Update: Rumor: Ubisoft Cancels Wii U Version of Watch_Dogs

[Strazdas]

More "gullible", really. If you've been gaming for any reasonable span of time, you should know better than to take devs at 100% face value about anything they say.

i was directly responding to the person who called me childish, hence why i used that word.

Actually motion controls would totally fit this sort of gaming, if you hybridize them with the standard Steel Battalion interface. It makes no sense to use them for, say, firing the guns or what have you, but it's a perfectly legit approach for things like the periscope. If you combine button and switch style gaming with accurate motion controls for other mechanisms in the walker, it would end up being pretty darn enjoyable as far as immersion goes.

This is quickly delving into "i prefer this" and not really worth further discussion then. you can prefer whatever you want, does not make it the optimal control mechanism.

Er, like what? None of the things you quoted are limited PURELY by the hardware of the system. Oftentimes the devs limit those things via internal discussions, rather than it being a hardware restriction.

NOTHING is limited purely by hardware.
my point was that hardware limits exist on things other than graphics, for example AI, area loading, size of gameworld, simulation level, ect. It is no secret that AI in games were limited by low RAM amount in old consoles to the point where developers were whining about it. Put one well programmed AI soldier in there and bam your out of ram.

Honestly, does no one remember when we did this same song and dance with the 3DS a year after its release? Or the opening few months of the Wii, for that matter? Or the 360/PS3 (which were beginning to catch the Wii in the final years of their lives). Or any of the other consoles in the last two decades.

i honestly never cared about 3DS or vita so i dont remmeber its sales. Wii launch was full of "not enough supply" so the low sales were puraly limited by nintendo itself and it was clear that once they produced enough it sold like hotcakes, even if everyone predicted doom for it.
PS3 launch was a disaster to the level of Xbox One launch, however sony did a lot to fix that and thats when their sales picked up. Nintendo on the other hand seems to hope their games are going to pull them through when i nreality that is true only for nintendo core. Consoles older than that i really cant comment as i wasnt following the gaming scene back then. and i only know information in hindsight.

Why can't people just learn that the first year or so of hardware is not enough to adequately determine its final status?

It is a second year for WiiU now. Also the new consoles architecture beign standart x86 means it is much much faster to adequately tap it in comparison to monstrous cell architecture. If you knew how to program for PC you know how to program for new consoles.
Sadly judging by such things as BF4 on PC that sem to be full of mistakes a first year colledge student in programming know better not to make (locking your game speed to FPS, changing FOV completely breaking game) they do not know how to program for PC.

As for the rest of your post, i agree that nintendo CAN definitely turn this into a profitable expedition. they do not seem to do that other than attempt to release same franchises again. Theres only so many times you can beat a dead horse into working.

 

[Strazdas]

This is quickly delving into "i prefer this" and not really worth further discussion then. you can prefer whatever you want, does not make it the optimal control mechanism.

This basically reads as: "I respect that our disagreement is purely a matter of preference and opinion, but you're still wrong and it's not optimal because I say so."

You don't maybe see a problem with this thinking? 'cuz I do.

The optimal control method is not a matter of opinion. What is a matter of preference is whether you prefer to use that or another control method.

It's also no secret that hardware is not the only restriction to games. To claim otherwise is just ridiculous.

I never claimed otherwise. I claimed that the hardware will not be able to run things that developers promised it to run.

That's my point, though. People always do this same thing

Not always. out of your examples it was done once and perhaps twice (since i dont know about 3DS). it also was failed to be done at least twice (dreamcast/gamecube) and plenty of times if we go to the old and weird consoles (collecovision anyone?)

Er, no, it's only been out for 14 months. That is not 2 years, that's just over a full year. At best you could claim that it's the START of a second year, but that'd be exaggerating the reality of the situation. It hasn't been two years, or even close to two years yet.

I said it is the second year now. 14 months is more than 12, therefore it is 2 months of the second year. i never said it was 2 full years, merely that WiiU is already in its second year.

See, people keep saying that, but that's exactly how Sony and Microsoft make their money too. Or are we going to pretend that Call of Duty, Battlefield, Gears of War, Halo, Uncharted, Final Fantasy, etc aren't all becoming mainstays of consoles these days? All three of the Big Three do it, and Nintendo's no longer even the biggest offender now that CoD releases yearly installments.

