Mr Khan said:
If i have the right read, Nintendo's thinking was strategically defensive. Their platform just needs to be good enough to "run" the third party games, if not especially well, so that people who buy the platform for Nintendo games first and foremost won't have to get another platform for their CoD/Assassin's Creed fix. It's just to give people no reason to look elsewhere for their gaming needs.
Where the implementation was botched, then, was in Nintendo not providing enough compelling software to prompt people to think of buying a Wii U before buying one of the other platforms (because once you've bought a Sony or MS platform, the question becomes "why should i buy this console *just* for the Nintendo games, and the math doesn't work in Nintendo's favor at all at that point), that EA would completely fuck them over for no good reason at all, and that other third parties needed more incentive to play ball.
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Interesting points. But I think you've managed to raise even more points where implementation was botched than just lack of first party games.
For example: What market are Nintendo targeting with the WiiU?
Are they trying to attract current PS360 owners by saying "Hey, upgrade to our system and you can play all the games you can currently get on your system plus our first party games!"
In which case, they completely failed on two counts. The "play all the games you can currently" is more like "you can play a selection of the games you can currently" thanks to some third parties not playing ball, indeed. So it's Nintendo's job to get them on board, which they don't seem at all interested in doing (despite it being something that both Sony & Microsoft did to get themselves at this point in the first place). I mean sure, some like EA might not play along, but there's plenty of Nintendo-friendly publishers (Capcom; Namco Bandai; Tecmo Koei; Codemasters etc.) who skipped WiiU with various titles (DMC; Dark Souls; Samurai Warriors; GRID) despite supporting it with others. They needed a bit of effort to provide parity, and yes that may have taken a bit of effort and money for the time being but surely for the greater good it would've been worth it? Some publishers like Take Two and Bethesda may have taken a little more work on Nintendo's part, but again, if that was the message they wanted to send, then they should have done it.
And the "play our first party games" wasn't exactly great either; at least until the end of 2013 by which time there was competition out. Sure, some of that may have come down to the troubles of HD development, but that was something Nintendo had longer than pretty much any other major publisher to figure out. And I don't think, even if development had gone smoothly, things would've been much better. Pikmin/Wii Party/Wii Fit/Game & Wario aren't exactly the kind of thing you're going to woo PS360 gamers with.
So you're left with a release schedule which has some - but not all - of the games you can currently play on PS360 and a few scattered pieces of first party support not really targetted at this crowd. You can see why it failed to take off.
But perhaps, instead, they were trying to attract gamers who were planning on upgrading to next-gen. "You're going to need to go to next-gen eventually, so why not play on our platform where we'll have all the next gen ports that the other 2 8th gen systems have; plus Nintendo titles?!"
In which case, they again failed on two counts. Designing the system with the power that they did seemed like the first flaw. They must've known that western third parties do like to make flashy games with big budgets and that some of these would indeed skip WiiU if there was a notable power gap (which there is).
The second problem would be their network system. Did they believe they were going to attract Xbox gamers - who have become accustomed to a reliable; well-run and extremely broad entertainment network on Xbox Live? Did they think they'd attract Sony fans - who've been treated to an ever-improving network system throughout the 7th gen? For better or worse, Nintendo's networks are missing some basic features which the other two have had for years and are the kind of things that PS4X1 gamers take for granted. Things are getting better, sure, but "getting better" isn't going to make your average Call of Duty player want a WiiU when the features for the other consoles are so much better.
All in all, this comes back to a problem with WiiU's identity. They tried to target a segment of the market with a legitimately good idea (Nintendo first party IP's + third party games on one system = no need for your Nintendo console to be your second system) but handled it in the most cack-handed way without any thought (or in some cases effort) into actually making it a reality.
