ZyroXZ2 said:
I clearly said Nintendo missed their targets, and have probably decided to be much more conservative this time around. That isn't proof that they didn't hold back on marketing/advertising costs in an attempt to strike a balance between the hardware losses from sales and the lowering of manufacturing costs.
What measures up is that they willingly kept back sales, but it ended up being even lower than expected, and instead of creating some crazy projection that could make them look like absolute buffoons, they decided it better to keep the expectation low while going all out.
This IS Nintendo we're talking about, they do crazy things, and it's horrible that people always equate "crazy" with "stupid" or "bad" just because it doesn't always pay off. The Wii was "crazy" when you look at it when it was first announced, and yet it became one of the hottest selling consoles of all time... Nintendo banks on crazy, and the idea that they're trying to manage the Wii U around the hardware costs that they talked SO much about (remember, they emphasized it was sold at a loss, and also emphasized there would be no price drop because of it, yet dropped it anyway probably in the hopes it would boost them closer to their expected sales while they held off on aggressive marketing/advertising) really isn't that far-fetched.
In fact, the crazy ramp up in budget towards marketing in Q4 of the last fiscal year is almost proof on its own that they were waiting until the time was right to come out swinging, because we're seeing the result of that money, and it's quite glorious with how Mario Kart 8 is starting to top pre-order charts. My whole point, even now, is that Nintendo is probably a hell of a lot smarter than they're given credit for.
Letting their competition take the lead and have the spotlight isn't a bad idea, either. They could have been just waiting until all the hype dies down on the competition, knowing it would have been foolish to go up against marketing giants at the peak of their new hardware hype sales and marketing freight trains. Microsoft could very well have been correct that this generation really is a marathon rather than a sprint. It doesn't mean the Wii U will win, but it may perform dramatically better in its later life than anticipated simply because that was the plan to begin with!
|