Halo kind of died. I havent heard anything about gears of wars for a long time. Uncharted seems to bring something new every time. BF 4 is now hailed as a disaster that can actually end the franchise at this point. latest FF instalment was, lets jut say Jim called a midday robbery. Ghosts do seem to sell like hotcakes despite pretty much universal bad reviews. And i never said Nintendo is alone in beating dead horses, merely that it eventually stops working and you need to find a new horse. you know, like Dead space or Assasins creed.

If CoD can keep reselling what is essentially the same game over and over millions of copies at a time

COD community is weird. they release a 15 dollar map for COD, and a motnh after you cant find a server that runs any of vanilla maps (essentialy forced to buy the map). they seem to want to be abused.

Oh ye of little faith.

It has sold 1.65 m copies. according to the same website you linked, it is the 63th mario game in terms of sales. In fact the best selling Mario game this decade is only 22th. Source [http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=mario]
And while yes, this game is rather new and will sell more, game sales decrease exponentially with time and it probably sold over half of copies its ever going to.

And to Nintendo's credit, that's mainly because the games they release under their franchise title are anything BUT turds....they are almost always really good, so they've built up a lot of trust.

As far as this i will have to agree with Jim and Bob on that a lot of this is driven by nostalgia and once a new generation of critics grow up that havent grew up with SNES and NES we will likely see a whole different picture.

 

[Strazdas]

The optimal control method is not a matter of opinion. What is a matter of preference is whether you prefer to use that or another control method.

Once again, this is quite literally saying "I understand this is a difference of opinion, but I'm right because I say so".

Only, you're not right. "Optimal controls" vary by user, too, especially for PC gamers (who can, and often do, change their keybindings to something that suits them personally). If you don't know that, then you haven't been gaming for long enough to lecture me otherwise.

you seem to not understand the difference between "opinion" and "preference".

No, it's been done on virtually every console in the last decade or so whenever it fails to sell exactly the same as its competition. It was done with the Wii, with the 3DS, the Vita, etc, just to name a few recent examples. Your failure to pay attention to the market at large doesn't mean it's never been done before now.

The "last decade" is very small selection of consoles you know. basically we got Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, 3DS and Vita (which btw did not turn around to sell well). well that and the new consoles we still dont know how it will end.

Uh, the two most recent games in the chain set record sales figures for the franchise within their respective release windows, and remain the #2 and #3 ranked games in the franchise in total sales. You are 100% wrong on this.

look at the release date of those games. Only one of them in this decade. nothing afterwards.

Pssst. They just released a game last year. It did very poorly because most of the series' fans abandoned ship, though, so this may have been a weaker example than others I could've picked.

Oh, i didnt knew about this one, my bad here.

You mean the game that has a mid-80s rating on Metacritic? CoD Ghosts has a worse rating, and no one (outside of over-exaggerative journalists) actually thinks that this will be the end of that franchise. The controversies surrounding BF4 are meaningful, but will not be significant enough to kill the franchise.

yet failed to sell well, especially on PC where it usually was the strongest and is a technical disaster. COD has worse rating but is selling far better. COD is selling so well it dominated the sale charts for most of december.

A 73 average rating on Metacritic is "universally bad reviews"? Granted, it's not what CoD usually gets, but it's still not BAD, just sort of average. And, as you pointed out, it still sells. Which is, again, proof of my point.

Also according to THIS [http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/call-of-duty-ghosts] its 68 and not 73, with the user score of a whooping 1.9!

And Nintendo's fanbase doesn't?

It does. Thats what keeping nintendo profitable it seems.

Correction, it's sold 1.65 million copies within three months on a console that is supposedly "dead". It's unfair to rate it against games that have been out for a much longer span of time. 1.65 million sales is pretty darn good for a console that's only sold 5 million units, that means 30% of the people who own the console have bought this game. To compare, this would be like Watch_Dogs selling roughly 25 million copies on the PS3. That sort of saturation is pretty darn good.

It sold 1.65 million within 3 months. Games are expected to make over 90% of their lifetime sales within 3 months. Especially considering it was released for holyday season.
The saturation of console proves two things:
1. It wasnt the "console seller" it was supposed to be, it didnt make them sell millions of consoles because people rushed to play it.
2. Only the nintendo core bought the console for the most part. and that is clearly no longer enough to sustain hardware development.
therefore your example is without ground here. and to top that over completely it is assumed that more than every third Xbox One sold also sold Dead Rising. thats even higher saturation, does not make it the best game launch though. at least it could be argued that that game actually was a console seller.

