Akalabeth said:
I don't know if you noticed, but the IPad and gaming on the IPad are becoming increasingly popular. Is it any surprise that Nintendo is moving on that trend instead of building an xbox clone?
Nintendo's biggest competition is Apple. NOT Sony & Microsoft.
And their solution to this was too build an iPad right into the controller? Which by its description is still a controller and is portable only within the confines of ones house. (or however far the streaming range is) If they wanted to make an iPad like handheld with the power of a console they should have gone ahead and made that instead of the 3DS.
Frankly I think the controller looks like it could be a perfectly acceptable handheld console were it to be a standalone item, but it's not; its got a home console system tethered to it for god only knows what reason. In the home console market Nintendo's competition is still Microsoft and Sony, because last I checked Apple had not yet released a home console. If competing with Apple on serious level was their goal they would have released a stand alone, hand held console that was just as good if not better than the iPad. I know they could do it too, and do it damned cheaply if they wanted to give Apple a run for it's money.
Instead, however, they've decided to go ahead and do their damndest too fill the casual gaming/shovelware market; because they know they couldn't compete with Microsoft and Sony without jacking up the prices on their hardware. What would be the point of that when there are two other companies to compete with in the market. Two companies, might I add, that soundly dominated Nintendo in the pre-Wii generation. Nintendo did what any smart company would do, they took the path of least resistance and won big. Sales wise Nintendo soundly crushed both Sony and Microsoft very early in the current generation of consoles. Once again they sat atop the pile because they adapted.
Did that adaptation mean that the quality of their product went up? I would say no, and that it in fact went down the shitter. Very few of the third party titles on the Wii don't suck or aren't shovelware. It's made hand over fist in money but it's neglected to keep it's gaming infrastructure up to par with the quality of Microsoft and Sony. There was no reason to, it found itself an isolated vacuum of zero competition in a yet tapped market of gaming.
Then Apple came in during the course of the Wii's life span and is looking for a piece of Nintendo's pie. It brings with it the advantage of mobility and multifunctional products in the iPhone and iPad. What's Nintendo got at the moment; the quickly aging DS brand that it's making an attempt to breath new life into with the 3DS and the newly announced WiiU. Neither of those has a prayer of ever competing with Apple for the casual gaming market.
The WiiU is proof that Nintendo now finds itself conflicted. What was once a competitor free market is now quickly becoming populated and it doesn't like that. Now it's trying to bring back the non-casual gamers with WiiU by making a compromise between motion controls, portable gaming, and your traditional controller. It is, without a shadow of doubt, an ungodly mess of a console. It's the dissertation that's been quickly assembled when Nintendo realized they've done fuck all for the last 5 years while the other kids have been keeping pace and now sit comfortably upon well established systems and online communities.
Nintendo woke up and realized it needed to get it shit together, and unfortunately the WiiU is the result of that realization. I have zero doubt that it is going to suck and it is going suck hard because Nintendo let its quality control slip. Where the Wii succeeded because of an untapped market the WiiU is going to fail because it is no longer alone in that market and will have to acquire customers from the market it left because it couldn't compete anymore.
Apple isn't who they should be worried about competing with, they lost that battle while the Wii stagnated in its facade of inovation. Nintendo needs to worry about competing with it's old competitors, a group it was having trouble keeping up with before 5 years ago, and the WiiU is just not going to cut it.
Not that I use Apple products (quite the opposite, actually), but there you go.