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Forums - Nintendo - The Wii U IS NOT Doomed.

Soundwave on 12 November 2013
curl-6 said:
Soundwave said:
curl-6 said:
Soundwave said:
Nintendo generally publishes 4-5 "big" games for a platform in a "big year" (usually the 2nd or 3rd year of a console/handheld).

This is their peak output generally.

After that they sorta become exhausted and need time to recharge.

In a slow year you maybe get 2-3 "big" releases.

Fact is there's only so much one company can do. Even though Nintendo's expanded a lot too, the loss of Rare has cut down on the amount of the games they release as Rare could often provide Nintendo will 2 good exclusives yearly (sometimes even more).

That was back in the N64 days, when games required much less time and resources. Rare released 8 Xbox 360 games throughout that console's life, more like one a year. (One of which was just an XBLA game) Not to mention they haven't made a game of Nintendo quality since the N64.

Though I have to wonder how much of that is due to mismanagement on Microsoft's part. Even if Rare was with Nintendo today, 1 extra game per year makes their lineup look surprinsingly better

2012: New Super Mario Bros. U, Killer Instinct U, Nintendo Land

2013: Pikmin 3, Mario 3D World, The Wonderful 101, Wii Fit U, Perfect Dark Omega

2014: DKC: Tropical Freeze, Mario Kart 8, Bayonetta 2, X, Banjo-Kazuuuie, Super Smash Bros. U

2015: Zelda U, Kirby U, SmT x Fire Emblem, Diddy Kong Racing U or Kameo

Right now I think Nintendo is 2 games/year short on their console side. They need to invest more in at least financing more external projects if they choose not to have to make studio investments any longer. 

Mismanagement by Microsoft could definitely be a factor, though even before they were sold, their last NIntendo game, Starfox Adventures, was way below their past standards.

What Nintendo need right now is more collaborations like Sonic Lost World, F Zero GX, The Last Story, Kirby's Epic Yarn, (Whose dev is actually doing a Wii U collaboration, Yarn Yoshi) etc to bolster their output in the absence of strong multiplatform support.


They need to hire some Western studios to help them out, they seem to only want to work with Japanese studios, an American studio only gets a chance if they're working on a game Nintendo doesn't have the staff for (ie: Luigi's Mansion 2, but a studio like Platinum gets to make something entirely new like Wonderful 101). 

They did a lot of that in the 1990s, they should revisit that. Sonic: Lost World is not going to bring you any sales that Mario doesn't, you need to get other genres and game styles filled up. 

I think they probably easily could've financed projects from teams like the Darksiders guys, Factor 5 (before they got forced out of business), etc. 



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Th3PANO on 12 November 2013
Michael-5 said:
Th3PANO said:
Michael-5 said:

WiiU isn't doomed, but it probably won't do that much better then Gamecube, and I can understand why. All sequels....

Yeah, because we know the full line up for 2014 and beyond........

When you look at the Wii, Gamecube, N64 etc, by the first couple years, a most of the bigger games released, and we knew about many of the ones that didn't.

Mario Kart Wii, Smash Bros, Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3, Wii Sports, Wii Fit, and Twilight Princess all released within the first 2 years the Wii released, and we knew about XenoBlade in 2007, 2 years after release

Metroid Prime, Pikmin, Smash Bros, SM Sunshine, Wind Waker, Eternal Darkness and others all released within 2 years, and we knew about other games.

Sure there were surprises, we didn't know about Skyward Sword & Galaxy 2 for Wii (sequels), nor did we know about Baten Kaitos and Resident Evil 4 when Gamecube first released, but....it's not like the Gamecube and Wii suddenly got a ton of exclusives mid-life and beyond. Wii actually got kinda abandoned the last couple years with very few games (good ones though) releasing post 2009.


So? we knew nothing about 2013 until january.....and that only because of the investor meeting. They said they will announce their games a lot closer to release in the future. Ans as far as I know it's true. Because they did this with N64, GC, Wii doesn't mean they do it with Wii U.



Purple on 12 November 2013
curl-6 said:

Oh I agree, third party games like Monster Hunter Tri and Goldeneye 007 were among my favorite Wii games of 2010. Oh, and you missed out No More Heroes 2, Silent Hill Shattered Memories, Rayman Legends, and Little King's Story. ;)

My point was that if we're going to look at Nintendo developed games within the 2009-2012 period, we should also look at the games they published, which greatly swell the ranks.


