Topic: Should Nintendo Just Tell Investors to "Shove it" and go private?

I think people who think Nintendo should have moved to become more like some of the other players miss the point. Nintendo is at their worst when they are stubborn, when they miss large technological trends like disks or online. However Nintendo are at their best when they pluck an idea out of nowhere and turn it into a new trend that everyone else follows.

In terms of tech the Wii U isn't missing the point. In terms of architecture, control schemes and infrastructure there's nothing there you can point to and say that's why it's not moving units. There's the horsepower thing true but there's also the pricetag thing and besides, the style of game that could sell the Wii U doesn't need more horsepower. Lets face it, it was running Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty and all of the other "ZOMG visuals" games early on. Slightly better than the other players at the time even. Nobody cared. What makes you think they'd care if it was doing AC:Unity? You think people would be lining up? AC3 didn't even sell.

The real failure of the Wii U has been its inability to have a game or hardware hook that captivated people. Amiibo is maybe one of the first that might be able to do that. Smash Bros and Kart aren't that thing but they're a comfortable blanket that some might want to land on. They don't have a Wii Sports, Goldeneye, Brain Training, Tetris, Super Mario Bros or Pokemon yet. When they try to be someone else they coast along and people say they're doomed, when they do their own thing? That's when they hit it big.

I'm pretty sure that if Nintendo could ditch the investors and do it without any consequences there wouldn't be any investor left by now.
even if the investors are wrong or not needed it'd be way too complicated(or risky) to get rid of them purposedly.

Except when their 'own thing' is the gamepad.

The PS4 is outselling the Xbox One because the Xbox is perceived to be the weaker of the two in terms of graphical horsepower, so I think its disingenuous to pretend that the obvious weakness of the Wii U isn't hurting sales.

Ya, because those 7th gen games running just 'slightly better' on the brand new 8th gen Wii U wasn't a good thing. It just showed off how weak the actual system is.

Couldn't agree more. Nintendo has been at the forefront of almost every major innovation that the industry has seen. Without Nintendo, the entire business would stagnate and, eventually, crash. I believe that wholeheartedly.

In terms of tech the Wii U isn't missing the point.

And I no longer agree.

In terms of architecture, control schemes and infrastructure there's nothing there you can point to and say that's why it's not moving units. There's the horsepower thing true but there's also the pricetag thing and besides, the style of game that could sell the Wii U doesn't need more horsepower.

The type of game that is enjoying widespread, mass appeal currently does need more horsepower. The big sellers right now (notwithstanding whether they are good games, mind you) require more under the hood than the Wii U has.

Lets face it, it was running Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty and all of the other "ZOMG visuals" games early on. Slightly better than the other players at the time even. Nobody cared. What makes you think they'd care if it was doing AC:Unity? You think people would be lining up? AC3 didn't even sell.

I've said it before, those games wouldn't be the reason why someone would get a Wii U, but it is the reason why someone wouldn't get one. If you can play AC:U AND Mario Kart 8, then why wouldn't you only buy a Wii U? But you can't, so someone will get a PS4/XBO instead, or in addition to, a Wii U. That's a major fail.

The real failure of the Wii U has been its inability to have a game or hardware hook that captivated people. Amiibo is maybe one of the first that might be able to do that. Smash Bros and Kart aren't that thing but they're a comfortable blanket that some might want to land on. They don't have a Wii Sports, Goldeneye, Brain Training, Tetris, Super Mario Bros or Pokemon yet. When they try to be someone else they coast along and people say they're doomed, when they do their own thing? That's when they hit it big.

The real failure of the Wii U was to come out a year early with last-gen tech. That, in turn, caused it to miss out on captivating software.

The business model has to be What can I do/make to ensure than my product is the only one the consumer needs/wants? Think about all the people on these message boards. Most (if not all) are Nintendo fans to some extent. Most own a Wii U. Many, however, also own a PS4 or an XBO. Why?

I want to know, for those people who own either both a Wii U and either an XBO or PS4, or for those who own either an XBO or a PS4 and no Wii U, if the Wii U had those other, mass-appeal games on it, would you own a Wii U only? Would you have bothered getting both a Wii U and an XBO/PS4? I'm willing to bet a lot of money most people wouldn't bother getting both. Some would, for exclusives, but they would be a small minority on these message boards.

Nintendo is losing sales by not having a console that can run the most popular games out right now. Whether you and I think Generic Shooter X is a good game isn't the point. The masses like those games. The masses can't get those games on the Wii U. The masses, therefore, don't buy a Wii U or also get a competitor's system. That's Nintendo's real failure this gen.

...no, The Xbox One shot itself in the foot early on and now it's finding it difficult to recover. It was more expensive while not offering anything that most people felt justified it. It originally had policies and PR that most felt rubbed them the wrong way, to put it lightly, and many aren't so willing to forgive those early mistakes without offering some major console-selling games, which it hasn't gotten just yet.

