Topic: What 5 games must Nintendo launch the NX with?

5 launch titles is not very ambitious...just saying...

Here's what I would launch the NX with to ensure it gets off to a good start.

Zelda Wii U(I would move this game off the Wii U and make it clear that it is an exclusive for the NX. Offer Twilight Princess HD to Wii U owners)

New Super Mario Bros Collection(Something along the lines of Mario All-Stars that offers retouched graphics for NSMB, NSMB Wii, and NSMB 2. This game would be bundled with the system at launch)

Super Smash Bros for Wii U: Ultimate Edition(A port of Smash Wii U that offers all the DLC in the package, as well as slightly upgraded graphics. Allow Support for Gamecube Controllers, as well as Wii U and Wii options.

Wave Race NX(I think F-Zero is better saved for later in the NX's lifespan. Waverace could be the NX's early showcase game to show off the power of the hardware as well as the new online that the NX has to offer.

Major third-party exclusive(Its time for Nintendo to open the checkbook and play Sony and Microsoft's hand by getting a major third-party release on their system that is exclusive like Street Fighter V and Rise of the Tomb Raider are for the PS4 and Xbox One. It also needs to be a new game. Year old ports like Fallout 4 will not convince people to cough up money for an NX. The Wii U had a good number of third-party games at launch, but they were older titles that most people had already played.

Something like Monster Hunter 5, Soul Calibur VI, etc are good choices.)

It depends on how you read the question. For example the 3DS launched with ~15 titles in the US but you'd probably only put Nintendogs, Steel Diver and Pilotwings on a list like this. All of which were incredibly underwhelming. And if you were to ask someone in retrospect what games the 3DS needed at launch? You'd probably add Ocarina of Time 3D and Mario Kart 7 into the mix.

Same deal with the Wii U. At its launch there were far more than 5 games but the only ones that mattered were New SMB U, Nintendo Land and Zombi U. There were a few ports of other popular third party games like Assassin's Creed, Batman, Mass Effect and Darksiders but people didn't get the console for those. Certainly better than what the 3DS had but still not fantastic, and it had to be fantastic because it had more competition. And it's the same deal again, if it had launched with Wind Waker HD and Mario Kart 8 in addition to those launch titles? It would have been entirely different.

If anything I'd argue that a list of 5 must-haves at launch is too much. Not because I'd expect a console to launch with that many games but because outside of the filler there are usually far less than 5 that matter. Hell, to do well you don't even need that many. Just two great games at launch is enough. Home Console or otherwise, the NX needs to have a launch lineup that includes two games which can convince consumers that they need that hardware. The last console to do that well was the Wii with Wii Sports and Twilight Princess.

1. Major New IP - And something that is appealing as far as Western gaming trends goes. They need to hire a Western studio (or put Retro to the task) and make something cutting edge and at least somewhere in line with popular gaming trends. Yes, that means something that doesn't have cartoony graphics. I'm talking a big high-budget action game- big sandbox world, detailed character models, hours of voice acting, and cinematics galore.

2. Sports - A really nice sports title could help fill out launch list and attract gamers. How about a new Excitebike? It's going to need to be a cut above the rest though. It will need superior gameplay and graphics.

3. The Next 3D Mario - I really can't believe Nintendo tried to get away with having NintendoLand and NSMBU (especially when an NSMB title for Wii just launched like 3 months prior) would be enough to attract gamers. Nintendo needs to take no chances and needs to put something major out at launch and 3D Mario is their best bet.

4. Mario Kart 8 - This is a major title and a lot of people that didn't buy a Wii U will have missed it. I think it belongs here, possibly with some tweaks to make it even nicer. Bringing over Mario Maker and Splatoon would probably also be worth it, but not all of them at launch, because you wouldn't want consumers to think the system has a library of old games.

5. Zelda Wii U

I think you need to check your facts. New SMB Wii like it or not was one of the best selling games on the Wii. It was only second to Mario Kart and Wii Sports on that system and it outsold Super Mario Galaxy by a factor of 3. And maybe it was a typo but it launched three years before SMB U not 3 months. At this stage New SMB U has done just as well on Wii U relative to other titles as the Wii version did. It's a game that sells bundled or not.

As I said earlier, at launch it's not about getting all of the big games out. Not only is that pretty much impossible but it also means that people are going to skip half of them. So really what they need are at least two key titles. One that has mass appeal and one that "rallies the base" both of which ideally should explain why people need to get the new hardware.

