By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Soundwave on 27 July 2015
Edit Thread
zorg1000 said:
Soundwave said:


Price is an issue, but it's not the only issue. The other thing is I think Nintendo by giving Sony/MS basically 3 years+, has given them plenty of time to get their own pricing down into an affordable range. So even if NX is say $100 cheaper than a PS4, if the PS4 has 300+ games next to NX starting at say 10 ... well like the PS2 a lot of people will probably be willing to pay more to get what they perceive is the better product. 

What Nintendo needs is something new and different that is a legitimate game changer. And I have no idea what that would be, but that's for them to figure out. 

Even when the XBox One was $499.99, a full $200 more than the Wii U, I believe it was still outselling the Wii U. 

What I'm saying is price didn't matter because Nintendo was trying to compete head on for the same audience as PS2/Xbox and was seen as inferior, it had no DVD/CD playback for movies/music, it didn't embrace online like the others did, it had inferior 3rd party support with many games skipping it or coming late, it was labeled a kiddy device. A mere $50 more for what were perceived to be superior devices wasn't an issue for that audience.

Wii U is a similar situation, Nintendo wanted to recapture the "hardcore" gamer and win over the PS/XB audience while retaining the casual audience they had on Wii but ended up making a device that was unappealing to both sides. It doesn't matter that Wii U is cheaper than PS4/XB1 because it is seen as vastly inferior to the PS/XB audience. Nobody who is interested in mainstream Shooter, Sports, Racing, Action games and an all-in-one multimedia device would ever choose Wii U over PS4/XB1 despite the lower price tag.

So I agree that NX having a $100 price advantage won't help at all if it's a device designed to appeal to PS4/XB1 owners, but if it's a device like Wii where Nintendo basically says "we don't give a shit what the competitors are doing, we're doing our own thing" than it has a chance of success depending on their execution.


To be that device it needs to have something genuinely different about it that completely changes the game play. That's what the Wii did. Nintendo didn't just say "we're different", the consumer is ultimately the one who decides what a product is by voting with their wallets. Nintendo said the GameCube was different ("The Nintendo Difference") and they certainly did their own thing with the Wii U too (it's not like Sony/MS looked at it for any pointers). 

They need something pretty ground breaking I would think. Which is pretty hard. I think what people don't realize is the Wii U controller is the best Nintendo's R&D came up with after several years of work. I doubt they have like 4 or 5 better/more interesting options but instead chose to go with a controller that a touch panel on it. 

It's very hard to come up with ideas that genuinely change the game play structure and is still suitable to a wide variety of games. But that's basically what they need.