"This would have been a decent argument if the WiiU never happened. Nintendo has made some poor decisions, but they have made way more good decisions imo. Every big gaming company does stupid shit. What exactly did Nintendo get away with that Sony, MS, EA and Activision didnt get away with? How are they suffering in a way Nintendo isnt?"
Aah! But what if I offer this.
Nintendo learned from the Wii. I remember a billion dollar advertising limit when Wii came out, could be wrong, but it was expensive. Remember that was off the heel of the GameCube, third place in console sale. So the pricey ad campaign showed them how it was supposed to be done. How a message is told by the name of the console, Wii. How to take back an industry.
With Sony able to outlast the Wii, Nintendo began to panic. The next console can't be the tired waggle. They had some ideas. A social media service. A multimedia hub. Asymmetrical gameplay. But their best was the tablet format. Unfortunately the tech was in its infancy. Too expensive for the time. They needed to put something out there and they did. As long as they could hold on to this idea, Nintendos pride would be the first to suffer.
They put out Wii U as a buffer, a temporary fix all to buy time. It was business as usual, make great games. There was controversy all around, mostly due to the poor wii U sales. Remember their advertisements? Exactly, no one did. There were few and unremarkable. But why? Didn't nintendo learn it's lesson? Didn't they know not to confuse their casual customer of which they've been targeting since the wii ds combo? Or did they purposely redirected all their distraction tactics on Wii u. How would it have looked if Nintendo said, "hey, we have the next real wii innovation. You only have to way 4 and a half years." Nope. Wii 2.0 would never have sold with ps4 looming.
I remember Satoru Iwata taking a paycut during Wii u Era, to avoid letting anyone go. I wondered, why? No other CEO for a big name company would do that. Unless he knew. That switch was in the future and he could only stall. He didn't let anyone go because he knew it was business as usual. Make great games, make controversial decisions, hype new games, release great game. And innovate.
Last edited by Ouroboros24 - on 31 March 2021