Yeah good point and I totally agree. If Nintendo actively target second and third parties to fill their release schedule with quality releases, the Wii U will be a worthwhile console and hopefully sales will improve.

Wonderful 101 and Lego City Undercover were good in that regard, but they're going to need a lot more of those, and less funding SiNG Party, Ninja Gaiden and Game and Wario.



DélioPT on 12 November 2013

To the above discussion of how many games Nintendo can output per year, don`t forget that Nintendo has or will increase their workforce. Something that can have na impact on how many games Nintendo can make per year.
I think the number of new employees is 1000, but i`m not sure.



Michael-5 on 12 November 2013
curl-6 said:
Purple said:

@bold - Really? I personally feel their Wii support was sparse, especially after 2009. And there is a HUGE gulf between SD and HD development.

Again with this.

Why do people say this? 2010 was PACKED with  Wii games, it was the console's best year in terms of software.

You know, I don't know why people say that I want to say it's because support for 360 died in 2009, but that console also had a good 2010, even a decent 2011. I think for me, the reason why I said support died initially was because I bought my Wii largely for Pikmin 3, which was suppose to release in 2010, then 2011, then got pushed to the WiiU.

Keep on heckling people, let Mario Galaxy 2, Metroid Other M, and Donkey Kong Country speak gloriously.



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Michael-5 on 12 November 2013
Th3PANO said:
Michael-5 said:

When you look at the Wii, Gamecube, N64 etc, by the first couple years, a most of the bigger games released, and we knew about many of the ones that didn't.

Mario Kart Wii, Smash Bros, Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3, Wii Sports, Wii Fit, and Twilight Princess all released within the first 2 years the Wii released, and we knew about XenoBlade in 2007, 2 years after release

Metroid Prime, Pikmin, Smash Bros, SM Sunshine, Wind Waker, Eternal Darkness and others all released within 2 years, and we knew about other games.

Sure there were surprises, we didn't know about Skyward Sword & Galaxy 2 for Wii (sequels), nor did we know about Baten Kaitos and Resident Evil 4 when Gamecube first released, but....it's not like the Gamecube and Wii suddenly got a ton of exclusives mid-life and beyond. Wii actually got kinda abandoned the last couple years with very few games (good ones though) releasing post 2009.


So? we knew nothing about 2013 until january.....and that only because of the investor meeting. They said they will announce their games a lot closer to release in the future. Ans as far as I know it's true. Because they did this with N64, GC, Wii doesn't mean they do it with Wii U.

History tends to repeat itself.

I'm excpeting 2014 to be a peak year for the WiiU, instead of a sign of continued support based off what Nintendo has given us in the past. I have no reason to expect Nintendo to support the WiiU more late into its life when they haven't done that for any of their other consoles, except right at the end before they discontinue it. (Nintendo also has a history to release low volume, but high quality games late into a consoles life. Examples being XenoBlade/Skyward Sword, Twilight Princess/Baten Kaitos, Conker's Bad Fur Day/Majora's Mask, Super Mario RPG, etc)

Plus Miyamoto and other figures have said that their games sell best when released within 2 years of the consoles launch, so it's only reasonable to see most of their games release in that window.



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snowdog on 12 November 2013

I think the 'Wii U is d00med' nonsense will stop after the Christmas shopping season has come and gone.

It's going to have an installed userbase over 8m before the end of the year. And that Motley Fool article didn't mention that the bad start that the Wii U has had has left it with an installed userbase just 1.5m short of the 360 during its 1 year head start. Hardly a disaster.



chakkra on 12 November 2013
Soundwave said:
chakkra said:
DialgaMarine said:
They really should, though. We're obviously going to have to wait and see just how much better the PS4 does, but continuing to invest in the Wii-U could end up backfiring really bad for Nintendo. They clearly have a much stronger stake in the portable market, and that's where they should devote their resources. It'll just be so much more financially beneficial for them in the long run. They're losing so much money on the Wii-U as is, and nobody's really buying the system. Nintendo themselves even admitted it's not a worthy successor to the Wii. Just let it go and focus on making a new handheld to bring to the market down the road.

I respectfully disagree with that.

