worst of all time? u forget the Saturn, the Jaguar or any atari console except the 2600
What Pimpus said. If you are gonna worry about anything , you should worry about Microsoft.
BADBOY XBONE plays games in 720p while Wii U (which i thought to be the ‘weakest’ console on the market today) plays games in 1080p.
That is a huge mindf*** right durrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr hurr hurr hurr…hahahahahhaa lol xbone!
A ton of people don’t do local smash casuals, they don’t do tournies, many people only play single player.
Yes everyone with a WIIU (almost nobody) will buy the new smash, but more and more people don’t see smash as a reason to get a wiiu
Still waiting for dragon quest X for wii u to come to the U.S. if it ever happens. Though it it does im going to play that game 24/7
and I wonder if people in japan wants american gaming companies to go out of business, like Bungie, Rockstar, or the creators of CoD since those companies have shit for sells in japan.
Nah, japan doesn’t care, they just keep playing phone games and not having sex. Truly it is a mysterious country.
^I highly doubt that, GTA sales in Japan are quite reasonable and Capcom and I believe SquareEnix do help publish a lot American games for the Japanese market, they generally pose no ill will to each other and just want to ake money.
I’m bored so I’ll even the playing field (Devils Advocate), Sony and Microsoft aren’t doing too well either.
Sony - (as a company) They’re broke ass fuck right now so they’re betting big on the PS4’s success to give them some revenue back along with extended support for the PS3/Vita for a few more years. Things are looking up in the Playstation division but the future is still unclear. They’ve set there goal to be 5 million PS4’s worldwide by March 2014 so they’ve got there work cut out for them.
Microsoft - Running around like chickens with their heads cut off, the Xbox brand/division is in literal shambles right now so they got A LOT of work to do. Granted Microsoft’s other divisions (software/OS’s and the like make them enough money to keep them around. Just depends whether or not they’ll want to keep the Xbox division around.
Nintendo - They’re doing fine if not better than the other two so they’re not in trouble HOWEVER the only thing in trouble right now is Iwata, not so much the company as a whole (unless those investors have a word in edge-wise). Iwata has been making promises he can’t keep (@zoolanders post explains a bit of it) and I could go in deeper about the subject as well. Dude is a CEO, if he keeps fumbling he’s bound to be replaced which in return could very well change the face of Nintendo’s future (again) and that’s why it’s considered a big deal imo.
That’s the current situation for these 3, anyobdy else wanna Nostrodamus and predict the future?
I don’t gave a shit about competitive smash. If don’t want to have fun with the game I’ll look their way. I play Smash to fuck up Mario with WEEGEE. Locals for Smash isn’t difficult to find in my area. My local library holds them every Wednesday.
Look at their most recent financial report, there’s increased revenue across the board, including software sales…
WiiU is proof that they’re not doing fine, they have no idea how to sell consoles anymore, some might say they got lucky that wii sports and wii fit sold the PoS wii.
If you STILL don’t believe me go check the financial reports, in what Nintendo makes in a year, Sony triples in a quarter. Same with Microsoft. So now explain to me how these companies (which have much better software sales for their consoles) are in trouble?
Nintendo is not going to meet their proposed fiscal profit, they’re taking losses every quarter and reporting less wiiu sales than 360 sales. An eight year old console is out selling the wiiu by a lot (quarterly sales, not total sales). They’re targetting 9 million wiius at the end of March 2014, currently they have 3.9 million sold worldwide.
So maybe they can double their hardware sales, but can they turn their losses into 100 billion yen operating profit? I don’t think they will, but maybe the whole world will go batty and turn this holiday season into the year of mario.
This thread is about Nintendo’s future not MS or Sony’s. All of you guys talking about the latter sound pretty insecure 
Also as I mentioned before, talking about what the competition is doing rather than focusing on the self is a common deflection technique used by those who are in denial about obvious failure.
For the first time in forever mind you, especially their game division.
You wanna post some proof though? I never dive into these discussions without some evidence.
Here’s some of mine to look over.
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/library/er.html
Found a neat picture too.
