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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Destructoid Blog: "Is Wii U's Touch Screen Controller a Red Herring Hiding a Deeper Strategy?"

RolStoppable said:

So what exactly makes me a problem?

The world runs smoother when we all agree that the Emperor is wearing the finest suit of clothes ever created.



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c0rd said:

I'm confused, did he really write that whole thing up just to highlight the pro's of having a weaker console? And that being the factor in the Wii U beating the next two consoles?

The problem with that is, the PS3 and 360 are still on the block. There's no reason the Wii U would ever have better third party support than either of the two (especially when you assume the touch controller isn't a factor).

Exactly.

If devs are really going to stay with the lower powered consoles, they'll stick with the ones that have a collective 140 million+ install base for a while. Whatever secret sauce the Wii U has could take years to tap into fully. There's no incentive for third parties to do such heavy lifting, especially in the first couple of years.

And the Wii's motion controls were always the main selling point. Nearly ALL the top selling Wii games are built around the Wiimote and other periperals, with many still charting to this day. The Gamepad is just as important for the Wii U; Nintendo's utilization of the hardware in a way that convinces people to buy the system is the only way third-parties will come on board. Otherwise, they'll just continue to stick with what they know--right alongside consumers, who have been doing just that since New Years.



Have some time to kill? Read my shitty games blog. http://www.pixlbit.com/blogs/586/gigantor21

:D

BuckStud said:
RolStoppable said:
BuckStud said:

The Wii U sold 3mil units in approx 10 weeks.  It took the 360 almost a year and took the PS3 more than a year to achieve the same.  They must have both been HUGE flops then?.....  The biggest problem with Nintendo right now are people like you.

Your 360 and PS3 numbers are most certainly wrong, but either way, these consoles burned through money, so they were anything but successful in their initial years on the market.

So what exactly makes me a problem?

Do a little research, those number are not wrong. The problem is all the hate towards Nintendo, MS, & Sony. It doesn't help anyone, yet every day people spew crap about them just to start trouble. If you were a true gamer, you would enjoy the fact that all three companies have great systems out.



Your numbers are seriously off. Xbox 360 sold almost 8million by the end of 2006. So that's about 13-14 months on the market. PS3 sold over 9million by the end of 2007, which is about 13-14 months on the market. Now, where are you getting YOUR numbers from? Mine are from VgChartz http://www.vgchartz.com/yearly/2007/Global/ http://www.vgchartz.com/yearly/2006/Global/

Cool read. Thanks for the head's up.



RolStoppable said:
Aielyn said:

The point isn't so much about what is happening right now, but what happens once the other platforms are released. Wii wasn't the first one out of the gate, so it wasn't in the same position as the Wii U in that regard (and that's probably the biggest failure in his effort to equate the two systems - he describes the Wii as having come out "close to the start of the generation").

And his greater argument isn't that the Wii U will be a phenomenon like the Wii, but that there's more to the strategy than meets the eye. It's less about the results and more about the intent.

As for THQ, the point is that it'll serve as a case study for the other publishers. Development costs spiraling out of control, greater focus on "online passes", etc, and the fact that they didn't really put much support on the Wii (they did publish de Blob, but other than that, the only notable releases were the niche Deadly Creatures and their WWE series).

And if you pay attention, EdgyDude doesn't so much predict that third parties will all move to the Wii U, but that those that don't are going to fail anyway.

By the point third parties might realize that they need to sell more games, the Wii U will most likely be dead in the water already due to a lack of third party support. This will not result in any sort of measures that benefit Nintendo, but rather efforts to milk the consumers on Sony and Microsoft consoles even more.

The intent behind the Wii U was to get third party support. It's not coming and it's not going to come, so the strategy has failed.

The final point, the inevitable failure for many third parties, is about the only good thing that is coming from Nintendo's self-destruction in the eighth generation.

remind me how things were for the 3ds 3 months after launch and how they are now. Short memory huh?!

Predict to me this: what will happen if nintendo releases a 3d mario and mario kart 8 with say a 70 euro/dollar price cut this christmas? take into account that zelda ww remake will already be out.

Yeah... maybe you are proclaiming failure a bit too early eh? i remember the claims that the vita was going to destroy the 3ds and how doomed it was.



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Veknoid_Outcast said:
DanneSandin said:
Sorry for the delay, had to google "natalie portman closer" ^^ damn she's fiiiine!

Anywho, first off; THQ. They didn't fail simply because of higher developing costs, afaik. What I can gather the uDraw for PS360 cost them a shit ton of money, making that particular argument useless.

Secondly, I think PS720 will share quite a few ports among them, which Wii U might get some of - and likely gimped down versions at that.

