Dragonbums said:
I come back from two days of NY to see 4 or so article in under a week bashing the Wii U.(including gaming discussion.)
Discussing the current failing of a system is not bashing it. I think you're taking discussions about the WiiU's limitations, marketing failures, and faulty pricing strategies to be bashing. It isn't bashing when there really is a problem and if even Nintendo has acknowledged these things then you've got no business calling it bashing if we discuss them too. Not unless you know things Nintendo doesn't want to tell us. The media isn't creating news here, this is public discussion of what Nintendo made. It's rough when a brand you love teeters this way but that doesn't make this particular iteration praiseworthy. Rest assured that Nintendo is sitting on a scrooge mcDuck mountain of cash from the Wii generation and will have at least one more shot at the home console market before they're really in trouble. Just hope they take in all the criticisms and turn that into a reliable response to this shifting market in the coming years.
For example, the fact alone that it can't play DVDs makes it second choice at best for my next gen console. I've also not been happy with the Wii's Netflix or HuluPlus app but haven't seen the WiiU's to know if it's any better. I already use my ps3 as my primary media device in my home and a 360 as my backup one (I only prefer the ps3 to the 360 here because the ps3's dash is cleaner and ad-free. The boot time is also better but perhaps that's because the 360 thinks I want to use the kinect every single time).
And another article where Iwata had to waste his time replying to the stupid notion that because of ONE bad console launch Nintendo would have to put their IP's on their competitors consoles (and considering how they haven't come out yet OR know how well they will sell makes this idea really hardware destroying at worst stupid at best.)
This isn't one bad console. The Wii wasn't a great console, it was a FANTASTIC (in my opinion revolutionary) use of peripherals that opened up an entire other type of gameplay that wasn't viable before. The console itself was weak sauce but Nintendo managed to expand its market. But if you haven't noticed, 3rd party development began dropping off as of the gamecube. I mean, if the Wii, a system that has probably sold 100 million units by now, can't get significant third party development then there's something wrong with the system.
So the question is really up in the air. Is there a future for a company like Nintendo that can't compete with next gen technology but is trying to? I'd say no. I'd say there is a future for Nintendo if they compete along the lines of what they succeeded on the Wii with. Affordable family friendly and party fun with the usual first party titles for the serious gamers. Is the WiiU a bad console? Yes. It's between markets and that's the worst thing they can do. Expensive and unnecessary for casual gamers while being reasonable but too weak for most hardcore gamers that love their 3rd party content. Will I be buying a WiiU? Probably. But not for years and that's going to be a problem for Nintendo if other gamers are going with a full-fledge media/gaming system for $50 more like I am.
Meanwhile Sony has devalued what little they have in the way of company recognizable franchises like Little Big Planet by having them in an iPhone app Coco Cola game. Something that actually manages to defeat the ridiculousness of Halo and their fucking Doritos promotion, and they don't get nearly enough ridicule as the Wii U articles.
HAHAHA, Who the hell would Nintendo be to tell any other company that they're encorporating an IP into too much other stuff? Mario is insanely popular, I'd say he's more recogniseable than Mickey Mouse and perhaps any other animated icon. You'd be shocked how many things you can actually find the main Nintendo cast in. Additionally, have you ever seen the character based TV shows? SMB, Zelda, etc?
To Sony's general defense, as if they needed any, Microsoft literally encorporated marketing into the mainstream games themselves. You got points in-game for buying doritos or mountain dew products. We don't care about IPs being used elsewhere, we care when the marketing crosses into our games themselves in such a ridiculous way.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/halo-4-double-xp-unlocked-with-dew-doritos-purchases-6397472
Look, in Halo 4 you could get double xp by buying those products. That's dumb as hell and isn't the same as the Master Chief appearing in other media like Super Smash Bros. or movies or something like that. What's more, the doritos and Mountain Dew stuff didn't make people like Halo 4 any less. It was still a great game. So how does the existence of a character in a iPhone app somehow equate to the mainstream game itself being a sell-out? Heck, a tiny Coke world done right could even be charming.
funkyjiveturkey said:
Nintendo's last major progression in game technology was the N64. it had amazing graphics, a great lineup of games and developers (especially with Rare on their side), and they were able to do as much gimmicky bullshit with it as they could before it got discontinued, and even then the gimmicks were neccesary for some really great games.
I did find it astounding that this console only sold 34 million units compared to the ps1's 102 million. It seems like everyone I talked to has fond memories of the N64 and yet that appears to be statistically unlikely.
the gamecube was good, great even, but the only real progression there was the controller and graphics, the actual hardware was crushed under the mighty weight of the PS2. The moves nintendo made with the wii essentially shunned a good portion of the fanbase due to lack of third party support, and everything not being mario or metroid was generally crispy-fried puke.
The gamecube was not good. It was especially not great. A great system that is highly affordable does not sell less than a more expensive new entrant in the market (Xbox) and 7 times less than a competitor that was only 4 years old. It was the first major generation where Nintendo began losing 3rd party development in a significant way.
You did forget that this console gen they moved away from catridge to the optical disk. Sure, it was to a crappy minidisk but at least in 2001 they finally stop using cartridges. This is hilarious because Sony had actually developed a disk based console for Nintendo a decade prior (1991) but Nintendo snubbed Sony after they had already put so much work into it and ultimately led to the creation of the playstation. Nintendo even secretly went with Phillips to develop a disk-based console and didn't tell Sony until announcing it on stage. Thus making the original playstation more revenge/justice for Sony than anything else and so it became the first console to ship over 100 million units. It's one of my favorite stories and makes Sony one of the very first companies to develop cd-based console hardware (though they released only 200 or so of their first model in 1991 before really releasing the psone). The gamecube also encorporated online gaming albeit extremely limited and barely supported. They also, of all things, had a stereoscopic 3D feature that wasn't used because this was 2001 and 3D televisions were a rarity. This all isn't to say that the console was good, just that there were several legitimate advances.
the Wii-U is trying to recapture a fanbase lost to the HD consoles by re-releasing all the same games for the HD consoles on their new platform. now that many developers have even already stated they want nothing to do with wii-u, i really dont think it's going to be the saving grace of nintendo. their strength lives in their franchises, not their hardware or gimmicks.
They really did a disservice by trying to create a next gen system at near next gen prices but failing to reach next gen technology at the given price. They would have been much better suited to create a console called Wii2 that had substantially better controller tracking and was just a nice tech step above the Wii but not so much as to push the price over $250. Including a DVD player would have been very nice for them as well.
