Pachter: Nintendo Should "Consider Getting Out of the Wii U Business"

[st0pnsw0p]

Ditching the Wii U is probably the best decision Nintendo could make since they screwed it up so hard already (calling it the Wii U was a big no-no).

Actually it's easily the worst decision they could make.

The console hasn't sold up to the levels of its competitors, no, but it's pushed under 5 million units in a little over a year. That's roughly par for a previous gen console, as the PS3 was doing roughly as "bad" in roughly the same time frame (so for those of you who insisted that the Wii U was a "last-gen" console, well, it's at least selling like one). That is to say, yes, it's less than PS4 and Xbone, but it's nothing to panic about.

Not to mention this same thing happened to them on the 3DS, and there were people like you insisting they should dump the 3DS only a year after it had "flopped". Yet, after they started pushing out big games, the damn thing sold like hotcakes, and now completely dominates the handheld market.

The Wii U can still easily turn a profit for Nintendo if they get their shit in one sock. Abandoning it would be the most absolutely bone-headed thing they could possibly do to themselves.

What they should do instead is expand their virtual library and push out more of their major titles. The fact that the console still doesn't have the new Smash Bros, or a Zelda, or Metroid, or Star Fox title is a serious drag on its sales figures. And it's missing some of the other titles that were supposed to help it push units. It's all about games, and while Wii U boasts an arguably better library than its competitors (as the PS4/Xbone launch lineups are a bloody joke), it's still not a very impressive one. But with a better library of games, they could still turn things around.

No, actually, that's nowhere near PS3 levels. After its second holiday season, PS3 had sold over 10 million units, which is almost twice the number of Wii U's that Nintendo is hoping to sell by the end of this fiscal year.

And the 3DS's situation isn't really comparable to the Wii U's, the 3DS has practically no competition whereas the Wii U is up against the PS4 and XBOne.

That said, I have to agree that killing the Wii U so early would be an absolutely terrible choice.

 

[Something Amyss]

This title should just be renamed to "Pachter makes a "prediction" that has striking similarities to the comments seen on your average news article.

It could also be called "Pachter makes a "prediction" that has striking similarities to the comments he has made for several years now, even when Nintendo had a significantly more popular product."

It's a little lengthier but still quite accurate.

 

[Something Amyss]

Though unfortunately Nintendo is having to deal with a very impatient generation who has this foaming-from-the-mouth mentality of "we need it nownownownownow!!!!!!!!!!!" despite the fact that it's illogical and unreasonable to ask them to pump out that many titles all by themselves. But even that probably wouldn't be enough. Asking a single company to make a dozen console releases a year (and let's face it, that IS what people are demanding of them) is absurd and childish. Nintendo will do what they can, but they're merely one company and they're having to deal with a generation of assholes.

It's pretty recent not to have a solid Nintendo game or two at lineup, so it's not really all that unreasonable. People aren't really expecting there to be like 15 Nintendo titles at launch, but waiting a year and still seeing only a couple of major titles is absurd. Asking for blind faith is a new and ridiculous practice in gaming, and it reads like cultish behaviour.

Consumers wanting the games they like on a console before they buy it is not unreasonable. Nintendo should be used to this, they have been the biggest developers on their consoles since the N64.

Not to mention they surely must know their games are the primary draw for a console.

It's brilliant! Burn the consumers who bought a Wii U by ditching it, then put all your games on other consoles, leading to people getting the idea that your next console will only be a waste of money.

Well, dropping consoles quickly worked well for Sega.

 

[JCAll]

Let's put this another way. What if SEGA made a new console? Let's say they even do it right.
Six button controller, full Dreamcast compatibility, all the Saturn/Genesis games on Virtual Console, GOOD Sonic games.
...
Why would you ever buy it? Why? They've already pulled out of the race once before, abandoning all the people that supported them. There would be no games on it. 3rd party developers won't support a console that might self-destruct at any moment because of who-the-hell-knows. Not as expensive and speculative as the market is these days.

No, if Nintendo leaves the console market, it's done. At least as a hardware provider. As long as they own the handheld market, and as long as they can survive the rise of tablets they'll have no real challengers, they need use that to float their less profitable home market. Nintendo isn't crippled here. Not even floundering really.

Also, I would totally buy a new Sega console. But I'm a fanboy, my point still stands.

 

[Xman490]

In the case of the 3DS's failure to meet expectations, things are "more complicated." According to Pachter, the rise of mobile and tablet games has damaged Nintendo's dominance of portable gaming in a way "they will have trouble getting back." In turn, he thinks the company should embrace the new mobile market by "Placing GBA games on those platforms for paid download ($4.99 - 9.99) and developing a broader audience." Newly hooked Nintendo fans could, in turn, be convinced to "buy a 3DS and more expensive games."

The 3DS has not been a serious failure in sales. It has sold ten-millions and continues to gather popularity.

If you ask me, I don't care much for it. The various RPGs and rehashed games don't interest me much. Even Pokemon X/Y don't interest me enough to buy a new system. The Double-Screen and 3D gimmicks aren't too inviting, either.
I would pay $5 for GBA Pokemon on iOS.