Right now there is nothing compelling consumers to buy the Wii U, and this probably won't change. The future is indeed looking bleak right now, and that blogpost is simply wishful thinking. The thing is, lower specs forces developers to be creative with the hardware - as he points out. Just look at Mario Galaxy and Skyward Sword - excellent examples of that. But, this is nothing 3rd party will use a lot of since they won't be developing a whole lotta games for Wii U, mostly porting them I'd guess. This means that no one but Nintendo themselves, and maybe a handful of others, will get creative with Wii U.

I agree that as of now there isn't much to draw in consumers. But I disagree that it won't change.

The blog post IS wishful thinking, but the future in no way looks bleak. If it looks bleak for Nintendo, it looks bleak for everyone.

Finally, your last sentence is, sadly, spot on. You'd think video game creators would appreciate the ability to create new game experiences, but more often than not they zero in on the lowest common denominator.

yup ^.^ i am not concerned about Nintendo at all with the Wii-U.



Mazty said:

Complete puerile drivel from another wanna-be economist/deep -thinker.

I skipped most of it as I'd like to keep my IQ, and blood pressure, in check, but here are some of the glaringly obvious imbecilic comments:


1) "By this point I'm pretty sure we're all familiar with the fact that almost every past gen of consoles the winner has turned out to be the most technically underpowered system in the race"

On that comment alone the guy should be banned from the internet. First of all how is he measuring success? Please don't tell me it's via the thoughtless "WELL ITZ SOLDZ DUR MOST! ITZ WINAR!" What a complete moron. He obviously has no idea about how business works because success is far more complex than that. For example, success may just be establishing a creditable foothold in the market (xbox), or making sure you have a monopoly on the next-generations preferred optical media (PS3). However, it most likely is just about spinning a profit in which case all the consoles have succeeded in doing. To pit the consoles against one another is completely arbitrary and wholly juvenile.

So first point is, this kid clearly hasn't the slightest clue about business, yet here he is talking about the potential business plans Nintendo have...


2) "it's those very technical constraints (or rather the embracing of the constraints) that actually encourage interesting game development"

10/10 for going full retard right there. Do you know what encourages interesting game development? Devs who have a vision and aren't hindered by publishers. Power only comes into it when it is limiting game development. Otherwise why is Flower and Journey, two of the most innovative games this generation, on the PS3 and not the Wii? Why was Limbo not made for the SNES?

http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/star-citizen/ 02:46 on frontpage video
"None of this would have been possible two years ago, but with Moore's Law driving PC performance and cost[...]"

So we have proof that innovation and game development can actually occur directly as a result of giving game developers MORE power.


3) Congratulations. You found fog. It turned out to work in their favour. That doesn't mean lack of power will drive innovation, just in the same way that power doesn't drives it - it's down to how good the devs are.


4) "Given the specs presented earlier one can only imagine how much will budgets rise in the 8th generation of consoles, and it doesn't take much thinking to realize how this could go horribly wrong."

I'm guessing dearest author isn't employed within a big company, otherwise he would of heard of this thing called a "workflow". Considering with new generations come new iterations of game engines, these engines all provide tool sets to make games within. Each generation these toolsets are getting easier and easier to use, in order to maximise the efficiency of the workflow, and we have an added bonus that there are now two major engines fighting it out - Unreal and CryEngine - therefore it's safe to presume that both will attempt to be easier than the other to use as that's a nice selling point.
In short prettier games don't necessarily have to cost more. Plus he completely forgot to mention crowd-funding and accessibility to use hardware. So far devs have mentioned the joy of programming for the PS4 while criticising the Wii U due to having to adapt for the low CPU clock speed.


5) "The key here lies in the controller becoming a red herring that blinds rivals (and pretty much everyone) to the rest of advantages on the Wii U's corner"

Where can I buy my own tinfoil hat? Was the 20% reduction in estimated shipped units also part of Nintendo's strategy?


6)"Better specs than 7th gen consoles but not enough to require much bigger budgets: "

And probably not enough of a leap in specs to lure people into buying a console which is just slightly better than theirs...

That's as far as I got. The guy is completely insane, ill-informed, uneducated and trying to warp shit sales figures into "it'll make a comeback - this is all planned"! Someone grab him a straitjacket.

The sad thing is the amount of people who have been suckered into the inane ramblings of a madman. It's because of blogs like this that makes me think we need to enforce a license system in order to publish your opinion on the internet. 

 

.. I skipped most of it as id like to keep my IQ,.. complete puerile drivel from another wanna be deep thinker



 

RolStoppable said:
That's a lot of optimism coupled with ignoring reality. Based on Nintendo's financials it's pretty clear that Nintendo doesn't have much of a strategy. The THQ failure also shows that third parties would rather go bankrupt than reconsider their stance regarding game development on a Nintendo home console.

