Mahe

The games in the bundle are hit and miss. Some good ones, but some bad ones too. But at least at this price, it's easy to try them out if you're interested.

@khululy There is still Contra Rebirth on WiiWare. You need to get that, excellent game!

@alasdair91 People don't like the 3D, and usually turn it off. In addition, 2DS has sold something like 5 million systems in the West. That represents a massive chunk of the "3DS family" install base in the West. Games are better without the 3D.

@umegames Absolutely get the first one instead. This one is crap.

@Freeon-Leon Yeah, suuuuuure.

@VanillaLake If you think that "GameCube is considered by most people one of the best consoles ever", you're utterly delusional.

@Daldra Star Fox 64 sold over HALF A MILLION copies in Japan alone. And the N64 wasn't a popular console there, so the install base over Wii U wasn't much bigger.

In other news, Nintendolife employs some "modest" spinning in their sales figure articles.

@VanillaLake "GameCube was better than PS2 and is considered by most people one of the best consoles ever"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.... no.

@VanillaLake Yeah, I don't think even Iwata believed himself then. In the last years, Nintendo has been utterly confused and seemingly without any clue of what to do.

Question is, have they found their Wii insight again with NX, or is it just a continuation of Wii U errors and confusion?

@VanillaLake The Wii concept is still alive in Just Dance. Just watch how that series has kept selling on the original Wii all these years - despite Nintendo themselves cutting off all Wii support many years ago!

Also look at how many people kept buying old Wii games like Mario Kart Wii even after Nintendo's new games had stopped coming. The people wanted more Wii gaming, and Nintendo made a huge miscalculation in thinking that they would "upgrade" to Wii U - a console that so badly misses almost everything that made Wii great!

@VanillaLake The Wii U is completely opposite to the Wii. Despite the name, those two are two very different consoles with two very different concepts.

NX needs to be more like Wii and less like Wii U. Nintendo fumbled really badly in this gen.

This could be good.

@Freeon-Leon Even bad games have some fans. Most people don't like Nintendoland.

@Achoo Many people? Have you seen Nintendo sales lately? Hahahaha!

"Nintendo Land didn't make the Wii U top 20, but that's unsurprising as the majority of players in Europe likely had it for free with their system."

Nintendoland has been cut out from most bundles a long time ago. People just didn't want it, even at a budget price.

Games at the bottom of the Wii U top 20 sell miniscule amounts. Getting to that list should be completely trivial, but Nintendoland didn't manage even that.

@Henmii What do you mean, "half May"? Do you mean that in the sense of "May and half", since E3 is in June?

"time to finally retire those trusty Wii Remotes"

Never! Thinking about setting up a PC to use with Wiimotes. And will keep playing Wii games of course.

@readyletsgo It's rumored that Nintendo doesn't produce DS carts anymore, so that could explain the price hike if there aren't any more reprints of DS backlog coming anymore: http://nintendoeverything.com/rumor-nintendo-has-ceased-production-of-ds-cartridges-worldwide/

That debut is not impressive at all, it's a collapse. DQMJ and DQMJ2 sold around 700,000 copies in their first weeks on DS, and went on to sell over 1,500,000 copies both. DQMJ3 will be a far cry from those DS successes.

And speaking of collapse, look, Twilight Princess HD is out of the top 20 completely. Nobody wanted that downgraded port!

Aren't you glad that you got that crappy port in Twilight Princess HD, Wii U owners?

Agreed on so many points. Nintendo moving away from motion controls with the Wii U was a massive blunder, and it has made their game offerings worse. There's no reason to buy even ports like Twilight Princess HD when it's essentially a downgrade from the superior Wii version.

Look at Twilight Princess HD go!

@JohnnyC Wind Waker HD's worldwide "sales" were reached by console bundles and discounts, including the Mario Kart 8 promotion. A huge number of those copies were practically given away for free.

