Do you think Nintendo killed off the Wii too early

[Soundwave]

curl-6 said:

Soundwave said:

It's difficult I think. Even like I said with the Switch, I mean the launch year was great, but again, you take away several repurposed Wii U titles and it's not really anywhere near as impressive of a launch window and probably couldn't even launch at all until Mario Odyssey was ready. The last time Nintendo really, truly had a great all around launch without benefit of taking games from a previous system was really maybe the SNES, almost 30 years ago. 

For Nintendo I think it is simply a better rule of thumb to err on the side of caution and ensure the console to come (whatever it is) always takes priority. 

Gamers are not loyal to you or your friends even your so-called "loyalists" will fuck you hard the second you ask for some patience with a new system. No one ever wants to hear "can you please just give us a few months to get Mario Kart 7 and Mario 3D Land ready and not bail out on us, please?".

There is very little residual bounce or goodwill for past performance when you have a lukewarm or bad launch. 

I mean shit even the Super NES ... Nintendo had a virtual monopoly on the game market and were at peak top of the world in summer/fall 1990 thanks to the unprecedented launch of Super Mario Bros. 3. People even just as blanket term referred to all video games as just "Nintendo" ("little Johnny is playing Nintendo", even if he's playing an arcade game).

Even with Super Mario World and Nintendo promising a new Zelda just a few months later and several other pretty good launch games, Sega from out of fucking nowhere suddenly by holiday 1991 is giving Nintendo a major problem. 12 months earlier Sega couldn't even get stocked by several major US retailers and one damn blue hedgehog and a year+ more mature library and all of the sudden Nintendo's complete dominance of the industry is thrown upside down. 

Hiroshi Yamauchi (president of Nintendo) was so angry that the SNES actually had (relative to expectations) a somewhat lukewarm early period of sales in the US that he went to a Japanese newspaper to publically shame and berate his own son-in-law, NOA president Minoru Arakawa, lol. This lit a fire under Arakawa's ass and Nintendo became much more aggressive towards Sega in the 2nd half of the 16-bit gen. 

It is difficult yes. I think Switch and 3DS is a good example of how to do it; I myself criticized Nintendo in 2017 for not pulling the plug on 3DS completely, but if you were a 3DS owner you got a pretty damn smooth transition into the Switch without your current system being abandoned 2 years early.

Switch launch is mainly predicated on the ashes of the Wii U, remove BOTW, Splatoon 2 (quickly retooled Wii U sequel), and Mario Kart 8 and the launch year window for the Switch is fairly poor. 

It's easy to shit on the Wii U, but I'm also sure the Wii U probably would've had a much easier go of it if you gifted the system Zelda: Skyward Sword as a launch game, a Mario Kart game in its 2nd month on market, and moved the hit game Splatoon from its 3rd year into its first 6 month window that it would've developed significantly more momentum. 

The last launch that Nintendo did that was legit all around good was probably the Super Nintendo, but even there that was in the days when North American/European launches traditionally happened 9-16 months after the Japanese launch. So they were able to have Super Mario World, F-Zero, Pilotwings, Super Ghouls N' Ghosts, Final Fight, and other games ready and just as important "2nd wave titles" like Zelda III and Street Fighter 2 arrived the following spring and summer. 

And people complained that wasn't good enough back then, lol. 

The fact is despite people saying it over and over again, late gen support for a system really does not do anything for a game company in the long term. No one complains or bitches today that the GBA, GameCube, and Wii U were cut short ... why? Because they liked the successors so they have convenient amnesia about those cases.

It's basically: "Fuck you Nintendo, you fucked me on Wii U, where are all the damn games? I'll never buy another sys ... is that Breath of the Wild? On a 6 inch screen? But now on the bus? You had me at Zelda, you brilliant bastards take my $400 because I need neon Joycons to complete my life". 

Always err on the side of the new console's launch being the priority. No one cares about your late gen support for your previous system the second they get a gaming-boner from your new system reveal. But if your new system reveal isn't great or you need a little patience from the consumer .... good fucking luck selling that. All of the sudden you're as popular the guy coughing loudly in a grocery store. 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 10 August 2020