 

[lacktheknack]

Well, that's that.

The Wii U is going to be an insane slow-burner success and multiplatform Nintendo titles will never happen.

 

[immortalfrieza]

There's only so long a company like Nintendo can use their brand name to get blind fans to buy their terrible product while everybody else is providing a vastly superior product before everything collapses.

However, the only real reason the Wii managed to outsell the others is that they were much cheaper than their competitors for a good while. Now that the gap in price between the Xbox One, PS4, and Wii U isn't anywhere near as extreme and the Wii U fails to provide a competitive product to balance that out, Nintendo has lost their edge.

 

[mattttherman3]

Nintendo's current ownership would rather see the company fail then to see their beloved Ip's elsewhere. I think I remember them saying that before. Too proud of a company.

Know what would make me get a wii u? A comfortable controller.

 

[xaszatm]

Nintendo's current ownership would rather see the company fail then to see their beloved Ip's elsewhere. I think I remember them saying that before. Too proud of a company.

Know what would make me get a wii u? A comfortable controller.

You know what? The controller IS comfortable. Quite literally the most comfortable controller I've ever held. Yes, you're not going to reach all the buttons in one go, but you're not supposed to. You also know what will simply KILL Nintendo as a console business? Being third party. What Nintendo needs to do is repeat what Sony did with the PS3. Completely reinvent the Wii U, push a heavy and massive advertisement campaign, and start really playing to its strengths. Hell, the already did this with the 3DS, so now they need to focus on the Wii U. To borrow a phrase, "the game is never over."

 

[st0pnsw0p]

Er, yes, that's technically correct that it had, but that isn't what I said. I said that they had roughly 5 million units sold at year one. Which is correct.

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/PlayStation_3

The PS3 had between 5 and 6 million units sold by around the year one mark. Their sales jumped during the second holiday season mainly due to a price drop.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/fun.games/07/09/sony.price.reut/

So what I said was completely accurate. Methinks people too quickly forget that the PS3's initial sales were being panned in a similar fashion to the Wii U's sales right now, except in their case it was partially price range as well as library. Whereas Wii U is suffering almost exclusively because of a weak library.

That's not right either. The 3DS had competition in the PSP and the (then new) PS Vita, and if you'd asked anyone at E3 back in the day which one was going to win the handheld war, they'd have told you Vita, because despite its price range, it boasted the better....well, everything. The 3DS wasn't exactly putting on a good show, and the Vita boasted near-console-level graphics and other features which made it look appealing.

Yet the Vita bombed out, and the 3DS recovered from a rough start to become the undisputed king of the mountain. And as I recall, one of the big reasons the Vita bombed was....you guessed it....the library. The thing had basically no exclusives.

If we're talking about the 1 year mark, Wii U was only at about 4 million after one year, whereas the PS3 was closer to 6 million. After December, PS3 was at 10 million and Wii U at 5 million, so the gap is even wider.

The PSP and Vita are nowhere near comparable to the PS4 and XBOne (and PS3 and 360, since you brought the PSP into the conversation). There has never been a single handheld that actually threatened Nintendo's domination in the market, whereas their consoles have been in decline ever since the SNES sold less than the NES and they haven't won any generation since the PS1 came out, with the only exception being the Wii, but the people that made the Wii a success have left console gaming in favor of tablets and smartphones, not to mention that the Wii U doesn't even try to appeal to that market, going instead after the type of consumer who bought a Gamecube, so its success is largely irrelevant when discussing the Wii U.

 

[Sould1n]

Nintendo's current ownership would rather see the company fail then to see their beloved Ip's elsewhere. I think I remember them saying that before. Too proud of a company.

Know what would make me get a wii u? A comfortable controller.

As Zeszatm also commented, the Wii U does have a comfortable controller. Both the Wii U GamePad and the Wii U Pro Controller are wonderful to use, particularly the Wii U GamePad. It fits into the hand comfortably, is surprisingly light so at to not strain your hands but heavy enough to feel it's presence, has smooth triggers and the touch screen works great both as a bonus feature to games like Wonderful 101 and Wind Waker HD as well as for it's Off-TV play functionality. It may just be my own preference but the Wii U GamePad is easily my favourite controller of all time.

 

[Something Amyss]

Even Pokemon X/Y don't interest me enough to buy a new system. The Double-Screen and 3D gimmicks aren't too inviting, either.

Pokémon X/Y is pretty much the same game with a new coat of paint, so it's really more of the same anyway. Different flavour of dual screen as last gen, no real benefit from 3D.

Well, that's that.

The Wii U is going to be an insane slow-burner success and multiplatform Nintendo titles will never happen.

Now now, there's only a 95% chance of that. No need to call it just yet. Pachter is sometimes right, after all.

Occasionally.

Sometimes.

Why, half the time if you're really kind.

Nintendo's current ownership would rather see the company fail then to see their beloved Ip's elsewhere. I think I remember them saying that before. Too proud of a company.

