By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Nintendo - Why WiiU is the only viable strategy for Nintendo

 

The WiiU is the ONLY strategy

Yay 69 57.98%
 
Nay 50 42.02%
 
Total:119
Jay520 on 31 March 2013
JWeinCom said:
Jay520 said:
JWeinCom said:
Jay520 said:
JweinCom said "I don't think a large focus on motion controls would work. Motion controls should still be an important part of the console, and I'm hoping Nintendo still makes Wii-mote games, but you need to provide something new. I don't think a jump to HD would have been enough on its own. Like I said, I think the tablet does have the potential to appeal to casual gamers and hopefully Nintendo will prove me right with games."

I don't think so. Sure, there needs to be new experiences, but this usually depends on software. You don't necessarily need new controls to implement new experiences.

Do you think a Wii Sports-like launch title would have helped the Wii U sell more than it did?


New controls expand on what you can do with software development.  There is still dons of new stuff that could be done with the Wii Remote, or an X-box controller, or an NES controller for that matter.  But, having something new always opens more opportunities.

I actually think Nintendoland is a really cool game, and I believe it could have sold more systems with a few adjustments.  As for a Wii Sports type game, I'm not exactly sure what you mean.  Something simpler that uses mainly the Wiimote?  Do you literally mean Wii Sports 2 (or 3 I guess)?  Probably would have sold better at launch, but I think it would sell worse in the long run.

The Gamepad makes a lot of sense with a lot of the Wii features.  For instance Miiverse (which I think will become way more important as time goes on) is something that works really well that wouldn't with a standard controller or motion controller.   I think a co-op 3d mario with gamepad will be more enticing than a more standard sequel.  I think having off screen play makes the console waymore living room friendly for parents.  I like the Gamepad, and I think it could be a system selling feature if it was marketed better.


True about new controls. I was just responding to what appeared to be an implication that new controls were necessary new experiences

By Wii Sports like game. I mean something that heavily uses the Wii mote, yes. But hopefully instead of just introducing the concept of motion controls, it provided deeper gameplay and more accurate controls (I guess you could call it Wii Sports 3). Such a game would have done much better than Nintendoland or a Gamepad focused game imo, but I guess we'll never know.

I don't think the Gamepad's biggest problem is marketing. I think its getting a group of games focused around the device which provide experiences enticing to the mainstream. Seems like you agree with me here. We just disagree on whether such a game is possible. I guess we'll have to wait and see. Marketing should come secondary after first getting those games out there.


I don't think a deeper or more accurate version of Wii Sports is really what people are after.  That's what Sony tried to market Sports Champions as, and it didn't work too well.  I think the reason behind Wii Sports' success was that it was really accessible and simple.  If Nintendo created a really in depth version of Wii baseball, it could be really fun for big baseball fans, but probably wouldn't be fun to Wii Sports fans.

When I say marketing, that includes games.  Games are a way of marketing features, or at least that's part of what I meant.  That being said, the traditional marketing is off as well.  In store demos now feature Rayman Legends, Sonic Racing, NBA 2K13, and NSMBU.  Pretty crappy way to show off the unique features.



Using Sony's success, or lack thereof, for a feature is a pretty bad way to gauge that feature's potential. Time and time again Sony has shown to have great concepts, but terrible execution. Ignoring Sony though, I'm thinking of how Wii Sports Resort expanded on the concept that was only slighty touched on with Wii Sports. Wii Sports Resort was more accurate and a bit deeper and it looks like it was received well. But I still think Nintendo could have dug into the concept at least a bit more than that. Such a game would have made a great launch title imo.

Around the Network
Akvod on 31 March 2013

Edit: Whoop, I need to wake up. Didn't read OP carefully. Leaving the rest here to have some contribution.

 

I'm not a marketing person, but the way I see it is that Nintendo is suffering from the consequences of their blue ocean strategy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy

 

Blue Ocean Strategy is, IMO, going after a customer base that the competition isn't going after and catering to their needs. That, IMO, necessitates that you abandon your current or "conventional" customers.

So, they've done that with the Wii, dissapointing and alientating a number of "hardcore" fans. Now, the new customers they attracted either don't care about the WiiU, or moved on to things like social gaming.

 

So you have a console that:

1) Isn't able to charge a premium

2) Isn't able to make significant royalties due to lack of 3'rd party support

And worse, is having trouble gaining a user base.

 

I don't know what I would have done if I were Nintendo. You could either try to do a hard claw back into the HD market, which could be justified by saying that the new customers attracted to the Wii aren't loyal and interested in the WiiU. Or, you could try to continue catering to the new customers that they gained with the Wii (emphasize the tablet as being great for kids education maybe, IDK).

 

To be honest, Nintendo just doesn't really seem to have a clear strategy.



