You want on-topic? I’ll give you on-topic.
Let’s go back in time a little bit here, let’s think about the theory John Lucas had prior to this one; oh, the exact same one! In the 7th generation!
The Wii would start a new era in gaming, a full-turn revolution, stealing all the 3rd parties and sinking Sony and Microsoft with their stupid business practices and HD visuals (PS3 discontinued after 20 million or so, MGS 4 going 360 exclusive and other fancy statements were the norm).
Let’s look at this from a different perspective for a time now;
A lot of people are claiming that Nintendo make such amazing 1st party games that 3rd parties wouldn’t be able to compete, that is hardly a nice environment to publish on, another factor is the incredibly poor sales of a lot of 3rd party titles on Nintendo platforms, the latest being Ghosts selling less than 20.000 units week one, Assassin’s Creed 4 was the same story and no one can use the “crappy port” excuse this time around since that’s not the case.
Another factor here is Nintendo’s treatment of 3rd parties in the 80’s and 90’s, the have created this problem themselves and were widely known to front a very developer hostile climate on their earliest platforms, when they also lost their ability to sell consoles and win markets in the 5th gen, no wonder 3rd parties jumped ship.
The Wii came along, after two generations of a dictatorship, demeaning and bossing 3rd parties and two generations of poor hardware sales and refusal to embrace any form of standard tech, media or solution in architecture Nintendo fully expected 3rd parties to swim back and climb aboard again, perhaps eking out an existence making Just Dance clones for all their days, I dunno what the plan was.
This didn’t happen, of course, and Nintendo and their fans demonized 3rd parties and the stupid “hardcore” gamers that provided them with sales, the very fact that anyone could not be content with only a Nintendo platform was an affront to gaming in general, this despite the fact that Nintendo did little to hide that they didn’t much care to cater to the “hardcore” with the Wii.
Then there’s this notion of a Nintendo that is somehow more relevant, loving and caring than others, they have the only true passion for games and gaming. Why? Because they have different art direction? All other companies are just evil bastards who don’t like anything but your money and they’re too dense to see that they’re ruining the industry because Nintendo are the only ones who understand “what’s really going on”.
Nintendo are, believe it or not, a company with investors, they love to pocket your change as much as the next company, a change in color-palette doesn’t change that.
Look at their advertising over the past three decades; where companies like Sony and Microsoft and independents often focus on effects, visuals, sound and other, perhaps superficial things, they choose to focus the presentation on the product.
Nintendo have a long history of panning shots where they show ecstatic kids playing games, this isn’t because they have such immense heart and love your smile more than others, it is simply a marketing ploy to draw in young customers, they focus on the implicit euphoria of owning Nintendo products, instilling a sense of “can’t miss this, kiddo!” rather than focusing on the product.
Which is more ethical? Don’t think for one second that Nintendo are some benign saint who swooped down to earth so that grandma and her cancerous grandkid could enjoy gaming together, laughing and living it up like a fairytale; they want grandma’s money and they want the cancer-kid money (offended? I’m making a point), they want everyone’s money like everyone else does, they’re running a business!
Now, the Wii U is a HD console, undeniable fact. John Lucas and fans argued in the 7th gen that rising development costs would send 3rd parties reeling headlong into bankruptcy unless they embraced Nintendo and cast off the shallowness and tedium that is Playstation and Xbox.
You know how it goes; it’s the exact same formula as in the OP, only several years back.
There’s a problem; developing HD games for Nintendo costs the same as it would on a PS3 or a 360! What the hell?! How will they survive under such conditions, this was deemed deadly circumstances only a couple of years back!
And this amazingly ridiculous notion that Nintendo were in complete control of the Wii’s decline and abrupt irrelevancy is utter hogwash, the Wii U was in no way, shape or form a planned action, it was very much a forced action by a company under pressure and facing historically unique circumstances.
They got carried away, sat back and watched the money roll in and then, poof, lost their customer base.
It is also worth noting that a “brilliant” mind such as John Lucas failed to see Nintendo’s amazing plan for an epic relay, why did he predict such amazing results and conditions for the Wii if Nintendo planned all this all along? Isn’t that the very definition of lack of insight?
Or, if he failed to see this, and Nintendo didn’t have this planned since 2007, doesn’t that mean that the Wii U is simply an attempt to reset and have another go?
I addressed the possibility of the Wii’s failing momentum damaging their 8th gen efforts already at the start of 2011, does that mean that I’m magical? No, it just made complete sense.
What exactly is the plan for the future in regards to casual gamers, I wonder.
They are gone, they’re not buying home consoles any longer, the casual market was disrupted by phones and tablets and browser and social gaming, but this was also probably part of Nintendo’s brilliant plan for world domination.
That’s why Nintendo are jumping into the tablet sector right now.
Malstrom did not see this disruption, John Lucas didn’t see it and Nintendo sure as hell didn’t see it. Why? Because they didn’t want to.
They’re suffering from a condition where they need Nintendo to be the savior, they reminisce about the golden days when games were fun and companies made good stuff and they shun the idea that people might have different tastes.
Now, as for me? Do I love all this? No! I hate the idea that Hollywood is the primary inspiration for games, I hate QTE’s, hand-holding, ridiculous AI and other bullshit and I consider phone and tablet gaming nothing but cancer on the industry, pulling quality down along with the Hollywood model.
Does this stop me from seeing it happening? No, and I don’t understand why John and his disciples can’t, one comes with the other, the gaming industry is being beset from two sides, both unwittingly aiming to make it broader and dumber.