I attribute it more to the fact that Nintendo pretty consistently releases great games, so people trust them to consistently release good products because that's just what they do, at least on the software end of things.

But thats the question though. Do they still do that? or does the trust fueled by nostalgia is overshadowing the actual quality of the games? The only way to find out is to have a generation without said nostalgia to value these games.

If I'm being honest, I can't remember the last time that I played a Nintendo franchise where I genuinely didn't enjoy myself or think it was a good game. And I know I'm not the only one.

Thats complete opposite for me, i cant remmeber the last time i genuinely enjoyed myself playing a nintendo game. I dont play them often though, as i dont own their consoles since i dont see any games id like to play on them. To each his own of course.

Nintendo's problem is clearly on the hardware end of things. They're just not as good at it as their competitors. But in terms of games? They're nailing it on a pretty consistent basis, which is why people still buy their games and their consoles even now. And it's also why Nintendo refuses to go third-party: why sell $60 games (and make money on this) when you can sell $60 games that are exclusive to a $300 console (and make money on BOTH items)?

Thats not really a complete reason. Its true they theoretically make money on the console sales, however they need to sell far more before they recoup the developement costs for them, so so far the hardware is still very much in a red. ( i believe 11 million units was mentioned, but im not sure). The reason i hear more often why they dont go third party is because they develop games specifically to their hardware, and vice versa, and having to develop on other peoples ahrdware would mean that those people could impose restrictions on thier games that nintendo does not want to obey. and thats a fair argument.

 

[Strazdas]

Because....there isn't one? A person's preferences are entirely a matter of their own opinions.

There is a difference. Preference is a matter of opinion but opinion is not necessarely a preference. an example would be the valve controller lately. there were multiple people that came out and said that their opinion is that it is a better controller, but their preference is still the old controller, because they are used to it.

Yes, and?

a population pool of 3 is hardly enough to make accurate predictions.

Halo Reach came out in 2010, and Halo 4 in 2012. Both of those dates are within the four years. Dude, give it up. You're 100% wrong. You clearly lack the background knowledge to have this conversation, or at the very least, you lack the inclination to use Google to make sure you're correct before you go spouting off nonsense, and this is getting really embarrassing.

You got a point with Halo.

....yes, it's doing worse than its predecessor and its immediate competitor. But it's sold 8 million copies, that's....not exactly "franchise ending" sales.

Its doing so bad the shareholders are suing the company for it. [http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/shareholders-sue-ea-problems-battlefield-4/]. there are articles about BF4 almost every day here. Battlefield 3 sold 16,46 million units, double that. It is unclear if they even got their over-bloated budget back. It could very well be the first battlefield game that is a loss and companies are quick to drop these.

Er, you clearly don't know what you're talking about at all. The Wii U experienced solid sales during the months of November and December primarily because of this game. It's quite possible the console's up to 6 million sales now, when a few months ago, they were sitting at under 5. To flat out deny that it's contributing to new sales of the Wii U is just ignorance.

There can be many reason why the WiiU sales surged. holyday season. competitors going standart PC hardware (which a lot of people turned into thinking WiiU is the only actual console thats different), people like Jim Sterling telling people to buy that instead of Xbone or PS4. and the saturation you pointed out points towards those reasons being more likely, otherwise we would see the new surge buying this game while the old 5 millions having lower saturation.

If the Wii U continued to sell consoles at roughly this pace (which, realistically, they won't, but just to illustrate how much of a shift these last two months of sales are from their norm), the console would push itself to 7-8 million units before the mid-year mark, maybe further. Which would be a much healthier level of sales than they were looking at before.

Now just imagine how much better off they'd be if they were to release a few more big titles like this? Like I said before, there is no reasonable person who looks at these numbers and still denies Nintendo any chance at a comeback. But they will need to be smart and speedy in their release of more games in this vein if they want to keep those sales going. So it's on them.

I never said it is impossible for Nintendo to come back, only that currently it is doing poorly and if they continue doing what they are doing they wont dig themselves out of this hole.

