| Mr Khan said: Let's look at it simply: what are Wii U's two biggest weaknesses? Price and library (duh). A more powerful console would be more expensive, and would have fewer games because it would take Nintendo yet longer to build the games. It might have some more third party games (key word, might), but given that the unique selling point are the Nintendo exclusives, fewer of them would not lead to good places. |
I think its biggest problem is casuals don't want it, they are done with the Wii Sports/Fit/Party fads and showing how fickle they are (Candy Crush, Flappy Bird ... Brownie Poop is probably the next big thing). And it's not satisfying enough for hardcore gamers, to them it's basically Nintendo's XBox 360, just seven years too late.
The library isn't *that* bad though, with DKC launching this week, it's fairly comparable to the Wii at the same point in terms of overall quality though they've gone a bit overboard with the platformers.
The price isn't that outrageous either $299.99 is only $50 more than the Wii with NSMBU + NSLU ... many people were willing to pay like $400+ for the Wii in 2006/2007 just to play Wii Sports.
Nintendo needed to make a core console simply because making a casual console based on what casuals want to today would betray too many of Nintendo's business/design principals -- they'd want a digital only console with $1-$20 games (max) and mindless dumbed down content with some Mario in between and nothing else.
In a way casuals were a blessing for Nintendo that turned into a curse/nightmare ... now $1 games and cheap/crappy apps are killing Nintendo's bottom line and even taking the kids audience away from them. At least when the Playstation 2 was spanking them, Nintendo was still able to find a stable part of the market to work within, this is much more dire.
