful price cuts (which won't help either).

Another option - and this is radical - is to make the gamepad optional (back catalogue games can be patched for wiimote/nunchuk support and the OS redesigned to work without - if not already an option) thereby allowing them to drop almost $100 off the price and sell it as an HD Wii.

That´s indeed radical.The Gamepad, with its asymetric gameplay, is the entire design philosophy behind the system.Even if the tablet like controller is one of the 'culprits', it´s still the main thing differentiating the system from its competitors.

Radical indeed and aside from the huge price cut and the removal of a device that might be putting off more people than it's attracting I don't know if even doing that alone would boost sales significantly.   Perhaps with the right games it could.

If there's no percieved (and perception is everything in sales) value in the touch screen on the gamepad, that is, if it doesn't clearly and significantly show why it improves the gameplay experience (which so far it's failed to do) then it is NOT differerentiating the WiiU from the other next gen systems.  At least, not in any positive way.  

Being half the price (of PS4/720), with great Nintendo games and a true return to the Wii series (not the half-hearted lame affairs like Wii Fit Plus, Wii Music, and Wii Motion plus) could restore the shine to WiiU.     Wii Fit U from what we've seen of it, looks like another marginal upgrade of Wii Fit and I expect trepid sales as a result (Casuals already own Wii Fit, they won't purchase it again.)    They also need to follow Apple's lead with downloadable games.  Let them be cheap or free(dium). Let people score/review them - so casuals can easily discern gold from garbage - then make it as accessible to developers as possible.  Perhaps this is already done.  Don't have 3DS/WiiU myself.  But one of Wii's problems was the perception of 'no games'.  If casuals had known about Wiiware/VC (most didn't in my experience), saw ratings for them and could get them cheap/free, it would have kept them engaged with Wii until the next big game came out.