So Mario Kart 8 Isn't Going To Give The Wii U Even 1 Month At 100k+ In The US?

[Soundwave]

RolStoppable said:

Soundwave said:

And if that downmarket is perfectly happy playing $1/free Flappy Crap? Then what? 

There's nothing wrong with them liking that, anymore than the kid that wants to just watch Transformers and nothing else ... but I think honestly if you can't even enjoy a 3D Mario game, like the most recent 3D Mario World, which is pretty damn streamlined design wise -- then maybe (gasp!) Nintendo isn't for you. 

Maybe you're better off with Flappy Bird. A lot of these people don't even want to play a game for more than 10 mintutes at a time maybe three times a week, good luck convincing them to buy any kind of seperate console now that they don't need to (since their phone or tablet does that just fine). 

At what point do you just admit you're trying to fit a square peg into a round hole? Nintendo isn't about cheap disposable gaming. That's what that audience wants. 

Nintendo can't win with that audience unless they sell out and destroy the basic prinicpals that makes the company great in the first place. Nintendo games were never cheap, dumbed down disposable gaming ... they are generally easy to pick up and play, but very deep and often very challenging games with great design mechanics. But this also always required some level of skill, patience, and general love of gaming to really get into. Been that way since Donkey Kong in 1982, which is hard, unforgiving freaking game. Far moreso than the likes of Pac-Man. 

If someone can't appreciate that, then Nintendo simply isn't the company for them. And by the way -- Super Mario Bros, Super Mario 64, Zelda: OoT, are all *great* video games and tremendous achievements that will forever live on and be remembered decades from now, whereas Candy Crush won't. Nintendo has nothing to be ashamed about if they're being themselves. F*ck an audience that only likes you if you basically have to rip apart everything about the company that makes you tick in the first place, it's like a girlfriend that "loves you" but wants you to change everything about you, that's not love. 

Did I ever say at any point that the Wii Sports/Super Mario Bros./Mario Kart etc. player and the Angry Birds/Candy Crush etc. player is one and the same? That baseless assumption has always been coming from you. And what does it rest on? That the "casual" Wii audience isn't buying the Wii U. Newsflash: Virtually nobody is buying the Wii U. Maybe we should conclude that nobody wants to play Nintendo games anymore. Or perhaps it's like I say, that the Wii U is such an ill-conceived console that the hardware drags down everything with it; it doesn't matter what games Nintendo makes for the Wii U, the only possible outcome is failure.

By the way, if that "casual" audience already makes you so angry, what do you think of the hardcore gamers that demand that Nintendo should become like Sony and Microsoft?

The audience that wants games of very simple complexity, that are easy to pick and play ... are property of Apple and Android now. How that came to be is pretty much not even worth debating because what's done is done and nothing can change it now. Even Miyamoto acknowledges in their most recent Q&A that smartphones are hurting their business. 

People may not be buying a Wii U, but the 3DS is still selling reasonably well (at 30+ million it's the largest selling game platform thus far) ... but even there games like Brian Training and Nintendogs are gaining no traction and while Tomodachi Collection is a modest success it's no where near the level of success of previous Touch Generation type titles. Coincidence? No way. Where there's that much smoke there's fire, and I think you are underestimating how big that fire is, it's wildly out of control actually.

It's no different from the death of the "point and click camera". Those were everywhere 10 years ago, nightclubs, vacationers, teenagers ... if you wanted to take photos you had to have one of those cameras. Nowadays it's very rare than anyone buys one of those. Everyone just uses their smartphone for taking "point and click" photos as those do a good enough job for most people. And then you have sales of high end DSLR cameras for enthusiasts and budding enthusiasts that want better quality photos, and says of DSLRs are booming actually. So you have a high end market and the cell phone market, but the "middle market" which was the old point and click has become extinct. 

Now what industry does that make you think of? Hmmm ... Or MP3 players ... no one buys an MP3 player anymore, because why buy that when your cell phone can play MP3s too and do a hundred other things? Even the iPod touch doesn't sell that great anymore, people have that functionality covered through their iPhone/Android phone nowadays.

There is no value proposition to someone who only wants to play games about as complex as Wii Sports or Nintendogs or Brain Training to have to spend $150-$300 on a seperate piece of hardware just to play that when their cell phone does that already, at cheaper software prices to boot. 

Microsoft and Sony really just took what Nintendo was doing and adapted it to the teenager market (which Sega actually laid the foundation for). Nothing more, nothing less, whether Sony admits it explicitly or not the PS4's great grandfather is the NES/Super NES, everything starts from there. And really Sony/MS are complimentary of Nintendo and even share a lot of the same principals (listen to Yoshida speak) ... the console war bullsh*t really is passe, there are bigger issues for industry today. 

The one thing you are dead right about is there was always a conflict between Nintendo and not making enough simple software, but that's because it's not in Nintendo's DNA to make simple/casual software. Wii Sports was a bunch of demos they slapped together and gave away for free to demo the controller, it wasn't meant to define the software Nintendo would make for the next decade. This was always going to be a conflict for Nintendo. Mario 3D World is more the essence of Nintendo than Wii Sports is, and if you can't appreciate or see any value in that type of game, then you're always going to have a problem with Nintendo.