Yeah, I can agree with that. Unless Nintendo did something really crazy off the wall like saying it'd be all digital or something similar to the Xbox one. But if the rumors are true, I think the reveal won't affect overall sales very much.
As I said, people make this claim but they can't back it up. They just vaguely gesture to the Wii U and talk about how bad their decisions around it were. But get specific. What puzzling decisions were made in regards to the Wii U? List them out.
I can think of a few:
-The Gamepad itself. It isn't really capable of much that the DS and the 3DS weren't, and it caused a lot of problems for the Wii U including cost, confusion among non-Nintendo fans, and third party support.
-Subpar gaming lineup. There's a lot of different factors in this (the games didn't draw from the new hardware features enough, there were too many droughts, there were too many spinoffs and not enough main entries, etc.), but the games they released this generation in general failed to draw in anyone except core Nintendo fans, and several of them have been commercial failures.
-Mismanagement with VC. Starting from scratch and forcing people to buy games they already own all over again was not a popular decision among fans.
There's also a couple of other things Nintendo's done with its hardware and services such as region locking and staggering regional releases, poor support of MyNintendo, and draconian policies with fan content that make me question whether or not they can make good decisions with their hardware and software and properly promote it.
@Bolt_Strike
I'll give you the GamePad as a "bad decision" even though I'm not convinced it was. Ultimately I think that the concept was good it just didn't take as well as it could have. Hindsight is 20:20. But I'll give you that one.
On the software lineup? I don't agree. There was an issue early on with not enough software out of the gate. Nintendo Land, as fantastic a game as it was, didn't spark people's interest in the way Wii Sports did. And while we can complain about New SMB U being a launch game I think it's kinda hard to complain given the sales of the series. But once they got over that? The output from Nintendo was solid..... until they started to pull resources away from the Wii U in early 2015. Which in the long run was a good move.
Third party support? That wasn't a decision on Nintendo's part. Third parties ultimately don't care about the hardware as much as people think. What they care about is sales. If there's a huge install base? They'll port the games. If the Wii U had sold have as well as the Wii did in those first two years? And by that I mean literally 20mill units sold by Dec 2014 rather than the 9mill they sold? Third party's couldn't have ignored it. But it didn't, so by that stage even Nintendo was pulling back.
The VC? Well now I know you're scraping the bottom of the barrel. I think of myself as one of the most vocal people about the VC on these forums. Particularly in regards to the lack of cross-buy. So I think it should say something that I think you're grasping as straws with that one. Frankly the VC doesn't even need to exist. People are going to complain about it regardless because some feel they're entitled to those games for free. Hell, people complained when at the launch of the service they sold VC titles for 30c each!
Some playlists: Top All Time Songs, Top Last Year
An opinion is only respectable if it can be defended. Respect people, not opinions
@BiasedSonyFan
The Wii U was not a Virtual Boy or Saturn. It was more a Dreamcast or Gamecube. There weren't really a series of huge mistakes that caused the Wii U to become a failure. The Wii U did poorly because it was the wrong product for the market as it was. Nintendo misread what the consumers wanted. They rolled the dice and came up with nothing.
Now you guys can rake over the coals if you want. You can come up with all sorts of things and point at them as the reasons why the Wii U failed. You can point out what Nintendo could have done differently. You might be right, you're probably not. We can't exactly test your different decisions in an alternate universe. But at the end of the day? What you guys are saying here amounts to three things:
Nintendo made a bad decision having the Wii U not sell well Nintendo made a bad decision when third parties moved resources away from the failing Wii U Nintendo made a bad decision moving their resources away from the failing Wii U
I'd argue that the first two weren't decisions Nintendo made. The third one was the right call.
Some playlists: Top All Time Songs, Top Last Year
An opinion is only respectable if it can be defended. Respect people, not opinions
But the discussion here isn't really about that. Instead we're talking about what impact a reveal has on the actual sales of a console. And really, I don't think it matters that much. There are extreme examples where it has mattered like the PS3's E3 2006 or the XBOne used game/kinect fumbles. But usually it doesn't. Ultimately what matters more is price, content and marketing. The reveal is certainly part of the marketing but it's only one part.
I'd even argue that the XOne's biggest issue was the $500 price tag. If they sold the system for $400 (just like PS4) with the Kinect included, then I think they might've gotten a better start. When people see two systems (and don't care about the Kinect), they're going to pick the cheapest. Same is true for the hefty price tag of the PS3 at launch. Of course that's not to say that the reveals and all don't matter. It just that for you average Joe who wants to play a couple of multiplat games, they don't even know about E3 or any of that. They walk into the store and walk out with the cheapest system that plays their game of choice.
