| UncleScrooge said: To some degree yes but there's only so much these games can do. Think of a gaming console as a musical instrument and the software as the song that instrument is playing. The choice of your musical instrument will influence the songs you play on it. You *can* play Lord of the Rings on a guitar but why would you? It's better played on a violin. The same way you *can* play Wii Fit on the Wii U - but why would you? It was obviously made for complex gaming and "core" gamers (just look at the gamepad, it's the most complex controller out there). The Wii was so successful because the hardware and software told a very harmonious message: Simple hardware, simple software. The instrument fit the songs that were played on it. The Wii U on the other hand is a mess: The hardware screams "Core gaming! Core gaming!" in your face but Nintendo pumps out stuff like Nintendoland, Wii Party, Wario Ware, etc. The same thing happened to the 3DS: It launched with Nintendogs and that game flopped. So did people lose interest in pet simulators? Hell, no! But the software and the hardware gave consumers mixed messages. The hardware said: "I'm for the core gamer!" The software said: "I'm for 10 year old school girls!" (which is not an insult at all, 10 year old girls are just another market). It's like letting Slipknot compose the new Teletubbies theme song or the Republican Party using Lady Gaga as their public face! Same with the Wii U: They made a deluxe bundle specifically aimed at the core gamers... and then they put Nintendoland into it! And the version aimed at the more price sensitive market segments came without a game. It's like Nintendo is suffering from dissociative identity disorder: They keep screaming "we're hardcore!" (which is stupid because whenever they do that it threatens to kill the company) but they keep on producing Mario and Pokémon games (which is good!) At the same time they refuse to release the next Wii Sports and keep on giving low selling titles high production values and vice versa. |
There may be some issue with the message, but the fact is causal trends have a limited life cycle.
Guitar Hero, Brain Training, Nintendogs, were monster sellers a few years ago, but today they're niche games.
Cell phones have honestly taken the lead in this area of casual gaming trends -- Angry Birds, Plants Vs. Zombies, Minecraft, Candy Crush Saga, etc. are the real heirs to the casual craze nowadays, that's where that audience migrated to.
These little companies beat Nintendo to the punch, Nintendo needed to get to something like Minecraft first, not trying to recycle an old formula like Wii Fit.
That's the name of the game with casuals -- finding the next big fad/craze before someone else does. The best thing Nintendo could do IMO rather relying on sequels to casual games that were hot 5-8 years ago now is to rather finance a ton of new projects from small indie houses. Maybe you get lucky and one of them pans out and becomes the next big franchise.
