You aren't a privileged Nintendo consumer because you own a Wii U

[zorg1000]

Soundwave said:

zorg1000 said:

 

Well its hard to argue that Nintendo hasn't actively tried supporting them to the same extent that they did on DS. One thing is we saw a handful of big casual releases in a small time frame.

Nintendogs-August 2005 (also a price cut)

Mario Kart DS-November 2005

Animal Crossing: Wild World-December 2005

Brain Age-April 2006

New Super Mario Bros.-May 2006 (much sleeker/stylish revision)

Big Brain Academy-June 2006

From there things started to snowball with Nintendo & 3rd parties continuing to provide new casual-friendly experiences on a consistent basis over the next few years, Cooking/Gardening Mama, Professor Layton, Guitar Hero, Imagine Series, Style Savvy, Art Academy, Personal Trainer Series, Flash Focus, Rhythm Heaven, WarioWare, Scribblenauts, etc.

3DS has not had nearly the number of casual focused software released for it and Nintendo made mistakes in terms of design, price and marketing which hurt the device.

Another massive point that people forget or ignore is that the majority of R&D for 3DS happened before the mobile gaming market exploded in popularity. It was designed as if they had no mobile competitors since the mobile gaming scene was not nearly as large in 2006-2009 when the device was being designed. That's what is interesting going forward, NX will be the first device built from the ground up after the mobile market became mainstream, I'm really interested in seeing how they adapt.

 

3DS didn't have them because those games were putting up dissapointing sales. Nintendogs + cats badly hurt Nintendo because they banked the launch window on it. Brain Training full on flopped. Style Savvy didn't do well. 

Nintendo always did deep product testing with casuals (I remember Iwata would sometimes share surveys they did with this audience) ... they knew I think around 2013 that the mobile market was fucking them hard with casuals and they were done for with that market. 

At that point they started to look into mobile games for themselves (if you can't beat them ...) I believe. 

Again look at the Wii U's first 12 months ...

NSMBU, Nintendo Land, Sing Party, Ninja Gaiden 3, Wonderful 101, Wii Fit U, Wii Sports Club, Wii Party U, Mario & Sonic Winter Olympics, Mario 3D World, Pikmin 3

Like more than half of these are casual games even 3D Mario World was positioned to be easier than the Galaxy games for the Wii-Casual audience to play (more like NSMB). Wii U had terrible sales. 

 

Like I said, Nintendogs+Animal Crossing+Mario Kart+Brain Age+NSMB all released within an 8-9 month span, the combination of all those titles in such a short amount of time caused a huge surge in causal interest. It costing $129, having a focused marketing campaign and releasing a very stylish revision in that time contributed a lot as well.

Nintendogs+Cats was the big casual launch game but what came after that? 3D Land+Mario Kart 7 were the next games that had any type of causal appeal but they released 8-9 months later then NSMB2 came out another 8 months after that. Late 2012/early 2013 had Style Savvy/Art Academy/Brain Age but that's almost a full 2 years after 3DS launch, too little too late. Being more expensive and people thinking it was simply a DS with a 3D screen didn't help either.

The same goes for Wii, it had Wii Sports at launch followed by WarioWare in January, Wii Play in February, Paper Mario in April, Mario Party in May & Big Brain Academy in June. The second half of the year had 3rd parties start to release a bunch of casual centric games like Carnival Games, Cooking Mama, Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution, Game Party, Mario & Sonic Olympics. Nintendo followed that up in the first half of 2008 with Mario Kart & Wii Fit while 3rd parties continued to release new casual friendly games. A $250 price tag & strong marketing campaign also contributed.

Wii U launched with Nintendo Land+NSMBU, a solid casual friendly combo but what casual focused games released between holiday 2012 & holiday 2013? Game & Wario in June, that's it. The holiday 2013 lineup was decent with Wii Party U+3D World+Wii Fit U (digital only)+Wii Sports Club (just an HD port & digital only). We also saw Just Dance each holiday, but not much else from 3rd parties. Costing $50-100 more than Wii and people thinking it was simply a tablet accessory for Wii didn't help either.

So basically DS/Wii had a constant stream of casual friendly games, solid price points for what they offered, strong marketing campaigns, and sleek/stylish designs.

3DS/Wii U had constant droughts, high price points for what they offered, poor marketing and designs that caused people to think they were revisions/accessories for their predecessors.

Did mobile contribute to the decline? Absolutely but let's not act like Nintendo didn't cause a lot of their own problems.