But the discussion here isn't really about that. Instead we're talking about what impact a reveal has on the actual sales of a console. And really, I don't think it matters that much. There are extreme examples where it has mattered like the PS3's E3 2006 or the XBOne used game/kinect fumbles. But usually it doesn't. Ultimately what matters more is price, content and marketing. The reveal is certainly part of the marketing but it's only one part.
I'd even argue that the XOne's biggest issue was the $500 price tag. If they sold the system for $400 (just like PS4) with the Kinect included, then I think they might've gotten a better start. When people see two systems (and don't care about the Kinect), they're going to pick the cheapest. Same is true for the hefty price tag of the PS3 at launch. Of course that's not to say that the reveals and all don't matter. It just that for you average Joe who wants to play a couple of multiplat games, they don't even know about E3 or any of that. They walk into the store and walk out with the cheapest system that plays their game of choice.
Exactly, price is probably the most important factor for most consumers and has been for a long time.
"Gamers" likes to talk about power and pixel count, but the bottom line is that if they really would care so much for power, they would have bought PCs a long time ago. I also think Sony/MS are overpriced compared to PCs when you factor in things such as price on games and subscriptions, but people usually just look at the initial cost, not life-time.
@Therad To be fair, ''your average Joe'' isn't the guy that talks about specs of a console. When I friend of mine bought an Xbox One to play FIFA, when he has an expensive gaming rig at home, he told me that he had heard that FIFA looks better on consoles. These people have no idea what they're talking about and just buy what's popular, the things that get the biggest marketing push or whatever is available for the lowest price.
@Octane To be fair to your friend, I've never heard of a FIFA game having been optimised for PC. Maybe it's happened in the last couple of years, I've not kept up on the series, but just a few years ago PC version was basically a port of the previous year's console version.
You guys had me at blood and semen.
What better way to celebrate than firing something out of the pipe?
@gcunit I think you're thinking of PES 17; Konami screwed another PC port, that looks horrible indeed on PC. FIFA looks great on PC. Just as good as the console version at least. On similar settings you can't see a difference. Must've been a while ago then, because the last few years I haven't heard anyone complaining about the PC version.
@BiasedSonyFan
The Wii U was not a Virtual Boy or Saturn. It was more a Dreamcast or Gamecube. There weren't really a series of huge mistakes that caused the Wii U to become a failure. The Wii U did poorly because it was the wrong product for the market as it was. Nintendo misread what the consumers wanted. They rolled the dice and came up with nothing.
Now you guys can rake over the coals if you want. You can come up with all sorts of things and point at them as the reasons why the Wii U failed. You can point out what Nintendo could have done differently. You might be right, you're probably not. We can't exactly test your different decisions in an alternate universe. But at the end of the day? What you guys are saying here amounts to three things:
Nintendo made a bad decision having the Wii U not sell well Nintendo made a bad decision when third parties moved resources away from the failing Wii U Nintendo made a bad decision moving their resources away from the failing Wii U
I'd argue that the first two weren't decisions Nintendo made. The third one was the right call.
No that's not what it is. If you're going to boil it down that much, it comes down to the Wii U being a poorly thought out concept. It wasn't innovative (it was just a DS/3DS in console form) and it was all risk, little reward. Their decisions with the Wii U's core concept is what resulted in those first two things happening, anyone could've seen that coming.
@Bolt_Strike
People said the same sort of stuff about the DS and the Wii. Nintendo are a company that especially in recent years has taken risks. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn't. Using 20:20 hindsight to argue that it was a bad call? Well sure, you can do that now. But that doesn't mean it was a bad call at the time.
I'll put it this way. I thought the PSP Go was a good idea when it was first announced. I thought the no-used-game strategy for the XBOne was a good move. I thought the Kinect and Media functionality would be a hit. I thought the PS4 was kinda boring. I thought the Wii U was a novel concept with little content. I thought the Vita was DoA, I thought the 3DS would do ok despite smartphones.
Going way back I thought the Wii was going to be a smash hit. I thought the DS was yesterday's news because "people these days" carried around phones with snake/tetris. I didn't understand why the 360 existed when PCs were a thing. I thought the PS2 was way too expensive and would flop. I thought the HDD in the original XBox was going to be a big deal in the long run.
