Topic: Nintendo's current state

What ideas are new here? Or haven't been discussed before?

In the golden era of the GameCube we could look forward to dozens of new releases every month.

Lol! That's a good one.

But, seriously, what's the purpose of this topic? I believe I'm missing something.

So why do developers make games for 360 and PS3 while skipping Wii U?

Because the 360/PS3 have a combined userbase of 100m+ users, and the Wii U has 9m. It makes it worth it. And they've had a decade of experience working with the 360/PS3.

I think it's less about power output and more about the unique architecture. You can scale performance, but it's hard to port games to the Wii U because the guts are just so much different from PS4/XB1/PC. It almost needs to be coded from scratch. And then when people don't buy them anyway, it just doesn't justify the cost for publishers.

But Nintendo could make a powerful beast of a console next gen, just like the western market wants, make it look like a black, futuristic VCR, just like the western market wants, make it X86, just like western developers want, and people still wouldn't buy it. It says Nintendo on the box, and there's a serious brand image issue right now that isn't going to be repaired in one generation.

Back in the early 2000s, Nintendo shut down or sold several studios in America and reduced NoA to basically just a localization and marketing firm. This pretty much handed the American market to Microsoft on a silver platter. It's hard to believe they'll ever get it back, at least in the "hardcore" console space.

I think Nintendo's best bet is to continue not competing with Sony and Microsoft directly. Apple is a more direct competitor.

I think you’re misunderstanding me.

I didn’t mean GameCube to be golden era of Nintendo because it was in fact the least selling console they made.

What I meant was that during i.e. November 2003 there was 27 titles released on GameCube.
Some of them were 1080 Avalance, Mario Kart, Medal of Honor, Metal Arms, Metal Gear Solid etc.
This November I think there was three games released on the Wii U.

Purpose is a civilized discussion.

That is exactly what Nintendo are doing right now and it works on some levels.

It's interesting that you say Apple is more of a direct competitor. If Nintendo are doomed on the home console marked all they have left is the 3DS. But I don't think even 3DS has a chance against Apple iPad for instance. The iPad has a lot of free or very cheap games, and also work in other ways where it's superior to the 3DS.

It's a really tough marked out there and Nintendo still has it's way to go if they want to survive and not end up like Sega.

One way is to be more appealing for 3rd parties to make games for them.

This is why nobody interested in the long game puts any faith in mobile.

96% of mobile downloads in 2013 were less than a dollar each. Mobile gamers do not pay for games. Minecraft is a freak occurrence and an exception, not a rule. It's a highly risky, volatile market with flooding of biblical proportions of competition. Meanwhile, Nintendo can still sell 10 million copies of Pokemon on a cheap, weak piece of hardware without even trying for $40 a piece. Nintendo isn't going to end up like Sega because Nintendo makes money. Sega didn't for nearly a decade.

And I'm sure that Level-5 and Capcom find the 3DS very appealing when both of them can make $100 million in revenue off a single game release. For many Japanese publishers, the 3DS has been the only platform that has had good returns on almost every piece of software released.

I think it's too early to say that handhelds are on the decline. Maybe they've stabilized. The 3DS and Vita combined have around 60-65 million sales. If the next generation of handheld sells less than that, I think it's time to panic. Mobile swallowed some of the market, yes. That's why the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance sold about 80-85 million each. But we don't know yet that mobile is gradually replacing dedicated handhelds. We just know that people who don't pay more than a dollar for games stopped buying handhelds.

And a new user would know that how? Honestly your first post wasn't very productive to the thread and came across as hostile/dismissive.

"dozens of new releases every month"

Either you made this up or you have a different definition of "dozens". I don't ever recall this many games in one month for the Gamecube

We can only speculate on what plans Nintendo has for the future. I believe they can manage just fine with being the sole producer for their own consoles, but if so they will never be as successful as Playstation.

As it looks at the moment, developers have completely neglected the existence of Wii U. If Nintendo keeping going this direction their might be heading for trouble.

Let's take Bandai Namco for instance. On GameCube they released Baten Kaitos, Soulcalibur II, Star Fox Assault and Tales of Symphonia to name a few. On the Wii U the only noticeable game is maybe Tekken, which was originally for PS3 and 360.

If nobody wants to work with the Wii U, Nintendo have done something wrong.

Anyone who refers to the Gamecube as "the golden age" immediately loses all of their clout in my eyes, at least. The Golden Age of Gaming was and always will be the SNES/Genesis era.

So many classics. So much creativity. So much challenge. So much ruthless competition minus the internet.

It was beautiful.

You might not have seen my later post.

Change this to Playstation to make your point. Sony as a company is actually struggling with their other departments (or was, at least last year)

Another point about mobile is that while some companies make money from the market, they are only a small fraction of the millions of games on mobile. If I can get success stories from a majority of mobile developers, I may believe that mobile is a good market.

