I don't know exactly who has made the poor decisions in Nintendo but iwata ultimately decides what happens and there has been a huge run of ill-judged decisions.
It's difficult for me to play the expert because I never understood the success of the wii. At the time I didn't think releasing a slightly faster gamecube with a motion controller would succeed especially at the high price it was sold at. It did brilliantly and I scratched my head as to why that happened. Ultimately though I think many were disappointed with the wii performance level.
The wii u is much the same story with weak hardware sold at inflated prices. This time consumers haven't bitten. This was the reaction I expected with the wii.
When Nintendo released the Gamecube it was a fantastic console for its day but people rejected it.
I'm sure Nintendo are a fair bit confused themselves.
The thing that I feel was a huge mistake was releasing a console in 2012 that couldn't even match the 360 and PS3 in performance terms for many games. They didn't have to release something as powerful as the xbox one or ps4 but there is a huge gulf between what they released and those new consoles. There was plenty of middle ground between the two. Every wii u multiformat title should have been an upgrade on 360/PS3 versions. This was expected and it would be utter madness for the wii u not to deliver this minimal requirement but with Iwata at the helm he costed it so low it couldn't even beat those ancient consoles.
The gamepad isn't a very good controller either for a lot of games.
It's a real shame but it does seem like all that money they made on wii is going to end up being wasted with the train wreck that is the wii u.
I am a wii u owner believe it or not. I know its hard to believe but I do love Nintendo games but a games console needs more than first party games to attract a huge audience.
To think Nintendo even claimed they were getting third parties back with the wii u and then they deliver a console that can't even deliver the same game experiences as 360 and PS3.
The only reason I bought a wii u was because of Miyamoto. Fans of his games probably make up a huge percentage of the people who bought the wii u but Iwata has hugely damaged Nintendo with a product that has very limited appeal to a wider range of games players. It's hard to believe the thought processes where you remove essential game controller features like analogue triggers. Who did the research for that? I bought Need for speed most wanted on wii u and then realised I didn't like it on wii u because of lack of analogue triggers and went back to the ps3 version.
Still think the 3DS is doing good numbers though. I think expectations above current figures isn't really taking on board the saturation of other portable gaming hardware including tablets and phones. I just feel the 3DS figures are great when you factor that in.
