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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Watch Dogs shifts almost no copies on its Wii U launch in UK

torok on 25 November 2014
Soundwave said:

Yeah the truth is the competetion between Sony and MS alone for that audience is so heated, that they took whatever scraps Nintendo had with that audience-base a long time ago. The last time Nintendo really had an exclusive that resonated hugely with that type of audience was GoldenEye, I remember even my Playstation-loving friends who didn't give a crap about Mario would reluctantly admit GoldenEye was "pretty awesome" and some of them even bought an N64 just for GoldenEye. 

Nintendo can't win with this crowd. Seriously try going to a store and convincing people who are buying a PS4 or X1 to buy a Wii U instead. You will get laughed out of the store. 

They want what they want, and what they want sure as heck isn't what Nintendo is bringing to the table these days. 

Even kids I find especially younger boys look at a Wii U like you're asking them to eat broccoli. They don't want that. They don't want the "mom approved console", they want the XBox or Playstation like their older brother is playing, they want "Calladooty" more than even that comic book collecting 30-year-old who lives in mom's basement. 

N64 was awesome for mature games. Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Killer Instinct, Conquer's and so on. They lost these kind of games. Adults and teens want PS or XB and kids will just want what their "cooler" older brothers and older friends want, like you said.

We just have to look to Wii U ads. It's always a cute and overly colorful kiddy game played by a bunch of kids and their families. Then you see a CoD, Halo or Uncharted ad and you see action, characters that could be the main stars of blockbuster movies and it passes an idea of being awesome. That sells and Nintendo lost it years ago.



Bet with jetforcejiminy: PS4 will pass the Wii lifetime numbers.

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the_dengle on 25 November 2014
padib said:

True, but it also benefitted because it was a good game. Many other 3rd party exclusives released with the U (tank tank tank, no pun intended, Sing Party, other Nintendo-like non-exclusives) but they flunked because they weren't good.

Sing Party was first-party.



Soundwave on 25 November 2014
torok said:
Soundwave said:
 

Yeah the truth is the competetion between Sony and MS alone for that audience is so heated, that they took whatever scraps Nintendo had with that audience-base a long time ago. The last time Nintendo really had an exclusive that resonated hugely with that type of audience was GoldenEye, I remember even my Playstation-loving friends who didn't give a crap about Mario would reluctantly admit GoldenEye was "pretty awesome" and some of them even bought an N64 just for GoldenEye. 

Nintendo can't win with this crowd. Seriously try going to a store and convincing people who are buying a PS4 or X1 to buy a Wii U instead. You will get laughed out of the store. 

They want what they want, and what they want sure as heck isn't what Nintendo is bringing to the table these days. 

Even kids I find especially younger boys look at a Wii U like you're asking them to eat broccoli. They don't want that. They don't want the "mom approved console", they want the XBox or Playstation like their older brother is playing, they want "Calladooty" more than even that comic book collecting 30-year-old who lives in mom's basement. 

N64 was awesome for mature games. Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Killer Instinct, Conquer's and so on. They lost these kind of games. Adults and teens want PS or XB and kids will just want what their "cooler" older brothers and older friends want, like you said.

We just have to look to Wii U ads. It's always a cute and overly colorful kiddy game played by a bunch of kids and their families. Then you see a CoD, Halo or Uncharted ad and you see action, characters that could be the main stars of blockbuster movies and it passes an idea of being awesome. That sells and Nintendo lost it years ago.


Microsoft basically "stole" Nintendo's standing as being the FPS console of choice (N64 actually had a lot of Western exclusives too) with the XBox and Halo.

The N64 while still not being as popular as the Playstation did still have some catchet with the college dorm/"mature" gamer crowd thanks to things like GoldenEye and Turok and the Star Wars games. 

Kind of a shame that Nintendo basically just gave it up without even putting up much of a fight for that crowd (I'm sorry but ... Geist? Really? You went from GoldenEye to Perfect Dark to Geist? Really Iwata?). 

Nintendo's marketing today is basically an admission that they can't compete with Sony/MS so they have to market to kids/families even though that audience base is also under assault. 



Kresnik on 25 November 2014
padib said:

And again, ZombiU. It's not Shovel and it's not kidsware. 


The biggest problem I'm having with you using ZombiU as an example is that much of the reason it sold is circumstantial.

It was a launch title.  An exclusive, advertised launch title.  It was bundled.  And it had its price slashed rather rapidly after launch.

Had ZombiU been a title that came along later in the console's life from a third party and sold like it did without bundles, then absolutely I would've said it was a success.  But that wasn't the case.  

To use an example closer to home for me - look at Rayman on Vita.  Rayman Origins was a launch title (and late port) and sold fairly well, although had hefty price slashes fairly early on.

Rayman Legends came out much later and sold peanuts in comparison.  The sales of Origins were circumstantial.  It was a launch title and people needed games to go with their console, and lots of copies were printed so price dropped fast.  It probably turned a decent profit because it was just a port.

Legends had neither of those things going for it and as such only sold moderately/poorly.



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KLXVER on 25 November 2014
padib said:
KLXVER said:

They want them because its more money, but they arent doing much to attract them. Bayonetta wont do anything for most Sony and MS fans. The U controller design has nothing to do with getting non Nintendo gamers to their platform. The early multiplats were third party developers hoping to cash in on the launch. If Nintendo really did go after the those gamers, then they would have fought harder to keep the big third party games and not make games like Captain Toad, Pikmin 3, Yoshis Wooly World and Splatoon.

