WiiU

[Madame Adequate]

Ugh, the "Nintendo should go 3rd party" argument again? Such a selfish way of thinking (I mean, Sony and Microsoft fans wouldn't like it if their favourite companies went third party).

I never said I personally wanted them to do this. I said they may have to out of necessity. But you seem to have enormous difficulty telling the difference between "Here's what I want to happen" and "Here's what I think will happen".

Nintendo going third party wouldn't be a good idea, as good as you think it'd sound at first. Seeing how they know the hardware they work on inside and out when it comes to making software, having them work on hardware they're not used to will result in the game quality lowering. We know how that went with Sega, with the Sonic Dreamcast games being good, but with the games afterwards being of... significantly lower in quality. I mean, you really want Nintendo to make games that have Sonic 2006 quality?

None of SEGA's mid-2000s problems stemmed from a failure to understand the hardware they were working with. They stemmed from terrible gameplay ideas like the werehog, and the difficulty in making a speed-based rather than platform-based 3D platformer. Nintendo, meanwhile, made Super Mario 64, one of the greatest 3D platformers ever and one of the greatest games ever, because they sat down and figured out how this new variant on platforming would work, which is what Nintendo do when they're at their best. For a Nintendo fan you don't seem to have much faith in their abilities.

Even if Nintendo did go third party and all Nintendo games were available on home consoles, competing consoles would only be about power and exclusives (and Sony and Microsoft fans will probably start wishing the other went third party, and once it actually does happens, you can kiss console variety goodbye, and the remaining console can be as greedy and restrictive as they want to be without rival companies holding them back), and there'd be no more variety or lateral innovations with consoles since Nintendo is the one that led in that regard (whether it's touch screens, motion controllers, or tablet controllers).

If that happened someone else would enter the market very quickly, whether someone new to it or someone who had exited the market and now saw it as ripe for re-entry.

I'm sorry if you think me sticking up for and defending a company I like when someone else is saying negative things about it is being a fanboy, but I've seen nothing but negative comments and distrust in Nintendo everywhere I go, I'm sick of it, and I'm wanting to bring up the positives about Nintendo when very few people are. Everyone is always focusing on all the bad Nintendo does, and there's hardly as much bad press for other poor selling consoles like the PS3 (back in the day), PS Vita, and the Ouya.

I don't really know where to begin with this but it's the most fanboy thing I've seen in forever. Once again the fact I am saying "Guys Nintendo might be in real trouble here" does not mean I think that this is a good thing or that I want Nintendo to be in trouble, I am pointing out stark realities. Go click the news articles I linked in my last post. The BBC is not some longstanding videogaming journalism outlet with a proven track record of disliking Nintendo! And anyway I hope the WiiU does succeed! I want nothing more than another console with loads of great games on it! I want the next generation to be filled with innovative games that use the hardware's various unique attributes to do all kinds of cool trout!

As for the last sentence, are you high? PS3 buyers are so sore about the stick the console got that they're still mad about "PS3 has no gaems" like seven years later. The PSVita is still called the No Gaems Portable in half the places I see it mentioned (and anyway hasn't ended up selling all that badly). As for the Ouya, I've not seen such a hilarious catastrosmurf in the industry for 30 years, this thing is a literal scam and the only reason there's not more out there about it is because nobody cared to get one in the first place.

[Spuuky]

But you should be a PC Elitist. Because the PC is objectively better as a gaming platform. I was going to add a "just kidding," but I considered it and I'm not.

And I also do think Nintendo would be better served by making games for other consoles at this point rather than trying to save the WiiU. Nintendo consoles have certainly failed before. Nostalgic love of the SNES isn't going to keep everyone a customer forever; if Zelda games and Mario games and whatever else people play on Nintendo systems became available for other consoles, there'd be no reason to own a Nintendo console.

I will probably never buy a console again, unless we reach a generation where one console is clearly the dominant one, so that it gets all the good exclusive games. Because to me, the only reason to own any console is the exclusives, and I'd still rather just be playing those on the PC, but I'm not allowed.

[Evastio]

It's selfish to want people to be able to play more games without spending a few hundred extra dollars?

Coming at the expense of another company's success and goals, yes. I can understand not wanting to buy another console to play some games (Dissidia was a huge example of that in my case, since I wanted to play it that badly), but wishing for a company to fail for that to happen is quite selfish.

