Is Nintendo making the games they want to make a bad idea these days?

[RawSteelUT]

Nintendo's own software has never been the problem. Yes, it's very conservative, but it only has to be different from what EVERYONE ELSE is doing to work.

The problem is that one developer's games, even one as great as Nintendo, can't support a home console on its own. Nobody is jumping off a building over Uncharted 4 being delayed, because there's other stuff coming this year for the PS4, exclusive and not. If Nintendo delays a major release, the Wii U collects dust. THAT's Nintendo's problem, not the games it makes.

 

[Lightspeaker]

In fact every single actual game on that first page is either Mario based or has Mario in it. Because that's basically all they're selling.

Sorry, but your second statement is false. The Wii U have dozens of other games available (in fact there are more non-Mario games than Mario ones). Choosing to ignore that fact because Mario and Zelda games are the most sold on the console is moronic (you can argue that they aren't good, but not ignore them completely).

You are evidently missing the point I'm endeavouring to make here: Of course they're not physically the only damn things on the console. But they're not what they're trying to sell the console on. They're not selling the console on the basis of "hey, look at these cool new things". They're selling it on the basis of "Look! New SSB game!"

The only exception I can even think of immediately is ZombiU which to a certain extent they did do they "hey, cool new thing" thing with. Although even in that case the push on it felt somewhat halfhearted (indeed it was something I'd heard about more through word of mouth than any attempt by Nintendo to draw attention to it).

Quality of the game has nothing to do with it. Its how they present themselves.

 

[Lightknight]

Nintendo's IPs are wildly successful. For example, Mario Kart and New Super Mario Bros. are the top sellers on their console and have an attach rate of around 50% (NSMB is more than 50%, Mario Kart is around 46% but has been around two less years). That means that half of the consoles that are out there should have these games. By contrast, the highest attach rate for the PS4 is Advanced Warfare with 31%.

Their problem is in the management of their platform. While their attach rate is ultra high, the number of consoles sold is ultra low. So their 50% attach rate translates into less than 5 million copies sold whereas a 30% attach rate is over 6 million on the ps4.

So if Nintendo was able to sell more consoles then their games should hypothetically be above the 10 million units mark.

Nintendo's failure with their console is multi-fold:

1. Marketing: (People didn't know for years that the WiiU was a new console. They thought it was an expensive peripheral).
2.Cost: At a starting cost of $350 for the unit that had 32GB (which is now standard), the value just wasn't there. Especially when the most powerful console on the market slammed through at $400. That was a death toll on their pricing.
3. Quality/inferiority: Unfortunately, the console ended up being only marginally more powerful than the 360 and PS3 generation. So much so that technologically it is far closer to the last generation than anywhere near current gen. This IS a problem when its competition is both last gen and next gen consoles.
4. Failure to cater to developers as if they were also customers, because they are: Nintendo expressed disdain for how Sony and Microsoft reach out to 3rd party developers and wine and dine them. Nintendo believed that the 3rd party developers should come groveling to them on their own like they did in the Wii generation. But that only happened because the Wii was selling like hotcakes first.
5. Failure to produce quality games within the first year of release. (this is also in part due to problem #4) If you get the reputation of not having games, that's hard to shake off.
6. Over-reliance on a peripheral they could provide a compelling argument for: The gamepad. Sounds cool but Nintendo has yet to make any games that truly felt worth the $140 gamepad. Imagine a world where the WiiU had launched for $250 or less because they didn't shoehorn in the gamepad as a required peripheral? They could potentially still drop it to slash costs while requiring continued third party support for it but they're pretty set in their ways and the time to do that was two years ago.
7. The Decoy Effect: If you go into a movie theater and see a small popcorn for $2, a medium popcorn for $5, and a large popcorn for $5.50, you are seeing them play off of the decoy effect. The medium popcorn is that expensive to make the large popcorn look better. Both the WiiU and the XBO fell into decoy effect territory by being close enough in cost to the PS4 (or more expensive as the XBO was) while being inferior technology. That makes people think that the PS4 is an even better deal.

