| Mr Puggsly said: I think what you're saying are good reasons for why core games are more successful on other platforms. I'm simply arguing there is a very small core audience on Wii U and that won't change. It looks like the people buying Wii U overwhelmingly just want casual experiences. The type of stuff we expect from Nintendo. In a nutshell, Nintendo should focus on the type games that brought people to Nintendo platforms. |
Define "casual".
I wouldn't call most Nintendo-published games casual, outside of a few like Wii Sports and Wii Fit. Things like Starfox, Pikmin, Zelda and F-Zero are aimed at "core" gamers. Things like Smash, Pokémon and MarioKart tend to bridge the gap between both casual and core gamers; I work at an annual gaming convention over here and I know all of those games (especially Smash and Pokémon) have a huge, very hardcore fan community.
The problem is not that Ubisoft is trying to release core games or "mature" games on a Nintendo console. If core/mature titles didn't sell well, then games like ZombiU or MadWorld or the Pikmins or the Resident Evils wouldn't sell upwards of half a million copies apiece. If all Wii U owners wanted were casual experiences, then Wii Fit U and Wii Sports Club and the newer Just Dance titles would probably have sold a lot more, too.
My impression is that casual gamers exist in different forms with all of the consoles, whether they're kids who only play MarioKart or frat boys who have a PS4 and only play shooters. One of my friends has a PS3, but outside of CoD and GTA games, he hardly plays anything and I'd consider someone like that a casual gamer as well. People don't gravitate to Nintendo consoles because they're casual gamers, they do so because they don't want the same kind of experience they'd get in spades elsewhere (you know, that open-world shooter/action/adventure hybrid that is everywhere at the moment). If Ubisoft or anyone else wants to release something on the Wii U and have it sell, it doesn't need to be a casual game, it just needs to be unique. Or, if it's a port of something on PS3/PS4/etc., then it needs to be a *decent* port, and it needs at least a little bit of marketing.
Thing is, it feels like publishers should have figured this out by now. Every once in a while, someone comes along with a MadWorld or a ZombiU or a Resident Evil 4 or a Muramasa and it sells well.