First, you had the price cut at the same time as the Wind Waker HD console bundles, so people who wanted a cheaper Wii U got the WWHD bundle. Second, those WWHD bundles actually didn't sell very well, so they had to be discounted further even despite the price cut to clear stock. These still counted as "sales" for WWHD. And then there's the Mario Kart 8 promotion, where WWHD was given for free only a few months after release, along such "gems" like Game & Wario.

Japan shows how much demand there actually was for Wind Waker HD, Game & Wario and other such Wii U releases: almost none. Those games flopped hard, and Nintendo had to pad their sales figures by giving those games away for free in the West.

A great system. Back then, Nintendo seemed like masters in designing handheld games.

@JohnnyC There was a lot of expectation for Majora's Mask 3D, but you wouldn't have believed that if you listened to some Nintendo/Windwaker apologists. They were saying that "Japan doesn't like Zelda anymore", "Zelda remakes don't sell well" and such, trying to excuse Wind Waker HD flopping. Those people couldn't explain why Zelda Musou/Hyrule Warriors exceeded expectations everywhere.

Now it's happening again with Twilight Princess HD. It's a bad port and not what people wanted, but some people are trotting out the old excuses again. "Japan/UK/The World doesn't like Zelda", "It's on an old system" (how old were 2DS/3DS when the Majora's Mask remake came out?) and so on.

@Expa0 Yeah. As it is, it's better to play this game on a DS.

@syrilram It's a remake of the first one, and a crappy one at that. The original has it beat 40 - 0.

It's a great game, but points should be docked for being forced to use the Gamepad with no other options. That controller is terrible, and it makes this release of Advance Wars DS not worth playing.

@JohnnyC In Japan's current hardware environment, tens of thousands of consoles is a huge deal. It means that just in a single week, Majora's Mask 3D DOUBLED what the 3DS was selling, and then there were lingering effects where Majora's Mask kept selling additional 3DS systems in the following weeks. These kinds of things build up. A game that not only will sell hundreds of thousands of copies but also tens of thousands of consoles is a big deal, and any platform holder would love to have titles like that on a steady basis. When it's a remake of an old game, and a system that has already been out for quite a while, it's even more impressive.

Majora's Mask 3D was also a major factor behind the New 3DS's big launch numbers in the USA. But when more games of Majora's Mask quality didn't follow, New 3DS sales plummeted and haven't recovered ever since.

Not having a proper new Wii Sports game for Wii U is telling of Nintendo's confusion. They just lost the plot completely this generation.

@JohnnyC Majora's Mask 3D bumped just the New 3DS XL up by 20,000 in Japan the week it was launched. For the whole 3DS family, the bump was closer to 30,000. New 3DS models were already doing relatively poorly back then, but Majora's Mask doubled their sales in a single week and gave more push in the following weeks as well.

The Nintendo fans here just keep making excuses that aren't based on reality. TPHD was a bad port and people didn't want it in the way that Nintendo made it. The poor performance of TPHD and its non-effect on hardware sales is Nintendo's fault.

@AlexSora89 Actually, the Japanese sales match pretty well proportionally with the West. Zelda hasn't usually been one of Nintendo's strongest series anywhere. There have been some high points like Twilight Princess, but when it comes to sales, most Zelda games have been mid-tier globally for Nintendo. Successful, but not mega-successful. Ironically, it looks like this poorly handled port of TP will be nega-successful, despite the success of the original.

@DiscoGentleman No it didn't. Check your math.

@Ryu_Niiyama @AlexSora89 How is Zelda unpopular in Japan? Twilight Princess sold well over half a million copies on the Wii. Majora's Mask 3D sold over 300 thousand copies in two weeks. When Nintendo puts out good Zelda games or ports, people will buy them.

The poor sales of Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD are completely deserved. Nobody wanted WWHD. TPHD was wanted, but Nintendo completely mishandled the port and alienated a large part of TP fans who could have been interested in an upgraded version, but not this downgrade.

