padib said:
As much as I'd love to agree with you, for some people those were the games to talk about.
The way he worded it is wrong, the Wii had a ton of 3rd party support. Just in a certain type of game, it was completely lame. And for many people who buy PS and XB, those were the games to talk about and Nintendo wasn't part of the party.
But the part where he said only people who are happy to buy the same old Nintendo da da da. That was just a really bad dogma that just keeps getting propagated. Nintendo created a ton of new IPs especially during the Wii era. Most of the games in Nintendo's main series are constantly evolving, feeling like different games many times. The most notorious series on this chameleon style of creation are Mario and Zelda.
Saying that Nintendo makes games for everyone doesn't make their games childish. It's just that they are for everyone. And since when is that a bad thing? People could say that Sony always makes games for older people, games that lack originality and follow money trends. But even if there might be a portion of truth to that, why would it be a bad thing? Each company brings their strength to the industry and that is perfectly fine.
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I think this is a huge thing that a lot of people just tend to ignore. New IP's sometimes get far too much attention despite not bringing much of anything new. I think that there are bigger differences between Mario Galaxy, NSMB, and Super Mario 3D World than there are between Bloodbourne and Dark Souls, or even Uncharted and TLOU, but Bloodborne is fresh and Mario is stale because...it has the same old characters? There are also games like Captain Toad that bring plenty of new concepts, despite being part of the Mario IP.
And don't even get me started on Watch Dogs.
ps4tw said:
It depends how you look at it. Is the Switch technically similar to the Wii U? Not quite. Is the business model just as filled with holes? Most certainly.
The issue with third party support on the Wii was certainly the power, but somewhat for the Wii U, and most certainly for the Switch, a major issue is the architecture. The Xbox 1 and PS4 use X86, giving publishers a larger market with little extra development overhead. With the Wii U and Switch, apart from compensating for weaker specs, the change in architecture is a massive issue - it took the guys who made the Uncharted remasterd series over a year just to get an image to show
While the Switch is portable, it's not truly a handheld game console (HGC) - if it was, then Nintendo would surely start to halt all HGC production and focus everything on the switch to prevent market cannibalisation? Therefore, comparing market tactics for two items that are in different markets doesn't really make sense. Different customers, therefore different business tactics. Also, the Wii U had a $50 pricecut less than a year after launch...
Consoles are an essential part of Nintendo's tactics, more so in the light of mobile gaming. The 3DS has sold slower than the DS, and the Wii U was a flop. If Nintendo just rely on HGC, can they guarentee market dominance in 5 years? Unlikey considering the growth of mobile gaming, and decline in HGC sales - this looks to be a trend rather than a coincidence. You also can't throw around comments like without "The Wii could have sold no units, and Nintendo would still have been in a good place." without any proof; it seems to me you're just forgetting things like R&D etc, y'know, the cost it takes to make something. The low sales of the Wii U resulted in Nintendo having several quarterly losses, so it makes no sense to believe that zero sales of the Wii wouldn't have taken just as big a toll.
I'll tell you now exactly why the Switch is identical to the Wii U. They are both based on hilariously ill-informed, naive business plans that forget to look at trends in gaming, or lessons learnt from past ventures. The Switch is still underpowered, still using an architecture and game medium that'll be difficult to port to. Nintendo are still relying on game IP's that are woefully out-of-date, and are unwilling to change to market demand e.g. Capcom and Resident Evil. For all these reasons, the Switch is just another Wii U, and that's to say, Dead on Arrival.
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I'm not a developer, so I can't say for absolute sure, but I seriously doubt porting between x86 and ARM is anywhere near as challenging as porting an engine designed for Teh Cell to work on x86. The cell was a notoriously "unique" and challenging chip to work with, ARM is the most common architecture in portable devices today. The very fact that the Switch has a legitimately modern GPU, and that most of the major engines have support for ARM is already a huge advantage it has over the Wii U, not to mention that Nintendo has Nvidia's experience and expertise on their side this time around. Plus, Aonuma stated recently that porting Zelda: BOTW to Switch was faster than he expected. Make of that what you will.
My theory is that Nintendo is holding off on introducing the Switch as a 3DS successor until they can implement a die shrink to improve battery life in portable mode, and get the price down to something mobile gamers would be able to accept. 3DS sales are strong for the time being, so they're going to ride that horse for as long as it will carry them. In the mean time, Switch will be marketed as the "Home Console" that you can take with you anywhere. I don't expect it to stay this way, though. There's just no point in them releasing a Hybrid system if they plan to continue making dedicated handheld systems. I also feel that the limited software lineup and low early shipments are evidence of this March release being a bit of a soft launch for what will eventually grow to be Nintendo's sole gaming platform.
I had actually forgotten that the Deluxe Wii U was actually $350. The minimum base price of the console never did officially drop below $300, though, so I stand by my statement.
The dedicated console market as a whole is on the decline as well. I don't expect that Nintendo can possibly acheive market dominance in that space either, especially with how ultra competitive Sony and Microsoft are. Yes, mobile gaming has done significant damage to Nintendo's handheld sales, but they're banking on the idea that there is still a significant enough number of gamers that want a full-fledged gaming experience on the go for them to carve out a bit of a niche for themselves in handheld gaming, which I tend to agree with. As long as mobile phones are unable to provide "hard-core" gaming experiences, there will always be a market for dedicated handhelds. And of course they're also attempting to retain what console fans they still have with an adequate on-TV experience. We'll see how that works out.
My statement regarding the Wii was just to illustrate how enormous the sales for the DS were. It moved more units than all or Microsofts consoles to date combined, and was approaching the PS2. It's also my understanding that any R&D expenses would have been payed for in the months and years before the Wii -- which, if I might add, must have been inexpensive due to it being essentially just a gamecube with motion controls tacked on. They even used the same factories, iirc. Any losses they took from the failure of the Wii would have been swallowed by the profits they made from the DS.
Nintendo has shown that they have learned plenty from the mistakes of the Wii U. The Switch is a product with a clear, marketable fuction, using a popular and well documented architecture, and is powerful enough to run all but the most demanding AAA titles. They also worked with third parties during the development of the system, and are already doing a better job marketing the product than the Wii U.
Also, their "outdated" IP's are still some of the most popular in the industry. Their newest IP, Splatoon, turned out to be a huge sensation, and Zelda in particular has gotten a very modern makeover.
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