Topic: The Biggest Software Lesson Nintendo Should Have Learned

In the last ten years, what do you think is the biggest lesson that Nintendo should have learned from the Wii and WiiU? A need for more variety? More robust online support/commitment? The selling power of Western games? The importance of exclusive online shooters?

My pick specifically relates to their biggest software success of the last decade-- Wii Sports. The success of the Wii should have affirmed to Nintendo that they can dominate the sports market and target a wide user base with sports titles. Wii Sports should have led to the creation of a dedicated American sports studio to make a priority of the genre. This applies to the present and the NX. Games like Mario Golf, NCAA football, Wave Race, Punch-Out Online, King Bowser Bowling, etc can diversify Nintendo's user base again and properly demo the next gen 3D tracking wands (if that is what NX is). Nintendo launched WiiU with a party title instead of a sports title-- this shows that Nintendo took the wrong lesson from Wii's success and saw the target audience myopically.

When it comes to sports titles no one is going to beat or even compete with the EA titles, as much as I despise them. Even though there are much better options out there, it's the official license that sells. Games like Mario Golf, Tennis, Punch-Out etc. are fun/family/arcade games with a sports theme. All put together are popular but wouldn't be able to dominate as suggested. However, I do believe there is a place for them.

One of the biggest lessons for Nintendo to learn is who are it's audience/customers? Is it the casual market, the hard-core market? Young or old? Their most loyal customers are gamers from an older generation. Personally I think Nintendo should create two brands. One side should be the fun/party brand with games like the above and would include Mario Party, Wii Sports etc. and could include the upcoming mobile games, and should be marketed and targeted to young kids and parents. While the other brand would be for standard/proper gamers; some would say the hard-core gamer. Under this brand would be games such as Metroid, Smash, Splatoon, Zelda, Fire Emblem etc. They would then target these games accordingly. This could also stop the opinion of the XBot/PS4 who claim that Nintendo is for kidz and bring back some of those customers.

Having two brands would be difficult, but if done right it could succeed.

I'm pretty sure that a lot of casual gamers picked up a Wii for Wii Sports (I know I didn't), but that crowd is gone and isn't coming back. I also don't think that they cared it was a Sports game, actually, I'd hardly call Wii Sports a sports game, it's more of a party game to me. Those people bought a Wii because it came with a waggle stick, they didn't care whether they used the Wiimote for a sports game or a party game, the novelty of the idea itself sold many Wii consoles.

There were quite a lot of sports games on the Wii after the success of Wii Sports. Other than Wii Sports Resort, which effectively was a replacement for Wii Sports in later SKUs, none of them really stuck. And the next big hit on the Wii was Wii Fit. Wii Fit wasn't a sport game, Wii Fit was really just another piece of software that leant on a unique controller input.

If anything I'd say the main lesson would be that launch content matters. It has to be something nobody has ever seen before and it has to explain why you need that piece of hardware. The hardware doesn't sell it. The hardware is secondary. If a console doesn't explain its value by showing great, unique and exclusive content? Well sure they can still make it, they can sell on the idea that it's just another console. But it makes it a lot harder. The DS and Wii did well on the back of great software. The 3DS and Wii U struggled because they fell short early on.

@Pahvi:
There was a big patch at launch that enabled WiiMode, the eShop and a bunch of other basic features. So all of the basic functions were there from the start. It was a few months before they released an update that improved system stability, menu performance and so on. Then an update after that which enabled standby mode including downloading and installing updates. It was then that I'd say it was a fully featured console.

But you're right. I think having a console at launch that's ready is a big lesson they should all learn. Massive updates that have you sitting doing nothing when you first take your console out of the box at launch? Not fun. That and having a killer app at launch. Those are the two big things.

@Octane
I don't disagree that many people bought Wii because of the concept of motion control itself but I think it is wrong to simply view the market as casuals. There were certainly a lot of people that bought Wii like one buys a toy-- to do one thing, to play Wii Sports and they never even viewed the premise of the console as something you buy new games for.

What I meant in saying Nintendo viewed consumers myopically is they saw them as casuals and launched WiiU with a party game, ignoring the universal appeal of the sports angle of Wii Sports. Some of those people that are lumped in as non-core are actually core gamers that play sports titles.

There is a large swath of the Wii audience that were hardcore gamers. They swallowed the hook, became disillusioned with the console over the years, and now pretend they never fell for the magic. The Wii's success did not come from just non-gamers. The non-gamers definitely did not prove to be a reliable audience but Nintendo failed doubly with WiiU to once again attract hardcore gamers.