If the WiiU had sold like hotcakes, their games would be performing the same way they always have. There is no massive shift in consumer taste between 2007 and now and yet those same games sold several tens of millions each.

 

[Lightspeaker]

5. Failure to produce quality games within the first year of release. (this is also in part due to problem #4) If you get the reputation of not having games, that's hard to shake off.

Just to highlight this is more or less exactly what happened with the PSVita.

I bought a Vita last November after having my 3DS for around ten months; partly because I got a good deal on one, partly because I had it recommended to me by a friend repeatedly and largely because I just wanted to play SAO Hollow Fragment. I've found that its actually a really nice, competent console with a pretty good selection of games. It feels and looks great. But its always struggled because of the initial perception that "Vita has no games".

You'd have thought Nintendo would have learned this lesson from what is their main handheld competitor...

 

[JayRPG]

Couple of corrections already needed after reading the first 5 posts, I should just stop coming into Nintendo threads, I prefer Sony over Nintendo but I come off as a Nintendo fanboy for using facts and thinking rationally.

Anyway...

Nintendo is lagging behind because they recycle the same tired IP's. and because they chased off all of their third party support.

Those "same tired IP's" are some of the best selling games (and some are the best selling) in their respective genres from any console.

They also didn't chase anybody off, in the current world of yearly releases and the WE NEED IT DONE NOW BECAUSE MONEY attitude of developers, third party devs opted to develop for the extremely easy 'PC parts in a VCR' generation rather than spend a little more time learning the Wii U hardware.

I don't necessarily blame devs because it is obviously easier and cheaper to develop on what is essentially PC hardware, but it's hard to put all the blame on Nintendo for essentially doing what has always been done forever, which is make a console that is somewhat unique from your competition, and they did do it a year before not doing it that way became the 'norm'.

Just as the GameCube sold like crap, so does the Wii U now, because they don't have a fucking clue how to sell their latest console.

Gamecube sold about the same as the original xbox*
Selling less than expected =/= selling like crap - in comparison to the PS2 everything sold like crap, but the PS2 is the outlier.

The Wii U is Nintendo's slowest selling home console, but they've had worse selling products in the past and they aren't exactly in a bad position (as your lovely stats already showed).

It was released a year before the Xbox One and it took the Xbox One more than 1 year to catch up to it's sales (and they only saw the sharp rise which made that catch up quicker when they temporarily dropped prices by up to $200 depending on the country).

The Wii U is still over 9 million sales world wide which is Dreamcast lifetime sales territory (including Sega's last ditch effort of dropping the price to $50) and there's still at least another 2 years left in it's life cycle, which has never seen a price drop at all in most markets - if Nintendo were really worried about the Wii U's situation they'd drop it $100 and take the initial hit, but it is obviously already profitable for them at the moment.

What did you want Nintendo to aim for? if you consider the Gamecube a failure, and the original Xbox a failure then ~22 million consoles would also be a failure for the Wii U. So Nintendo 64 numbers then? 30 million consoles?

It's not exactly a monumental failure, and if it continues sales numbers as it is, it will still hit the upper middle of the lifetime console sales ladder. It is definitely selling slower than expected/projected though.

Also, I didn't really want to touch on it, and I didn't even keep it in your quote, but "occasionally gets lucky"? You can do better than that, surely.

On the best selling consoles of all time list Nintendo holds 5 spots, in the top 15 they hold 8 spots, they have only ever recorded 2 financial year operating losses in 100 years, and those losses were minuscule compared to what we had seen from the industry since the 90's - I'd say they are doing pretty well at selling their ideas, considering they just do whatever the hell they want.

 

[Lightknight]

5. Failure to produce quality games within the first year of release. (this is also in part due to problem #4) If you get the reputation of not having games, that's hard to shake off.

Just to highlight this is more or less exactly what happened with the PSVita.

I bought a Vita last November after having my 3DS for around ten months; partly because I got a good deal on one, partly because I had it recommended to me by a friend repeatedly and largely because I just wanted to play SAO Hollow Fragment. I've found that its actually a really nice, competent console with a pretty good selection of games. It feels and looks great. But its always struggled because of the initial perception that "Vita has no games".