There is very little they can do TO attract them, that is the reality of it. Nintendo can create bridge software like Galaxy, Zelda and X which can appeal to both audiences, and progressively infiltrate that market, but they can't win a direct assault with games like Bayo.

About Captain Toad, it's not an either or scenario. Nintendo was not going to suddenly throw away its evergreen audience to pursue the PS-XB audience, not in a million years.

By the way who do you think asked the 3rd parties to work on some easy "hardcore" launch cashins with padlet integration. Think business for a sec, you'll figure it out. It was Ninty.


Of course Nintendo asked. Why wouldnt they?



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Soundwave on 25 November 2014
RolStoppable said:
Soundwave said:

Wii Sports is pretty much the definition of "lightning in a bottle" for this business. 

It's not repeatable. 

Wii Fit released in 2007.

How can you call something not repeatable when the facts are so obvious?


And what happened with Wii Music? 

Tomodachi Life is basically their most recent game that would be in this lineage, and while it sold OK, it's hardly something that's driving 3DS sales. 

You can only get lucky with these types of ideas so often. 

Maybe Nintendo should just make a purely casual console in conintuation of the Wii, with like nothing but games like Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Wii Cook, Wii Do I Look Fat In These Jeans?, etc. Sell it with a redesigned Wiimote for $130 or something (HD graphics, nothing fancy otherwise). But my guess is such a console today would not find a market, not with Apple offering an ecosystem of thousands of casual friendly games on a much cooler, more fashionable device for basically free or $1. 

Nintendo can't compete with that. 



KLXVER on 25 November 2014
Soundwave said:
RolStoppable said:
Soundwave said:

Wii Sports is pretty much the definition of "lightning in a bottle" for this business. 

It's not repeatable. 

Wii Fit released in 2007.

How can you call something not repeatable when the facts are so obvious?


And what happened with Wii Music? 

Tomodachi Life is basically their most recent game that would be in this lineage, and while it sold OK, it's hardly something that's driving 3DS sales. 

You can only get lucky with these types of ideas so often. 

Maybe Nintendo should just make a purely casual console in conintuation of the Wii, with like nothing but games like Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Wii Cook, Wii Do I Look Fat In These Jeans?, etc. Sell it with a redesigned Wiimote for $130 or something (HD graphics, nothing fancy otherwise). But my guess is such a console today would not find a market, not with Apple offering an ecosystem of thousands of casual friendly games on a much cooler, more fashionable device for basically free or $1. 

Nintendo can't compete with that. 


Nintendo can compete with anyone when it comes to quality games and when quality is once again a factor for most gamers when buying a console. Nintendo will probably make a huge comeback.



Soundwave on 25 November 2014
padib said:
Soundwave said:

Microsoft basically "stole" Nintendo's standing as being the FPS console of choice (N64 actually had a lot of Western exclusives too) with the XBox and Halo.

The N64 while still not being as popular as the Playstation did still have some catchet with the college dorm/"mature" gamer crowd thanks to things like GoldenEye and Turok and the Star Wars games. 

Kind of a shame that Nintendo basically just gave it up without even putting up much of a fight for that crowd (I'm sorry but ... Geist? Really? You went from GoldenEye to Perfect Dark to Geist? Really Iwata?). 

Nintendo's marketing today is basically an admission that they can't compete with Sony/MS so they have to market to kids/families even though that audience base is also under assault. 

It's a pipedream bro. Even if Nintendo had pursued that crowd they would have lost it and hurt themselves even harder. They would have injected more money into that type of game and would have lost it that much more.

Why? Because the FPS genre was taken in a direction that did not fit with Nintendo type games. Proof is, they were already headed for a different direction with Metroid Prime when Halo came out, and we know what the market preferred. Gheist? Case in point.

Metroid Prime is nothing like GoldenEye though. 

GoldenEye was successful because it was a fun, shoot-everything-that-moves shooter with the centerpiece of the game being the multiplayer. 

Metroid Prime is a solitary, slow moving, slow paced, cerebral single player game. 

Call of Duty is basically the modern GoldenEye.

The funny thing is Nintendo was actually onto these modern industry trends before Sony/MS were. They got to the multiplayer FPS before anyone else did. They were working with DMA Design, the GTA designers on open world sandbox type games, DMA has even said Grand Theft Auto is basically an evolution from the Body Harvest concept which was a game that began under Nintendo. 



KLXVER on 25 November 2014
padib said:
KLXVER said:

Of course Nintendo asked. Why wouldnt they?

You said Nintendo had nothing to do with 3rd party cash-ins. Have you changed your mind?


I did? I said third parties wanted to make some easy money on the launch. I didnt say anything about Nintendo asking them.



Soundwave on 25 November 2014
RolStoppable said:
Soundwave said:

And what happened with Wii Music? 

Tomodachi Life is basically their most recent game that would be in this lineage, and while it sold OK, it's hardly something that's driving 3DS sales. 

You can only get lucky with these types of ideas so often. 

Sorry, moving the goal posts won't fly here.

If your argument is now that not every single game was a hit, then you have none. After all, failure is something that can and has occured with every type of game.


I think my general point is sound ... very, very few developers can consistently create casual games that are hits.

Some have been able to manage 1-3, but I've yet to see any one developer in the world consistently catch lightning in a bottle time after time after time. 

Because it's not workable. It's like asking a musician to make a Gangam Style viral hit every year ... it's impossible (sorry Psy).