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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Reggie explains why the WiiU underperformed.

Soundwave said:

The concept simply wasn't very good, no amount of explaining it or marketing it would've changed that.

It was a controller with streaming capabilities that only went about 20-30 feet away from the console which was connected a much better quality home HDTV, why would you want to use a shitty 6 inch sub HD display to play games on when it basically had to be in the same room as your HDTV?

Also the whole asymmetric gameplay thing didn't work well for games, people can only focus on one screen at a time, asking them to look up/down and keep track of two screens added nothing to 99% of games and made some of them (Star Fox 0) harder to play for no reason.

Asymetric gameplay was for multiplayer. Problem with the concept is:

a) It is not marketable

b) The concepts that would work well with it are fairly limited, and Nintendo would never make a Dungeons and Dragons game

c) People don't play multiplayer locally anyway

Why did they think the Gamepad was a good idea is beyond me. Do they even have focus groups there?



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Allot of gamers are reluctant to say it, or even admit it but, being the most under powered also played a huge role in its demise. There is no excuse for that anymore.



MohammadBadir said:

“When we launched Wii U, we missed the opportunity to be clear on the concept, to show off its capabilities and what the users could do. And that hurt us. Sales were also hurt, during the beginning of its lifespan, by the lack of games. And although we’ve sold 13 million consoles, against 20 and 40 million from the competition (Microsoft and Sony, respectively), what pleases us the most is that Wii U has the games with the best reviews and ratings from fans.”

 

Of course the poor marketting and name didn't help either.

source

He forgot to say there must be something wrong with users that didn't buy it, we'll have to slash at least ten troll points away from his score.    



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Magnus said:
Soundwave said:

The concept simply wasn't very good, no amount of explaining it or marketing it would've changed that.

It was a controller with streaming capabilities that only went about 20-30 feet away from the console which was connected a much better quality home HDTV, why would you want to use a shitty 6 inch sub HD display to play games on when it basically had to be in the same room as your HDTV?

Also the whole asymmetric gameplay thing didn't work well for games, people can only focus on one screen at a time, asking them to look up/down and keep track of two screens added nothing to 99% of games and made some of them (Star Fox 0) harder to play for no reason.

Asymetric gameplay was for multiplayer. Problem with the concept is:

a) It is not marketable

b) The concepts that would work well with it are fairly limited, and Nintendo would never make a Dungeons and Dragons game

c) People don't play multiplayer locally anyway

Why did they think the Gamepad was a good idea is beyond me. Do they even have focus groups there?

Not to mention the fact that it had/has support for only one Gamepad, which makes even the local multiplayer kinda worthless in that regard. Even if they supported more than one Gamepad though, the price would probably send people screaming out of stores.



Dunban67 said:
maxleresistant said:
"we weren't clear on the concept"

Hope you learned your lesson, seriously, EVERYBODY told you saw at E3 2011. Did you listen? Nope...

Nintendo can be the king of dummies some times

then after all that they ran those Wii u adds calling it an "upgrade"-  it s like they refuse to call any replacement console or " new" console what it is -  I wonder how many people will think the NX is an add on to the Wii u when they release it 

to this day, most people think it's an upgrade, an add on. One of the biggest fuck ups in the history of gaming.

Properly marketed and with a price cut, it could have easily sold 25/30 millions lifetime.

Nintendo went full retard for this gen, they were full of themselves, arrogant, they thought they couldn't fail and that they owned the market... 

They did the same thing with the N64, and Playstation did the same thing with the PS3. The history just keep repeating itself... 



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RolStoppable said:
thismeintiel said:

Nintendo fans love to say this, but it's really just a deflection.  The fact is the Wii U embraces the Wii's success.  It's named after it, almost confusingly.  It follows the same exact HW model, underpowered, cheaply priced (compared to the competition) HW with a controller made to appeal to casuals.  Casuals Nintendo knew were moving over to phones and tablets.

Another thing you seem to want to ignore is the fact that the Wii was basically a fad that lasted about 3 years, the it thing casuals had to have.  After that its sales started dropping like a stone and became something people only bought on Xmas for the kids.  That's why it started out higher than the PS2, but failed miserably in passing it (something a lot of Nintendo fans thought it would definitely do early on), selling slightly above 100M units.

So, no, another console that used the Wii controllers (even though the Wii U does for some games and for all multiplayer games) would not have done any better.  Casuals were done with the Wii-mote halfway through last gen.  And core gamers were not going to be satisfied with a console that was barely stronger than their last gen console and didn't use a standard controller.

I am not sure if you know what facts are when your expected lifetime sales range for the Wii U is 15-25m, and you posted that just a couple of days ago. What I am sure about is that you are so detached from reality that it would take days of elaborate responses to get you back to reality at least somewhat.

