FrancisNobleman said:
When people say "it's just 2006 all over again" they're buying into the fallacy of history repeating itself. History does not repeat itself. It does, however, resonate with past circumstances.
Is there a real reason to be concerned about Wii U's long term support? Yes.
Is 2012 the exact same situation as 2006? No, of course not.
We're now in an industry that has learned it is very hard and expensive to keep raking in the AAA core gamer dollar, that most of your over-budgeted triple A games fail to make money, and studios regularly shutter because the situation is unsustainable.
We are also in an industry that has seen how blind it was to the Wii's potential to blow up, and utterly failed to capitalize, leaving money on the table. And the existence of far wider audiences than the 20-30 year old male is now firmly established, even the nature of those audiences isn't fully understood.
The Wii also did not launch with games directly competitive to the other platforms. From day 1, it was outclassed in terms of software available. The unusually long 7th generation may, just possibly, be a boon to Nintendo. It allows them to launch Wii U, and for the next 1-2 years position the console as having a truly competitive library with the other guys, plus all the exclusive stuff only Nintendo can offer.
I know that many do not want to see the 8th generation as having the potential of repeating the 6th - with a triad of consoles with noticeably segmented performance. The notion that the PS4 and Xbox 720 will be as far beyond Wii U as this gen is beyond PS2 is too firmly entrenched. (And a recipe for massive disappointment.)
But I think there is some potential for Nintendo to force a PS2-Gamecube-Xbox scenario here - though in a modified form, whatever shape that will take.
Oddly, a 'soft crash' of the AAA games industry might help them out. If the number of AAA+A games does decline over the next few years, it would appear that only means the number of superior exclusives the next gen MS and Sony consoles have will be a lot smaller. There does seem to be an assumption in place that after a year or so, every significant game on the other consoles will be a UE4-powered technology festival that will be impossible to port to Wii U.
But it's also possible we would end up with a situation that resonates with the 6th generation - the most powerful consoles occasionally get their showpiece title, and the average multiplatform game remains at a level a couple of notches below that.
edit: I'm quoting
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This has really been like a 16/17 year problem for Nintendo.
Ever since the SNES ended and Nintendo basically shot themselves in the foot with the N64 cartridge decision, they've pledged every gen since that they'd get better with third parties, and every console cycle by about the third year, the remaining third parties that even bothered to support Nintendo in the first place bail out.
So yeah, I'm skeptical. I don't see anything all that different with the Wii U, and Nintendo's problems aren't just the chipset (though that's a big one and a pretty easy excuse for devs to use in ignoring the Wii U).
With regards to the 2006 remark you're right it's not 2006 anymore. No one is that impressed by the concept of social/casual/motion gaming nowadays because it's been done to death. The Wiimote propelled the Wii to tremendous success back then because it was completely new, now Nintendo doesn't have that same hook. So this could very well go a lot more like the GameCube (which actually did have some pretty earth shattering third party commitments early on, but failed anyway).