For example, here are some of the big pairs of early titles for each of Nintendo's systems:
NES: Super Mario Bros & Duck Hunt
Gameboy: Super Mario Land & Tetris
SNES: Super Mario World & F-Zero
N64: Super Mario 64 & Wave Race 64
GBA: Advance Wars & Wario Land 4
GC: Luigi's Mansion & Smash Bros
DS: Super Mario 64 DS & Wario Ware Touched
Wii: Wii Sports & Twilight Princess
3DS: Nintendogs & Pilotwings
Wii U: New SMB U & Nintendo Land

I'd argue that the only one on that list that falls well short was the 3DS launch. The Wii U and DS are close behind, everything else was good enough. If the NX is to have a good launch it doesn't need to go much further than these systems before it have. Ideally it'll do something close to what the Wii managed. If you could redo the Wii U launch you'd have maybe a pairing like Super Mario Maker and Nintendo Land. They were pretty close to a good launch I'd argue, it was the months after that which hurt them. That's the part that the NX needs to do better.

Ah, I was thinking of New Super Mario Bros. 2 on 3DS, not NSMBWii. Oops.

Anyway, I'm aware that NSMB sells more than 3D Mario. But that was during the Wii era. Notice that NSMBU didn't outsell SM3DW by nearly the same margin. The DKC reboot sold gangbusters on Wii... but its sequel had little impact on the Wii U. Wii Fit U and Wii Sports probably didn't sell well either. It's hard to tell though since they were mainly sold digitally. However, neither is in the top 20 of all time best sellers on the eShop, and both of those franchises sold gangbusters during the Wii era. What happened on the Wii =/= what happens on the Wii U.

A 3D Mario would get the gaming press and "core" gamers excited about the system. It doesn't matter if millions of more people bought NSMBWii during the Wii era, because the market has changed, and Nintendo's business strategy needs to follow. Hype sells.

@fascinatura: The attach rate of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze was bigger than Returns.

It's easy to say now that because NSMBU didn't outsell 3D World as much as NSMBWii outsold Galaxy, it wasn't a good launch title. From Nintendo's perspective when they started development of NSMBU in 2010/2011, it was going to be the title that would bring back the casual market in an instant.

@fascinatura:
New SMB was the best selling game on the DS, 5th on the Wii, 4th on the 3DS and 2nd on the Wii. It has performed similarly to Mario Kart on every one of those platforms. It has outperformed Smash Bros on every platform Smash has existed on. It has outperformed pretty much every game people have listed as "must haves" in this thread. We may not like getting the nth version of it but it's a game that sells, so it was objectively not a bad title to launch the system with.

Super Mario Maker would have been better obviously. And games like Splatoon and Mario Kart would have also been good fits. But New SMB U wasn't a bad launch title. And to repeat myself, the launch titles weren't the big issue. The problem was that by the time we got Mario Kart, Smash Bros, Mario, Zelda, Pikmin, DKC etc everyone had already given up on the Wii U and had moved on to the PS4. There was almost a full year where those ok-but-not-groundbreaking launch games were the ONLY games.

Well maybe this thread should be "What games does the Nintendo NX need in its first year?"

A new Metroid game, a new Paper Mario game, a new Super Mario Bros. game that really differs from the New Super Mario Bros. series, a new Animal Crossing and a Donkey Kong Country. But I'm going to buy the system (whatever it is) at launch anyways so I don't really care but I certainly hope it won't end up the thing that just stands there and is never used for the first few months that I have it (like the WiiU did).

Possibly. I just think that what we as fans want and what games make sense as launch titles aren't necessarily one and the same. I think New SMB U and Nintendo Land were decent as launch titles. Because ultimately a launch title needs to have mass appeal and be something that couldn't exist on the previous hardware. They weren't a perfect pair because New SMB U could have existed before the Wii U.... but they were close enough.

The question of mass appeal is easy. Whatever the NX is Nintendo can hit the mass appeal button with a 2D Mario, a party game or something along the lines of Mario Kart. It's the second part that's tricky. Well, that's not entirely true. If it's a portable it's easy to think of something that the 3DS wouldn't be able to handle. Very easy. But something the Wii U can't do? That's tricky.

