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Forums - Nintendo - Miyamoto Expains Why Wii U has Failed

sc94597 on 19 June 2015
LipeJJ said:
This confirms the next console will have a gimmick and that it will, probably, do more harm than good to the console (probably it'll have low tech). Not that this wasn't expected, but it's a disappointment anyway.

The "gimmick" is probably the fusion concept. 



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Mystro-Sama on 19 June 2015

Notice how he didn't mentioned anything about third party? This just proves they still haven't learned shit.



sc94597 on 19 June 2015
Mystro-Sama said:
Notice how he didn't mentioned anything about third party? This just proves they still haven't learned shit.

I think he was describing the ultimate and specific problem with the Wii U. Third party support has been a problem of Nintendo regardless of the Wii U. The Wii didn't have it, the GC didn't have it, the N64 didn't have it, and while the SNES had it third parties wanted out of that situation. Nintendo was still very profitable during these generations though.  Miyamoto was likely thinking terms of success by profit rather than success by marketshare when answering this question. 



LipeJJ on 19 June 2015
sc94597 said:
LipeJJ said:
This confirms the next console will have a gimmick and that it will, probably, do more harm than good to the console (probably it'll have low tech). Not that this wasn't expected, but it's a disappointment anyway.

The "gimmick" is probably the fusion concept. 


Hopefully you're right. 



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ihatefatkatz on 19 June 2015

Whelp. At least we can say Miyamoto ain't delusional.



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SJReiter on 19 June 2015

Great points guys. While Nintendo did really miss the mark when it came to how the GamePad would be received, it's been far from the only reason why the Wii U failed. Still, I agree that it is nice to hear Miyamoto speak openly about this. To me, if Nintendo really was developing games with the GamePad in mind, they should've had more launch titles that utilized it in interesting ways. I know that Nintendo Land did, but the fact that NSMBU did not was terrible. Also, when Pikmin 3 launched, it had poor GamePad usage. It does make you wonder what they were thinking.



Danman27 on 19 June 2015

He's spot on, then there was the fact that wiiU had a game drought comparable to the dust bowl.



MoHasanie on 19 June 2015

I really like that he is so honest cause not many executives would ever admit to their mistakes. His reasons aren't the only reason's it's a failure though.



    

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naruball on 19 June 2015

"So I don’t think it’s just price, because if the system is appealing enough, people will buy it even if the price is a little bit high. I think with Wii U, our challenge was that perhaps people didn’t understand the system. But also I think that we had a system that’s very unique — and, particularly with video game systems, typically it takes the game system a while to boot up. And we thought that with a tablet-type functionality connected to the system, you could have the rapid boot-up of tablet-type functionality, you could have the convenience of having that touch control with you there on the couch while you’re playing on a device that’s connected to the TV, and it would be a very unique system that could introduce some unique styles of play.

I think unfortunately what ended up happening was that tablets themselves appeared in the marketplace and evolved very, very rapidly, and unfortunately the Wii U system launched at a time where the uniqueness of those features were perhaps not as strong as they were when we had first begun developing them. So what I think is unique about Nintendo is we’re constantly trying to do unique and different things. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they’re not as big of a hit as we would like to hope. After Wii U, we’re hoping that next time it will be a very big hit."

Jesus Chris, Miyamoto. How many times can you say unique in an interview? If anyone decided to play a drinking game, having a shot every time he says unique, I'm sure they'd be proper drunk by now.

As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't seem like he learned his lesson. Nothing about 3rd parties and how they need to establish better relationships with them, nothing about wii not supported well at the end of its lifetime. He also blames the audience for not understanding the system instead of realising it was perhaps a bad idea in the first place.

He gives me the impression that he thinks that they need to come up with another thing like motion controls and hope that the masses follow. Problem is, apart from motion controls and VR there aren't many things left to do and even VR will probably fail to attract the masses. So, as a business you have to rely on games (yes, 3rd and 1st party). New IPs are very important and the success of Splatoon clearly shows that.



theprof00 on 19 June 2015

The problem is that nintendo never really tapped into the gamepad.
I mean, it's a unique control style, but there was never really anything interesting for it.
Now, the amiibo however, the amiibo was a very very interesting development, along with the cards that are coming out soon.
I think they're ready to tackle the tablet style again in a slightly different way.