The Big N – or should that be the petite N these days? – is in a spot of bother. Last week it slashed its predicted Wii U sales figures from nine million to just under three million and declared its third consecutive operating loss.
Worse still, President Satoru Iwata has announced a strategy to turn around the company’s fortunes. The plan – clearly suggested by Baldrick, it’s so cunning – is to release Mario Kart 8 on Wii U, do something very vague on smartphones and write more fitness software.
That’s right: the company that owns the crème de la crème of gaming aristocracy – Mario, Luigi, Link, Samus Aran, Donkey Kong, Fox McCloud, Kirby, et al – thinks that some kind of standalone Wii Fit – a one-time fad that’s sooo 2008 – is its best chance of long-term survival.
... for all that heritage, all that success and all that brilliance, the firm’s solution is... to build a gadget for the overweight.
How did it come to this? How did the former market leader fall so low and get its design decisions do wrong with the Wii U? Why did it decide that competing with Microsoft and Sony wasn’t worth the candle?
I blame the Wii. The Wii should have meant a bloodied nose for Nintendo. The console’s motion controller should have been recognised as the gimmick it was, and the machine castigated for being woefully underpowered and not even capable of HD.
Instead it struck a chord with non-gamers, and so millions of living rooms the world over suddenly contained a Wii and a copy of Wii Sports. After a few bouts of Tennis, the machine was left to gather dust and disappointment.
The Wii meant unqualified success for Nintendo and a new focus for the company, as it looked to cater for its new-found non-gamer customers. Wii Sports’s success giving rise to Wii Fit, Wii Party and Wii Music, and directly influencing the design of the Wii U.
A great plan but one key fact: scant few of Nintendo’s newly recruited fans had any intention of upgrading to the Wii U, a console they simply didn’t need or desire.
The Wii U is the very antithesis of everything it should have been directly because of the Wii’s freakish success. Nintendo was saved from failure, but at a cost: it didn’t recognise the mistakes it made with the Wii. It remained convinced that the Nintendo way was the best way, in turn setting itself up for the mother of all falls.
Imagine what the Wii’s successor would have been like if the Wii had bombed like it should have done. Gone would be any notion of a GamePad, exercise software, cutesy visuals and, most satisfyingly of all, the console’s ridiculous name.
Instead, quick to take stock of its console rivals and determined to rekindle third-party support, Nintendo would have turned to processing power, online connectivity and to new entries into its iconic franchises. Having given up the Wii as a lost cause, Nintendo’s would have launched successor machine a year before Sony’s PS4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One with true next-generation hardware.
Instead of looking to re-tempt a uninterested audience with the promise of high-def Wii Sports and Wii Fit, the company would have emphasised production of Zelda, Mario Kart, Star Fox, Smash Bros. Metroid and Mario. All out within the first 18 months of launch, re-imagined in next-gen visuals and with robust multiplayer.
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