WiiU is dead in the water. Their strategy has become outdated. It needs to be tweaked for them to have any chance of a distant third, and needs to be drastically altered for them to be competitive. They weaseled their way out of the Wii being a complete failure despite being voted console most likely to collect dust for years at a time between uses. The demographic they tapped into to make the Wii a success, doesn’t want a WiiU, they’re still flailing their Wiimotes around when they have a bunch of people around drunk etc.
There are a ton of reasons to doubt Nintendo being remotely competitive this time, but it’s completely silly to think they’ll win. C’mon man.
That demographic is much bigger than the “hardcore” gamer demographic. Also you have to take into account the “gamer” demographic is so spread out. Not just Xbone and PS4, but also PCs. That large casual demo that made the Wii the winner of the last console war isn’t just gone. As soon as Wii U starts getting some games and then some hype they’ll destroy Sony and MS again, nothing has really changed at all from the business models. The Wii just got older and it’s time to replace it. That casual demo will just buy the Wii U instead of being spread out.
The Nintendo library is just too deep and has too many opportunities to put out a killer app that really becomes popular. It’s also really the only exclusive right now, since most of the other games get released on both Xbone and PS4.
Wii U got already got crap that was popular with the casual demo like Wii Fit U and Wii Sports Club and it hasn’t been flying off the shelf. Nintendo needs to let that audience know that the Wii U it’s is own console. You wouldn’t believe how many people come to store I work at thinking the Wii U is another hardware peripheral like the balance board and Wii Motion Plus.
As bad as I’ll sound for saying this, the console’s name and price are not its worst sticking point as regards its sales.
It is the price of the games.
Whilst I myself think that the quality of the software is of a level with or better than anything else out there… it is the successor of the Wii, and people remember the Wii having $50 games.
As the perception of most consumers, right or wrong, is that the Wii U is a technically inferior system, next gen game prices doubly stymie its sales.
Well right now the Wii U still has the most hardware sales of the three consoles, so at the very least people should probably wait until Xbone and PS4 have sold more units before writing of the Wii U. I’d say check back in the middle of the year or at the end of the year.
The big apps for Nintendo are always going to be Smash Bros., Mario Kart and Mario Party. Zelda, Metroid and a Mario platformer/action game are going to be in there too and have their own player bases. To my knowledge none of those games have been released yet on Nintendo. My guess is Smash Bros. is the one that sets the Wii U up. That’s not even mentioning Pokemon, if they ever release a console version of that which the fanbase feels they have to have, they’re going to succeed based on just that alone. Too many killer app opportunities for something not to stick, especially in the current console environment where it’s mostly FPS games.
@serpent Mario 3D World was released and was the poorest selling “mainline” entry in the franchise to date, if it was a spinoff I’d understand, but when a real Mario game fails to be a system seller it becomes hard to agree with your optimism for Nintendo’s future dominance.
That being said take a look at the numbers:
64 sales: 5 million
Melee sales: 7 million
Brawl sales: 10 million
Wii U lifetime sales are at around 5 million and it’s been out for over a year. PS4 and Xbone current sit at 4 mil and that’s within the first two months of their releases. I can see why guys like Shogun think that the Wii U is dead in the water.
Did the release of Super Mario 3D World pass you by? mainline Mario platformer and it had the lowest numbers for a main series game to date as Zoolander mentioned?
“That’s the problem with honouring history when tastes move on. Competitors such as Sony, Microsoft, Valve and Apple have released game platforms that, in many respects, are perfect for a gamer who grew up with Nintendo but now want experiences better suited to their eclectic tastes”
Hate to admit it, but moving to Smart Phones is a good move.
Even played Puzzles and Dragons? Yea, it’s not much, company wasn’t established long ago. It’s already worth more than Nintendo.
People are stupid when it comes to mobile gaming apps. I remember an app on the iTunes store that did nothing… literally nothing. The advertisement even said “this app does nothing”. After downloading it, it prompts a screen when opening the app, explaining how the app does nothing, and by clicking on the only buttons there, you are donating to the app maker.
This app was taken down in several hours, only for the guy to make thousands off people.
Ridiculous.
