Topic: Which is a better strategy for Nintendo. Do everything differently, or try to do what everyone else is doing?

But that pseudo-innovation is what Xbone and PS4 have, they also have more marketing than Nintendo to deliver the point that PS4 or Xbone are the "real next-gen consoles." Nintendo did a good job causing waves at E3, but they need to do more inbetween their big announcements to keep people informed. In the end "innovation" is less important than marketing. Marketing is how you tell your customers you are innovating with Streaming and rumbles in your triggers. Everything comes back to how Nintendo delivers their message, Miiverse is innovative for this reason (and others) and it still allows for Nintendo to control their message. Directs are another way Nintendo is innovating their Marketing. Nintendo needs to create a good Marketing team and a way to communicate with their consumers before the next-gen starts. They need to hit the ground running and so when we talk about whether Nintendo should copy the competitors or continue to innovate what we should be talking about is how is Nintendo going to market their next system? That is the way I see it. If your marketing is good enough and you have an acceptable product (whether it is innovative or not) you can sell it

I wasn't aware of that statistic, and that's actually kind of cool and good to know. Thanks.

However, I will stick to my argument that certain decisions Nintendo has made hurt them in image, at the very least.

Let me give you a personal example (one I used in another thread a few minutes ago).

I bought a 360 to play Oblivion. I bought it before I got my Wii, because it came out first. So I played Oblivion A LOT. When the Wii came out, my 360 collected dust. It literally had a layer of dust on it from lack of use. However, slowly but surely, I started to play my 360 a lot more. Why? Because Mass Effect didn't come out for Wii. Because multi platform games were watered-down on Wii: lacking online, missing levels, options, game types, etc.. And why did these game either not come out on or were watered down on Wii? Because of the lack of power in the console. Not necessarily because of "high-definition", but because of the inferior hardware the Wii had.

I would have much rather own one console — my Wii — and be able to play multi platform games on it, and also enjoy the Nintendo exclusives that are far superior to Sony and MS exclusives. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do that.

For the record, I play my Wii to this day, and I hardly ever play my 360. Additionally, I'll go as far as to say that even the watered down versions of certain games had better gameplay than their HD counterparts, yet they suffered in the long term.

I remember playing Call of Duty: World at War on Wii and 360, and the Wii version was far better. What killed it was that it was missing various game types, a real substantial online mode, and all of the maps. Not the graphics, the content. But that goes hand-in-hand with the hardware.

Like others have said, a combination is the most ideal. A company's product must have things that set them apart from the competition to make them desirable to the consumers that don't simply have preferences of the brand... In other words, other than those that will always prefer the specific franchises, gamers on the fence need a reason to consider Nintendo, especially with the lack of cross-platform games; price doesn't apply much here because there is so little overlap in third party games when compared to their competition. On the other hand, they also can't continually reject current trends. Ideally, a company's product can do what the others do and more (of course, because competitors are all going to be doIng this, it's rare that any products ever reach this ideal). As much as some Nintendo purists seem to reject features such as DLC, achievements, and high technical specs, lacking these features can make it too much for third parties to adapt cross-platform titles and without any overlap in content available, price becomes less of a selling point for many consumers - if you don't like Nintendo's franchises, why bother buying their systems, even if they're cheaper? In other words, their desire to stand out is great but they need to learn to adapt to the market more instead of always expecting the market to adapt to them.

It depends. I think they are "excused" for the type of steps they did for Wii. Alot of people wanted a more fleshed out online experience with better graphics, HD, and media, so they went with Xbox 360 or PS3. Wii focused on smaller games, motion control/interaction, running older games, and getting niche titles. Both strategies worked, for the most part.

While I do think what Nintendo has done with Wii was fine for the type of situation they were in(GCN not doing so great, not as many people cared about online), but they don't necessarily have to exclude certain features anymore, so while I think that the Wii remote and the GamePad are enough to make them immediately different(which is a good thing), they should try and focus more on a more broad perspective of what people want from their device. Even if people "hate" Nintendo Network or the IDs for whatever reason, it's still a huge step up from what Wii offered, and there's still room for massive improvement that wasn't really all that possible on Wii.

TL;DR
It's good to be different, but there's a point where adopting certain ideas or features that have become common place is probably a good idea. Nintendo can adapt ideas and features better with Wii U, than they could have with Wii.

Party Chat
Better Messaging system
Virtual Console cross buy
Other than those, keep doing what they have been doing.

Posts like this are why I like NintendoLife's forums infinitely better than those on GameFAQs. Everyone, aside from a very small handful of people, is level headed. We don't see a lot of drones, nor do we see a lot of trolls.

For good or ill, the thing that makes Nintendo Nintendo is that Nintendo will always be doing its own thing regardless of what their competitors are doing. Sometimes they’re ahead of the game (D pad, 3D, motion control, touch screens, ect) and sometimes they’re WAY behind (cross buy, HD, DVD/BluRay, processing power, ect).

