| Mr Khan said: I've said it before: the major difference is that the Wii U will get top-tier 1st party support. Given Sony's record with the PSP, Vita likely won't. The difference will be made blindingly apparent by E3, where Wii U's heavy hitters land, and Vita will be a very clear afterthought to PS4 in Sony's setup. |
I'm not sure which one is more fucked TBH. I think the problem with both isn't just launch titles and software, but really a fundamental issue of targeting.
The Vita's target audience doesn't seem like it has a lot of potential outside of Japan. It'll be interesting for a professional to do some actual surveying and number crunching, but my gut tells me that there's just no need for what the Vita offers. Young males (18-30) already have smart phones that can do better in terms of internet browsing, music, etc. No matter how good the Vita is, it'll never replace it.
So that basically leaves the Vita's only offering and need to fulfil gaming, or more broadly, killing time.
I like to think of "killing time" as having 2 categories: 1) Short (5-30 minutes) 2) Long (30+ min)
People who need to kill time for a short period of time, whether they're waiting in line, waiting for the bus, waiting for class to start, etc can easily do so with a smartphone. Nevermind the game apps, you have texting, checking e-mail, surfing the web, etc. When these options are good enough to hold your attention span, 250 USDs just doesn't make sense for killing 5-30 minutes.
Then you have people who need to kill time for a long period of time. Again, smart phones do meet this need, although not as well as short periods of time. You can theoretically do all the short term things (like surf the web) for hours. If that's boring, then you have the ability to watch movies (which can kill about 2 hours). Or hell, you can do what most people probably do at the airport and on planes: sleep.
There's also 2 other issues with long term time killing. One is that it's not a very common occurence, especially in countries outside of Japan with under developed public transportation. If you're a businessman traveling around a lot in the air, then a Vita might make sense, but how large is that market, and how much do they really want to play CoD at the airport? Second is that when you're killing time for such a long period, it actually takes away some of the portability needs. You're probably carying a bigger bag with you, and might be carrying your laptop or tablet. You also have a high chance of having access to an electrical outlet. So why not just plug your laptop in and play some games on it? Or hell, your iPhone and play some of the more battery draining games?
So the Vita just doesn't seem like it really fulfills any needs. The second problem is the audience size. It seems like the Vita is just slicing segments into smaller and smaller pieces, until there's nothing left.
First, it looks like it's targeting males 18-30, so that's saying goodbye to women and children. Then you're targeting people who have a high need for mobility, so that takes away the basement dwellers. Then you're targeting people who can't be satisfied with Angry Birds or napping, or "hardcore" gamers, so goodbye to almost everyone else. Wait, a lot of the "hardcore" gamers are the basement dwellers? Well s**t.
It just seems like the Vita is offering a solution for an imaginary need to an imaginary audience. The only people I see really needing this is the Japanese, who commute a lot on the train, and also live in a more population dense environment to make face to face gaming with friends viable.
Now to the WiiU. The WiiU is basically stradling two audiences. They're trying to go back to "hardcore" gamers by going HD and getting games like Bayonetta 2 exclusive to the system. But then they obviously want to appeal to the new audience they gained with their "blue ocean" strategy, and are doing it by keeping the "Wii" brand alive with the name, and by trying to make the WiiU like a tablet.
When you just look at the WiiU more and more, longer and longer, you get 2 impressions: 1) clusterfuck 2) fear.
It just sounds like the Nintendo executives felt paralyzed. They gained so many new audiences and cash with the Wii, and didn't want to give it up, hence the "Wii" name. They also felt afraid that they were losing that new audience already to mobile gaming. So they made the really, really strange decision to incorporate a tablet design into the controller. What makes me so mad about this decision is how counter intuitive it is. Tablets were designed primarily for the purpose of MOBILITY. You might say that user friendliness is what tablets offer, but I say that that's just an after effect of making the tablets mobile.
When you compare the WiiU to a tablet, you see that the WiiU eliminates the most critical benefits that the tablet offers: mobility and flexibility. Because of this the WiiU will never SUBSTITUTE for a tablet, and won't stop people from getting it. Which means that if Nintendo was hoping the WiiU would counter against the new threat of mobile gaming, they failed.
I won't get into whether the Wii was a fad or not (as a side note, my dad bought Guitar Hero III and my mom bought a Wii, and both never played them). But the current stituation is that the WiiU isn't getting the same mainstream buzz like its predecessor did, and the controller isn't as intutitive as the Wii. So they're just not wooing back the audience they gained.
So then you have have the traditional gamer market, which can be broken into 4 parts. Young children, Nintendo die hards, "casual gamers", and "hardcore gamers".
Nintendo already have their die hard fans. Or at least, they should. Wooing these people isn't really a step forward in my opinion, and failing to do so is a very serious concernl. Young children have always been a core audience of Nintendo. Again, they should have this audience member, and getting them to buy a WiiU isn't a step forward.
I wish I had data on either of these segments, but if Nintendo has failed to get these audience members on board with the WiiU, that's just horrible execution on the part of Nintendo IMO. Any resources available should be used to quickly get them as soon as possible, especially since they're probably the most willing to pay a premium for the system.
Then you have the "casual" and "hardcore" gamers. I define the "casual" gamers as people who might play games a lot (let's say 3-6+ hours a week), but are usually limited to a very small number of games like sports games and shooters (CoD). Nintendo isn't going to woo these people. Not just because of graphics, but because these "casual" gamers are about social games. The main thing they do with games is playing with other people, and that's just such a huge uphill battle for Nintendo. To get these "casual" gamers, they need to convince them to switch over to the WiiU at once.
Then the "hardcore" gamers aren't going to come on board. Again, never mind the graphics, but the 3'rd party developer support. You're going to have a hard time convincing me that "hardcore" gamers are going to buy a WiiU as their first next gen system, forgoing not only the exclusives that the PS4 and 720 offer, but the 3'rd party games that they offer as well, just for the Nintendo exclusives (that aren't out yet). The best I can see is that these gamers buy the system years later when the system becomes cheaper. But then what's the point for Nintendo? They're barely making a profit for the system, and the "hardcore" gamers that do buy it will only buy the exlusives, eliminating the prospects for royalties from 3'rd party games.
I guess after doing all that thinking, the Vita and Nintendo really have a problem of going after an imaginary audience, while having a small niche one. In the case of Vita, gamers in Japan, and in the case of the WiiU, probably young children and hardcore Nintendo fans.
I don't want to just criticize the 2 systems, so I'm just going to throw out some random suggestions that I thought up on the fly. So I'm not putting too much faith in them.
Vita: Focus on Japan and getting an install base there, so that 3'rd party support will emerge from Japan. Support localization efforts, and sell the Vita to hardcore gamers as the system to get access to exclusive Japanese games and charge a premium. All the while, focus on cost cutting initatives and establishing whatever they're doing with the PS4, and try to sell the system to a broader audience, probably targeting more of a high school crowd (play PS4 CoD in study hall!).
Nintendo: Ramp up 1st party game production, and target young children and Nintendo die hard fans. Get them as quickly as possible so you can charge a premium. Try to pull a Ouya and support indie games to attract some of the more older gamer crowds back.
