Soundwave said:
Japan is actually the contracting market, not the other way around. There is no console market left, it's basically become a country where there's only one viable new platform (the 3DS, which is selling slower than the DS there).
No one is asking for a GTA Mario.
I think it is a fair question though to ask why a game on the scale of say a Halo/Metroid Prime ... something that could be real show piece for the Wii U ... why such a game was not greenlit and made a priority for the Wii U when Cafe kits were first shipping 2 years ago (now).
That's the type of lack of vision that Nintendo really suffers from. They figured people would just eat up another Mario and that was all the work they had to do.
Even 1990s Nintendo understood this and was willing to bank on games like GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, and finance things like Eternal Darkness and the Star Wars games. NCL today .... doesn't get it.
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Japanese studios aren't shutting down or "streamlining" left and right, that's what I meant. Nintendo is actually expanding.
You know what I meant when I said GTA Mario, it was also a play on the Robot Chicken thing. People are clamoring for Nintendo to change their franchises to fit the adult western audience, which would be a mistake considering how poorly those types games have been performing lately (few exceptions aside).
They likely planned this soft launch situation. Get a head start, launch with lots of titles (more than the 360/PS3 did at their time) , give third parties some breathing room (EA shafted them and Ubi got scared/bullied), and bring the heavy hitters closer to the launches of their competitor's systems to make theirs seem more appealing due to the dirth of variety/titles/what have you on other platforms. Thinking the Wii U would sell incredibly mostly on its own merits and fickle third parties was a mistake, but it still managed to sell better than the PS3/360 did at launch, with more games too.
We have absolutely zero clue what has been green lit and what announced games look like aside from X and Yarn Yoshi though there is a rumor that whatever engine Retro made for their game puts out better than KZ3 fidelity (in this early stage) at 60fps....stunning. It was also pulled before E3 at the last minute because someone (See: NOA) didn't think it was ready, which led to the extended NintendoLand demo. Iwata wasn't even physically at E3 so he wouldn't have made that call as the different divisions are allowed to (mostly) do their own thing. It was a NA event, with NOA's plans plus NCL's guidance on the overall system and its launch.
The vast majority of their teams have been working for 2+ years on titles, given the transition to HD that could have caused some issues at first, that should be worked out. Pikmin 3 was delayed because that team was spread between that, NSMB2, NSMB2 DLC, NSMBU and likely NSLU. Just about every other team worked in conjunction with smaller dev studios (Brownie Brown, Monster Games, Grezzo, Retro task force of awesome, etc) or were a smaller group of the team to produce 3DS title after 3DS title, but as they finished, they moved over to Wii U dev.
"They figured people would just eat up another Mario and that was all the work they had to do" isn't true and you know it. They have been toiling away to make sure the titles are top notch by the time they launch, like I said....soft launch planned with a blowout this fall. If they had released a major franchise (not counting NSMBU) it would have been rushed, buggy, possibly ugly, maybe broken and not at all what Nintendo is known for....pure polish and solid gameplay. Thing is though....people HAVE eaten up NSMBU....over half the install base owns the game.
NOA is the one who "doesn't get it." The terrible marketing is only present in the US, the UK has much better commercials for all products....I have only seen the crappy launch one here. Japan gets more advertising than anyone and Famitsu regularly covers Nintendo. When Tatsumi Kimishima took over at NOA in 2006, things took a downturn, localization became horrific, and he was able to let the Wii coast on it's motion controls and didn't know how to handle selling the Wii U. NCL has seen that the indie scene is an emerging market and thus is covering the Unity license for all developers....not NOA just for American devs even though that is where a majority is.
This is why Iwata took over responsibility. He knows how to interact with developers since he IS one. He knows how to interact with consumers as evidenced by the Nintendo Directs, he isn't just a corporate suit who is selling us something (even if he is selling us something). Kimishima-san knew none of these things which is why Reggie was the figurehead for NOA, but was just that....a spokesperson.