Video games is a terrible industry full of awful producers and worse consumers and they should release that banned pokemon episode that was said to be stroke-inducing.

Then burn it all down and buy an island somewhere.

I honestly don't think a sports game was ever a selling point, and I don't think Wii Sports was a selling point because it incorporated sports elements. I also don't think that it would've made a difference if the Wii U launched with Wii Sports U or whatever. Just look at Wii Sports Club, if the appeal of sports games was that big, it would've sold a lot better than has done. Wii Sports Resort hasn't even sold a quarter of a million copies, which is very embarrassing compared to the 80+ million sales of Wii Sports. Wii Sports was a one-hit wonder, the entire Wii brand was in my opinion. It worked when the casual crowd was still on board, but it doesn't in this day and age.

More RPGs than 2D platformers.

@Octane: the Wii Sports crowd is still here. They just moved to mobile (henceforth why Nintendo's deal with DeNA is a good idea).

Anyways, the biggest lesson Nintendo should have learned is that Nintendo needs to globalize. Most of Nintendo's recent decisions would only make sense in japan, and it's hurting the company. On the flipside, look at LEGO. LEGO has been globalizing a lot recently, and it's paid off (just look at the LEGO movie).

@Octane: Wii Sports Resort sold 32 million copies. I'm not saying that every sports title from Nintendo would sell 100 million or even 30 million, but they can sell a respectable number with consistency given three important factors-
1. Nintendo commits to online gaming with chat in all of their 1st/2nd party multiplayer titles
2. Nintendo delivers the next step in one-handed controllers with NX
3. Nintendo steps up their investment in their sports titles beyond treating them exclusively as casual products

I'm suggesting not only games like Punch-Out and Mario Golf (which appeals to both families and core sports fans) but a realistic NCAA title, a realistic racing and free-driving title, and more realistic sports titles. They have to get beyond the laziness of Mii based games with N64 level character models.

So you want Nintendo to do what everyone else is doing with their "sports" titles? Sounds like a plunge straight down into mediocrity to me. Derisive lol at "N64 level character models."

@BlueSkies Hate to break it to you, but Nintendo doesn't really do what everyone else does. They just sort of do their own thing. Also, "N64 level character models"? REALLY?

Assuredly not. Nintendo has much more non-narrative, level-based, and platforming games where the multiplatform space is dominated by open world action and shooter games with something either pretending or trying to be a story. Nintendo tends to go for polished simplicity (Mario 3D World) over unwieldy complexity (Batman Arkham Knight.) Also, Nintendo has pretty bad facial animation tech compared to everyone else.

Wii Sports wasn't about sport. It was about how easy it is to play a game with other people. Do you really thing a bowling game could ever sell so well? It's about the accessibility, not that it's sports... I mean there could be something in that, given how dominant sport is in the West, how much we glorify sports stars. Maybe it was extra successful because it was a sports and party title..

Wii Sports did well and Wii Sports Resort did well. But to say that it was because of "sports" is to ignore the other software that did well on the Wii. You're also ignoring the massive pile of sports games on the Wii that didn't do particularly well.

The example I brought up earlier was Wii Fit. That wasn't a sports game but instead it played into the motion controls aspect of the Wii. That the console got people moving, was different to what others were doing and was easy to pick up. Mario Kart was also a hit and it did the same thing. Just Dance was the same deal and so was Wii Play and Guitar Hero. But it was a one time thing, that time has passed.

It was successful because it was bundled with a big part the Wii units, just like the sales figures for Wii Fit and NSMB. It's like saying NintendoLand is the definition of a successful Wii U game.

@jariw:
Except that in Japan they never bundled those games and over there the top 5 Wii games were:
1. New Super Mario Bros Wii
2. Wii Sports
3. Mario Kart Wii
4. Wii Fit
5. Wii Sports Resort
6. Wii Play
7. Smash Bros Brawl
8. Wii Fit Plus
9. Wii Party
10. Mario Party 8

(feel free to correct me if I missed something)

While I don't think Nintendo should necessarily build its own sports studio, this article by Emily Rogers has lots of good tidbit facts:
https://dromble.wordpress.com/2013/10/17/20-reasons-why-ninte...

That not everything your competition does is the devil and that employing some of their ideas and mixing them with your own can make your products even better than they are.