Spoiler
http://lh6.ggpht.com/-rQiA6l52wDA/TseP3PpWDMI/AAAAAAAAAwc/S3SXothwqCg/s1600/image%255B3%255D.png
“Vita is proof that they’re not doing fine, they have no idea how to sell handhelds anymore”
See what I did there? hell you could have said the same thing about the PS3 a few years ago too.
That’s subjective, but you have to admit their strategy worked.
Wii lifetime sales are litte above 100.6 million and it’s only discontinued in Japan right now.
DS lifetime sales are at about 152 million, just a few million short of the PS2 (155 million).
What year(s) though? because I doubt that’s the case when the Wii/DS were at their all time high.
I also think you’re confused, Sony and Microsoft make more money because they’re BIGGER conglomerate companies. Something would be severely wrong if they weren’t making more dough.
Microsoft sells what? OS/Software/Xbox/XboxLive/Zune/Mobile stuff
Sony sells Music/Hardware (DVD Players/Blu-Ray Players/Phones/Playstation/CD Players/MP3’s/TV’s/etc)/Video Games/Music Unlimited/ and soon Gaikai.
Nintendo sells? Game systems/Games and a few other little things here and there, that’s about it.
So naturally, of course the other two would be making more profits because they got their hands in more pies. However if you only take the game(s) division into consideration it would be a whole different story.
I’m aware of that, if you go back a few pages I explain it in full detail.
Iwata is either crazy or he has balls of titanium, either way it’s gonna be an interesting few months.
After the Wii craze it’s kinda hard to predict the future of the gaming industry anymore, anything can happen.
Anyone else wanna chime in? and for the record I’m only talking about Sony/Microsoft just to offer some leverage, kinda don’t want this topic to devolve into a “dogpile on Nintendo” thing.
Anyway back on topic, Iwata! you got some explaining to do!
I think even if nintendo ever did stop selling to american games, they wouldnt care since mostly japan loves nintendo, just like how america loves to keep playing the same games over and over again, like CoD, Halo, and Gta series
http://mynintendonews.com/2013/07/28/famitsu-reveals-the-best-selling-games-of-2013-in-japan/
http://nintendoeverything.com/famitsu-top-100-best-selling-games-of-2013/
Whether Nintendo can drastically improve Wi U sales depends entirely on if they do all 3:
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With the Xbone and PS4 launching soon, Nintendo has to release a lot of exclusive games, a few of which must take advantage of the touch game pad so gamers are reminded of why they fell in love with Nintendo in the first place. Nintendo got it’s reputation by taking risks and gaining the trust of gamers with their new ideas, that trust has been shattered by the Wii U’s lack of system selling games, so Nintendo must step up like never before and churn out even more quality games than usual. Relying on 1 or 2 Tokyo EAD games a year isn’t going to cut it. Most adult gamers in this economy aren’t ballers and can’t afford multiple systems until they get big price cuts so with their games and unique controller Nintendo must convince gamers that they are a better choice than the competition.
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Every generation countless quality games come out and sell terribly due to a lot of people even us gamers who are up to date on gaming news not being aware of them existing. In this modern era where companies are constantly competing for our attention through every form of communication available it’s more important than ever for Nintendo to have steady streams of updates and reminders for their games so they don’t get lost in the shuffle. The old “we’ll show it when it’s ready” attitude will not work anymore, these days with a few exceptions most core gamers want to know every little thing going on with a game’s development while the average gamer is so busy with other priorities like family, work, school, whatever that they don’t have the knowledge or time to look deeply into a game’s upcoming launch. @sonichuman and I worked at Gamestop and both of us agree that a large chunk of our customers maybe even the vast majority are clueless about what’s going on in the gaming world so how can you expect them to show up on launch day? Nintendo Directs are awesome, but there are probably millions of Nintendo fans and potential Nintendo fans who don’t know about them or keep up with them, so Nintendo has the responsibility of taking advantage of all forms of communication and throwing it in our face so we can’t turn our heads without seeing a Zelda ad or whatever.
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More third party support. Sure most gamers don’t buy Nintendo to play multiplatform games, but like I said before the majority of gamers can only afford a single console before price drops so if PS4 and Xbone have their exclusive content and all the third parties how can Nintendo reasonably expect gamers to still pick them?