Let’s talk about broader for a second, this leads us unto a subject close to John Lucas’ heart; the Playstation. Now, no one can deny that the Wii expanded the market, I hope no does at any rate. However, in percentages and impact, the original Playstation and its sequel; the PS2, can be attributed even more growth, they expanded the market greatly, they made 3rd parties absurd amounts of money and they dominated like no Nintendo home console ever has and likely ever will.
This, however, is something John Lucas refuses to give credit for.
Why is that? He doesn’t like the Playstation (this is all the more clear seeing as how killing Sony is more important than killing MS, he fantasized about prime PS franchises going to the 360 in the 7th generation) and what it represents, he resents the idea that a company with no pedigree in gaming could come in and change the course of the market, Nintendo, having saved the industry in the 80’s, deserve to be the top dog, and they do love games and gaming all that much more after all.
It’s personal, pure and simple, just as personal as those shouting in the halls when the Wii exploded past the HD twins and the non-gamers had the gall and audacity to dare pick up simple games, people were offended.
John Lucas and the likes of Malstrom perpetuate the war by representing one extreme of the spectrum; they want the hardcore gamer to die, therein lies the key; they want.
It has nothing to do with divine insight or foresight, or even a basic understanding of business and the ethics surrounding it, it is simply desire, while they chant about “hardcore” being afraid of change, they’re the ones who are still wishing that change never came around the mid 90’s, or at the very least; that the change had come from Nintendo.
John Lucas, you have been down this path before and been pronounced a genius for it, people thought you understood something they didn’t and they love to chime in with their support and devotion to you superior analytical skills and your amazing posts.
I also find your posts amazing, but purely as a study, you have an incredible way of making ridiculous, unlikely and un-provable things seem plausible, you manage to make compelling cases with non-existent arguments and pure speculation.
Do you not see how this is much like people were saying; “The Wii is a fad, it will stop any day now.”? “Just wait and see the revolution, the Wii U will dominate the 8th gen.”
Let’s look at the Wii in hindsight; the impact it had was so great that Nintendo themselves abandoned the very idea and reverted to 6th gen tactics with a mock effort to reel casuals back in, casuals that aren’t there any more for the taking.
They chose to forego the Wii-mote and designed their most unwieldy, ill-conceived controller yet, they went back to trusting Mario and Zelda to sell systems rather than Wii Fit and Wii Sports.
Is that your revolution? A full 180 degree turn? Then what was the Wii?
The only continuation between the Wii and the Wii U is the lack of momentum, this is the prime characteristic the Wii U inherited from its father.
And Nintendo are now stuck in a market with no available blue ocean, a design that clearly doesn’t appeal to Playstation and One users/owners (both by your reasoning and all logic, at least you got something right), thereby excluding the possibility of stealing sales from the competition, a userbase, by the way, that isn’t just going to vaporize overnight like you seem to think, and to top it all off; they’re stuck with a platform that is now as costly as the previously bankruptcy-inducing (according to your reasoning) 7th generation.
How in the seven hells is this good news at any one point?
It seems more like a recipe for a slow-cook disaster.
But you could never handle that; a Nintendo that makes mistakes. Even though you have previously stated that they dropped Wii support prematurely, this is all forgotten now, out of sight, out of mind I suppose.
Could it be that Nintendo have failed to read the market and respond accordingly? Like Sony did in the 7th generation? Like Microsoft did in the 6th generation? Like Nintendo themselves did in the 5th and the 6th generation?
I suppose you’ll keep clinging to the facts of life though, these being;
Nintendo are infallible, clearly.
They love you a lot more than other gaming companies.
They love games a lot more than other gaming companies.
They’re a lot better at games than other gaming companies.
They are in a lot less trouble than other gaming companies.
What if the Wii U fails to sell 12 million by the end of 2014, what then? Revolution postponed? What if the PS4 and the One pass it in lifetime sales by early 2015? Will you go into PS3 mode and start posting lists of upcoming strategies and software that will kill it off, even though the customer base isn’t the same, much like GTA IV “killed” the Wii?
Both you and Nintendo are contradicting yourselves, and neither can see it. You’ve said the same things as in the OP before, the main difference is that in the 7th gen, it could be technically feasible, although it was obviously a stretch and wrong all along.
You’ll have to concede the fact that either your previous 7th gen thesis was highly flawed, or it was correct and the Wii U is doomed along with the PS4 and One due to development costs and extended development cycles for HD output.
You can postpone commenting directly on the sales until January 1st if you want, it won’t make a difference.
PS: Looking forward to a long reply with exciting images, the same rhetoric and numbers dodging and sentiments on how I “fail to see” certain things in the big picture, just like I “failed to see” them in the 7th gen, even though it was never there.
“Vide Omnia, es ubique” indeed.
Edit; how could I forget to adress this; JL leaving the site when the revolution was put on hold. There are people who spend quite a lot of time on this site who are engineers, doctors and a bunch of other, high-tier occupations, they have no problem coming here and they even have time to play games as well. You're trying to tell me that writing for a webiste, the incredible task of online texts took your entire life into a period where you had no time to even make a slight comment in here? You still participated slightly in political threads, fairly heavy subjects that require deep thinking and concentration, yet you somehow couldn't muster the energy and time to answer to a few sales outlooks and predictions?
That is convenient indeed. So much so that it smells funny, and telling people "wait in line, son" as if you were some monarch or president smacks of narcissism and a severely bloated ego. You're going the Malstrom way; picking the easiest and less important arguments to reply, a deviously clever tactic, if somewhat dishonest. For all the entertainment and debate you spark in here; this current attitude, with absolutely no grounds to exist I might add, only detracts from your somewhat intact pool of respect. If you lose your tone in debate simply for being asked to update, then you don't have much left.
Essay Pro