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Soundwave on 06 July 2014
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RolStoppable said:
Soundwave said:

If there was no iPad/iPhone in general I think Nintendo would be in a much, much better place, they had a lot of their thunder stolen. 

I don't know if the Gamepad would be some blockbuster hit idea, but it's not like the Wii U divorces the Wiimote either ... it's bundled with like 3 major first party releases (lol) and comes bundled with the Wii U in Japan too (and that hasn't helped sales) and is now in the Mario Kart 8 bundle here too. 

The GamePad isn't *that* terrible, I think the Youtube sharing idea for example is actually a really cool and funny feature. I had a group of casuals over at my house and between Nintendo Land (Mario Chase in particular) and sharing Youtube videos on the TV, they had an absolute riot with the machine, everyone was laughing and having a good time. 

But no one wants to spend $300+ on that, not when they all have iPads sitting at home. It's more of a "hey, that's neat and fun" response, not a "holy sh*t, I need this in my life right now" type response. 

I think making a controller that actually can function as a TV remote was a pretty shrewd idea too (the Wiimote should've had this functionality). It's a clever way to get people using the controller all the time. Again though it's no big deal today, any smartphone/tablet can do this, but in 2010 when Nintendo was designing the thing it probably seemed like a pretty cool way to get people to constantly use the controller. 

Nobody in their right mind would buy a console to watch Youtube videos, regardless of the iPad's existence. The Wii U is a dud because there were never any games to back up the Gamepad; and there never will be, because the idea itself is so dumb.

As for bundling Wiimotes with the Wii U, that doesn't change the console's image: Wii U is the console with the Gamepad. Remove the Gamepad and things become even worse, because then the question is why the console was made in the first place.


I'd go even further and say trying to replicate or continue the Wii especially in 2012 in any way was a mistake. 

Nintendo was never going to repeat the success of the first Wii, the thing is in a lot of ways what Nintendo never really understood is that a lot of people don't want anything more complex than Wii Sports. 

And that iPhone/Android serves their needs far better. Nintendo had a nice window of oppurtunity from 2006-2009 but that was about it. These people don't want to play a Zelda game, I have a cousin who is pretty much a textbook definition of a casual player, and she asked me to list her some good games to buy for her new Wii and I suggested Mario Galaxy as the best game on the system. 

I remember the look on her face like a week later, lol, she was so frustrated with the game and couldn't even make it past like the first couple of levels and was upset that I had suggested it. I think we wrongly assume that the Wii broke down all barriers ... not really. Wii Sports did, but the thing is many Wii gamers wouldn't be able to play a game like Skyward Sword or Metroid Prime or even Mario Galaxy, it doesn't matter what controller you give them either (short of maybe brain control).

They want games with extremely stripped down play mechanics (ie: in tennis you don't even need to worry about moving your player). Nintendo's hope that they could get this crowd to graduate to different games was ill-founded. It was like assuming the person who likes Transformers movies may eventually become a fan of art house films for example ... and maybe that might even happen once in a blue moon, but the odds are that audience simply likes what they like and want nothing different. 

And in that scenario, Nintendo was always doomed against Apple, because they can't beat Apple for simple/easy to play games on volume, price, or hardware sexiness.