crazycrazydave

@D3athBr1ng3r187 Sony have been having losing a lot of money over the years as a result of the PS3 (although they are profiting from it now) as well as the PS Vita (which seems to be on an upward trend in Japan). They only made a profit this year by selling off some of their assets(such as their headquarters in New York).

Although I didn't explain it well in my comment, I am impartial to Sony, and a fan of Nintendo and Valve. I actually dislike Microsoft at the moment despite being a PC gamer, they have made many horrible decisions over the past few years. If I had to choose between Microsoft or Sony this gen, I would choose Sony.

Valve's Steambox could become a legitimate threat to all the consoles due to being more open and having extremely cheap games (via Steam). With lots of marketing and deals with manufacturers, it could steal customers away from Sony and Microsoft and potentially Nintendo too.

I'm not saying the Wii U is the "Grand Jewel" of anything. I am interested in one, but I don't own one now precisely because of it's many problems (no unified account, 3rd parties abandoning it, utter lack of advertising, no games that interest me, etc). I am saying that Nintendo is far richer than Microsoft and Sony's gaming divisons, and they could easily survive at the moment. Microsoft and Sony generally make losses on their gaming divisons and are kept afloat by profits in other areas.

Finally, the environment was different back when the PS3 and Xbox 360 was a year or 2 in. Digital distribution on PC wasn't a big thing back then and so the consoles still seemed quite ideal at that point for the big name games. The Xbox One and PS4 however consoles to me seem like glorified PCs and because of their PC architecture, a lot of multiplatform games will make it to PC too. Plus they could end up competing with their earlier iterations too.

Unified account system announcement please.

Nintendo due to their innovations are the most likely to survive compared to Microsoft and Sony. I think the interest in home consoles is waning as a whole (I personally think PCs and Steam Machines will begin to eat into Xbox and PS sales, as well as the increasingly popular tablet PCs.) Nintendo always has innovative features and First party titles that sell their systems. This plus the odd third party exclusive is why I buy Nintendo systems. They have a lot of work to do however, but overall I feel they are not in any position to be worried about compared to it's competitors (especially Sony).

It's good to see the Wii U actually selling well. All Nintendo needs to do this time is to maintain momentum. I will be taking the plunge as soon as I see a release date for Smash Bros or the new Zelda.

Afroman.

The sooner EA dissolve and sell their development studios to those who will do something with them, the better.

@MadAussieBloke You know what I mean. The selection on Wii is actually pretty good, just hampered by the 50hz conversions that we used to get back in the day. A selection like that with Saturn, Dreamcast and Gamecube added in would be the bees knees.

If they properly emulated the Virtual Console releases the first time around, I wouldn't care less about buying games from the Wii U shop. There needs to be a dedicated team at Nintendo that handles all the releases because the rate at which we get new games is utterly pathetic.

Have a "game of the week" sale like the Apple App Store does on any Virtual Console, download or retail game. If Nintendo won't do it, a 3rd party or indie developer will enjoy the exposure on the front of the eShop. Reduce the price of a game on the eShop after a year, and then again after another year. The 50% off Monster Hunter 3 on 3DS and Wii U is the sort of deal that will sell lots of units from the eShop and encourage downloads. It doesn't need to be low price all the time, but it needs to get reduced around Summer and Christmas temporarily and permanently after a year or two have passed.

As for physical games, accessories and consoles, a similar (although not as much as drastic) temporary sale should be in effect, especially around Christmas and Summer. They should price their merchandise just a little above what most retailers would sell it for, but offer Club Nintendo coins (or whatever the system is, I don't have one myself) in exchange for paying a slightly higher price. You can get it cheap, or you can get coins to spend on cool things.

Speaking of an account, a unified account system with cross download compatibility on Virtual Consoles and some games on both Wii U and 3DS would seal the deal, with Club Nintendo coins being abolished for a monetary value and tied to each account set up.

There you go Nintendo, make like Steam a little, and you might divert me away from my gaming PC for a bit.

I think this could only be good news for Europeans who don't get a lot of Atlus games. Hopefully Altus will release some of their older games on Steam or the eShop.

While I'm not a huge fan of the Grand Theft Auto series, I will point out that substituting Wind Waker for an open world game like GTA is not a good idea. One of the most disappointing aspects of Wind Waker for me was how little there was on most of the islands in the game. I'm pretty sure 6 of the 35 islands of the game is just a rock with a 20 Rupee treasure chest on it. If Wind Waker had lots of stuff on these islands that you could access relatively early in the game, it would be much higher in my favourite Zelda games. It sticks far too closely to the formula introduced by Ocarina of Time and it suffers as a result. I was hoping that the HD edition would add more to some of these barren islands but it doesn't seem that way according to what I've read about it so far.

Don't want to drop the price? Bundle more games with it. The premium would sell at Christmas if you bundled Nintendoland and Wind Waker HD/SM3DW in it for the same price as they are selling the Premium now. Even bundle one of the games released this summer if you don't want to detract sales from the new releases.

That is the scariest picture of Iwata I've ever seen. He looks as though he has been beheaded. 0_0

Of course download games are overpriced on consoles. Last time I checked Xbox Live shop, Borderlands 2 was £50 (about a year ago). About that time, the game was being sold for about £30 in shops. As I write this comment, it's £7 on Steam for PC. Nintendo needs to have a summer and Christmas sale for it's eShop games. 50% off for games that have been on the eShop for over a year or two, and 75% off after 3 years. A drop in price could generate interest in games that have sold not as anticipated or with a small amount of physical copies. New releases for Wii U should be priced about £40. I am predominantly a PC gamer (owning a 360 and Wii as recent consoles and planning on getting a Wii U) and part of this is digital games being so cheap on distribution services such as Steam.

Why would anyone want to believe this guy? He does make a fair point about third party support and Nintendo being a "second console", but does he really believe that no one is going to come back to Nintendo after the launch of the other consoles is out of the way? Plus, does he really think Xbox One will sell when Microsoft doesn't give a flying toss about it's customers and is £70 more expensive than the PS4?

Yay! Exposure at long last!

While I wouldn't bother with home console region locks, the 3DS being region locked is ludicrous, and the reason why my DS library will always be bigger than my 3DS. It needs to be removed from handhelds.

The problem I see is that the 3rd party developers were happy to port their older games onto the Wii U, for full price and expect it to sell, even though most people interested will buy the often superior version on another platform for cheaper if they haven't already played it (EA with Mass Effect 3 on Wii U is a prime example). I think 3rd party games should have simultaneous releases on current games, and if the game itself is a year or two old, make it far superior than the other platforms. Nintendo also needs to convince 3rd parties to ensure multiplatform releases make it to their system, but also exclusive games for the Wii U (even if it's just 1) and then if it doesn't sell they can properly justify the lack of interest.

Super Smash Bros, Monolith's X and surprisingly, Wonderful 101. Didn't really like the look of it before, but it impressed me seeing it in motion.

I would have thought the simple use of the gamepad would suffice.