Also, did you know that Mario 3D World actually sold pretty poorly in its opening week in Japan (in Mario standards)? It would have only barely beaten The Division, and that was in a holiday season when Wii U was enjoying a rare boost thanks to Wii Party U in Japan.

TPHD did better than WWHD, but it's still a disappointment, and shows how Nintendo mishandled this port. For comparison, Final Fantasy Type-0 HD sold just under 100 000 copies when it was released, a HD port of a PSP game that sold about the same as Twilight Princess on Wii. When Type-0 HD was released, the PS4 had only been out about a year in Japan, and its install base was about half of what the Wii U has now.

So what went wrong? Twilight Princess was obviously a good game on the Wii, but this port just didn't give most people any reason to buy it. Only a miniscule portion of Japanese Wii U owners bought the game. While Japanese owners have shown that they preferred this port to Wind Waker HD, it's still a poorly handled downport of a classic Wii game, and it seems most people have been happy to keep to their original Wii version.

Nintendolife is just going full force with the Nintendo apologism lately.

@VanillaLake Yeah. I was interested in this and would have bought it before I learned it didn't have motion controls. No point in playing this now, I'll stick to the Wii version.

@VanillaLake Well put. Nintendo got some extra money from TPHD, now it's going to plummet when the few people who were interested in this downgraded port have bought theirs.

@zool Yeah, in a way. TPHD is just a bad deal, most people have no reason to buy it.

Games like these show how the Wii U game selection is a complete joke.

The Nintendo Selects line was introduced on the Wii, and is even now continuing there. Nintendo Selects has in part been a response to the continuing demand for Wii games. There are still millions of Wii owners out there, looking for games, and besides new titles like Just Dance 2016, they may well be interested in classic titles at budget prices like Donkey Kong Country Returns.

However, especially on the Wii U, even a lineup like Nintendo Selects can't do much. The Wii U install base is very limited, and the selection of games available for the budget lineup is also very limited. Nintendo will quickly run out of Wii U titles to feature, as well as Wii U owners who would buy these games even at budget prices. Trying to cram Wind Waker HD down customers' throats just won't work after all the bundles and discounts that the game already had.

It's a missed opportunity, and makes the Wii version still the definitive version of the game. It also sets a worrying precedent about current Nintendo. It seems they haven't learned a thing from the failures of the Wii U.

These games will flop on the New 3DS, even despite their classic status. Sure, some people will try them out at launch, but sales will likely diminish quickly after that. The small New 3DS install base and uncompensated high prices will make most people stick with Wii VC or other versions.

This is probably why Nintendo has priced them like that, too. They know that not many people will bite, so they will collect the money from those few who do.

Meanwhile, the general 3DS malaise with low game sales means that these will still appear on the eShop charts. Few people are buying 3DS games, so VC titles can chart even with measly sales.

@joey302 Sega supported Wii Virtual Console even in the late stages with games like Wonder Boy in Monster Land, Monster World IV, Super Hang-On and Super Street Fighter 2 (Sega published the Megadrive/Genesis version on Virtual Console). Don't you think Sega would have supported Wii U VC if there was actual money there?

That Mario promotion is actually pretty good. Nintendo doing something right for a change.

@sillygostly You do realize that this game would make Fire Emblem look bad, right?

@sillygostly This game flopped disastrously in Japan already. Nintendo probably wants to make the Fire Emblem connection less obvious now, but at the same time, they're starved for games on Wii U, so they'll just push out any old crap they can.

@NodesforNoids The Wii U was still in 4th place with 5000 consoles sold, when the other consoles sold tens of thousands, with no Wii U games in the top 10 and only one in the top 20. Calling that any sort of victory is just delusional.

And that goes for Nintendolife with their misinformative title too. "Nintendo Hardware Sales Climb"? Seriously.

@foodmetaphors Definitely get the Wii version. You will want to play that game on a big TV screen.

Hahahahaha! Yeah, right!

The New 3DS is a flop. Most people don't want it. Just accept it.