| potato_hamster said: Let's see how that plays out when the rubber meets the road. If the Wii is not a fluke Nintendo needs to demonstrate as much, and they haven't yet. Why was the Wii successful? It was cheap, easy and novel. You could literally play video games with your grandparents and they would understand it and enjoy it. The NX doesn't appear to be any of those things from what I've seen. The Wii U was confusing, more expensive, and had no real novel ideas (let's take a DS and make one of the screens a television). Now the NX appears to be more of the same. If anything by unifying theit handheld and home consoles under one banner, if the games made arent compatible with every version, you're making it even more confusing than the WIi/Wii U naming confusion debcale. You think Nintendo is setting themselves up for massive success, where as I think they're setting themselves up for more of the same failure. It seems to me with all of those initiatives you speak of do nothing to make their video games more entertaining or their consoles more desirable. They're just doubling down on the Nintendo fans they already have, trying to wrench every last dollar out of them rather than trying to appeal to an audience that doesn't appear to be shrinking with every successive console release. Meanwhile, they're doing nothing to make the devices more desirable to iPhone/iPad gamers and non-Nintendo fans. |
When I say that the Wii was not a fluke, I mean that it wasn't a success by accident. It was orchistrated. They did prove that by the way they marketed it and the way they capitalized on it for the first few years. It was cheap, easy, and novel on purpose. A fluke, that does not make.
The NX does not need to be any of those things to be successful. What worked for the Wii does not need to work for the NX. These are different times with markets and different expectations. The Wii U was an execution nightmare. Looking at that isn't indicative of anything. Nintendo knows the Wii U saw unsuccessful, they've stated why, and they've made structural changes within the company to reflect that. They are not tackling the NX from the same angle as they did with the Wii U, and that will likely garner much more success, as this angle is a more intelligent, forward thinking one.
Unifying the platform doesn't confuse anything. iOS and Andriods, the two most recognized platforms on the planet, already do this. The concept is well understood. It just has not been replicated to similar effect in the traditional console space yet.
Those initiatives mean everything. Their games are already entertaining. Their issue isn't quality, but one of their largest recent issues is exposure. Nintendo's brand awareness is weaker than its ever been, and these initiatives are all important in rectifying that. Especially mobile. All these initiatives give the average Joe more opportunities to have a reason to say "Nintendo," and that's an extremely powerful thing. People here scoff at mobile games, but mobile gave Angry Birds a movie deal with Sony's A team.
Unlike Angry Birds, Nintendo's brand is already powerful, and they already have iconic IP. Coming on to the mobile market with quality games in a precise and innovative fashion would be titanic for them. Serkan Toto, a prominant analyst of the mobile market, agrees with me - Nintendo is laying the groundwork to significantly inpact the mobile market, and anyone who cannot see that is not paying attention. This is not "Pay-to-Mario." It's not "1-Up for $1." This is big. If you're underestimating the importance of mobile, that's your failing. It's more important now then anything outside of the actual platform itself.
When Nintendo's brand was the biggest? When all those shitty Nintendo shows and movies were being shown everywhere for years. Nintendo was everywhere, not just on its physical platforms, and anyone would be remiss to think that that didn't play a significant roll in their massive success. They are setting themselves up to do that in an even bigger way with all of these brand expansion initiatives. That's all completely without all of the movie and TV shows that are bound to be in the pipeline as we speak. Most of this stuff will be either starting or entering their full swing at the beginning of 2017, which will be the most important year for the NX. The membership will have been active for over a year, with assuredly hundreds of millions of members thanks to their mobile games alone before the NX is even launched.
They aren't doubling down on Nintendo fans they already have. The mobile games are concrete proof of that. They expect the first game to have 200m+ users. That isn't current Nintendo fans. That's everyone. Hardcore Nintendo fans, lost Nintendo fans, and newcomers. The NX platform is showing many signs of appealing to mainsteam western console gamers. The mistake is thinking that doing that the PS4 and XBO have done is the only way to do that. If Apple thought like you, smart phones wouldn't exist, and we'd still be listening to music with CD players. Nintendo wants to change the traditional gaming definition of a platform. One that is not tied to hardware like the PS4, XBO, and Wii U currently are. When that is finally revealed, and everything they've said about it up until now takes tangible shape, people will look at these consoles as antiquated and the NX as modern by comparison. It will end the era of hardware upgrades and start the era of firmware upgrades. If you can't understand how huge that is now, you will when the NX launches and it becomes a worldwide phenomenom.