You'd have thought Nintendo would have learned this lesson from what is their main handheld competitor...

Both the PSP and Vita have had the same problems. It's depressing, really.

However, I can't fault Nintendo for not looking to failures in the handheld industry as examples of how to run their console business.

But either way, these are extremely fundamental mistakes that hardware manufacturers should absolutely have caught. It sounds like someone in charge is flexing too much control over the process and making uninformed decisions.

 

[Fox12]

Nintendo is lagging behind because they recycle the same tired IP's. and because they chased off all of their third party support.

Those "same tired IP's" are some of the best selling games (and some are the best selling) in their respective genres from any console.

They also didn't chase anybody off, in the current world of yearly releases and the WE NEED IT DONE NOW BECAUSE MONEY attitude of developers, third party devs opted to develop for the extremely easy 'PC parts in a VCR' generation rather than spend a little more time learning the Wii U hardware.

And whose fault is that? It's Nintendo's job to attract third party developers, no one is obligated to develop for them. If their architecture is different, or harder to develop for, then of course no ones going to make games for them. Hence my point, that they isolated themselves from the rest of the market.

As for their IP's, I think you missed my point. Nintendo is lagging behind in hardware sells, despite having a year long head start, and a big reason why is because they rely entirely on a handful of pillar games. You can spin it anyway you want, but Sony smoked Nintendo in short order, and now even Microsoft has surpassed them, despite one of the worst PR stumbles in video game history. A big reason why is because people want diversity, and because they want new IP's to occasionally surface. That's more likely to happen when you have a wide net of third part support to help take some of the burden off of you. Software helps drive hardware sells, and Microsoft and Sony both have that. Sure, we get COD and AC, but we also get persona, dark souls, numerous indie games, and new IP's like The Last of Us and Bloodborne. Nintendo has... What Bintendo has always had. They play it safe.

 

[JayRPG]

Nintendo is lagging behind because they recycle the same tired IP's. and because they chased off all of their third party support.

Those "same tired IP's" are some of the best selling games (and some are the best selling) in their respective genres from any console.

They also didn't chase anybody off, in the current world of yearly releases and the WE NEED IT DONE NOW BECAUSE MONEY attitude of developers, third party devs opted to develop for the extremely easy 'PC parts in a VCR' generation rather than spend a little more time learning the Wii U hardware.

And whose fault is that? It's Nintendo's job to attract third party developers, no one is obligated to develop for them. If their architecture is different, or harder to develop for, then of course no ones going to make games for them. Hence my point, that they isolated themselves from the rest of the market.

As for their IP's, I think you missed my point. Nintendo is lagging behind in hardware sells, despite having a year long head start, and a big reason why is because they rely entirely on a handful of pillar games. You can spin it anyway you want, but Sony smoked Nintendo in short order, and now even Microsoft has surpassed them, despite one of the worst PR stumbles in video game history. A big reason why is because people want diversity, and because they want new IP's to occasionally surface. That's more likely to happen when you have a wide net of third part support to help take some of the burden off of you. Software helps drive hardware sells, and Microsoft and Sony both have that. Sure, we get COD and AC, but we also get persona, dark souls, numerous indie games, and new IP's like The Last of Us and Bloodborne. Nintendo has... What Bintendo has always had. They play it safe.

I'll approach both your paragraphs at the same time because it does all interrelate.

There are more than 100 Indie titles on the Wii U right now, and there are set to be more than 200 by the end of this year, lots of them are exclusives too, and some of the best reviewed games on the Wii U are indie download only titles.

This responds to 2 of your points:

1. If Indie devs can so easily make great games for the Wii U, why can't a AAA studio with all their resources and manpower make great games for the Wii U?

Being harder to develop for hasn't slowed many other consoles down in the past, despite the original xbox being much easier to develop for than the difficult cell processor-powered PS2 there was still more 3rd party support for that, and even the PS3 enjoyed a big 3rd party and indie following despite it's difficult-to-develop-for cell processor.