The blog post also tries its best to link the Wii and Wii U, but where this comparison crumbles is that the Wii was a hit while the Wii U is not. Additionally, Nintendo didn't bet the farm on the Wii. If the Wii struggled out of the gate, they had plenty of room to make a price cut. The Wii U, on the other hand, was a huge gamble.

Did you just blame Nintendo for THQ going backrupt?  You seriously did this?



RolStoppable said:
That's a lot of optimism coupled with ignoring reality. Based on Nintendo's financials it's pretty clear that Nintendo doesn't have much of a strategy. The THQ failure also shows that third parties would rather go bankrupt than reconsider their stance regarding game development on a Nintendo home console.

The blog post also tries its best to link the Wii and Wii U, but where this comparison crumbles is that the Wii was a hit while the Wii U is not. Additionally, Nintendo didn't bet the farm on the Wii. If the Wii struggled out of the gate, they had plenty of room to make a price cut. The Wii U, on the other hand, was a huge gamble.


Or maybe they could not develope on a Nintendo console because they were going bankrupt.



Mazty said:

Complete puerile drivel from another wanna-be economist/deep -thinker.

I skipped most of it as I'd like to keep my IQ, and blood pressure, in check, but here are some of the glaringly obvious imbecilic comments:


1) "By this point I'm pretty sure we're all familiar with the fact that almost every past gen of consoles the winner has turned out to be the most technically underpowered system in the race"

On that comment alone the guy should be banned from the internet. First of all how is he measuring success? Please don't tell me it's via the thoughtless "WELL ITZ SOLDZ DUR MOST! ITZ WINAR!" What a complete moron. He obviously has no idea about how business works because success is far more complex than that. For example, success may just be establishing a creditable foothold in the market (xbox), or making sure you have a monopoly on the next-generations preferred optical media (PS3). However, it most likely is just about spinning a profit in which case all the consoles have succeeded in doing. To pit the consoles against one another is completely arbitrary and wholly juvenile.

So first point is, this kid clearly hasn't the slightest clue about business, yet here he is talking about the potential business plans Nintendo have...


2) "it's those very technical constraints (or rather the embracing of the constraints) that actually encourage interesting game development"

10/10 for going full retard right there. Do you know what encourages interesting game development? Devs who have a vision and aren't hindered by publishers. Power only comes into it when it is limiting game development. Otherwise why is Flower and Journey, two of the most innovative games this generation, on the PS3 and not the Wii? Why was Limbo not made for the SNES?

http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/star-citizen/ 02:46 on frontpage video
"None of this would have been possible two years ago, but with Moore's Law driving PC performance and cost[...]"

So we have proof that innovation and game development can actually occur directly as a result of giving game developers MORE power.


3) Congratulations. You found fog. It turned out to work in their favour. That doesn't mean lack of power will drive innovation, just in the same way that power doesn't drives it - it's down to how good the devs are.


4) "Given the specs presented earlier one can only imagine how much will budgets rise in the 8th generation of consoles, and it doesn't take much thinking to realize how this could go horribly wrong."

I'm guessing dearest author isn't employed within a big company, otherwise he would of heard of this thing called a "workflow". Considering with new generations come new iterations of game engines, these engines all provide tool sets to make games within. Each generation these toolsets are getting easier and easier to use, in order to maximise the efficiency of the workflow, and we have an added bonus that there are now two major engines fighting it out - Unreal and CryEngine - therefore it's safe to presume that both will attempt to be easier than the other to use as that's a nice selling point.
In short prettier games don't necessarily have to cost more. Plus he completely forgot to mention crowd-funding and accessibility to use hardware. So far devs have mentioned the joy of programming for the PS4 while criticising the Wii U due to having to adapt for the low CPU clock speed.


5) "The key here lies in the controller becoming a red herring that blinds rivals (and pretty much everyone) to the rest of advantages on the Wii U's corner"

Where can I buy my own tinfoil hat? Was the 20% reduction in estimated shipped units also part of Nintendo's strategy?


6)"Better specs than 7th gen consoles but not enough to require much bigger budgets: "

And probably not enough of a leap in specs to lure people into buying a console which is just slightly better than theirs...

That's as far as I got. The guy is completely insane, ill-informed, uneducated and trying to warp shit sales figures into "it'll make a comeback - this is all planned"! Someone grab him a straitjacket.

The sad thing is the amount of people who have been suckered into the inane ramblings of a madman. It's because of blogs like this that makes me think we need to enforce a license system in order to publish your opinion on the internet. 


You know your stuff man.

+1