Or we could just stop pretending that reviewers are "biased in favor of Nintendo" (which is a silly stance to take, and is akin to Fox News's insistence that all news other than their own is heavily slanted towards the communist left). Nintendo's games continue to get high ratings because they continue to produce high quality games, it's really that simple. Yahtzee's pretty much NEVER liked Nintendo, and even he has admitted to enjoying some of their recent games. I'm not sure how to make this point any more crystal clear than that.

Not so much biased in favor of Nintendo as Biased in favor of old franchises they grew up with, which just so happens to be the only thing Nintendo does first party anymore. Nostalgia is very powerful [http://realdoctorstu.com/2012/07/23/nostalgia-why-we-think-things-were-better-in-the-past/].

Now it would be interesting to see where you found Yahtzee saying he never liked Nintendo, because as far as i know he only started disliking them since Wii.

Opinions, everyone has one.

Of course.

 

[duchaked]

well it's not canceled, but it may have saved Ubisoft money to
esp with Watch_Dogs being delayed as is. still no actual release date last time I checked lol...darn

 

[Strazdas]

Nice explanation but it has nothing to do with the debate over motion controls. Your claim is that they are not optimal, the part you're refusing to admit is that their status as "optimal" or not is actually just your opinion on the subject.

No, it is not. The most optimal control mechanism was shown to be buttons and mouse sensor for precision aiming. There were tests, its not an opinion. You can have a preference for motion controls. thats about how far it goes for motion controls though. This is simply because human body is not as effective in reaction as button controls are. Motion controls arent as optimal because humans arent optimal.

Wanna count up the number of consoles you named and try again?

Sorry, i skipped over those that dont fit the "sucked at first and then suceeded" category.
here, lets try again.
We got PS3 that sold badly until Sony removed backward compactability making the console much cheaper.
We got Wii that sold badly until Nintendo actually managed to produce enough to fill demand which is when it sold very well (crysis solely at Nintendos lack of production).
We got 3DS that sold badly and then sold well.

I count 3, how about you?

There could be, but there's really only one. The release of Super Mario 3D World. And we know this because the sales picked up during the final week of November, and are now starting to dip (at nearly 3 months after its release).

So please, stop denying the facts of the situation.

So lets ignore the other two reasons i gave, that does happen at exact same time, because you like this one better?

If they continue doing what they're doing (releasing high quality franchise games abysmal marketing as a upgrade to Wii)

here, fixed this for you.

 

[Strazdas]

Wow, you're still here, trying to salvage yourself. I had thought you'd finally realized that you'd lost this discussion with your inaccuracies and lack of fact-checking a few posts ago but clearly I was mistaken.

Real life takes priority over internet forums sometimes. As a regular poster you probably noticed that i havent posted between my responses elsewhere either. And also ill post a lot today because im "Catching up" on the news.

No, it is an opinion because people's preferences are different based on that person.

Its an opinion because there are people with different preferences? Thats like saying that a ferrari is faster than a wolkswagen is an opinion because there are people who prefer to drive a wolkswagen.

In any case you may as well give this up, too. It's obvious you can't prove that one control scheme is more optimal than another, and this back-and-forth of "nuh-uh, yah-huh" has been going far too long.

Indeed i am sorry for not being able to provide links to research and as such will drop the matter.

You're forgetting the fact that not every console actually "sucked" at first, but almost all of them received a "these sales aren't good enough" spin/speech from one outlet or another.

That is irrelevant. we are talking about consoles that have bad sales and is considered a failure in public eyes.

Not to mention the articles that say "Xbone isn't beating PS4, therefore it's in trouble". Heck, I saw an article recently alleging that even Sony's massive sales weren't good enough because they aren't singlehandedly saving the company from its dire financial situation (granted, it was written by a site that owns stocks in Microsoft so the bias was obvious, but still).

Sony is having a consolidated financial loss. Not because of PS4 though, their entertainment and media divisions are pretty much the only profitable ones. That is not to say they should drop the rest. Sometimes a small loss is better than cutting part of the produce which would result in even larger loss. but i wont start telling you basic economic theory here. The point being that writers who do not know how economy work may think sony was banking on PS4 to "Save the company" and write such nonesense. It is true that Xbox is in trouble, but not a "failure" trouble but rather the loss of dominance it had in 360 days.

I'm ignoring the reasons you gave because they're wrong. The facts clearly show that console sales picked up on the exact week as the release of Super Mario 3D World. I even linked you directly to the weekly sales charts, for shit's sake. You're simply denying that reality because it doesn't suit your ridiculous narrative.

