Whilst Nintendo has some of the best franchises in gaming there are some genres that are practically nonexistent on the Wii U, most notably in the range of sports titles and FPS titles. Whilst they are not my favorite genres, they are very popular with the gaming masses and their absence may put them off the Wii U.
The lack of sports is largely due to EA boycotting the Wii U, as they have a virtual monopoly on the majority of sports. Neither 2K or Konami (who make up the remainder of sports titles) are willing to bring their games to the Wii U either as they don't think it'd be profitable (despite the fact that there would be no competition from EA).
As for FPS, besides the multiplatform games, the other consoles have their own FPS franchises, Sony with Killzone and Microsoft with Halo. Nintendo could have had something like Perfect Dark be their flagship FPS series but it went with Rare to Microsoft. On the Wii there was the 3rd party exclusive Red Steel, but poor sales of Red Steel 2 (which was actually pretty great) probably finished the series. Which leaves Nintendo with nothing (Zombi U and Metroid Prime are not FPS and shouldn't be either).
So given that the Wii U won't get the next FIFA, PES, Madden, NHL etc and is limited to the multiplatform COD for FPS maybe they should they look to making their own franchises or sign up some existing ones to be exclusive. I'm not talking about Mario sports here either (although they can be great too) but more serious titles that might attract the other gamers. One thing that always stands out in Nintendo titles is the quality, so if they applied the same standards to a sports or FPS title then maybe they could gain a following. It could be a great opportunity too, as people are becoming fed up with EA and could be interested in a more pure game.
My suggestions would be:
10 Yard Fight - American Football - A NES title by Nintendo, so they could make a new installment with a bit of nostalgia thrown in.
Techmo Bowl - American Football - A 3rd party title that seems to be fondly remembered.
International Superstar Soccer - Football - ISS by Konami (not PES) began on the SNES and continued on to the N64.
Timesplitters - FPS - A PS2 launch title, it was made by a number of the team who made Goldeneye on the N64 (it even used a modified Goldeneye engine), a Timesplitters 4 would be ideal for Nintendo and even better for the Wii U with the GamePad co-op option.
I can't think of any ice hockey titles that aren't by EA or 2K and no other FPS come to mind that'd resonate with Nintendo; so maybe some new IPs could be made.
So would these kinds of titles help the Wii U with the gaming masses?
I not now nor ever will care about the more serious sports titles but yeah it could use more FPS. It's a shame considering Wii pointer controls ftw. Ideally (out of somewhat recently released titles at least) Blood Dragon and Bioshock Infinite because those games are actually interesting. I already own the latter but I'd get Blood Dragon on Wii U easily.
Sports titles are hard to do and usually take around 3 years of iteration before you can get a good game. You also have to take into consideration that the most popular sports have their licenses locked up. At the end of the day Nintendo could make the best soccer sim ever but if I can't play as Arsenal or Chicago Fire I don't care.
While throwing Mario or the Wii Sports brand isn't the answer,I don't think Nintendo should go full on sim if they were to get into the sports game market. Stil I wouldn't mind Next Level Games being bought out to be Nintendo's sport studio.
Timesplitters 4 will never happen on Nintendo consoles since crytek wants on the bleeding edge of software, It says a lot about the state of the IP that crytek made generic Waface for their F2P game instead of using the timesplitters brand.
Metroid is as close as your going to get to a Nintendo FPS and a game taking the multiplayer component from the DS Hunters game would do pretty well and be different than the other ones. Really can't explain it but Halo and Killzone both play very differently than one another, with Halo well being Halo, and Killzone having this much more weighty purposely cumbersome gameplay. Metroid Prime Hunters is an Arena shooter in the vein of UT and Quake of old. Its fast based and every charcters plays differently in their Alt modes and special moves. You have to carefully learn the map and take into account who your team mates and opponets will pick and where each gun expansion will spawn.
WAT!
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Nevermind that fan project, which I think has been discussed about bringing it to Wii U, but some actual TimeSplitters HD remakes for the Wii U would be great. I know Crytek is all about pushing hardware performance, but can't they be about giving gamers want they want and making money, too? Would that be so bad? Plus, I think the Wii U is honestly the best place to release a TimeSplitters game right now. PCs, xbox and playstation all have plenty of FPS games. So even if TimeSplitters did come out for any of those systems, they would just get lost in the bunch. Now, the Wii U is a market that is missing out on some FPS action and I think the Nintendo audience is a good audience for TimeSplitters. TimeSplitters is more of a goofy, just for fun type of first person shooter, not trying to be hyper-realistic or serious. It just seems like a perfect fit.
Timesplitters - FPS - A PS2 launch title, it was made by a number of the team who made Goldeneye on the N64 (it even used a modified Goldeneye engine)
No it cannot have. That was a custom in-house engine designed by a second-party dev owned 49 percent by Nintendo for Goldeneye (and later re-used for Perfect Dark, no other games as far as I know though.)
The engine might have had a lot in common with the Goldeneye engine coming from much of the same dev team but come on.
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