The incentive for 3rd party developers is being able to develop something that is unique, that can't be done on other consoles, but the only incentive that drives big developers these days is money.

2. Nintendo don't just rely on their same old IPs; people ignore what they actually do and just assume they rely on their same old IPs.

Nintendo pushed for Indie developers to come to the Wii U.. and it worked, but as I can see, the regular Nintendo basher has no idea about any of that. Do people forget that the very popular Shovel Knight was a Wii U timed exclusive?

There are notoriously long breaks between Nintendo's main stay titles, when Mario Kart 8 came out all the Nintendo bashers said was "oh, another mario kart, same same blah"... there was 6 years between mario kart wii and mario kart 8. Meanwhile, reviewers and people with open minds were (and still are) praising mario kart.

Nintendo have also created themselves, or been responsible for the creation, of over 70 new IPs since the year 2000, most people also seem to forget that a whole lot of what are considered Nintendo main-stays now were all created over time.. and some fairly recently in the scope of things.

Nintendo funded Bayonetta 2, they are funding and co-developing Devil's third, we are getting a new fatal frame, splatoon is upcoming, Nintendo is also working on 2 unnannounced new IPs both under codenames, and we are also getting a new IP from intelligent systems/nintendo, shin megami tensei x fire emblem is being funded by Nintendo and co-developed by both IP owning developers as well as Nintendo themselves, they got the Sonic exclusives even though most were terrible, the wonderful 101 was a new IP and a fun game.

Then there are all the other games they make and/or fund that are essentially brand new games but loosely use one of their IPs. Yoshi's woolly world, Kirby and the rainbow curse, hyrule warriors, game and wario, captain toads treasure tracker, and to a lesser extent mario maker, the mario/sonic crossovers etc

They do almost exactly what they are criticised for not doing but as soon as they release a new super smash bros after 6 years, or a new mario kart after 3 years (6 years for home console releases) any recognition is drowned out by people yelling about how they only do the same thing.

People want these titles, and Nintendo make them wait a damn long time for them, but everything else they do in between falls on deaf ears.

When Nintendo do essentially retire an IP/don't talk about it, they are flooded with requests to bring it back, any Nintendo related game news post or video from the last 2 years has a bombardment of comments asking about a new Metroid.

They are by no means perfect, and I won't say they don't do anything wrong, they do plenty wrong. Their whole brand naming at the moment is terrible, as is a lot of their marketing (which stems from their confusing naming structure at the moment), and plenty of others, but the most common complaints are rarely ever accurate - especially ones akin to "releasing the same game" and "no variety";
There have been 22 different Assassin's Creed games since 2007 not counting HD remakes or re-releases (there are 24 AC games if you include remakes/re-releases sold at full retail price), there have been 19 Legend of Zelda games since 1987 not counting HD remakes or re-releases (there are 22 Zelda games if you include remakes/re-releases sold at full retail price).

I also won't pretend the Wii U is perfect, it is far from my favourite console but I definitely don't regret the purchase, right now I have more game content to play on my Wii U than I have free time.

 

[Meinos Kaen]

Well, no, it's not a bad idea. It's not like they aren't making any money from it, and they have a solid audience of buyers, and they're kings in the handheld sector.

But they certainly cannot prosper on videogames alone, since their target audience is not as big as Sony's or Microsoft, for the simple fact that Nintendo Home Consoles are for Nintendo Games, and very difficult to program for for 3rd Parties.

Which is probably why they're investing heavily in things like Amiibos and now going into Mobile gaming. They don't want to ridimensionate the company and are trying to keep their size any other way they can.

After all, that PokemonLand won't build itself.

 

[CaitSeith]

In fact every single actual game on that first page is either Mario based or has Mario in it. Because that's basically all they're selling.

Sorry, but your second statement is false. The Wii U have dozens of other games available (in fact there are more non-Mario games than Mario ones). Choosing to ignore that fact because Mario and Zelda games are the most sold on the console is moronic (you can argue that they aren't good, but not ignore them completely).