Bonus goal not necessary to Nintendo’s success, but still would be very helpful:
Start edcuating and inspiring young people within Nintendo so they can one day develop brand new first and second party franchises. The minds at Nintendo who invented Mario, Metroid, Zelda, Kirby, Smash Bros, etc have done their part in making Nintendo a global brand, but now the torch must be passed into new, younger talents. Nintendo can ensure future generations have the fond associations with new Nintendo franchises that we currently do with the old ones if they invested into some kind of internal training programs or workshops. Wouldn’t it be awesome if during our lifetime we saw completely new, fresh franchises from Nintendo that while mechanically completely different than the old franchises, still retained that classic Nintendo feeling and carried it into the future?
OZ what you point it is exactly what needs to happen, but I don’t see it coming to fruition, next gen starts in 12 days and there hasn’t been any media groundswell.
For nintendo to realistically succeed your first bulletin point they needed at least one title released early sept, nov and dec to cement WiiU in the minds of christmas shoppers. The watchdogs delay is a HUGE boon for nintendo’s positioning since next gen launch is basically just Killer Instinct (too bad xbad).
Also it would be very cool to see some fresh first party stuff, but there wasn’t any for the wii which was the perfect time to launch something new, with such a high hardware penetration a risky IP could’ve been very successful but alas they missed their chance. Now a fresh IP on the wiiu wouldn’t likely be profitable because new ip wouldn’t cause people to buy into a wiiu the way having a wiiu would cause you to buy into new ip.
Closing, unrelated point:
Sakurai’s mind has withered into a stump of pure loathing, he knows not but to hate his fans, my heart goes out to all you smashers.
At least kirby is still fine
the wii craze was evidence that people are ready to evolve in their game playing, playstation move not being properly integrated into the xmb was a big hit for motion gaming also like John Carmack mention kinect being like a zero button mouse is a flaw in its integration
with kinect there’s absolutely no tactile reinforcement making the experience even more separate. the hunger for evolution was exposed by the intuitiveness of the Wii but the flaws of the move’s integration and the kinect’s looseness stimulated a confusion within the publics consciousness and now most gamers are scared of motion controls instead of seeing the first wave of the technology being akin to the 8bit era of video games.
kinect in combination with the environment being completely around you becomes a fantastic technology, interacting with something in a small square away from you has no value to our senses
playstation move with the environment around you becomes an amazing experience, with the move becoming a weapon/item giving extra belief in the environment thats around you.
this is fact and all the people who have their mind set on innovation know this, the other people who make games and might be iffy about integrating motion into their games is because the environment is in that little square away from you.
how hard is this to make sense of? it boggles my mind
People buy systems for games…even more so for exclusives. The fact that you’re underestimating the hype behind Smash is amusing. Don’t forget Melee was the no.1 game sold on the Gamecube from Day 1 that it was out all the way to GC’s demise. Brawl sold 11.42 mil by March of this year. And now you’re going to doubt the game that has Mario, Sonic, AND Megaman in it? Don’t make that bet man…I wouldn’t do it. Nintendo just updated a lot of their Wii U kiosks with new demos and a eyecatcher video that advertises some upcoming games while it idles and there’s been a few people since their update last week who have done a double take towards the system…because Smash is on that reel.
First off the Wii U right now…yes is doing not what it needs to in sales currently. The fact that you seem to be either ignoring or blatantly not mentioning the fact that 3DS is kicking the shit in out of everything in the game industry at the moment is quite interesting. Nintendo’s handhelds have always had a very solid holiday season regardless of whether their home console platform is doing well or not. 3DS is stronger than ever this holiday season just off the strength of Pokemon and Zelda alone, it could possibly be enough to offset the losses from Wii U. I will admit though, I am curious as to why Iwata believes he’ll be able to sell 9 mill Wii U’s before the end of the fiscal year but the fiscal year ends in March. So far the only concrete date we have going into 2014 is DKC:TF in Feb so we don’t know what else is gonna come. I will say that whatever it is Iwata has planned to reach that number he needs to act on it soon…
If there’s anything pretty sure of at the moment, it’s that I’m having deja vu to when 3DS was having problems with selling at first and Nintendo was suddenly like ‘Oh shit…we aren’t gonna give up on this! We need to do something! ORAORAORAORRRAAAAAA!!!’. Nintendo is more than likely scrambling their ass off right now. They have a decent cash flow coming in from the 3DS so I’m curious to see what they have planned for next year.