When you're sitting on 85 gazillion dollars in assets, you can afford to be proud. The question is whether they will remain proud should they actually hit financial hard times. This isn't quite a mayday scenario yet.

 

[lostlambda]

I think Nintendo should sell some of the old I.P.'s it holds like Golden Sun or Earthbound (Mother) to other developers for multi-platform release. Would any one be angry if Atlus got the rights to make a new Earthbound game for the PS4, Xbox one or if Level 5 made a new Golden Sun game.

 

[xaszatm]

I think Nintendo should sell some of the old I.P.'s it holds like Golden Sun or Earthbound (Mother) to other developers for multi-platform release. Would any one be angry if Atlus got the rights to make a new Earthbound game for the PS4, Xbox one or if Level 5 made a new Golden Sun game.

To be honest, yes, I would be angry if Atlus got a hold of the Earthbound series. That franchise doesn't belong to Nintendo but to Shigesato Itoi. It was Itoi himself who said he didn't want to make another Mother game and I say we should let him have his wish. Furthermore, Nintendo does allow third parties to touch their franchises, those franchises just won't be touching any non-Nintendo consoles.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

To be honest, yes, I would be angry if Atlus got a hold of the Earthbound series. That franchise doesn't belong to Nintendo but to Shigesato Itoi. It was Itoi himself who said he didn't want to make another Mother game and I say we should let him have his wish. Furthermore, Nintendo does allow third parties to touch their franchises, those franchises just won't be touching any non-Nintendo consoles.

Like how CAPCOM developed the Zelda: Oracle games, Namco doing Donkey Konga and now Smash Bros., Sega with F-Zero, Team Ninja with Metroid, and Tecmo-Koei with Pokemon Conquest and now Hyrule Warriors. We won't be seeing Nintendo franchises on other system. It's about time people learn to cope with that because that how it is in the real world

 

[Sean951]

I work retail, and I'm still selling Wii-Us after the holidays. No one wants an X-Box and people want PS4s, but I haven't had any in stock since Christmas. Meanwhile, I keep selling 5-6 Wii-Us a week, sometimes more, occasionally less.

 

[xaszatm]

To be honest, yes, I would be angry if Atlus got a hold of the Earthbound series. That franchise doesn't belong to Nintendo but to Shigesato Itoi. It was Itoi himself who said he didn't want to make another Mother game and I say we should let him have his wish. Furthermore, Nintendo does allow third parties to touch their franchises, those franchises just won't be touching any non-Nintendo consoles.

Like how CAPCOM developed the Zelda: Oracle games, Namco doing Donkey Konga and now Smash Bros., Sega with F-Zero, Team Ninja with Metroid, and Tecmo-Koei with Pokemon Conquest and now Hyrule Warriors. We won't be seeing Nintendo franchises on other system. It's about time people learn to cope with that because that how it is in the real world

Still, he does raise a good point. Nintendo could be letting more people get a hold on some of the lesser Nintendo franchises for a Wii U exclusive. It would serve both as a way for more quality games to be released on the Wii U and stop all the complainers saying that Nintendo doesn't put too much focus on its minor franchises.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Still, he does raise a good point. Nintendo could be letting more people get a hold on some of the lesser Nintendo franchises for a Wii U exclusive. It would serve both as a way for more quality games to be released on the Wii U and stop all the complainers saying that Nintendo doesn't put too much focus on its minor franchises.

True, but Nintendo doesn't let just ANYONE touch their franchises. They're sticklers for quality and that's before there's no guarantee it would boost sales. Seriously, I'm not getting my hopes up for people suddenly getting over their Nintendo cooties just because F-Zero or Star Fox came out on the system.

 

[xaszatm]

Still, he does raise a good point. Nintendo could be letting more people get a hold on some of the lesser Nintendo franchises for a Wii U exclusive. It would serve both as a way for more quality games to be released on the Wii U and stop all the complainers saying that Nintendo doesn't put too much focus on its minor franchises.

True, but Nintendo doesn't let just ANYONE touch their franchises. They're sticklers for quality and that's before there's no guarantee it would boost sales. Seriously, I'm not getting my hopes up for people suddenly getting over their Nintendo cooties just because F-Zero or Star Fox came out on the system.

Well, it's not really for the sake of "hardcore" gamers (though it will convince a few) but rather that Nintendo's franchises are so varied that just adding a few of them to the roster will entice more people to pick up the console...well, that and advertising the darn thing.

 

[JCAll]

True, but Nintendo doesn't let just ANYONE touch their franchises. They're sticklers for quality and that's before there's no guarantee it would boost sales. Seriously, I'm not getting my hopes up for people suddenly getting over their Nintendo cooties just because F-Zero or Star Fox came out on the system.

After Other M got absolutely savaged by the critics, I'm not sure Nintendo is in any hurry to start loaning out the bit IPs.

We all have Nintendo games we'd like to see more of. I could use a new F-Zero now that WipEout is basically dead, and I'm been bitching for a new Lolo for over a decade. I...don't think Nintendo is in any hurry to cater to my absurd niche. Ah well.