AngryLittleAlchemist said:
Ok...saying this about the Wii U. Ok. Saying this about the Nintendo 64's use of cartridges. Ok. Even saying stuff about third party support on the Nintendo Switch? Fine. But the Wii?
...come on man. You can't just use the same arguments for some Nintendo consoles as you use for other Nintendo consoles. There would literally be NO POINT in making the Wii better from a power perspective than it was. It still got a LOT of third party support, it's third party games still sold really well, and it was a huge success. Nothing but profit for Nintendo. Motion controls in 2006? Those were probably expensive. And sure, Nintendo probably made anywhere from 25-60$ of profit off the system when itt first rleased at 250$. But if Nintendo were to adjust that profit for better graphics, the Wii would have sold for 300$ just for a marginal upgrade or 350$ for a noticeable one. To make it 300$ with a big spec boost AND motion controls would mean their profit on the system would have to take a noticeable cut. Nintendo likes making cheap hardware with cheap prices and tons of profit. It makes sense, and they nailed it with the Wii. They'd either have to cut into their profit, or sell it for a lot more money. What would happen in both cases would lose money. |
There's plenty of advantages to having a better chip, it never needed to be an either or choice.
The SNES and N64 and GameCube were all huge upgrades over previous hardware and all three were very affordable, so what ... something happens to technology in 2006 that makes tech so much more expensive just 5 years after the GameCube?
I don't buy it. Hell even the DS was a full generational leap over the Game Boy while also having a more expensive "gimmick" ... a second panel touchscreen was likely a helluva lot more expensive than a plastic controller with motion sensors and an IR pointer.
The truth is I think Nintendo chickened out on investing too heavily on the Wii concept, it it flopped (same with the DS), the plan was likely to move ahead with Game Boy Next/Next-Gen Nintendo system. This is why they pushed hard to have the DS seen as a "third pillar", so they could wash their hands of it in the event that it didn't go well.
They didn't want to risk much on the Wii, so if it flopped, they would've just have recycled the GameCube and not have expending a ton of resources on it. Their lack of vision though cost them dearly though, because they could've probably sold 150 million+ systems if they actually had real developer support, and no developer would have been able to not support the system with their main games, because the publishers (business suits) would not allow such a platform to be ignored. And the system likely would've have finished much stronger in the second half of the life cycle, when more and more people had migrated over to HDTV sets.
