Wii U Releases Will "Dramatically Increase"

[StewShearerOld]

Wii U Releases Will "Dramatically Increase"

Nintendo is impressed with the 3DS's digital sales and wants fans to prepare for more Wii U games on the horizon.

The Wii U has been available at retail for several months now, but for some the console still doesn't warrant a purchase. Sure, it's new and that GamePad is fancy, but at the end of the day its library is a bit on the scant side, with only a few original and exclusive titles to its name. Perhaps learning some lessons from the <a href=http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/miyamoto-admits-too-few-wii-games-in-2009>content droughts that afflicted the Wii over its lifespan, Nintendo wants to affirm to its customers that releases for the Wii U will be picking up soon and fast.

"The pace of launches has been slower than we hoped," said Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America, speaking to GamesIndustry. "But as we prepare for E3, the pace of launches for Wii U is going to dramatically increase." While some will likely remain skeptical, there is recent evidence to suggest that Nintendo will fulfill this promise of new games. The 3DS, similarly criticized in its early days <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/111356-Nintendo-Messed-Up-3DS-Launch-Says-Analyst>for its small selection of games, is now developing a more respectable library. Just yesterday, Nintendo announced a bevy of titles coming to the handheld in the near future. Among these will be new entries for several of its core franchises, including <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/123347-Mario-Party-Coming-to-3DS>Super Mario and <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/123361-Nintendo-Announces-A-Link-to-the-Past-2>The Legend of Zelda. A similar slew of announcements for the Wii U could serve as incentive for reluctant gamers to adopt the console.

Whatever Nintendo has planned, there's a chance a portion of it may be digital. Recent digital sales have been enough to impress the company. "We have 15 Nintendo-published titles available, both physically and digitally [on the 3DS]," said Fils-Aime. So far in 2013, of those 15 available in this format, 11 percent of sales have come through full digital downloads of those games." While nothing has been announced, if this appreciation translates into more support for Nintendo's digital storefronts, it could be a potential boon to both the 3DS and the Wii U.

Source: <a href=http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-04-17-nintendo-our-digital-sales-are-soaring>GamesIndustry


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[Mr. Omega]

Well, that's true. There are a lot of decent WiiU games on the horizon. Thing is, anything up from what it's at now is a drastic increase. I love the system, I really do, it's just that there's nothing there.

Still, the same thing was the case with the 3DS, and look at it now.

 

[BrotherRool]

So you mean in the half of a year before the Wii U becomes technically obsolete and unable to handle the games developers are producing without 20x the optimisation and effort needed for the other consoles and PCs, they're going to release some games which aren't rehashes of PS3/360 games?

I bet one's a mario title

 

[Smiley Face]

All I hear is noise. Noise that makes sense, mind you, but I'll show an interest in the Wii U once it actually has a decent library under its belt, rather than just talking about having one. Heck, they've barely even announced enough things to pique my interest, let alone released.

 

[Dr.Awkward]

Of course sales will increase - You just gave fanboys a reason to buy your console with the recent debuts. How much it increases depends on how many of these fanboys are still fanboys, though; it's going to take several original 3rd party titles to make non-fanboys buy the console.

But you seem more interested in working with the 3DS, though...

 

[Scribblesense]

Going from "nothing" to "something" is indeed a dramatic increase!

In all seriousness, there's about a dozen games expected from Nintendo by this holiday, and multiplatform releases or ports besides.

What I'd really like to see is Nintendo releasing some Wii U eShop-only games for ten dollars or so; imagine if the minigames from NintendoLand were expanded and turned into full-fledged downloadable titles. They could show off the GamePad's unique features and be as quirky and niche as they wanted them to be, not to mention they could release plenty of them every month.

With today's technology, we're seeing many indie studios capable of creating games that rival the fun factor of old-school Nintendo titles. I'm sure Miyamoto would be interested in creating smaller titles, and it would be great for employee morale if their pet projects could end up on the eShop. That's why GameFreak released HarmoKnight, which was pretty fun.