The horsepower is a minor issue, and always is. Gamers only pretend to care about who has the biggest horse power, but that hardly ever amounts to the actual success of a console. The SNES was the only time the "best horsepower won the race", but that was more because it had some high-profile exclusives, many of which were sequels to popular NES franchises that many would argue defined their childhood and helped keep console gaming afloat after the so-called "Video Game Crash." Did having good tech help? Of course. But I think having Super Mario World packed in at launch helped it far more.

Xbox was outsold because of the terrible PR and higher price. It had little to nothing to do with "graphix"

I guess if you spend all your time moderating a Nintendo forum and don't visit other gaming sites where Xbox is ripped daily for having inferior versions of major third party releases, it would be possible to believe this.

It also helped having only the Sega Genesis (which was the sequel to the relatively unpopular Master System) and the $600 Neo Geo as the only other competition in terms of console gaming. To compare the gaming landscape today (and it's consumers) to what was happening in the early 1990's isn't an apt comparison at all. Today it's all about high end electronics and what system is the most powerful. People want to have what they perceive to be the 'best', they don't want to have what they consider to be a weaker or inferior console like the Wii U.

As sales numbers have shown for the past several years, people would rather have GTA, COD, and other third party titles over the next Mario game.

If people cared about that then they would almost always use a PC. The differences are minor as opposed to major.

Japan did care about power (Reason why there are so many more Japanese AES carts) and the X68000 did quite well.

The West only cares about marketing / advertising now and always.

PC and console gamers are completely different audiences. They don't have munch impact on each other.

Because they would rather play an open world game with graphical styles, settings, and themes they can more easily relate to. It has nothing to do with the actual power. What people say is not always what they do. If the Wii U did things that a large group liked and had games that drew enough interest and attention, that don't necessarliy need the additional power, at least some of those people would be eating their hats, while also drawing in the "crowd that doesn't know enough to be discerning about technical features", which is most people. seriously, if every gamer cared about resolution, anti-aliasing, and all that other performance crap, the PC Master Race would well and truly be a thing, and they would've snuffed out console gaming by now.

That's without even touching upon how absurd it is to use "people on gaming websites making digs at the consoles they don't own" as evidence that the majority truly do care about specs...

Ya, I guess all the reviews and articles stating how the PS4 is technologically superior to the Xbox One have absolutely no impact on what console people choose to purchase (which ties into 'hype' and 'marketing', which you yourself say are the reasons PS4 sells well). And that's not even counting those people who outright say 'the PS4 is more powerful than the Xbox so that's why I bought it instead'.

From my standpoint, it was mostly ripped for being $100 more and having awful PR and 180 degree decisions

Not nearly as much as having the games they want to play, which are also games and consoles their friends will own. Those have always been the greater factors.

If people really cared about which box was most powerful, console gaming wouldn't even exist anymore, because both the XB1 and PS4 are just underpowered PCs with a locked OS.

Of course with all other things equal, people start talking about power. Thing is that the PS4 and XB1 are going to be like 95% identical this generation in terms of software, so the only thing there is to really compare is the specs. If they had a line-up as exclusive as the SNES and Genesis, nobody would really care which one was more powerful.

Except that in terms of sales none of the five best selling consoles have been graphical powerhouses. The Playstation comes close but it was built around running games fast and with a lot of storage vs the N64's approach of better visuals. If it was all about visuals then the best selling consoles of all time would be the PSP, PS3, Gamecube and GameGear. Clearly it isn't the only factor. If it was predicting who does well in the market would be a very, very easy thing indeed.

The PS4 vs XBOne thing is not about power at all because they're pretty much identical. The gap between them is trivially small and the truth is that they're both underpowered. In the end it does come down to content, as of now the biggest market is in what I think are pretty bland war shooters. The PS4 does that at a decent price compared to what the XBOne does. The Wii U is trying to appeal to a different kind of consumer, one who so far doesn't think the Wii U offers enough for the price. The Wii U could do well in the same way that the DS, Gameboy, Wii, Playstation and PS2 did. By offering it's own unique take on the market.

There's more than one kind of game and there's more than one kind of gamer. When I said they didn't make a mistake with the hardware I meant it in the sense that they did make a huge mistake with the N64. They haven't repeated that since. The Wii U is an easy machine to develop for and hardware wise it has the potential to produce a massive hit. When I mentioned Amiibo that's one of the ways that they could potentially create a hit. Ontop of that in terms of infrastructure the Wii U is doing all of the things that everyone else is doing so it's not falling behind in that way either.