Some people would have disagreed with me about all of those thoughts at the time. Sometimes I was right sometimes I wasn't. Though compared to me? Nintendo has a better track record of getting it right. So I'm not going to sit here and judge their tea-leaf reading with the advantage of hindsight.
I wouldn't be surprised if NF has some info about the NX reveal. They were the first ones to tweet about Mario Party: Star Rush and the new amiibo (+ some other stuff I don't remember right now) when the E3 presentation said nothing about them. They have professional staff so I don't think they'd just write that just to get attention. And it's not like Nintendo has never given info away in advance to some trusted partners. Anyone remember Cloud reveal for Smash and how JWittz and Jirard the Completionist got to see the Direct beforehand? They teased a bit before the reveal too. I'm not saying this is a confirmation of anything but I trust them much more than any rumors that have circulated before.
Check out my Gaming Nonograms thread here on Nintendo Life if you are into Picross or other similar games.
Nintendo NX To Be 3-4 Times Stronger Than Wii U; Multiple Sources Confirm NVIDIA Pascal Tegra, No 4K Upscaling, HDR – Rumor
September has come and gone, and there still hasn’t been any Nintendo NX reveal. The secrecy surrounding the new console from Nintendo is making fans more and more curious about it, and we may have managed to learn some new details thanks to some of these curious fans asking one informed insider multiple questions.
Not too long ago, Direct Feed Games shared a new video where he answered questions that have been posed on Twitter regarding the Nintendo NX. While he obviously couldn’t answer several questions, some of these answers did reveal some interesting new details. For starters, Direct Feed Gaming revealed that the Nintendo NX will be 3,4 times more powerful than the Wii U in terms of Gigaflops, also adding that developers won’t have to deal with any technical hurdle if they want to port PS4 and Xbox One games to the NX, as the console will support Unreal Engine 4 and other modern game engines. Multiple sources have also confirmed to him that the NX will be powered by an NVIDIA Pascal Tegra, which doesn’t tell us much other than the fact that NVIDIA is going to be involved. Direct Feed Gaming sounds pretty confident in saying this, so it will be interesting to see if the company is indeed involved in the NX as rumors have been saying these past few months.
Direct Feed Gaming has also been asked about possible 4K upscaling and HDR support in the vein of the Xbox One S. According to the insider, it could be technically possible, but he doesn’t believe Nintendo will be going for it. Direct Feed Gaming also doesn’t believe any of the features that have been recently patented by Nintendo will be making it into the NX, as the only “hook” of the console will be its hybrid nature.
As it often is with rumors, we must take everything that’s been revealed in the video with a grain of salt until an official confirmation comes in. Still, Direct Feed Gaming revealed the Nintendo NX hybrid nature even before Eurogamer did, so he definitely has access to inside information.
The Nintendo NX will launch in all regions during March 2017.
The current president of Nintendo correctly predicted that the Wii U would not sell well. How is that hindsight bias? There were many reasons to believe that the Wii U would struggle commercially when it was released, not after the fact.
People like to pretend that Kimishima was the only sane mind midst a bunch of lunatics when they launched the Wii U. All he said was that the Wii U needed to be marketed right if it ever wanted to surpass the Wii sales. That was going to be a tough sale regardless. He's right about that, but I don't think he was the only one;
"In an internal sales representative meeting, someone projected that we would sell close to 100 million Wii U systems worldwide. The thinking was that because Wii sold well, Wii U would follow suit. I said that, since the Wii had already sold so well, we need to clearly explain the attraction of the Wii U if we are to get beyond that and sell the new system."
@BiasedSonyFan
I was going to make a long post in response but @Octane beat me to it. Basically, he never said that. Or at least not in that sort of context. Basically the point he made was that whatever followed the Wii would underwhelm because the Wii was lightning in a bottle.
@SLIGEACH_EIRE
It's interesting. Though it's basically just repeating the original Eurogamer article once more. Which either gives more credence to the Eurogamer article or is just some easy recycling of news.
Tegra Pascal is older than Parker? Would this be in the same ballpark as the Xbox One? Not putting much credit in this rumour, but even if it is ARM based, it's not a major hurdle to porting per se, it's more important that it supports the newer game engines and the documentation for programmers is thorough and intuitive. ARM is ubiquitous nowadays, every code monkey should be bananas about it. It's not a fringe technology like IBM POWER or SPARC.
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