Gaming Nintendo Confirms Wii U Has Flopped, Slashes Sales Forecast By ~70%

[blaisedinsd]

Well there you go. Wii is completely under rated by many. It's gaming library is very impressive (Both in quality and quantity boosted by shovel ware).

It was the hot thing for awhile but the Wii Sports motion control hype has little to do with how many copies of Mario Kart Wii were sold, or even how many copies of Wii Fit that were sold. You almost would have to consider Wii Fit a separate fad and from an article I was reading it was favored by fitness experts as the best fitness software on any console (well this was talking about Wii Fit U, but it was of the opinion it was mostly the same and not saying it was a huge improvement over the original outside of the fit meter and gamepad/ off tv features). Has any console had the ridiculous riches of two killer 3D Mario games? Galaxy and Galaxy 2 are amazing games. The virtual console service allowed access to so many generations of great classics as well. Isn't Wii Sports the best selling video game of all time? Shouldn't that exempt if from being labelled as a fad? If anything labeling it a fad should not be done pejoratively. Also the motion control fad was adopted by its competition and last I looked Xbox made it a major part of its new console and PS4 is still selling it's camera thing.....if its still being included in the newest gen 7 years later should it be called a fad? When it is a huge part of the phone gaming market should be called a fad? (may as well call touchscreens a fad too) And what about the huge success of Wii Sports resort 3 years later? Is a fad something that is still going strong 3 years after the original? It is hard to say that the Wii is not the greatest nintendo console ever. It is the best selling. Had the longest cycle and more flagship releases as a result. All of its successes are console exclusives pretty much. First N home console with BC. Access to tons of great legacy software and you can softmod it to play anything else not available officially from the VC service.

Your lack of respect for the wii damages your credibility as a gamer.

 

[Foxi4]

Wii is completely under rated by many.

There we go again, the Nintendo Martyrdom Syndrome. How is it underrated if it sold the most units throughout the last generation of consoles? I don't understand why "Nintendo Fan(boys)" think that they're poor and opressed by the gaming community when they're its substantial part. The only people that put you down are you yourselves.

 

[FAST6191]

Not my precious gamer credibility....... it was all I had. On the other hand I would be delighted to not be recognised as a gamer.

I am really not entirely sure what you want by way of a response. If you enjoyed it then... so what really, it does not really impact upon what is being discussed here. Can't say I would suggest a wii to anybody really myself, maybe back when if they were looking for cheap and easily hackable console though there is hardly anything in it now, as it lacks much in the way of general appeal and most of what it offered I could probably get an equivalent for elsewhere. To end it on a slightly more civil note I will go with the usual "If you enjoyed it, great. You probably did not hurt anybody in doing so and that is all there really is.".

 

[blaisedinsd]

There we go again, the Nintendo Martyrdom Syndrome. How is it underrated if it sold the most units throughout the last generation of consoles? I don't understand why "Nintendo Fan(boys)" think that they're poor and opressed by the gaming community when they're its substantial part. The only thing that puts you is you yourselves.

I guess you didn't read the posts dismissing the Wii's success as a fad.

There was some context you missed their buddy. You are making the same point I was, but for some reason you are thinking it's a counter point.

Not my precious gamer credibility....... it was all I had. On the other hand I would be delighted to not be recognised as a gamer.

I am really not entirely sure what you want by way of a response. If you enjoyed it then... so what really, it does not really impact upon what is being discussed here. Can't say I would suggest a wii to anybody really myself, maybe back when if they were looking for cheap and easily hackable console though there is hardly anything in it now, as it lacks much in the way of general appeal and most of what it offered I could probably get an equivalent for elsewhere. To end it on a slightly more civil note I will go with the usual "If you enjoyed it, great. You probably did not hurt anybody in doing so and that is all there really is.".

I am just saying that dismissing the success of the console as a fad is a lack of respect for it's place in the history of gaming regardless of the personal enjoyment you got from it or your opinion of it.

You don't think the fad label was being applied pejoratively?

 

[Foxi4]

What FAST6191 is trying to say is that the Wii, as much as it was an incredibly fun console to play on, lacked the general gamer appeal. Most of the big budget productions did not see the light of day on Wii shores due to the fact that it was grossly underpowered. The usual gamer went the PS3/360/PC route wheras the Wii was reserved for those "unique" experiences.

I love my Wii and I don't regret buying it, but I acknowledge its shortcomings. After going through the considerably small amount of must-play titles, it devolved into a party game machine, which is perfectly fine by my standards since I often organized gaming nights with friends where we'd sit down, have a couple of beers and play Mario Kart or something along those lines, I took it with me to larger parties like New Year's Eve since it was portable and well-suited for a Just Dance music box, but it lacked the "core" appeal. No Skyrim, no Fallout, no Battlefield, no big name titles from third-party aside from Call of Duty and Force Unleashed, which was a different game on the Wii anyways.

That's not to say that the system was "bad", but I often say that the Wii U is what the Wii should've been at the time of its release, at least specs-wise. It simply didn't have a chance to compete with the stronger systems, which is why Nintendo purists missed out on a whole lot of triple-A titles during that generation of consoles. Whoever wanted to play stuff "beyond" the usual Nintendo offering had to own two systems - this is okay if you're hardcore about your gaming, but for the usual consumer this is not an ideal situation. Customers generally want to have one box that does all they need it to do in terms of gaming, and if that box fails to deliver, they are dissatisfied and may lose faith in the brand.

I really do believe that the Wii U has a lot of issues on the market purely because it wears the three scarlet letters - "Wii". There's a big chance that a lot of Wii owners who bought a Wii which then gathered dust simply don't want to jump into the Nintendo train anymore - they don't want to miss out on games anymore, and Nintendo needs to show them that they won't by stimulating third party development for the system.