And when I said that in terms of power they "don't need it" for the type of game that could make the Wii U do well? Well I meant that to. I mean sure, it's not going to be running GTA or CoD with the highest detail settings, longest draw distances and best resolutions. Neither are the other guys but that's another story. However what they can do is create a game with a style and we know that the Wii U can do that at 720p or better at 60fps. They have their big five that'll smash that out of the park with Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Smash and Kart. And you know what? The "masses" like those games to. They also loved Wii Sports and Pokemon and neither of them were about pushing the visual limits either.

The fact is that if the Wii U had taken off and taken off early we wouldn't be talking about what games the console didn't have. Because it is a reasonably capable machine. Those big devs would have found a way to get their content onto the platform. But people this generation seem to want to go with the PS4 so, naturally, that's where the devs are aiming. It's not a case of "ZOMG NINTENDO IS STUPID", it's more a fact of the gaming industry being unpredictable. Nintendo rolled badly this time, that's all.

Except that in terms of sales none of the five best selling consoles have been graphical powerhouses. The Playstation comes close but it was built around running games fast and with a lot of storage vs the N64's approach of better visuals. If it was all about visuals then the best selling consoles of all time would be the PSP, PS3, Gamecube and GameGear. Clearly it isn't the only factor. If it was predicting who does well in the market would be a very, very easy thing indeed.

The PS4 vs XBOne thing is not about power at all because they're pretty much identical. The gap between them is trivially small and the truth is that they're both underpowered. In the end it does come down to content, as of now the biggest market is in what I think are pretty bland war shooters. The PS4 does that at a decent price compared to what the XBOne does. The Wii U is trying to appeal to a different kind of consumer, one who so far doesn't think the Wii U offers enough for the price. The Wii U could do well in the same way that the DS, Gameboy, Wii, Playstation and PS2 did. By offering it's own unique take on the market.

There's more than one kind of game and there's more than one kind of gamer. When I said they didn't make a mistake with the hardware I meant it in the sense that they did make a huge mistake with the N64. They haven't repeated that since. The Wii U is an easy machine to develop for and hardware wise it has the potential to produce a massive hit. When I mentioned Amiibo that's one of the ways that they could potentially create a hit. Ontop of that in terms of infrastructure the Wii U is doing all of the things that everyone else is doing so it's not falling behind in that way either.

And when I said that in terms of power they "don't need it" for the type of game that could make the Wii U do well? Well I meant that to. I mean sure, it's not going to be running GTA or CoD with the highest detail settings, longest draw distances and best resolutions. Neither are the other guys but that's another story. However what they can do is create a game with a style and we know that the Wii U can do that at 720p or better at 60fps. They have their big five that'll smash that out of the park with Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Smash and Kart. And you know what? The "masses" like those games to. They also loved Wii Sports and Pokemon and neither of them were about pushing the visual limits either.

The fact is that if the Wii U had taken off and taken off early we wouldn't be talking about what games the console didn't have. Because it is a reasonably capable machine. Those big devs would have found a way to get their content onto the platform. But people this generation seem to want to go with the PS4 so, naturally, that's where the devs are aiming. It's not a case of "ZOMG NINTENDO IS STUPID", it's more a fact of the gaming industry being unpredictable. Nintendo rolled badly this time, that's all.

I have a PC, always have. Getting it or not getting it had nothing to do with what games were on the Wii U and what games were on PC. I have a PC because I like being able to get a game that's a few years old really cheap and I like being able to spend an afternoon playing a small little indie game. Quite frankly I don't see the appeal of the PS4 or XBOne at all because they're just watered down versions of what you can get on the PC. Nintendo however offer a different kind of content that nobody else even comes close to. The sort of content that frankly I'm more into. The same was true last generation but last gen Nintendo weren't even close in terms of visuals, now they're doing HD/60fps. If I had to pick between Wii U and everything else? I'd keep my Wii U. However if the Wii U had all the games I'd still have a PC.

And again, you have to remember that the "mass market" aren't on forums talking about games at all. The mass market aren't even "gamers" for lack of a better term. People on forums like this love to argue that Nintendo aren't doing enough to capture the CoD crowd. However you could just as easily argue that Nintendo is failing to capture the Candy Crush crowd. As I said, there's more than one kind of gamer.

This is indeed the way to go for Nintendo. It should be private, like Lego, for example. Once they work out the details, I'm sure we'll see a buyout eventually and the company will delist and go private. It really doesn't make sense for Nintendo to be public anymore. Consider that the share price is irrelevant for Nintendo - once the shares are there they are not gaining from any increase or losing from any decrease, it's already in the secondary market. It just provides PR negativity for Nintendo so they will get out eventually.

This isn't going to happen unless someone comes along with a very large amount of money. A company doesn't just decide to go.private, the people who want to take it private have to buy out all the unwanted investors.

Also, I'm not sure Nintendo becoming even more insular is A Good Thing.