Take a look at the PS3 and 360 and the PS4 and XBone now. We waved goodbye to console variety almost a decade ago. Hell, we pretty much waved goodbye to consoles since these things are trying to be more and more like PC's everyday.

It's true that console variety been very weak for a while, but Nintendo has been doing quite a lot to diversify their consoles like Motion Controllers, Wii U Gamepad, and touchscreens, which have led themselves to many new different kinds of games/games of uncommon genres being developed. Losing that kind of variety and diversity in gaming can only be a bad thing. I mean, even if most traditional gamers didn't like Brain Age, Nintendogs, or Wii Fit, that doesn't mean other people did (especially since those three are some of the best selling games on their systems), and it's not like those niche but hotselling games stopped traditional games from being released or skewed the market too heavily in that direction.

What god damn console launches were you following because there was a lot of criticism of the PS3 in the first few years (which didn't seem to really end until it finally passed the 360 in sales and people finally noticed that the talk of it selling poorly kind of stopped being true a while back), the Vita gets tons of flack for poor sales, and the Ouya has gotten a lot of flack for everything from hardware issues and a lack of decent games to poor game monetization rates. I'm not sure what sort of selective attention one would have to exercise to not notice that those platforms got literally shat on by the press for a long time/still are right now.

I have seen my share of bad press about other consoles regarding Sony and Ouya's sales in case you're wondering, but it's nothing compared to the bad press and the amount of articles about the 3DS' (at the time) and Wii U's sales. I've personally experienced on other sites people insisting things like poor sales on other consoles not being as significant as Nintendo's poor sales, saying biased things like "well no one expected the Vita to succeed, so its poor sales aren't as bad as the Wii U's" or "Ouya isn't mainstream while the Wii U is, so their failure doesn't count."

I'm well aware of the "PS3 having no gaemz", the PS Vita's poor sales and lack of both current and upcoming games (specifically exclusives), and the bad press the Ouya is receiving. I've been following the Ouya since the very beginning, I was even the one making the very first Ouya thread on EoFF, I know about the "Scruya", how a lot of people's preordered consoles were not being given when the retail versions were already out, how a lot of preordering customers were given beta/alpha versions of the console and weren't given the final version they're promised, and how they hardly have any games or indie's developing for it (which was supposed to be its selling point). And I haven't even gotten to the bad press the "XBox One Eigthy" has gotten (but since none of it relates to sale amounts, I won't delve into it). I just find that there's a lot more bad press for Nintendo than for the other game companies. Sorry if I came off as that biased or blind to the bad press other companies have gotten.

Anyways, it's probably best if I stop here before warns start being given out or the thread gets closed.

[Spuuky]

I will just say as someone who DOESN'T carefully follow news about consoles, only a few times has the bad press about a console become so widespread that even I was aware of it.

PS3
WiiU
Ouya if that even counts because no one reputable whose opinions I saw even expected it to succeed in the first place

Only one of those is a Nintendo console, and the PS3 seemed to have gotten much more negative press than the WiiU to me; again, from the perspective of someone who doesn't really follow console news or care that much.

[Flaming Ice]

I've been thinking Nintendo should go the software route for a while now. The Wii was a neat experiment and if sales are any indication then it worked, but that Wii market that they had on lock is now turning towards smartphone and tablet games. Nintendo is stubborn as a mule, though.

Part of that market was middle aged women buying wii fit though............



What they need to do is make games for people who grew up with nintendo. Instead they make their games really childish. Glad that monster hunter and those few rpgs that took forever to get into english came out but a few isn't enough for people who play games as a hobby.



Playstation's major flaw is their highly priced console.......

[Bolivar]

The thing about sales is that it's all spin. Even when the PS3 was in "dire straits" it had still sold faster than almost every console in history up to that point, including the 360 (as in year 1 vs. year 1 sales, year 2 vs. year 2, etc.). It's also perception. Someone informed of current gaming events probably wouldn't know that Gran Turismo is more successful than Forza or that Final Fantasy XIII was much more popular than Mass Effect 2. So outside of spin and perception, I don't think video game sales support the crazy extremes they're often rationalizing. As Evastio pointed out, Nintendo can withstand two more generations of Wii U debacles before it seriously has to evolve or die. Of course a console that sells no units with no brand power is going to fail, but in most cases, the numbers really won't mean as much as a the gamer commenting on a news article is making it out to be. We're a bunch of sensationalist trolls, not informed investors. And if history has taught us anything, I'm not really convinced that sales translate into the health of a game library.