I guess you didn't read the posts dismissing the Wii's success as a fad.

There was some context you missed their buddy. You are making the same point I was, but for some reason you are thinking it's a counter point.

The Wii was hugely successful because of motion controls - the exact same motion controls that lost their casual appeal today. Of course it was a fad, to an extent at least. Motion controls were something new and exciting - they have been done in the past, but not as successfuly and not as the sole control scheme of a system. People wanted "in" on that and now they had their fill. Now that smartphone gaming is spreading like wildfire, previous non-core Wii users don't need a new system for their games - they can play their games on their phones.

 

[pwsincd]

i come back 10 pages later and your still banging on about it.. same posts reworded.. ffs

 

[blaisedinsd]

Right, the Wii struggling later in its life due to being under powered was my point as well. Nintendo should have released a successor sooner, perhaps kept the motion plus as a feature of the new system, but the Wii had done so well for so long even though it was underpowered it is no wonder Nintendo stuck with it as long as they did. If Wii U came out in 2010 it probably would have done better than it is so far and Nintendo would have at least had a console to run the big third party titles on the same level as the other consoles. The price point was a big factor in the Wiis success though, so I don't know if having a Wii U powerful type of device instead of the Wii would have yielded the same success.

Motion controls as a fad is debatable since they are still very much with us in new platforms and in the casual gaming arena with smartphones and tablets that all have it. Its just not an exclusive thing to the Wii anymore.

It is also very normal for a household to have more than one home console these days. The majority of households with a home console have more than one. I have been to many strangers houses where they have a PS3, 360, and a Wii all set up in the living room. I probably can't think of a single household that I have ever encountered where they don't have more than one of those 3. Only one buddy I know that pretty much only plays Madden is the only one and he is basically a bachelor with no family. He has PS3, and he has more than one of them.

 

[slingblade1170]

In my own personal opinion I don't think the gamepad was a bad idea, i actually enjoy it a lot but Nintendo should have pulled away from the Wii name and made the gamepad an accessory and not a vital part of the system. Nintendo should have released the console with a traditional controller like the pro controller and up the specs to somewhere closer the X1 & PS4, maybe a quad over a tri and more RAM would have been good enough. The name isn't appealing at all, it should have been something cool and easily recognizable for the U.S & Japan.

 

[blaisedinsd]

I agree, the wii name hurts the new console more than it helps because of the last few years where the wiis horsepower was a major issue. The wii u coming out only slightly more powerful than ps3 and 360 while their successors were nearly here has many feeling wii u is just as under powered.

I personally don't feel that's the case. Xbone and ps4 don't currently have anything graphically that knocks your socks off compared to their predecessors. With the well established ps3 and 360 install bases I don't think wii u is going to be significantly underpowered for years. Right now many new games are still coming out on the older platforms too and it will likely be this way for a few years. There is multi platform gameplay footage that most would be hard pressed to tell which game is PS4 and which is P3 with out doing detailed side by side comparisons.

 

[DonnyKD]

I love how people with little business skills pretend to know business.

Using stocks as a measure of anything? Really?

Yeah, getting rid of the GamePad will solve everything. Its obviously the problem 'cause its new and stuff.

MK8 and SSB4 won't help the Wii U? So we're just going to ignore the fact that Nintendo games are much more popular than the N64 and GC days.

Also, I didn't know Mario games had two months to reach the bulk of its sales. Obviously the rest did!

 

[osirisjem]

I love how people with little business skills pretend to know business.
Using stocks as a measure of anything? Really?

I love how people like you pretend things are fine when the Wii U is flopping so badly, Nintendo may have released it's last Home console.

So by your analysis, the Wii U is doing great, it just needs to release MK8. You seem to imply MK8 will drive console sales. Well ... we will see.

 

[blaisedinsd]

I think the point being made is mainly that even if wii u is the worst performing home console Nintendo has ever made that they will still be fine. It would take more than that for them to leave the business.

 

[FAST6191]

I think the point being made is mainly that even if wii u is the worst performing home console Nintendo has ever made that they will still be fine. It would take more than that for them to leave the business.

Nintendo's business analysts would then need to be fired if they thought like that. Give or take big research years or downswings in economies you never really want to take a loss.

 

[blaisedinsd]

Nintendo has taken losses less than sony or Microsoft has with there game consoles and they have been doing it a lot longer.

 

[FAST6191]

Nintendo has taken losses less than sony or Microsoft has with there game consoles and they have been doing it a lot longer.

I am going to have to find some numbers there as this could well be one of those "common knowledge that really isn't" situations. Until such a time...

What does that mean though? No small part of Microsoft's plans with the consoles seem to be to keep their programming technologies relevant (stuff like directX, their C# implementations and some lower level things) and Sony is not in an altogether different boat.

 

[blaisedinsd]

We established in this thread that Nintendo has been profitable for 28 of the last 30 years basically. They also have huge amounts of cash and even profited on the gamecube.

Everyone knows Xbox has been a Microsoft money pit and sony lost money on PS3 and overall as a company has huge losses rather frequently from what I have seen and read. This is a big reason these companies have pressure to spin off their games divisions.

 

[Ray Lewis]

I thought ps3 reached profitability? 360 never did?

 

[slingblade1170]

I'm sure Nintendo will be fine but I hope they do not resort to mobile or an app only market. Even if the Wii U is and stays a flopped system i'll be happy if Nintendo shrugs it off and creates a new system when its time and keep giving me their fine games that I can only get from them.

Where the hell is Star Fox & Metroid?

 

[Foxi4]

I'm just going to drop this here for funny purposes:

Spoiler

I'm not saying that this is a negative trend or anything... but this is a negative trend... ;O;

 

[DinohScene]

Well ninty, hope you stop focusing purely on families now.