Talal on 31 March 2013

The problem is it isn't even cheap. If it were cheap then yes it would have been a decent strategy but this thing is a bit expensive.



JWeinCom on 31 March 2013
HoloDust said:
redgreenblue said:
The 'Nintendo should make FPS' argument is incredibly flawed and short sighted. There is currently the best version of the most popular FPS (COD black ops whatever) on the Wii U and the sales are abysmal.

Yes they are abysmal - it competes with PS360 and their userbase, so no wonder. But looking at exclusive FPS games, Killzone 3 sold 1/4 of CoD: BLOPS2 on PS3 (less than 2.5mil), but that will not make Sony ditch it, on the contrary. Nintendo should definitelly make FPS, but one that does not compete with CoD, just like HALO does not actually compete directly with it. Let them be creative and make something different that will bring that audience to their system.

The problem with this idea is that Sony doesn't just have Killzone.  They have Resistance, they have Uncharted, they have Gears of War, they have better third party support, and they've catered to that particular audience to some extent since the PS1 days.  Sony has created a fanbase that would be receptive to games like Killzone.  Nintendo has not.  If Nintendo wanted such a fanbase one FPS wouldn't do it.  They'd have to create quite a few first party PS360 style games, and switch up their marketing. 



HoloDust on 31 March 2013
JWeinCom said:
HoloDust said:
redgreenblue said:
The 'Nintendo should make FPS' argument is incredibly flawed and short sighted. There is currently the best version of the most popular FPS (COD black ops whatever) on the Wii U and the sales are abysmal.

Yes they are abysmal - it competes with PS360 and their userbase, so no wonder. But looking at exclusive FPS games, Killzone 3 sold 1/4 of CoD: BLOPS2 on PS3 (less than 2.5mil), but that will not make Sony ditch it, on the contrary. Nintendo should definitelly make FPS, but one that does not compete with CoD, just like HALO does not actually compete directly with it. Let them be creative and make something different that will bring that audience to their system.

The problem with this idea is that Sony doesn't just have Killzone.  They have Resistance, they have Uncharted, they have Gears of War, they have better third party support, and they've catered to that particular audience to some extent since the PS1 days.  Sony has created a fanbase that would be receptive to games like Killzone.  Nintendo has not.  If Nintendo wanted such a fanbase one FPS wouldn't do it.  They'd have to create quite a few first party PS360 style games, and switch up their marketing. 

True, they would certainly need more than one new IP for that - maybe they need to start spending some of that cash they're sitting on and start buying studios that can make them games in genres that they need if they want to go for the same market as MSony. Then again, maybe they need to use that cash to start making more games (whether in existing or new franchises) that caters to audience they gained with Wii. One way or the other, I think it would be a good thing for them to make up their minds about what is the market they want to focus on most. As they say "If you try to sit on two chairs, you will fall between them"...



Around the Network
MaxwellAllen on 01 April 2013
RicardJulianti said:
MaxwellAllen said:
I love that the OP is just coming to this conclusion now. As if 10yrs ago people didn't realize this to be the case...

Nintendo was never that great of a competitor in the face of ACTUAL competition lol. They failed as a company to stay competitive or relevant. No one to blame but themselves.

The smartphone revolution pretty much crippled nintendo's "we're the unique guys," "we do our own thing" strategy. It was fun while motion controls lasted, but now people want touchscreen tablets and smartphones. Nobody is willing to purchase dedicated nintendo hardware for a duel screen controller...

I don't see any realistic way for nintendo to make any progress this gen. Eventually a small profit after a few years? Once PS4/720 hit --it's all over but the wiimusic. (I still don't even know what wiimusic was)

You're kidding right? It only takes 1 first party game for the Wii U to turn a profit, 2 third party titles. By the end of the year they will most likely start to see a profit on each Wii U sold, if not be damn close. It took MS a couple years to lower manufacturing and shipping costs enough to turn a profit and it took Sony YEARS. Even with profits on each unit sold, Sony and MS lost about $8 billion due to their consoles. In fact, Nintendo posted a profit for the third quarter of this fiscal year (Oct-December). If you count progess as only selling more than the previous gen, then no Nintendo won't make "progress" anyone who thinks the Wii U will sell around 100m without major MS/Sony **** ups is dillusional. By that logic though, Sony will never make progress.

The PS4 will likely cost $400-$450 if not more and it doesn't have that "thing" that will grab a massive audience from the start. The loyal PS fans will pick it up early sure, but people will have a hard time justifying the purchase if the launch titles are inFamous, Killzone, Knack and a bunch of cross-gen titles (in other words, the exact same thing that happened to the Wii U) We know extremely little about the 720, so predictions on how that will do are pointless at the moment.

