Soundwave said:
Upgraded Wiimote would not have done the trick. It doesn't address anything with regards to casual players and many kids preferring smartphones/tablets. The Wii U comes with a Wiimote bundled as standard in Japan for example, and that's the worst selling market for the system. Wiimote was showing signs of feeling old/outdated by around 2010, so that whole gravy train was slowing down years before the Wii U even came out. If I'm a casual gamer .. explain to me why I should pay $30-$50 for a game period today. That's your central problem. A controller isn't changing that, because a multitouch screen is as intuitive or even moreso than a wand controller is. So the whole "barrier to entry" issue has been taken away ages ago, no one really cares about that anymore, today anyone can play simple video games if that's what they want. Truth be told a touchscreen is probably easier/more intuitive to use than a wand controller is. I have to constantly explain to my 5-year-old niece that she needs to point the Wiimote at the sensor bar for it to register, or she has to re-sync the controller, or that she needs to press B or A or whatever, but with an iPad, she just jumps in and can use it by herself and can play games on her own. The Wii was successful with casuals but in a time period where it basically had no competitor to worry about. Once things like the iOS app store and Kinect and the iPad starting arriving, it's sales start to decline (circa 2010). And I don't buy that it's because Nintendo stopped releasing "big games" the Wii sold even during periods with weak releases (ie: holiday 2008 with just Animal Crossing and Wii Music which didn't really even take off), and the Wii was never really dependant on franchises like Metroid or even 3D Mario to sell well in the first place. A "big" game for the Wii was Just Dance, which it was still getting. |
There is no proof that people simply got bored of the Wii Remote, yes things like Kinect & Smart Devices started to eat into that market but that doesn't mean the ship had sailed, if that were the case than Wii wouldn't have sold another 20 million post-2010 when it basically got no support outside of Zelda & the Just Dance/Skylanders combo every holiday.
Holiday 2008 did not have weak releases, those games u mentioned, Animal Crossing: City Folk & Wii Music along with Guitar Hero: World Tour were all big releases that averaged about 4 million sales each on top of evergreen titles like Wii Sports/Play/Fit, Mario Kart still moving units.
This is why I hate the "casual" term, u are referring to all casuals as a single group of people who all share the same opinions/tastes, that's not how it works. Based on how ur talking, this is the video game market.
Hardcore-$60 AAA console games
Casual-free/$1 mobile games
Im sorry but ur pretty ignorant if u dont think there is any type of middle ground between those 2 markets.
When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.