Eh it was a badly written article that had no point and went on for far too long. I think my favorite part of the article is the author’s thesis that Nintendo’s sales have been declining on its consoles and the Wii U is doomed to that pattern. He demonstrates his point by showing us a nice little chart which shows a bar graph proving his point.
Except he neglects to bother putting in the previous console entirely, because it would make his chart look retarded.
And when you play retard games like that when trying to make a point, I zone out and can’t take the rest of your article seriously at all.
I have no idea who this guy is either, and why I should take him seriously, there are so many articles written from better, actual financial sources. The Times had one on Nintendo a little while ago, and I’m sure Forbes and WSJ have a few articles every once in awhile too. If you want to link something from a respected source and a good writer, that would be a better idea. Otherwise, try and at least write your own posts conveying your own views and thoughts, instead of trolling us with garbage articles.
As you showed in your previous post, Smash has been increasing in sales and we can project it to go higher. 14M units for Smash is a decent projection, and that will move a lot of hardware. Now I’m too lazy to check the release date or anything like that, but that’s where you have to start paying attention. I don’t really take this seriously and won’t be putting any money into Nintendo stock anytime soon.
Just quoting for emphasis, this is exactly what I’ve been saying for a while now. Nintendo WILL become Sega. The only difference is their handheld division still prints money. They were idiotic and late to the party by limiting their source of income - Square has been slowly pumping out Final Fantasy on the iOS platform (no experience with Android so I can’t say what they have and haven’t been doing), and Nintendo’s 8 and 16-bit catalogs which can be emulated with no issue, should be ported over and would make INSTANT money and let them continue to milk the old properties. I’ve got like 10 racing games on my iPad and they are all ‘meh’, but if they ported F-Zero? BANK. There are a heavy number of games that try to emulate Zelda…why not just do it yourself - BANK. Unfortunately, I don’t think it will save the company at this point, they’ve lost soooooooo much value over the past few years.
i don’t know if smash is going to save the WiiU this time around
if you look at the smash games and compare it to console sales, melee did the best as every 1 out of 2 GCN owners had it (GCN only sold 14 million units), brawl was on about 1 out of 7 or 8 units, smash 64 was way lower (like 1 of 20 or something)
what i’m getting at is i don’t think smash is going to really bring up the sales that much, melee was the high point of it and a lot of people who bought melee also bought brawl. now with this group being much older, the biggest demographic for the game has pretty much dwindled and the group that they want to target, parents aren’t going to dish out $300 for “another wii”. smash is not going to save the WiiU, I honestly think they should just scrap it, call it failure, take the loss and move on, nothing they put out will make the WiiU sell like hotcakes
Smash won’t do shit. It will make profit for the game, it will sell ‘some’ consoles, but the Wii U is ‘established’ as what it is at this point. To use myself as an example. I’ve got the wii U and the XB1. I honestly got hte XB1 for 1 game (this early) - Killer Instinct. I also bought the Mad Catz stick. Why did I put out that kind of money for a single game? Because the console is new and still impressionable with a wide range of games from a wide range of developers - incoming, so its a solid investment. The Wii U on the other hand has been out for over a year, has fewer and fewer games coming out with more articles detailing its ‘death spiral’ than it’s praise, etc etc, so if you love that one game series - you MIGHT get a Wii U - with the price slash - so you can play it - but you are buying it with the expectation of ONLY PLAYING SMASH. Few people are going to make that leap (not saying none, just few).
If you put Pokemon on a smartphone, I can guarantee with 100% certainty I’d play that game for years. The reason I gave up on the 3DS is because I hate carrying any extra electronic with me. At least on a mobile device it’s always reachable.
RPGs that aren’t SMRPG are great on smart phones (SMRPG you have to jump in and some puzzle require you to jump, you’re going to pull your hair out)
i had en emulator on my palm pre a few years ago in which i played the hell out of earthbound, it was great until the game glitched and put me at a save 5 hours before
so if nintendo makes rpg’s for smart phones like what square enix is doing, then it can totally work
You didn’t read the article thoroughly. The author does brought up the Wii in the section when he talks about Nintendo’s console decline. The very first sentence brings it up and tells the reader the chart only works if they think of the Wii as a anomaly.