If Nintendo has a price drop this fall plus the massive library of games they have lined up, it is going to sell gangbusters. Their (adjusted) 15m projection is VERY attainable and is only 7m short of Gamecube numbers if that's what you think it would take for the Wii U to "fail" by saying "it's all over but the wiimusic". That's before a proper Zelda, Retro's game (if it doesn't release this fall), Smash Bros, Miyamoto's new IP, and god knows what else Nintendo has up their sleeves.

The Sega vs. Nintendo era was more cutthroat and a tighter race than anything modern, that was REAL competition. The N64 suffered from the same problem the PS3 did by being late to the party even thouh aspects of it were more powerful than the PS1. The Gamecube suffered because Sony included the DVD player in the PS2 so people would buy that as a cheaper dvd player that could also play games....even though the Gamecube was more powerful in almost every way. Nintendo discovered that specs alone cannot sell a console so they let MS and Sony eat each other alive in the arms race, while they took a different approach. If they weren't competitive or relevant, MS and Sony wouldn't have jumped on the motion control bandwagon as fast as they did after the Wii's success. Nor would they have started to implement dual screen stuff with the Vita and Smartglass after the Wii U was announced. They are smart not to count Nintendo out, they did after the Gamecube and it came back to bite them in the ass.

Judging by the current state of the industry, it was an incredibly smart business decision to make the Wii and Wii U. Western devs are cosing left and right and development costs are insane (Tomb Raider = ~$100 million....hasn't broken even yet with 3.4 million sales) and that is only going to get worse when PS4/720 release. The Wii U is marrying the motion control concept of the Wii, the dual screen innovation of the DS, and graphics capabilites above what is currently available, but keeping things reasonable for developers who might not want to risk it all on one or two titles. Japanese developers (other than Square Enix apparently) understand that graphics alone can not sell titles and keep  them in business. I can't recall a single Japanese dev that has closed. They generally go for fantastic art styles and gameplay over "OMG THE WATER LOOKS REAL AND EXPLOSIONS HAVE A MILLION PARTICLES", which keeps dev costs down....big time.

Even IF the Wii U somehow bombs, Nintendo can take hundreds of millions in losses a year and still be around for 40 years. They aren't going anywhere.

If you disagree with 7 words out of my post, just follow it up with a simple reason as to why you think Nintendo will make any progress this generation or generate any meaningfull success, propelling themselves to market leader position. Don't waste time comparing PS3 or 720 or PS4 or gamecube or everything else you mentioned that doesn't actually pertain to what I said lol.

Nintendo, so far, looks to be immitating gamecubes presence in the industry. Lackluster sales, poor marketing, and lack of market penetration. It's just not a good outlook for this generation, considering wiiu has only been out on the market for 4 months. Things don't look good.



RicardJulianti on 01 April 2013
MaxwellAllen said:
If you disagree with 7 words out of my post, just follow it up with a simple reason as to why you think Nintendo will make any progress this generation or generate any meaningfull success, propelling themselves to market leader position. Don't waste time comparing PS3 or 720 or PS4 or gamecube or everything else you mentioned that doesn't actually pertain to what I said lol.

Nintendo, so far, looks to be immitating gamecubes presence in the industry. Lackluster sales, poor marketing, and lack of market penetration. It's just not a good outlook for this generation, considering wiiu has only been out on the market for 4 months. Things don't look good.

The bolded was simply my jumping off point for disagreeing with your entire statement. The rest was long-winded sure, but I did address your entire post. I brought up the 720/PS4 because YOU brought them up. You said that when they release, it is "all over" like somehow those are going to sell insane amounts at launch. Profit margins, talk of "progress" (which is extremely vague), Nintendo competing in the face of competition, remaning relevant, strategy from 10 years ago (Mid Gamecube life cycle, hence me bringing it up), all mentioned in your statement, all covered by mine. I even stayed on topic by talking about how the Wii and Wii U were viable strategies due to the tech arms race that is bleeding the industry dry. Reading's hard, huh? 

The Gamecube was having those problems years into its life, not 4 months in. Give the Wii U time. If a console is doomed in it's first 4 months, the PS3 would have been an overall failure. Launches aligned, the Wii U sold more than the PS3 or the 360 in the same time frame following launch, so I guess both were failures, right? People said the exact same thing about the 3DS and now it is currently curb-stomping everything in Japan and is Nintendo's fastest selling piece of hardware ever. The Wii U will turn around, not to the extent of the 3DS because handhelds are a different beast, but it will improve nonetheless.

Nintendo doesn't have to be the market leader in order to make progress. They have made progress into HD, power consumption, tech other than clock speeds and flops, online to a massive extent, Indie development etc. They will most certainly make more of a profit than Sony/MS....8GB of GDDR5, 8 core processors and the Kinect/PSEye don't come cheap and that cost is eaten by the company and results in a less attractive price point for consumers.