 

[subtlefuge]

I think it's a serious win-win situation for everyone if Nintendo develops titles for the PS5/Xbox 1080/PC after the Wii U. They can devote all their resources to making games, their games can sell tons from being on all platforms, and they don't have to contend with the fact that they haven't built an online infastructure (an oddity for a Japanese company, considering that Japan is so big on investing in the future).

That said, there are more good games coming, and they've very quickly turned the 3DS from a complete failure into the best device for gaming on the market. Nintendo could surprise me, but I'll just stick to spending all my hard earned cash on all the awesome 3DS games that have come out this past month.

 

[elvis-66]

As a serious console I think its dead in the water. As people have stated the more mainstream consoles debut later this year with purported specs that leave the Wii U in the dust.

Unfortunately I will only really consider one when its cheap and all the nintendo titles that I want are out - pikmin, mario, kart, zelda.

 

[Scribblesense]

So you mean in the half of a year before the Wii U becomes technically obsolete and unable to handle the games developers are producing without 20x the optimisation and effort needed for the other consoles and PCs, they're going to release some games which aren't rehashes of PS3/360 games?

I bet one's a mario title

They have a new 3D Mario and Mario Kart in the works, yes. I'd expect a Mario Party for Wii U in the near future too.

The limits of the Wii U won't be as detrimental to cross-platform development as we saw with the Wii, though. Most next-gen engines are incredibly scalable, so what runs on the PS4 should run on the Wii U (though it will no doubt be a pale imitation). And we aren't going to see developers abandon the 360 and PS3 until the PS4 and Nextbox have the install bases to justify it, so we'll still see the Wii U piggybacking on the success of Sony and MS.

Most third parties have games in the works for the Wii U - the only one to publicly turn its back on Nintendo is EA. Ubisoft, Activision, Square-Enix, WB Games, and more will likely make good ports for the Wii U in the future, if not exclusive titles.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

Wait for E3 guys, wait for E3. From the January Nintendo Direct here's what we can pretty much expect to see at E3:

-Smash Bros
-First Bayonetta 2 gameplay
-Mario Kart
-3D Mario
-Wind Waker HD gameplay
-SMT x Fire Emblem
-More info on the Xenoblade successor
-Retro Studio's brand new game
-Yoshi's Yarn

And here's a list of what we might see

-Miyamoto's brand new IP
-Star Fox or F-Zero
-Footage or trailer of the new Zelda
-Whatever other trump cards they might have up their sleeves, there is probably a few things nobody will know about until E3

It's now or never for Nintendo, if they disappoint at E3 then they are pretty much screwed. However, with the list of games I've just shown maybe we might have some hope left. Nintendo has to impress with tons of good games at E3 or they're going to be over-shadowed by the other two.

 

[R.Nevermore]

I have faith here. As has even said they managed to turn the 3DS, which was once nothing, into a huge smash hit. If they work that same magic with the WiiU we could see something really special.

 

[Scribblesense]

I think it's a serious win-win situation for everyone if Nintendo develops titles for the PS5/Xbox 1080/PC after the Wii U. They can devote all their resources to making games, their games can sell tons from being on all platforms, and they don't have to contend with the fact that they haven't built an online infastructure (an oddity for a Japanese company, considering that Japan is so big on investing in the future).

That said, there are more good games coming, and they've very quickly turned the 3DS from a complete failure into the best device for gaming on the market. Nintendo could surprise me, but I'll just stick to spending all my hard earned cash on all the awesome 3DS games that have come out this past month.

Every publisher on the market is scared of going up against Nintendo. It's one reason why third party support has been abysmal since the GameCube days. If Nintendo was devoting all their resources to developing games, they could easily release a new game every two months which would take a huge chunk out of the sales of all other major releases.

That may not be a problem for Call of Duty, GTA, and Madden, but for any publisher trying to release a new IP? It would be suicide. If Nintendo were to go software-only, which is twice as unlikely as Sony or Microsoft bowing out, I really doubt they'd stay out of the console business for more than a decade.

 

[Colt47]

To be fair, Nintendo wont be alone in slow home console sales. Both Sony and Microsoft will be having a hard time coming their respective consoles as well.

 

[Ickabod]

I really like my Wii U, too bad there is nothing to play on it. So this is welcome news.