I agree with Iwata that all of Nintendo's good will would dissipate if they became a third party publisher. Nintendo's software feeds off the creativity of its hardware and vice versa. A lot of its games throughout history wouldn't have been possible on other platforms. I'm absolutely absorbed in Etrian Odyssey IV right now and that game just wouldn't be the same if it wasn't on a handheld with a stylus and stereoscopic 3D. The day I play Mario with a dualshock or sync my Zelda save on the Steam cloud is the day gaming becomes a hell of a lot less magical.

[Slothy]

Coming at the expense of another company's success and goals, yes. I can understand not wanting to buy another console to play some games (Dissidia was a huge example of that in my case, since I wanted to play it that badly), but wishing for a company to fail for that to happen is quite selfish.

This assumes that said company couldn't be as, or more, successful if they stopped making hardware.

But even if it did require a company to be worse off for it to happen, so what? Why would me or anyone else being selfish about the games they want to play be a bad thing? Nintendo is a company in business to make a profit, not a starving child that's having their sandwich snatched from them. We don't owe them anything.

And just for the record, so you don't misunderstand, I really couldn't care less if Nintendo went third party or not. They haven't made a game I really enjoyed that was the least bit original in more than a decade. If they'd like to make original titles that are as innovative and enjoyable as games like Super Mario Bros., Zelda, or Mario 64 were, they are welcome to court me again.

[Freya]

I want a Wii u. why? Zelda. Why did i buy a 3DS? Zelda. Why did I get a Wii? Zelda.

Those big exclusives sell their product. Instead of bleeding some of there popular series dry (mario) they should focus on making quality games of the stuff people love.

[Madame Adequate]

The Death Of Nintendo Has Been Greatly Under-Exaggerated | TechCrunch

I don't agree with his conclusions about selling to Apple (wat) but most of the base he lays out seems sound to me.

[Bolivar]

Again, spin from a tech journalist who thinks the business world operates in such a way that of you're not first, you should start looking for a buyer.

Ex: he paints the 2ds as a desperation move since the 3ds is tracking 20% behind its predecessor. But the DS was a cultural phenomenon, achieving a level of success that few tech products ever have.

The Wii isn't on top but Nintendo's home consoles never were for the majority of the last twenty years. They're fine.

Also, under-exaggerated is a pretty horrible compound word.

[Slothy]

Ex: he paints the 2ds as a desperation move since the 3ds is tracking 20% behind its predecessor. But the DS was a cultural phenomenon, achieving a level of success that few tech products ever have.

To be fair, that may be a bit of a problem for them. When they had to cut the price of the 3DS early on to drive sales up they were taking a loss on every unit sold which is something they rarely do. Now it may not be a major problem for them just the same. It's well known they were swimming in cash for years and their software sales may have picked up the slack, but still, they've had to make a lot of decisions they never had to make before, and we know their performance has suffered as a result or Iwata wouldn't have volunteered to take a pay cut for the myriad of smurf ups under his watch lately.

[Madame Adequate]

Nah, he's using this to argue for his pet cause of "I like Nintendo! I like Apple! What if they were together!" but the fact his conclusion is silly doesn't mean the statistics are. Look, a bunch of business and tech commentators didn't just decide one day that it would be funny to trout on Nintendo for no reason, all this stuff is coming from somewhere, and his points about how concern about Nintendo's financial status is seen as criticism of Nintendo and how anyone who wants to point out that the WiiU is doing badly has to preface it with loads of "I love Nintendo I grew up playing NES" stuff is all very relevant.

[Madame Adequate]

Japan Hardware sales figures for last week, and the week prior in brackets:

3DS LL – 236,700 (60,077)
3DS – 40,092 (19,114)
PlayStation 3 – 12,146 (13,790)
PlayStation Vita – 6,020 (7,314)
PSP – 5,449 (5,493)
Wii U – 5,003 (5,702)

[Del Murder]

Yikes, even below Vita and PSP? Ouch.

[Denmark]

well, what (exclusive) games does it have?

the wind waker? i got that game like 10 years ago
super mario bros wii u? it's a sidescrolling mario game, those have been out for 28 years
pikmin 3? ehhhhhhh i didn't really like the first pikmin game (i never got the hang of it despite repeated attempts, i'm aware a lot of people liked it)

(i don't have and won't be getting a WiiU)