When you talk about the Wii not being HD you have to think about it in the context of when it was released. This was back when Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD was just starting out and a HD movie cost a good $50AU vs the $10 it costs now. You'd walk into a shop and pay $2000AU and get something like a 32" LCD TV. It was only a couple of years earlier that multiplayer Halo meant getting your friends to bring around their 20" CRT SDTVs. In 2006 even late 2006 the majority of people were sitting infront of SDTVs. By 2008? the majority would have been HD. But it wasn't until around 2010 that HDTV was ubiquitous.

Also you've gotta remember what price point was. In Australia it was $380AU vs the 360 at $500AU and the PS3 at $700AU. Plus the fact that it sold pretty well. It's easy to say that they should have gone HD sitting in the comfort of 2014 where everyone has a HDTV and you can grab one from the shops for $200. I don't think it's fair to re-write history and say that one of the best selling consoles in history was a strategic mistake. Sony and MS released consoles that were the right consoles for 2009 in 2006. Nintendo released the right console for 2006 in 2006. I wouldn't call that a miscalculation.

Don't be too quick on that.
Take Splatoon as an example. Just by watching the E3 trailer, all the average viewer sees is a 3rd-person cartoon paintball shooter. But the very concept of using ink as ammunition is a stroke of genius on several levels. Unlike most shooters, you see which direction enemy shots are coming from, because it's all blobs of ink - most "serious" shooters had to add artificial indicators (normally red arrows) to give the player this vital information. Funniy enough, this would've gone largely unnoticed if the developers didn't point it out during the dev interview.
Another example that many don't realize even now is with the kart selection in Mario Kart 8. You can watch videos of races all the time, but you'll have an extremely hard time telling the difference in handling of karts that actually have identical stats. But it exists, and it gives players a sense of uniqueness to their driving because, more often than not, their friends probably can't handle the same setup as well.

Now I won't go overboard with examples, but I suppose it's clear what I mean. Nintendo does these kinds of things to keep players connected to the game as a fun experience, but it's very hard to see the source of this fun, and that is an ongoing issue nowadays, since graphics and visual impressiveness is treated as a clear indicator of experienced developers who must know how to make good games. But this kind of statement heavily conflicts with the actual quality of gameplay of many games. And that's where Nintendo makes the difference, even when they end up as the underdog.

Differently as long as they're not just being different for the sake of it. They quite often make better versions of the same games that their rivals make so I'd like to see them trying to outdo EA and Activision with Sports and a shooter. Proper sports and not Mario sports.

Even if they do make a sports title what's gonna hurt their sales is a lack of licences, people don't care if there are better foorball games out there than FIFA but it will always sell due to them having all players & clubs.

IMO the lack of EA sport titles hurts the Wii U more than a lack of GTA & COD imo.

Nintendo will not change....100 years of tradition is not something that will change that easy and the fact is Nintendo do not think their approach is wrong. They ignore everything that the west wants and do things there own way this is both a good thing and a bad thing.....

Try to do what everyone else is doing, Differently.

I agree with you.

This reminds me of how SNES and Genesis were battling at the time. In reality, SNES is more powerful than the Genesis but because Genesis had more MHz, SEGA took that as an advantage. Some games like F-Zero were new for that time and thus brought in sales.

Its clear to me that if Nintendo is still out there, its because they take risks that no one would dare to do so. Who would have thought that having dual screen gameplay would turn out to be a fantastic concept?

They should keep the innovation, but that must be coupled with copying what is good on the other platforms, such a much more better online infrastructure. Voice party is an amazing feature.... playing destiny and being able to talk with my clanmates online, even without having the game running, is amazing... i can hop in, ask what are the activities of the day, and only then decide to play with them or not, or having a couple of Fifa matches, while waiting to be 6 to go in the Vault of Glass, and still be able to chat here and there.... it makes such an intuitive tool that really improved the multiplayer....

But that IS doing what everyone else is doing. Creating a fairly generic main console and selling peripherals separately. This practice disincentivizes the use of the peripheral, as only a fraction of the install base owns it. This kind of makes its inclusion pointless.

I don't see how the Gamepad alienated developers. There is no requirement to use the Gamepad screen whatsoever. The only justifiable way it could alienate devs is if the devs absolutely needed analog triggers.

I don't think a lot of people care, they're looking at the bigger picture. They're probably going to be looking at things like the winner being determined based on who covered more of the arena, the ability to transform into a squid and move through your own ink, and the Super Jump.

What exactly is innovative about having karts with different handling when many other racers have done it before?

Mario Kart 8's differences are nowhere near enough. For the amount I have played it I should still only be able to use the easiest configs Maybe have just beaten 50cc

Not saying it was the right move in the long run, but when he said that XBLive had 1M subscribers. Iwata correctly stated that that was still a small fraction of the XB's install base.

Also, at that point in time, Nintendo really couldn't do anything about it. I think standing behind the product they had out at the time was the right move then.