RolStoppable said:
Lateral thinking with withered technology means to use matured technology and think of new uses for it. This results in a cheap manufacturing process, yet still a potentially appealing product. Neither the 3DS or Wii U were and are cheap to produce, and of course we have to look at these products in the entirety of their components instead of just a few cherry-picked ones in order to form an accurate conclusion. So neither the 3DS or Wii U qualify as following the philosophy of lateral thinking with withered technology. Entertainment media aren't mutually exclusive, so the simplest solution for Nintendo is to offer something that nobody else does. But I am obviously not talking about something like the Gamepad because people aren't going to pay for minor things like map and inventories on a separate screen. The wonderful thing about the Wii was that its experience couldn't be replicated on smartphones or PCs, and neither Sony or Microsoft were up to the challenge to compete with Nintendo because for one, they would never put their top development teams on such software, and two, neither would third parties. Nintendo was sitting on a huge competitive advantage, but then they decided to give up all of that and self-destruct by making a me-too system that was supposed to play exactly the same games as other devices. Even if all those third party games had been coming, the Wii U (or a more powerful version on the same level as the PS4) would still have failed to gain traction because of what I mentioned in my previous post: As long as people are satisfied with a brand, they aren't going to switch. So the result would have been that people waited a year for the PS4 and Xbox One to come out, and then buy those consoles. Well, a few might have bought a Nintendo console because the Xbox One reveal was a disaster and they can't stand Sony, but that wouldn't have amounted too much, seeing how Microsoft did one 180 after another to salvage the situation. Anyway, the Wii's success wasn't all on motion controls. Nintendo actually made honest efforts to win back the people that bought an NES, but eventually quit console gaming when it all became about console wars and Nintendo's software output ultimately became what we know as the GC library. Most Nintendo fans on this forum hold the N64 and GC eras in high regard. However, these two consoles were failures, so reality doesn't line up with what is idealized as Nintendo's best periods of software. The Wii was a strong statement by Nintendo that the N64 and GC weren't the cream of the crop. On one hand, that means that the people who loved those consoles are often the most vocal detractors of the Wii direction. But on the other hand, that led to success for Nintendo. So to bring this post to an end (finally), Nintendo should do what pisses off the people who put the N64, GC and Wii U above the Wii. |
I didn't cherry-pick the CPU/GPU/RAM, those are the only parts people really care about these days. It's all about the graphics. Wii U used withered processing hardware, then made it expensive with the lateral part, which nobody cared for.
You didn't really answer the question though; who should Nintendo go after? "Retired NES gamers" sounds like a mythical audience who in reality are just a mixture of casuals and non-gamers who could not be tempted back to consoles in sufficient numbers now that smartphones meet their needs.