 

[BrotherRool]

So you mean in the half of a year before the Wii U becomes technically obsolete and unable to handle the games developers are producing without 20x the optimisation and effort needed for the other consoles and PCs, they're going to release some games which aren't rehashes of PS3/360 games?

I bet one's a mario title

They have a new 3D Mario and Mario Kart in the works, yes. I'd expect a Mario Party for Wii U in the near future too.

The limits of the Wii U won't be as detrimental to cross-platform development as we saw with the Wii, though. Most next-gen engines are incredibly scalable, so what runs on the PS4 should run on the Wii U (though it will no doubt be a pale imitation). And we aren't going to see developers abandon the 360 and PS3 until the PS4 and Nextbox have the install bases to justify it, so we'll still see the Wii U piggybacking on the success of Sony and MS.

Most third parties have games in the works for the Wii U - the only one to publicly turn its back on Nintendo is EA. Ubisoft, Activision, Square-Enix, WB Games, and more will likely make good ports for the Wii U in the future, if not exclusive titles.

The Wii U has 1G RAM (for games) to the PS4's 7GBs right? And it's the sucky sort of RAM (it already has less bandwidth than the PS3 and 360). Thats a pretty significant difference when we want enemies on screen and AI. Maybe if people are still making games for low end laptops. If the next Xbox has sucky specs then maybe we'll have a console generation more in the Wii U's range. The Wii U is way worse than the Wii in terms of percentage increase on RAM and I think it'll also be significantly slower than the other consoles are in comparison to how slow the Wii was, but I think when the numbers get bigger the difference matters a little less too


There will be a transition year, it took a while for the PS2 to stop releasing games, but on the other hand production of Xbox games immediately switched over to the new hardware, so you can expect pretty much all the big budget games (except for the ones that got delayed) to be releasing on the new platforms within the year. It was a very noticeable occurrence last time for a big game to be released on an old platform. (Stuff like Okami being the exceptions)

EDIT: Switched out 8GB for 7GB. For some reason I thought the system RAM was counted in the PS4's RAM total when it was.

 

[Sean951]

None of the upcoming consoles is likely to break 50 million units in my opinion. At least not if the economy continues the way it has for the last few years. Many of those sales last gen came during an economic boom, which really isn't happening right now. Either way, with 3 million sales in the first 6 months and a slew of 1st party games set to come out in the next 6 months, I could see the Wii-U hitting 7 million units pretty easily, and that would make it a pretty successful 1st year by most standards.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

I can't believe how much times have changed since I was in high school. I don't remember anyone referring to Nintendo as a "toy company", or "second best", especially "not a real console maker". I grew up with everyone I knew playing Super Mario World and Final Fantasy 4-6, then moving to daily 4 player Goldeneye games, and even during the Gamecube having lots of fun with Smash Bros and oggling over Resident Evil 4 and the REmake.

It would be sad if Nintendo pissed away all of their good will with the Wii (despite there being plenty of fun games for "us" on it). It seems like a new generation of kids grew up knowing the tail-end of the Gamecube and the Wii, carrying the stigma of being "grandma and child machines". Nintendo will bring the games, and they'll certainly have that intangible charm and magic that just isn't emulated elsewhere. They pulled the US out of the crash, they have some of the best minds in game design toiling away, and they're the only company left that exclusively and entirely makes games and game machines. It would be sad to see them go, as Sony/Microsoft have far less love and passion for the medium, as well as respect for their consumers.

Also, if power and graphical capability was the magic bullet that ensured success, the Wii would have been last place in its time and the PS2 would have been as well. It is not an indicator of success. I'm sorry if I sound like a wanking Nintendo fanboy here, but I needed to get that off of my chest.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

As much as I bash the Wii U on these forums, I'll wait until E3 to judge the validity of this claim. That's where Nintendo embarrasses themselves the most with their software announcements. We'll see if they repeat that trend.

 

[V da Mighty Taco]

While I personally don't care for or play Bayonetta, I can imagine that Wii U sells will go up when that gets released. Games like that are probably what the Wii U needs if it wants to be successful.

 

[Andy Shandy]

Well thank god for that. Even as someone who really wants to like the console I was finding it bloody difficult with the lack of games for the damn thing.