"your reasons are wrong because mine fit my explanation better". the same link you gave also show how my reasons are perfectly viable as well.
The reality is all 3 reasons are likely culprit in this situation.

Cute, but wrong.

I also love how you didn't respond to any of my other valid points throughout my post or discussion. Nope. Just focused on setting up a few feeble straw-men for me to knock over in a matter of minutes.

Considering that your other points have been made based on that simple fact that i fixed i didnt dissect the post sentence by sentence as they are getting long as it is already. Also do tell me why am i wrong in saying that WiiU has bad marketing? because i believe this was universally agreed upon by now.

Another reason why i may not respond to part of your post is because i ignore personal attacks.

 

[Strazdas]

No, my original statement clearly reads "Or any of the other consoles in the last two decades.", and then directly refers to the fact that media outlets have traditionally thrown a panic party every single time that a console has been released, announcing how the console is "failing" regardless of its numbers.

You then chose to try and turn it into a discussion purely about consoles with bad sales, but that's not what my original statement said. My original statements pointed to a trend in the gaming media to over-sensationalize the "failure" of every console, ever, because it helps them get more clicks.

fair enough, we have derailed that argument then in the last couple relies away from iriginal meaning. sensationalistic journalism will always be sensationalistic, thats the nature of tabloid journalism.

You mean the link which clearly shows a massive spike in sales the exact same week as Super Mario 3D World released?

the same link also shows that that week new consoels also launched (my other proposed reason) and a quick look at the calendar will also tell you that its the same week holyday shopping begins (my third proposed reason). but you chose to ignore that in favour of your argument because only your reason can be right.

No, you dropped several lines of discussion throughout this little debate of ours, and every time you've done it, it was primarily because I'd proven you factually incorrect on at least one major aspect of your argument in that regard.

This is correct. I often drop such lines because i aknowledge that you were right and i was wrong in that case and the posts are long enough as it is without me quiting you and saying "your right".

Please point to where I said those exact words. Of course, you won't be able to, because I never did.

I said that WiiU is failing because of bad marketing and you said "Cute, but wrong.". So no, these are not these exact words but the meaning is the same.

 

[Strazdas]

The new consoles launched on different weeks, and the new consoles doing well would have nothing to do with the Wii U's performance whatsoever. So it makes no sense to attribute the Wii U's sales success to the release of the other consoles.

Also, the holiday sales from this year were abnormally large when compared with the other 11 months of that year. It's completely illogical to presume that people would suddenly start buying the console in droves on the last week of November when they ignored all of the other logical opportunities to purchase the console (like when they dropped its price about mid-way through the year, which would've been a much better time to buy if the problem in question had nothing to do with games).

So, again, I ignored your suggestions because they're clearly wrong. The statistics demonstrate quite clearly that the release of big titles has a direct impact on Wii U sales. You're trying to falsely attribute it to other sources because that fits your argument better, but that's not what the data shows.

the consoles launched in same window WiiU picked up. as i pointed out before, they had inpact on WiiU sales partly because people felt dissapointed by the other option and wanted a console and partly becuase influential people like Jim Sterling said WiiU was the best option at the time of the launch. A lot of people were posting "im going to get a WiiU instead of Xbox/PS when they launch because those suck" at that time. this is a very real cause of at least some sales.
Holyday sales are abnormally large for every other console as well. this is because the consumeristic tradition combined with actual sales and discounts means a lot of presents are going to be bought in that time. people get trampled to death at store openings, theres obviously an obsession with buying things in that month, and WiiU is no exception to people buying stuff. Especially as christmas gifts for kids.
Your saying they ignored the chance to buy it a month forward and claim that this is the reason holiday season does not boost sales when in reality most people dont plan thier purchases and rush on holiday season. Sure, it would be nice of sales would be more equal throughout the year, but thats not how humans work.

The data shows only one thing: there were an increase of sales in december. It does not show what caused this.

So I never said it then? Glad we've verified that you're just pulling arguments out of nowhere.

Well i guess then Wrong does not mean Wrong unless its said in a very specific phrase.

 

[Strazdas]

This is patent nonsense of the highest order. You're so obviously just making this argument up as you go that it's almost painful to watch.
snip.

considering that your whole argument is holding on "i dont like your argument therefore its nonesense" i have no wish to continue throwing my head at a brick wall.