I think the NX needs that falls biggest multi-plats, a AAA first-party game (probably Zelda U), a showcase game like Wii Sports and Nintendo Land if it has a new gimmick, NWMB or something that that sells about the same that can work as an alternative bundle, and a few smaller games. Nintendo can't release the biggest games of the console's life at launch, or its first year for that matter, because the games will cannibalize each others sales. Spacing them out over the lifetime of the console will keep it and its games' sales up, plus gamers won't be complaining about having nothing to play down the line; it's a win-win situation.

The difference is that the Wii U had ''nothing'' at launch. 3rd party games were a lot of ports, from PS3 and X360 games, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but those aren't the games that sell hardware. Nintendo's own games? New Super Mario Bros. U and Nintendo Land. Whilst I personally think that Nintendo Land was a brilliant little game, in the end it's just a party game and not for everyone. NSMBU was basically NSMBWii in HD. Pikmin 3 didn't arrive until summer, and that is again a pretty niche game, definitely not one of Nintendo's popular franchises. Wind Waker HD came next, a GameCube port. I think you could argue that 3D World was their first unique and popular game on the system, more than a year after its launch. Pikmin 3 and Wind Waker HD aren't bad games by any means, one of my favourites actually, but I can understand that those weren't enough to carry the Wii U from launch in late 2012 all the way to the holidays in 2013. I think they needed more than that. The Wii U had many great titles during its first year, but few system sellers, of course it didn't help either that a big chunk of their audience left the home console space all together.

I get the feeling Nintendo's going to go the Wii Sports route again. It has just been announced that Harmonix's Wii Sports clone "Beat Sports" is the Top Paid and Top Grossing app on Apple TV so it seems the casuals still like what made the Wii such a success.

I think the problem with the Wii U's launch lineup was that it didn't have a consistent vision that resonated with gamers. The lineup didn't really give gamers a good idea of what the Wii U was about or appeal to what gamers wanted, and there was a lot of confusion over what the Wii U was about for a while (and you could argue that not even Nintendo themselves knows). In light of this, I think they need to market the NX and its lineup in a way that gives it a clear direction that gamers can get on board with. In particular, I think they should show that you can play the NX the way you want to. Handheld or console, casual or hardcore, kiddie or mature, first or third party, whatever kind of game you want to play you can play them on NX, and the lineup would be diverse to show this. That would be the kind of vision and marketing that could make the NX appealing. So as far as the lineup goes, here would be a good example for what we should get within the first year:

-Some type of Wii Sports/Nintendo Land type of game
-3D Mario game of some sorts
-7th gen Pokemon games
-2D Metroid game
-New IP from Retro
-Twilight Princess HD
-Some type of mobile game(s)
-CoD game
-Assassin's Creed game
-Some type of EA Sports game

A lineup like this would be a real crowd pleaser that appeals to a broad range of interests while also not exhausting too many of their big IPs too soon, with series like NSMB, Mario Kart, Smash, Splatoon, Metroid Prime, Zelda, and DK showing up in 2018/2019.

@Bolt_Strike: Smash is 2020 at the earliest, most likely 2021.

@Bolt_Strike: Again I think it comes down to having a collection of games that offer new experiences. Either because they couldn't have existed on the existing platforms (Super Mario Maker, NintendoLand) or because they are significantly improved by the new hardware (Pikmin 3, Mario Kart 8).

It's probably too early what those games would be given that we don't know what the NX is yet. What it will be able to do that other products on the market can't. Or at the very least what it'll be able to do that Nintendo's current hardware can't. Until we know that we can only speculate what the games need to be based on what we assume the hardware might be.....

That's not what the Wii U did though, I don't think all of its games are evenly spaced out. The need of system sellers during its first year doesn't mean releasing all your bigger games during its first year. I know that's difficult to understand, but there's a difference.

• Pokemon Stadium 3
• Puzzle League
• Meteos
• an F-Zero spin-off
• Bomberman online

Well first of all I did say that it was an example, I was mainly trying to make the point that the lineup should be diverse. Sure, whatever hardware gimmick they come up with could affect their lineup, but there are several games that might not be affected by the new hardware at all and would still need to show up early because they drive sales, such as NSMB. Not every game should use a gimmicky controller, there are some games (especially third parties) which gamers and developers don't want Nintendo's funky controllers shoved down their throats.