RolStoppable said:
1) Yes, gaming got devalued by free games overall, but you understand that the free and low priced options can only really cut into the success of higher priced games that are similar, i.e. when the lower priced options work as substitutes, right? Everything that can't get substituted with free offerings can still thrive at premium prices. 2) You should consider the release timing of all those games you mentioned. For example, your 2009 list has only second half of the year releases, meaning that the entire first half had nothing worth of note; that's where the year over year decline comes from, a damning software drought that killed momentum. 2010 is similar along with the lineup having less system-selling power to begin with. 2011 was atrocious; I mean, the minigame compilation Wii Play Motion is the only game in your list that released before November of that year. But despite all of the aforementioned things, each of those years recorded at least 11m of sales. It's perfectly reasonable to suggest that a more consistent release schedule along with a continued push to create new IPs would have resulted in higher Wii sales in each of those three years. Think about it, the Wii managed 11m in 2011 on the back of an awfully sparse lineup; the appeal of the system was far from dead at that point, but Nintendo made it dead by scaling back support in order to prepare for the ill-conceived Wii U. 3) Now you are changing what the point of contention was. Let me remind you: You believed that the best strategy going forward is to cater to existing consumers that bought Wii Us and 3DSes and give them what they want with the follow-up systems. I disagreed with that because it's very likely going to lead to a continued erosion of Nintendo's consumer base (historical trends point that way), so my task was not to lay out a strategy that matches or exceeds Wii and DS levels of success, but one that beats your suggested strategy that would top out at a Wii U+3DS level installed base because Nintendo would be looking inwards with (virtually) no thoughts lost on increasing their consumer base. |
1. I agree that u can't substitute everything with free phone/tablet games, hence why PS/XB are largely unaffected. U can't simulate these AAA titles on phones/tablets. But when it comes to the type of games that made Wii/DS successful, yes they are able to substitute them. We have already agreed that the type of games that Wii/DS had were games with simple to understand controls/concepts and focused on light-hearted fun. That is exactly what type of games are on phones/tablets, games like Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, Doodle Jump, Candy Crush Saga, Minecraft all fit into this category. No, u can't get the exact same experience out of Wii and iPhone but that doesn't matter, as long as games are simple, fun and addicting then this demographic of gamers is happy to simply play games at a very low cost on the devices they own regardless of gaming.
2. I'll agree with u to an extent on this one, scaling back on games outside of the holidays did hurt the Wii image but I think it's a combination of Nintendo's mistakes and the rise of smart devices that have killed the Wii brand. If Nintendo had kept up strong support all year round in 2009-2011 then the decline would very likely have been smaller so maybe Nintendo in a way helped out the rise of gaming on smart devices when people got sick of only getting a few big games a year with most of them coming during the holidays.
3. I thought u were suggesting if Wii U had a simple controller and colorful, local multiplayer games then Wii U would be selling like Wii, that's my bad. So overall I agree with u on some points, had Nintendo giving Wii strong, year round support from 2009 onwards and made Wii U more accessible with a better lineup than yes I believe it would be doing quite a bit better but still only a moderate success like GC-N64 level sales.
When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.
