Topic: Is Nintendo resting on its laurels?

@skywake I was hoping they Wii U would have had more strategy/tactical games. They certainly had a compelling input method for those, But sadly it didn't happen.

@Yorumi I disagree with the 2D Mario part. It didn't have the nostalgic shine anymore and started to feel stale. And at that time there was a strong "Too much Mario" going on.

It was more 2D platformers in general than just 2D Mario. Tropical Freeze especially got a lot of negativity for being just another 2D platformer instead of Metroid Prime 4.

Well it was but it was still a horrible fit for what their messaging needed to be. The Wii U's main selling point hardware wise was that it was a HD capable console with a semi-portable screen. It was about doing things on a portable screen you couldn't do on a 3DS and seeing Nintendo franchises at higher resolutions than on the Wii. Aside from MiiVerse it could have more or less been just as good on Wii or 3DS.

But it was worse than that because a section of the wider community thought the Wii U was just a Wii accessory. A game like New SMB U being the key system seller early in the Wii U's life? That doesn't really make it obvious at all this is not a Wii accessory. Hell, they made things worse by showing a WiiMote in a lot of the advertising for New SMB U.

Smash Bros. Ultimate is a Top Tier Triple AAA Nintendo game, just like Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Many would even include Splatoon 2, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 to that list.

It was always a system seller, it has one of Nintendo's strongest fan bases. And I think Melee was the top best selling Gamecube game of all time. True, with Brawl and SSB4 the game was evolving and not every new mechanic was received well, but Ultimate looks absolutely like coming back to form. From graphics to gameplay to content it already looks much better than the last game in the series. They even cracked every little detail to bring it to the next level. This is a fans dream come true.

Let's just hope they confirm only the best modes, like Targets and Run, and surprise us with even more iconic and popular characters and stages.

Smash Bros. Ultimate is a Top Tier Triple AAA Nintendo game, just like Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Some would even include Splatoon 2 and Xenoblade 2 to that list.

It was always a system seller, it has one of Nintendo's strongest fan bases. And I think Melee was the top best selling Gamecube game of all time. True, with Brawl and SSB4 the game was evolving and not every new mechanic was received well, but Ultimate looks absolutely like coming back to form, from graphics to gameplay to content it already looks much better than the last game in the series.

Pokémon Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee don't look like Triple AAA to me, and it wasn't planned like that from the beginning. We hopefully will see Triple AAA come to fruition with the new Pokémon RPG for Switch next year. However, it will sell millions. Super Mario Party is kinda the same here. It will always sell a million or two. At least, this looks much better than the last two games as well. It seems they want to bring it to the next level as well, even calling it Super Mario Party, not Mario Party 11.

Before the console launched they did, of course they did. Why would you make a new console and not have some people internally predicting sales on par with your current console? This isn't a like for like comparison. I'll make it simple for you, here is Nintendo's most recent earnings report:
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2018/180731e.pdf

In it they are projecting to sell 20mill Switch consoles for this fiscal year. This is the figure we are all sitting around being arm-chair analysts about. It's too high, Nintendo are doomed, blah blah blah. Now here is the same thing from 2013. This was before pretty much any of the big games hit. We had all seen the turn-around for the 3DS once Mario Kart, 3D Land and OoT 3D hit and, at this point, the Wii U was about to get 3D World, Mario Kart 8 and Wind Waker HD. If you had been on a Nintendo fan-forum at the time we would've been talking about how the next game will be the one. But Nintendo?
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2013/130731e.pdf

9mill sales for the fiscal year was their projection. Well ahead of what it ended up being but even at this point they were projecting for a seriously underperforming console. By the end of the year Iwata announces that they're going to fall well short of what you could argue was a conservative projection and cuts his pay as a result. Then the next year they're projecting 3.6mill sales.... which it hit....

Don't buy into your own spin. Nintendo weren't blindly projecting insane sales for Wii U while the walls were caving in. Fan forums might have been, Nintendo were not. If they had been they wouldn't have had the Switch ready as soon as they did.

"System seller" and "AAA" are real nebulous, unquantifiable terms. Who would have bet that Splatoon 1 would become a (modest) system seller for the Wii U? Does Mario even have AAA budgets despite that selling incredibly well?

And what about Just Dance? Can you look at that and tell me that's AAA? Yes, because "AAA" means something different to everyone it's meaningless.

To me, "AAA" only refers to budget relative to the industry. And because of that, Nintendo isn't really considered a AAA company, at least nowadays in my book. The only game that would hit that mark would be BotW and Metroid Prime 4, probably. But then other people would want to refer to "AAA" relative to the company (which is also legit), so then you'd get Mario, Zelda, and Smash. Pokemon is strange in that it never tries to really expand its horizons too greatly compared to Mario, Zelda, and even Smash, and while I don't know the budget for Pokemon games I'm not sure if it's bigger than a Mario game. The same logic applies to Mario Kart.

Now see what I mean? It's so nebulous and arbitrary, we can have a circular argument about "AAA" monikers forever until a group of influential people finally put their foot down and explicitly state the true definition for other people to know.

@EightBitMan

1. Nintendo” didn’t predict 100 million Wii U sales, one salesman did in a meeting. That’s not really the same is it? As @skywake says they made some stupid predictions in 2013 but there was no 100 million projection.

2. The Switch, at 17 months old, nearing what GameCube did in over 5 years, is a heck of a compliment.

3. I totally disagree that they didn’t fix the problems with the Wii U. The hardware concept, hardware design, USP, name, marketing, price, development environment, third party support and overall software line up is far better. Of course launch hype dies away but hardware sales are barrelling along nicely and software sales are superb.