Nintendo's goal isn't to be as successful as Sony. Nintendo's goal is to grow and make money. They do that.

Their biggest problem is investors. Nintendo can do exactly what they're doing now for the next 100 years and make money doing it, and that would be perfectly fine if they were a private company. But they're publicly traded and investors don't just want to make money, they want to make more money. Nintendo needs to constantly grow to please investors. But that's not really our problem as gamers. That's Nintendo's problem, and mostly independent from their actual game output.

Speaking of Namco, they just developed two Smash games and a Pokemon game. They also have an exclusive lined up for the Wii U that was teased in the January Direct.

But yeah, I agree that Nintendo mucked up pretty bad with the Wii U to scare off so many publishers. They'll have to fix that, but it's not happening this gen and will require quite the radical turnaround to happen next gen. I think Nintendo is doubling down on the hardware business though. Iwata even spoke about increasing their number of form factors in last year's investor's briefing. Something along the lines of unifying their OS to make it easier to develop for handheld and console simultaneously, plus make it easier to introduce more form factors and have software ready to go for them.

Would explain a few recent patents, acquisitions, and partnerships.

Unifying their OS would go a long way.
And if they could merge Virtual Console for 3DS, Wii and Wii U, it would be huge.

I think Nintendo is sitting on the fence about rather they continue their current path, or head back to the mainstream line of hardware so more publishers are releasing software to their system.

There are a lot of games to enjoy on Wii U and I certainly will not have the time to play them all. I'm not sure how long Nintendo can sail with no wind blowing from other publishers.

I'm not even sure I want Nintendo to change their image. Wiimote and GamePad can be fun, but I still enjoy classic controller when I play PS3. When it comes down to it if Nintendo didn't have such unique features nobody would buy the console, unless for Mario, Super Smash and Zelda. I would love to see developers USE Wii U for what is worth, I take fun gameplay over graphics anyday.

It would seem like Nintendo made a console just for Nintendo games.

Definitely agree here. I would love to see other publishers actually make games that belong and are worth playing on Wii U. I feel like Ubisoft made a good effort with ZombiU and it's a shame that game didn't sell as much as Ubi wanted (I think its sales were actually pretty good, but Ubi wanted a multi-million seller). Rayman Legends did better on Wii U than anywhere else I think, or maybe PS3 sold a little higher. Wonderful 101 was... well, it didn't do well, but Platinum games don't do well anywhere. There's potential in the system for games that are distinctively and definitively "Wii U" games.

Personally, almost any version of a game that puts inventory and maps on the Gamepad screen just feels better to play. Wind Waker HD was so much better to me, not just because of the upgraded visuals and tweaks, but because I could look at my map while sailing. No more pausing the game every 5 seconds to make sure you're still on course.

Yes, that's pretty much sums up the Nintendo approach, since forever. They don't prevent/control the big 3rd party studios in the way they did on the NES, but they aren't that concerned regarding 3rd parties either. I think they are more concerned about any Wii U user who would only buy Skylanders and Disney Infinity, while skipping Nintendo's first party titles.

Wind Waker HD exceeded my expectation by far, they did so much right I don't know where to begin. Why developers haven't followed in these footsteps are a mystery to me.

There is so much potential with games of any genre. In first person shooters having a map and weapons on the gamepad while everything else is on the TV screen would be amazing. The original Counter-Strike was popular for years and it wasn't graphics that mattered, but the gameplay.

In RPG of any sort the GamePad would come in handy. When I play Tales of Xillia I have to open the menu all the time to use items, equip, change strategies etc. The game would been better off on the Wii U in my opinion.

Things may change after a year from now and more games will reach the system.
What will happen in the next generation is interesting though. Well not if you look at Sony or Microsoft, they will just have better grapichs and same controller as they always use. What concerns me is what Nintendo will do. They now have 3 different controllers for their systems. They can't expect people to buy different controller for different games when the price tag is what it is. They will have to stick with Pro Controller, Wiimote or the GamePad for the next console.
They might even make a whole new thing, who knows. I predict if they don't find something to stick with and keep make "revolutions" with every generation, people will get confused and go with a brand they are familier with like Playstation.

Yeah, any menu-heavy game is just better with the second screen. Convenience and ease-of-use is so important for any game with menus, and what's more convenient than tapping an always-open screen?

As good as the games are otherwise, this always threw a wet blanket on my enjoyment with Dragon Quest. Really fun, but awful, unintuitive menus.

I think that next gen, there will be a focus on cross compatibility between handheld and console, being able to buy any game for both systems. Sony has had success with their cross buy program, and I think Nintendo is watching that closely. Really, they should be watching closely at everything Sony is doing with the PS4 and Vita and how they interact. If they can take that sort of kinship between the two systems and bring it to the next level with the unified OS, that could mean cross buy, cross save on every first party title, use the handheld as a controller for the console, etc. That seems to be where they're headed with the whole "making them like brothers" approach.

Where did you find a Wii U for $250?