Is price a major factor in poor 3DS/Wii U sales compared to GBC/N64 & GBA/GC?

[mountaindewslave]

Soundwave said:

mountaindewslave said:

I agree

the touchscreen gamepad was a mistake- too expensive. Nintendo could have sold a tonnnnn more Wii U's if they simply had used a less expensive controller, something more traditional, and priced at like 200$ out of the gates. would have been very do-able

a lot of casual gamers out there who prefer, say, Sony, enjoy SOME Nintendo games and might pick up the system for a cheaper price simply to have an extra activity. 

3DS is doing fine, obviously we can say that when Sony would love for the Vita to have the same success

the Wii U had a lot of hiccups in terms of design and marketing, but the good thing is its very in your face and obvious where things went wrong. much better situation for Nintendo to be in knowing problems they can fix rather than totally being at a loss and confused to why they didn't succeed

Nintendo knows that to succeed next generation they either need a home console that has competitive graphics/hardware or something that has worse features/specs BUT is much more affordable. either one of those routes should garner them success, but having a fairly pricey system with a gimmick would not be a smart move again

I don't think Nintendo can reliably have a hit selling console without a controller gimmick. 

Fact is every single one of their consoles outside of the Wii, which temporarily attracted a ton of casual non-gamers before they got hooked on smartphone apps, from the NES onwards has had a fairly consisent down trend in sales from generation to generation. 

I disagree

if anything I think the gimmick things are confusing the consumers. the reality is we don't HAVE an example of a Nintendo system in the last few decades that used the most popular formats and went the most streamlined safe route. we have a lot of strange decisions, sometimes cool, sometimes not, that often made it difficult for third parties or the public to get behind

the Nintendo 64 (as much as I love it) used cartridges and third parties didn't get behind it and opted for disks instead. obviously consumers simply went to the system with the most software options

the Gamecube used mini disks to battle piracy and, again, third parties didn't have much choice but to opt to develop for the easier systems

the Wii succeeded BECAUSE of a gimmick, sure

the Wii U confused consumers due to its fairly limited use of gimmicks despite being named as a successor to a purely motion control prior system. also argubly its marketing and price point didn't help

in all of these examples never has Nintendo made an extremely competitive high spec system that ALSO was streamlined in terms of design and access to third parties

we don't really know what would happen if Nintendo attempted to make a 'Playstation'esque system that relied more on its graphics and games then unique function or ability 

I know that Nintendo every generation automatically pulls a lot of fans who are nostalgic, but obvs the difficulty they have is getting some of the casuals AND hardcore gamers to go their way

certainly its conceiveable that if Nintendo released a truly current gen system with a comfortable traditional controller that they could have massive success. third parties will always release for your system if a port is easy to do, and if Nintendo would make a system more similar to their competitors that would be the case

I have enjoyed Nintendo's unique hardware, but in the end personally I love their games and IP's more than anything else. I think the general public is that way too. people are most likely turned away BY an uncomfortable new thing. whether its the weird N64 controller (which I like), motion controls, a big screen on a controller- whatever

I think its certainly worth a try to do a streamlined 3rd party friendly console with great specs for once. what Nintendo needs is to make a console that consumers WANT, not something that's a total dice roll and has unknown factors in terms of how the public will respond. I will reiterate, I like Nintendo making consoles, but in my eyes what they do best is make games. they are fully capable of making a great spec system with a regular controller and a fantastic library of games

in fact, despite it being so long ago, possibly the reason that the SNES and NES were so successful is because they were just that- straight forward systems with easy to use controllers and good specs for their time. maybe Nintendo should go back to their roots in that way