You're right padib. The biggest mistake was no plan b that would allow them to drop it like kinect was.

Didnt learn nothing my response back then was the same. The market did decide and as i had predicted intially the market would have gotten tired of the motion thing and sales of the system would have sharply declined. ANd here we are and thats exactly what happened. Remember a lot of people were pegging Wii to beat PS2, its still trying to beat PS1 and its 2015

1. I didn`t ignore your comment. I acknowledged it and see it as a valid point. Because the Wii was such a big success, some companies had to take advantage of that and release some of their games to it. This gen is the case where the most powerful is at the top. The Wii U can output some great visuals high performances. Ninten`s games show this, like Smash, MK8, X, and Zelda. That can`t be denied, but I suppose it`s not enough for what 3rd parties want to do, at least in the west. I don`t mean I think the Wii U is underpowered, but that was the general opinion for awhile. And since the Wii U doesn`t have an appealing feature like motion control in the Wii, it looks lacking in comparison to the PS4/XB1.

2. I didn`t say it sucked, but I did say it was terrible and it didn`t do well to inform people about it.

4.I`ll agree that the Wii U had worse marketing than any of their previous consoles.

3.thanks for not hating me :3

GTA sales are clearly not proportional to the game. it only sells as much because of marketing.

So now you're changing from "the market decides who is doing right" to "The market decides what they want to play", that's quite a difference.

People don't say cod is the same because of the number of games, they say it because of what the games are. they release every year with little to no change.

the difference between nsmb/other sequels and cod? nsmb and others tend to change level design and mechanics enough that make them completely different games than their predecessors. and it certainly makes it easier that they release once or twice in a generation.

To be honest I'm not really even sure if Nintendo is capable of selling much more than 20 million home consoles anymore unless there is a miracle gimmick attached to the whole sales proposition. Even the N64 ... if people knew going in wasn't going to be like the NES and SNES in terms of overall support and understood the economics of the cartridge vs. CD decision and everything that entailed ... the N64 probably would've sold considerably less.

A lot of people bought the N64 early on with the expectation that it would be like the NES and SNES.

And to be fair I don't think Sony/MS would sell much more either with the same level of third party support.

People by and large simply don't want a console with a specialized/niche library, when they buy a console they want access to all the games. Wii U is just a return to the norm for Nintendo, taking them back to the trajectory they were on before the Wii.

The other thing is Wii sales really declined fast once MS introduced Kinect and Sony introduced Move ... suddenly motion gaming on a console was nothing special or exclusive to any of the brands, they all had it. That's also a problem with basing your whole sales pitch around a controller -- anyone can copy a controller. Analog stick, rumble pak, wand controller, all copied eventually. Nintendo is probably actually lucky that Kinect didn't launch in 2008 or 2009.

Does it matter about what exactly? I don't think I understand your question. This thread is about what Nintendo should have done to follow up Wii success, I'm not "bringing up" Wii success to prove some point, the Wii success is the topic of this thread. Can you please expain better what do you mean?

As for the second question, no that's not what they did.

Amiibos are the only exception, and they were very late to market, compared to activision and disney - timing is important.

They didn't push digital distribution. Yes they have digital distribution now, but their digital games are as expansive as phisical copies. The whole meaning of DD should be to tear down prices (since you don't have distribution costs), after all smartphones and tablets are solely based on digital distribution.

They have partially expanded their first party studios but not for the purpose of making more games, their purpose was making "bigger" games, more expansive productions. That startegy works for Sony/MS since they can count on 3rd party support, the strategy for Nintendo should have been to create a larger number of "smaller" titles. That's clearly not what they did.

Cross-buy is a feature that probably WiiU and 3DS successors will natively have, most probably. That's one generation too late, again timing is important. Nintendo is stuck in the cycle of developing 2 titles for each of their series (one for home consoles, one for handleds) every generation and this have 2 important consequences: they're wasting resources that could be spent developing a larger library with more variety, and second they're cannibalizing themselves (take New Super Mario Bros 2 and New Super Mario Bros U for instance).

More connectivity and social media integration: the online capabilites of WiiU are still very limited both in terms of services and gaming. They haven't integrated anything in terms of social media, they've made miiverse which is very poor attempt to make a proprietary SN. The whole menaning of social network is connecting with people with a profile page and sharing content. Miiverse is exclusive to WiiU users, so there are not many to connect with anyway, you don't have a personalized profile page (except for your Mii), you can't share anything but black and white drawings, and in general is very slow and limited. It's really more like a forum than a SN. But more importatly, the Wii was about "inclusuion" while the Miiverse was made with an "exclusive" mentality. If they really wanted to push social gaming they should have implemented their consoles with "real world" social network like Facebook, Twitter, etc. They should have implemented cross platform multiplayer with friends on FB, game related status updates, etc. etc. Sony did a much better jod on social integration with Twitch on Ps4.

Also, if they wanted to follow up Wii success the console itslelf should have been cheaper, not only compared to the WiiU but also compared to the Wii since the motion control thingy was not a novely anymore, 199$ could have been a correct launch price point, for sure not 349$.

There's not any point in predicting sales of unannounced consoles without basis.

sony/ms would barely sell any unit without third parties.

Wii sales didn't decline BECAUSE of kinect or move.

i don't think there is anymore innovation able to do in gaming console with reasonable cost, just make a hi-end enough system with easier development kit for 3rd-party like the PS4/XB1 will do, with their huge popularity exclusive will be good enough to become another better choice of gaming console, but of course provided more 3rd-party making games for it is still the most important part they should accomplish in the first place...

Nintendo sold out to the casual's and turned their back on the hardcore fans last generation. Now they will suffer. Rightly so.

In my opinion, the Wii was a positive slip-up. Early pictures show Wii Motes functionality with Game Cube, so i think, Wii was originally intendet to be a Gamecube Add-On. Wii U is on technical stats of 2006, so Wii U was intendet fo a 2006,07 or latest 2008 release, but Wii was such a big success, Nintendo "forgott" about Wii U and now we have a console with 6 year old technical power.

Maybe the next Console from Nintendo is on the Level of PS 4 and XBOX One, but than, Nintendo is behind the others again.