The Wii U has already settled at over 60K per week, and with the combination of price cut-bundles-upcoming games I don't see any reason why it would go down from there (In fact, I truly believe it will just go up) throughout 2014. Now, that may not be much, but atleast it guarantees that it will sell 3x as much as it did in 2013 (and I'm being conservative here).

But the real boost for the Wii U will come the moment Sony and Microsoft decide to retire their current consoles, and the Wii U is left as the only sub $300 console in the market. People here usually underestimate the power of price; they seem to forget that there are hundreds of millions of people around the world who just CANNOT afford to go for the top high end of the spectrum. It is also good to take into account that every year there are hundreds of thousands of new kid-gamers and it is a lot easier for their parents to shell $200-300 on their first console.


The problem with this is the PS3/360 clean up with the "budget parent looking to buy his kid their first console" crowd. 

The PS3 is even cheaper, has far more games, and tons of $19.99 LEGO Harry Potter/Star Wars/Indiana Jones/Batman/etc. etc. etc. littering every Best Buy. 

The Wii U at $299.99 is compartaively expensive, you can get a PS3 for a $100 less and it has far more cheapo $20 games. Kids love video games no matter what, they'll be happy with whatever until they reach age 11-13, and everything they buy "must be cool, get away from me mom, jeez, my friends almost saw you that time, I'm not a little kid anymore" sorta thing. 


That maybe a reality today; but I was actually talking about the moment when the PS3 and 360 dissapear from the market, and the Wii U is left alone in that price range. You know, kinda like what happened with the original Xbox-PS2 and the Wii. Of course, I'm not saying the Wii U will have anywhere near the success the Wii had, but being alone in its price range will definitely boost its sales.



Multishanks on 12 November 2013
ishiki said:
xJbownagex said:
ishiki said:
I think you must wait until Mario, and SSB if they do well enough and I think it will, I think wii-u can essentially be the gamecube 2 (except that its weaker than it's competitors).

If for some reason, SSB and Mario bomb (I don't think this will happen), you have to evaluate everything related to wii-u, and what the right move is which could be moving all the software to 3DS, and or putting other projects on hiatus or something.

I don't think endlessly supporting a dead console is a good thing. And Nintendo's had failures before (Virtual Boy), and recovered from them, they won't be doomed regardless of what happens to the wii-u.


Virtual Boy had an install base of 770,000 and games were developed in red and black, doesn't seem like a big loss at all. Plus, it only had roughly 3 games from Nintendo. Not to mention the Wii U is an HD console and they have over 10 games in development for it. In my opinion comparing Virtual Boy and Wii U is unfair anyway because Virtual Boy was a "handheld system" and Wii U is a home console.


you completely missed the point of the hypothetical and I did not compare the wii-u to virtualboy. I also predicted the wii-u becoming the gamecube 2.

Are you going to argue, that if.. (if being the key word) mario and super smash brothers bomb, they should support this console into oblivion? And not evaluate their strategy?


This is a gigantic IF. I mean feel however, you want to about those series but they are two of the best selling series of all time. If this does happen.(I know you aren't saying it will btw). I am sure this will be a gigantic market shift that many will have to adjust to, not just Nintendo. 



MontanaHatchet on 12 November 2013
Salnax said:

Let me Review Nintendo's 2014 Console Lineup:

  • Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (Will likely only get around 80% on Metacritic, but will likely have at least 4 million sales)
  • Yarn Yoshi (May sell a million or two, will have good reviews.)
  • Super Smash Bros 4 (Will have good reviews and sell at least 7 million)
  • Mario Kart 8 (Will have good reviews and sell to a third of Wii U owners.)
  • X (Could be the FF7 of a new generation.)
  • Bayonetta 2 (Will probably be a critical hit, but not sell much)
  • Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem (Will be a huge deal among a niche crowd, likely will become the best seller in console history for at least one of the two franchises.)

Also, some multiplat games

  • Watch Dogs
  • Project Cars
  • Call of Duty 11
  • Skylanders 4

That's already about a dozen major games, and Nintendo is infamous for not announcing stuff until as late as possible. This should easily be the best year for Nintendo console fans since 2010.


I think it's a good year for Nintendo fans, I'm just not sure it's a good year for Nintendo. X being the "FF7 of a new generation" is a bit hopeful too.