I’m not gonna try to predict the future, but right now, Nintendo is sucking it, and it’s been a steady decline since N64. Sometimes their hardware ideas are good, but sometimes they’re bad, and their execution is always terrible.
The N64’s analog stick was innovative, but only having 1 analog stick was short-sighted, and the 3 handle layout was retarded. No one remembers the N64DD because thankfully for Ocarina fanboys, they switched almost every game planned for the add-on back to regular cartridge format. Even in 1996 it was obvious to everyone but Nintendo that giant magnetic discs were the way of the past, not the future.
Then with Gamecube all they were really trying to do was copy PS1, and they still fucked it up. The giant A button might have been slightly more n00b friendly for 3D Mario and Zelda, but was a vastly inferior layout for pretty much any 3rd party game and put a limit on what was playable on the console. The octagonal gate on the right stick was also annoying. Then there was the GBA-GC link function, which only served to piss people off that they can’t play Zelda or Final Fantasy co-op games without spending $600+ on 4 handheld systems in order to run a console game which could have been easily handled splitscreen at no added cost.
The Wii gets originality points, but they had to upgrade the controller with the motion plus to accomplish the 1:1 accuracy originally promised, and the only substantial first party title to take advantage was Skyward Sword at the end of the system’s life. Just like N64 there is an unnecessary shortage of analog sticks and buttons, so you can’t have movement and camera control simultaneously along with motion control unless its an FPS. The Razer Hydra shows a button/stick layout which is vastly superior and should have been obvious to Nintendo.
And now the Wii U is like an even worse version of the GBA/GC link idea. Since the “gamepad” is the console, only one player can actually use it, so it’s not actually geared well for co-op or multiplayer and even with additional wiimotes or controllers, only 1 person at a time can actually get the full experience of the game. As usual, the gamepad has an unnecessary button limitation; with only 2 shoulder buttons instead of 4-6, it won’t work well for FPS unless you’re using motion control to steer your gun like it’s a car. They lost the only saving grace of the Wii - the U is a confusing marketing fail which is the total opposite of a casual-friendly and easy to understand concept. When the Wii hit, people had dreamed of swinging in-game objects with their real hands. By comparison, the Wii U concept is like a bad Xzibit meme that no one ever wanted or asked for.
The only good thing about Wii U is now with Super Mario 3D World, they’ve finally figured out how to integrate gameplay elements of their flagship series (SMB) into 3D, after over a decade of shoehorning Mario into unrelated collectathon setpiece galleries (SM64, SMS, SMG). Better late than never, but why did it take them so long?
That’s the biggest question. For almost two decades, Nintendo has been the only supplier of games to their systems, yet they still make games at a molasses pace. They outsource stuff like Zelda, Star Fox, and Mario Kart to companies like Capcom and Namco, yet they still can’t make a system launch without porting something last-gen over. In an age where other major series put out a sequel every 1-2 years, you’re lucky if your favorite Nintendo series gets more than 1 major entry on each new console. Why haven’t they hired more people to keep up?
As others have said, they fuck up their systems so bad, I would rather Nintendo go software only. I’m not going to spend $300 just to play the extremely few good games on their consoles, but I would buy them on steam and play them on my PC. You can already have a better experience playing Wii games in HD on emulator than waiting for Nintendo to port them to Wii U and then pay for it again AND spend $300 on a non-handheld non-console. Even NES and SNES games look way better on Retroarch than Virtual Console.
Maybe if they were just making software, they could finally figure out how to do all their other classic series in 3D properly, and remember to add the obvious stuff, like difficulty settings, so that someone over the age of 9 can enjoy their games without scouring online for some 3rd party hack that replaces all the enemies with stalfos knights.
