HD Wii?

[JWeinCom]

Mr Puggsly said:

JWeinCom said:

That's an oversimplification at best.  By the same logic, would we say the PS2 was a failure cause it's successor saw a huge drop off? If one product successfully sells 100 million units, selling consistently through 5 years, and its successor sells 20 million, the more logical conclusion is that the successor kind of sucks... which it did.

The Wii U uses a very complicated looking controller and focussed mostly on more core games.  Nintendo's two biggest casual franchises were released as minor upgrades over their predecessors, and both were launched digitally so they had no shelf presence.  Even the launch software, Nintendo Land, really wasn't all that casual.  Each minigame (except maybe Mario Chase and Balloon Trip) were more complex than the Wii Sports minigames by several orders of magnitude.  Even comments by Miyamoto and Iwata distanced Nintendo from casual gaming.

This just wasn't a casual system.  It may have been designed with that in mind at first, but the games lineup just doesn't bear that out.

It's like if I own a pizza place, that is successful for five years.  People love my pizza.  On the sixth year, I change the menu to entirely burgers, with one burger being a pizza burger.  If my customers all left, you wouldn't go "oh you see, the people didn't really like pizza".  You'd probably say, "those dumbasses should have probably kept selling pizza".  

I try selling burgers for about three years, but it's not working.  So I announce that I'm changing the menu once again.  If I change my menu back to pizza, will those pizza loving customers come back?  Maybe.  It could be that they found a better pizza place, or all went on diets and stopped eating pizza entirely.  But, I think there's a good chance that I could regain a good portion of them if I start making awesome pizza again.

No, bubble means its success that's won't last. Wii and Kinect's success was due to a gimmick, but most people moved on. The failure of WIi U and Kinect 2 doesn't mean their predecessor wasn't successful.

The PS2 userbase didn't just disappear, much of that userbase went to PS3 and Xbox 360.

I don't entirely agree with your analogy, but I see your point. Basically I think we agree Nintendo should have stuck with what worked for them. In my opinion, the Wii U should have simply been a more powerful Wii. The tablet control is cool, but it should have been an optional accessory. The primary controls of Wii U should have been the Wiimote.

The Nintendo home console userbase has declined since NES. The Wii turned that around and I give much of that credit to the Wiimote. I guess NIntendo didn't realize that because they went back to a gamepad and put out high priced console. Even if Wii U stuck with the Wiimote and was lower priced it had no chance of achieving the userbase of Wii (because of the bubble), but it could have sold better.

The Wiimote again wasn't a good idea, because it wouldn't really generate much buzz.  I really like the Wii-mote, but it was indeed a gimmick.  A fun gimmick that I very much enjoyed, but still a gimmick nonetheless.

I don't think the tablet was a bad idea in and of itself.  The idea, I believe, was to create a system that both casuals and core gamers could play, with the more experienced gamer using the Gamepad, and the less experienced gamer using the Wiimote.  And this works wonderfully in the multiplayer games of Nintendo Land.  They just never marketed it right, and never expanded upon that idea. 

I knew the Wii U was dead as soon as the second E3 hit.  I was really excited to see how Nintendo would start using the Gamepad in cool ways.  Instead... we had Mario 3D World.  Great game, didn't use the Gamepad except in a few minor levels.  Tropical Freeze, where you could actually turn off the Gamepad.  Pikmin 3, Bayonetta, Wonderful 101, Xenoblade, Wind Waker, Mario Kart 8... and while I really enjoyed all of these games, I couldn't help but think I'd rather play them with better graphics and no gamepad.  And again, none of these really casual games. 

The Wii U selling poorly wasn't the result of any bubble.  It was a result of the Wii U being a crappy system with next to no games to justify its main selling point.  The only way you could really say it was a bubble is if they tried to release another similar system and it failed, and that just didn't happen.  Nintendo basically stopped their casual experiment cold turkey.  Would another Wii like system have sold well, or was it a bubble?  We can't say for sure, because Nintendo didn't realease another casual system.