So, in other words, you have NO argument against what I have said and must resort to insults.  Good to know.



Goodnightmoon said:
pokoko said:

Why would you combine sales if the topic is home consoles?  Does the success of the PS4 means Sony is doing fine with the Vita?  Makes no sense, that's nothing but deflection.

Maybe if you read the part when he ask me how much devices they sold on prior generations you would understand why I posted that.

It doesn't change the fact that your decision of which handheld belongs to which console "generation" is completely arbitrary, and thus your "statistics" on how many devices Nintendo sold each generation completely meaningless.

If you want to argue against that point, please go ahead and point out why you decided the Gameboy was part of the SNES "generation" and not the NES "generation" or the N64 "generation". Even though the Gameboy was released 2 years before the SNES, and, if you even want to call the Gameboy color a different console (it wasn't, unless you want use the same logic argue that the new 3DS is a new console and separate from the 3DS, which I see you haven't done) was replaced as Nintendo's flagship handheld 2 years after the release of the N64.

The only reason people use this "generation" argument is because it obfuscates Nintendo's declining sales with each console's successor (of course with the exception of the Wii and DS).



potato_hamster said:
Goodnightmoon said:

Maybe if you read the part when he ask me how much devices they sold on prior generations you would understand why I posted that.

It doesn't change the fact that your decision of which handheld belongs to which console "generation" is completely arbitrary, and thus your "statistics" on how many devices Nintendo sold each generation completely meaningless.

If you want to argue against that point, please go ahead and point out why you decided the Gameboy was part of the SNES "generation" and not the NES "generation" or the N64 "generation". Even though the Gameboy was released 2 years before the SNES, and, if you even want to call the Gameboy color a different console (it wasn't, unless you want use the same logic argue that the new 3DS is a new console and separate from the 3DS, which I see you haven't done) was replaced as Nintendo's flagship handheld 2 years after the release of the N64.

The only reason people use this "generation" argument is because it obfuscates Nintendo's declining sales with each console's successor (of course with the exception of the Wii and DS).

So, as we don't know in what exact generation we should place every handhelwd, we just have to ignore the 420m they sold through times and keep telling shit like "Nintendo branch is losing strenght since the very beggining" even when handhelds are part of that branch and, as is already tradition in VGC, completely ignoring the wii era too. Then once you have eliminated those 2 completley essential things in the history of the company you can make any dumb doom theory that you want.



Goodnightmoon said:
potato_hamster said:

It doesn't change the fact that your decision of which handheld belongs to which console "generation" is completely arbitrary, and thus your "statistics" on how many devices Nintendo sold each generation completely meaningless.

If you want to argue against that point, please go ahead and point out why you decided the Gameboy was part of the SNES "generation" and not the NES "generation" or the N64 "generation". Even though the Gameboy was released 2 years before the SNES, and, if you even want to call the Gameboy color a different console (it wasn't, unless you want use the same logic argue that the new 3DS is a new console and separate from the 3DS, which I see you haven't done) was replaced as Nintendo's flagship handheld 2 years after the release of the N64.

The only reason people use this "generation" argument is because it obfuscates Nintendo's declining sales with each console's successor (of course with the exception of the Wii and DS).

So, as we don't know in what exact generation we should place every handhelwd, we just have to ignore the 420m they sold through times and keep telling shit like "Nintendo branch is losing strenght since the very beggining" even when handhelds are part of that branch and, as is already tradition in VGC, completely ignoring the wii era too. Then once you have eliminated those 2 completley essential things in the history of the company you can make any dumb doom theory that you want.

We don't have to ignore it at all. The fact of the matter is that Nintendo has released 6 Home consoles, and only one outsold its predecessor. Another fact is that Nintendo released 4 handheld consoles and only one of them outsold its predecessor. It remains a fact that Nintendo is selling less hardware annually than it has since it introduced the Gameboy. You can bring up the Wii and DS era all you want, but as time goes on those console's success appear to be more and more of an anomaly than anything else. It's really hard to argue otherwise.

You can spin things however you want, however it's obvious to everyone that isn't playing for team Nintendo (and that number is dwindling every year) that Nintendo's presence and strength within the console gaming community is diminishing, and has been for quite some time.



potato_hamster said:
Goodnightmoon said:

So, as we don't know in what exact generation we should place every handhelwd, we just have to ignore the 420m they sold through times and keep telling shit like "Nintendo branch is losing strenght since the very beggining" even when handhelds are part of that branch and, as is already tradition in VGC, completely ignoring the wii era too. Then once you have eliminated those 2 completley essential things in the history of the company you can make any dumb doom theory that you want.

Another fact is that Nintendo released 4 handheld consoles and only one of them outsold its predecessor. 

That's hardly a fact when in just 4 years GBA sold almost the same as Game Boy in its first 9 years.