Saw a Wii U in Gamestop on Saturday. That controller is God damn enormous! Which didn’t bother me whatsoever. I kind of want a Wii U, but I don’t have much time for video games, so I’ll only be able to devote time to one console. This has been the case for a long time.
I don’t disagree with your whole post but I want to address some things.
…Considering that they were the first to do the analog stick…calling them short sighted on this is kinda laughable. That’s kind of like saying all consoles that game before the N64 were short sighted because they didn’t come with analog sticks. 2 analog sticks on the controller wouldn’t have happened until someone actually tried to experiment with it.
Technically it’d be Wii Sports Resort unless you want to count that as casual. The game does do a good job using wiimotion plus. Red Steel 2 would be the first 3rd party game to use it in a serious manner but people seem to forget that sadly…
What? There’s 4 shoulder buttons on the Wii U pad man.
Why should Nintendo need to spit out 3-4 different sequels of all of their popular IP’s each generation? I’d rather Nintendo not CoD/Ass Creed their games. Eventually CoD and most definitely Ass Creed will run out of ideas and catch series fatigue way faster than any of Nintendo’s games. It’s bad enough there’s people now complaining that Nintendo whores out Mario too much even though the games he shows up in are varied in and in different genres then despite the fact that we get lucky to even get 2 mainline EAD Mario games on 1 console in it’s lifetime. I mean really though they’re receiving 2 different messages from the crowd here on this…When they make a popular IP it’s ‘oh it’s ‘popular IP’ that’s all they make and they make too much of it’ and inbetween development of their popular IP it’s ‘Where is ‘popular IP’ at? You know what they should be doing? Making more of ‘popular IP’.’ Seriously…am I the only one who catches this?
^ bot.
I want to like the 3DS but the 3D hurts my eyes so I’d end up not using it. I only have a few games for my DS but it’s still good to have fun with. Speaking of outsourcing, I hope Nintendo gets Sega to do another F-Zero. That game was on another level. That and Sonic Lost World are the only times a game made my stomach queasy.
I would love to see another megaton as well. The same situation with Bayo2, happening with DMC5 would be icing on the cake. I think the Wii U Pad would be better suited for the game as well.
It’s common sense when you develop a new technology that you make sure there aren’t obvious improvements you can make before shitting it out to the public. The first thing they teach you in design school is that design is iterative, so you start with a first draft then think hard about what you can add or improve. As soon as one played Super Mario 64, it was obvious that bad camera placement was a potential problem, and that the C-buttons were awkward and insufficient for controlling the camera. It should not have been a big leap to come up with a form factor like this or add a 2nd stick. That other companies so easily leapfrogged the functionality of the N64 controller shows a lack of thought on Nintendo - they didn’t flesh out the idea, it’s like they just shat out the first draft they came up with.
Again, the lack of a 2nd stick on the Wii is another perfect example…so then they finally reached their goal of 1:1 sword play in Zelda and the game is stuck back in the 3D stone age when it comes to any gameplay besides combat, because they didn’t think ahead or stop to ask themselves if they could use more buttons or sticks. By comparison, the superior layout of the Razer Hydra is not rocket science, it’s common sense design work - you don’t just shit the buttons and sticks out randomly, you stop and think about the optimal way to do it.
Because they’re the only ones producing games on their systems, and the idea of buying a new console just to play 1 or 2 games isn’t particularly convincing (especially if N64, GC, and Wii U sales are any indication). It’s common business sense - if you have a property in high demand, make more. Just within established franchises like Mario, Zelda, and Metroid, there are a ton of variations and ideas they could have pursued. Properly executing 3D games is a moving target which Nintendo did not bullseye on their first try, no matter what fanboys may think - if more sequels had been made experimenting with different approaches, we would wind up with better games in the end.
Maybe if they cranked out more games, they would have figured out by now how to make 3D games which are fast-paced and exciting, rather than a boring collectathon, and they’d have appeal to the general gaming public instead of just a niche group that is so dedicated to the Nintendo brand, they’ll swallow anything N dumps on them.