4. Nintendo have effectively admitted their mistakes with the Switch. They aren’t making futile, failed attempts to go up against Sony and MS. They aren’t attempting to support two machines. They’re focussing on what they do best and carving out a big old niche in the market. Of course they’ve made many mistakes in the past and will do again but the most ‘ignorant’ thing they could have done would be to attempt to sell a PS4 competitor to a saturated and disinterested market.

5. Your use of irrelevant would have made sense in 2015 but not now. They may be irrelevant to those who think Console gaming starts and ends with underpowered PCs and Western AAA online shooters but that isn’t everyone.

@EightBitMan
lol you're giving me an "I speak for the trees" kind of vibe, but in a crazy, manic way. Not a good way.

@EightBitMan Which one is is? Did the Wii succeed because of fanboys or was it a fluke? It’ll be great to hear when you never respond back.

@Yorumi I don't understand Nintendo sometimes. I thought they would release console versions of their mobile games soon after. Animal crossing right about nowish. I think that would be a fairly obvious strategy.

To some extent they did, (Fe warriors/heroes, Odyssey/run) but it seems more and more like a fluke.

You'd think so, but I guess their mobile games are just their own separate money maker at this point. Maybe they care less about using them to push people towards the Switch and now as just a supplemental income stream.

@Therad

I’m not a fan, I have no horse in this race but I’d put money on AC Switch being next year

@Therad
They do seem to miss those kind of opportunities a lot. Even so, Animal Crossing doesn't need much of a push so I don't think it's a huge loss in this particular case. It does need to come out sooner rather than later though as its the one system seller that's lacking.

It seems that way, but the problem I see with Switch is the lackluster exclusive third party support. Rabbids, Octopath and Daemon X Machina are steps in the right direction, but if the Switch goes into God-tier Mode, it will need a lot of great third party exclusives. Nintendo will keep pumping out high quality first party content, like they do most of the time. It really needs some killer third party exclusives to push it over the hump. Bayonetta 3 and SMT V are very important titles for Switch.

Yes, i know about the indies. Im talking about AA and AAA third party devs.

@Therad
Maybe Nintendo doesn't want the casual audience to be burnt out(?). FE Warriors was very different from Heroes, same with Odyssey. A new Animal Crossing game might be too similar to the mobile game so casuals might just think, "hey, I already have a similar game on my phone 360€ cheaper so why would I buy this version?". If Nintendo waits a year or two more to release AC people will have stopped playing the mobile game and might look into the new and impressive Switch version because they already experienced and finished playing with the cheaper alternative. (Inb4 Nintendo announces Animal Crossing as their last surprise game of this year).

@SharkAttackU

These days Third party exclusives are few and far between on every system though. Even PS4, Street Fighter V and Bloodborne were funded by Sony. It has, what Nioh and Ni No Kuni 2? They’re on PC. Same with Xbox, Microsoft paid for Sunset Overdrive. No system can rely on third party exclusives anymore because it’s hard to make them financially viable without multi platform releases.

@SharkAttackU @electrolite77 Nioh is on Xbox One now, so that's not even console exclusive. Same with even small games like Windjammers no longer being exclusive. Same thing happened with the original Dragon Quest Builders initially only being on PS4 and Vita but now is on Switch and the sequel will be on Switch too.

At least Nintendo has got Square Enix looking to create exclusives for the Switch going forward assuming Octopath sales have been good enough, though I not sure if Nintendo is helping fund this team/studio?

I think Nintendo is absolutely resting on its laurels, or is just far worse at this business than its experience would suggest.

This idea that Animal Crossing and Let's Go will put the company where it wants to be baffles me. Unless they can seriously innovate with Animal Crossing, that IP will struggle to match its earlier iterations, as it suits being on 'affordable' hardware. Switch is the most expensive hardware AC will have launched on, and while it seemingly has a strong fanbase, I don't think such a casual game will drive many to drop money on an expensive device if they haven't already. Same goes for Pokémon.

They'll still sell well, but I will be surprised if they reach 3DS numbers.

And what that reliance on that market does is further reinforce the 'Nintendo device for Nintendo games' (ie. 12 year old and casual friendly).

The indie scene is pretty good on Switch, no question, and helps keep others interested, but I just think there's a lot of room for Nintendo to do more to get some of the bigger 85+ rated multi-plats.

Skyrim is the only big third party game I'm happy with, but even that was well behind the other systems. Doom and Wolfenstein2 were both late too, but more importantly to me, not released in full on a game card. Dark Souls is late and MIA.

Nintendo should pay up to get some highly regarded games on Switch as full releases (not split between card and compulsory partial download). Too many of the more glamorous releases are still borked in some way.

Switch is capable of being positioned right across the market, not just for the established Nintendo audience. But I don't see it happening until the big games are done properly.

Skyrim is the only one I can think of that is all on the card and performs well enough. That's a wasted opportunity to me.

Sorry for the lateness of my reply.

Smash is a huge game. It will sell 10 million plus by the end of the generation. In some ways the only bigger franchise Nintendo has is Mario Kart. But (& it’s a big but) it’s largely a known quantity. It’s not a game that will reinvent the wheel - it’s like a FIFA or Madden revision. No doubt it’ll be the best in the series to date and it is hugely important to have on the Switch and it will be the straw that breaks the camels back in terms of bringing stragglers into the Switch ecosystem. But it won’t make anyone rethink what video games - or even what the genre - can be.

Nor does Smash necessarily promise something for everyone. As a single player game for someone who isn’t a 100% completionist and has no aspirations towards competitive play I’m not sure it offers enough to get me really excited about it.

Then again maybe it’s just talking passionately to an audience that’s not me. And that’s ok too!