You are evidently missing the point I'm endeavouring to make here: Of course they're not physically the only damn things on the console. But they're not what they're trying to sell the console on. They're not selling the console on the basis of "hey, look at these cool new things". They're selling it on the basis of "Look! New SSB game!"

The only exception I can even think of immediately is ZombiU which to a certain extent they did do they "hey, cool new thing" thing with. Although even in that case the push on it felt somewhat halfhearted (indeed it was something I'd heard about more through word of mouth than any attempt by Nintendo to draw attention to it).

Quality of the game has nothing to do with it. Its how they present themselves.

It sounds like you're basing your criteria more on word of mouth than in actual Nintendo advertisement. But really I can't blame you. Their marketing strategy with the Wii U has been so bad that those who don't follow Nintendo only get to know when a new Zelda or Mario game (or Bayonetta at most) is announced. I knew about ZombiU when Nintendo announced the launch titles lineup (pretty much the only reason I bought the Wii U was because there was a ZombiU bundle).

PS: "They're selling it on the basis of 'Look! New SSB game!'" OMG, are they trying to sell it with their most hyped games? Who in his sane mind would do that!?

 

[Lightspeaker]

In fact every single actual game on that first page is either Mario based or has Mario in it. Because that's basically all they're selling.

Sorry, but your second statement is false. The Wii U have dozens of other games available (in fact there are more non-Mario games than Mario ones). Choosing to ignore that fact because Mario and Zelda games are the most sold on the console is moronic (you can argue that they aren't good, but not ignore them completely).

You are evidently missing the point I'm endeavouring to make here: Of course they're not physically the only damn things on the console. But they're not what they're trying to sell the console on. They're not selling the console on the basis of "hey, look at these cool new things". They're selling it on the basis of "Look! New SSB game!"

The only exception I can even think of immediately is ZombiU which to a certain extent they did do they "hey, cool new thing" thing with. Although even in that case the push on it felt somewhat halfhearted (indeed it was something I'd heard about more through word of mouth than any attempt by Nintendo to draw attention to it).

Quality of the game has nothing to do with it. Its how they present themselves.

It sounds like you're basing your criteria more on word of mouth than in actual Nintendo advertisement. But really I can't blame you. Their marketing strategy with the Wii U has been so bad that those who don't follow Nintendo only get to know when a new Zelda or Mario game (or Bayonetta at most) is announced. I knew about ZombiU when Nintendo announced the launch titles lineup (pretty much the only reason I bought the Wii U was because there was a ZombiU bundle).

PS: "They're selling it on the basis of 'Look! New SSB game!'" OMG, are they trying to sell it with their most hyped games? Who in his sane mind would do that!?

So your argument in the first paragraph appears to be "oh well you just don't know about what Nintendo is doing *hipster glasses*". I mean...really? Yes, that's the entire point. Because guess what? I'm the kind of person they need to convince to buy the bloody thing. I want a reason to buy a new console, I have the money but not the drive because there doesn't appear to be anything I want on any system right now. The whole point of advertising and hyping games is to make your products attractive. If you screw it up then you're going to get poor sales. This is sort of marketing 101 stuff here. It shouldn't be up to your prospective customer to dig around and try to find a reason to buy your product.


On your PS...you've gotten half way to the point and then missed it I'm afraid. They're trying to sell it on the basis of, as I pointed out, franchises that they've pushed out time after time already. If you like them then great. But for attracting new customers who aren't already convinced to buy the console that only does so much. The PS4 was recently pushing The Order 1886 and Bloodborne is upcoming. The XBOne pushed Titanfall extremely hard last year and its pretty hard to forget the hype around Sunset Overdrive. New, high-profile IPs; and all four drastically different to each other in both style and game type. Did they all live up to their hype in the end? On average, no. But that's irrelevant. The point is that the companies are showing that new properties are very much a staple of their consoles. Nintendo hasn't done that in the slightest, the impression they give is that new IPs are something of an embarrassment to them.