Can Nintendo Court the Casuals Again? 132
An anonymous reader sends this quote from Eurogamer:
"Do you remember the last time? When the Wii launched at the tail end of 2006, it was to an air of excited curiosity that went well beyond the borders of core gamers, with Nintendo conjuring what ran close to a full-blown phenomenon. ... Nintendo's masterstroke, of course, has been resurrecting the ultimate hardcore poster girl with the announcement that Bayonetta 2 is heading exclusively to the Wii U. There's something slightly incongruous about an over-sexed, incredibly violent action game rubbing shoulders with Mario and co., but then again that's exactly what makes the proposition so very exciting. ... There's still one very important section of the market that may prove a little tougher to persuade. Right now it's harder to see the broader appeal of the Wii U, and it's not simply a case of fearing that it'll fail to replicate the success of its predecessor — there's every chance that it could endure the same rocky start that plagued Nintendo's 3DS."
Re:Jumped the shark (Score:5, Interesting)
That's partly because no one wants to develop a game for the Wii when it's massively underpowered compared to the 360 or PS3.
At this point the term 'casual' gamer really means someone who games occasionally, it doesn't necessarily mean they want to play shitty games with low production quality, they just don't want to spend 3 hours a day every day playing games.
For the Wii basically all of the good games that have a broad appeal are first party nintendo products. That's a problem, because without the ecosystem there's no long term monetization strategy. Although just dance managed to do well as a franchise.
Also, I tend to think the premise of 'are they going to win back casuals' is wrong. I don't think they want to. They sold 100 million Wii's, and then pitifully few games. That's not a good business strategy. Now admittedly, they made money on the consoles, but they'd be happier to sell 50 million consoles and 4x as many games sort of thing. Lots of people bought a wii, wii sports, and one game, and never touched the thing again, all of that unrealized potential turns out to be really really really hard to capitalize on. It's easier to make something people who buy a lot of games want, so you can keep selling them games.
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Drop the middle man and sell me $20 games rather than $70 dollar one (I live in Sweden) and I may start buying games.
I think I read that 97% of the games played in PCs was pirated copies? No, price wont solve that I suppose but you're pretty lame if you copy a full game you could had bought for $10.
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I think I read that 97% of the games played in PCs was pirated copies?
For us the ratio is about 50-70% piracy, but a LOT of that is in china where you can't sell your game.
Cutting out the 'middle man' and charging a lot less is harder than it sounds. If you're a niche product (think Hearts of Iron from your own Paradox, who happen to publish the stuff I work on), then you can build a direct relationship with the customers through steam and gamersgate and just give up on retail. On the other hand, if you're someone like Bethesda, and selling Skyrim, you need walmart and gam
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The 97% pirated number comes from an idiotic Ubisoft executive who was lying about how necessary DRM was. Please do no promote this myth.
Re:Jumped the shark (Score:4, Interesting)
That's only kind of true. It depends on the game, but some titles, ya, the piracy rate is easily up in the 90% range. If you only release your game in the US, or France or the like you have to realize that it's going to be pirated everywhere else, a lot.
My biggest piracy gripe at the moment (as a game developer) is when one of my friends pirates a game and says something like 'I spend enough money on games already". As in, they paid for world of warcraft, call of duty etc. All the ones that have an online component you can't get out of, and can get banned from if you pirate. But then the rest of us, who make smaller indie-niche-no massive online service titles are the ones not getting paid, and it's not like EA (or paradox for that matter) just throw us money for being nice people.
Ubisoft is interesting because they don't have a lot of focus in their publishing, they have Assassin creed, splinter cell, Far cry, and then the ANNO series, and Rayman legends and just dance type stuff. For them I'm sure they are constantly grappling with using the profits from the successful games to fund popular but unsuccessful games, and trying balance that out against piracy cutting into particular portions of their business isn't going to be fun. I'd be surprised if the 97% figure is accurate, but I would not all be surprised to hear a 90% piracy rate for some of their smaller titles like shoot many robots and the like. Well that, and they got themselves enormous bad press for DRM so lots of people are pirating their stuff on principle.
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Drop the middle man and sell me $20 games rather than $70 dollar one (I live in Sweden) and I may start buying games.
This won't ever happen and it's stupid to even hope it would (beyond some niche/indy games).
1) Inflation. The 20$ of 1990 was 26,35$ in 2000, 33,37$ in 2010 and 35,25$ today.
2) Development budgets have grown many MANY times over.
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1) Inflation. The 20$ of 1990 was 26,35$ in 2000, 33,37$ in 2010 and 35,25$ today.
Inflation has nothing to do with it. Right now the way our arrangement works (which is fairly standard but not exactly the same as everyone else) - retail chain takes 30%, the remainder is split 50/50 with the publisher, so on a 60 dollar game we make 21 dollars. The '70' dollar figure presumably includes tax, or the added costs at retail due to sweden paying more than in north america. If we could somehow market and fund development for years on our own (bank), advertise distribute etc without added cos
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1) Inflation. The 20$ of 1990 was 26,35$ in 2000, 33,37$ in 2010 and 35,25$ today.
Inflation has nothing to do with it.
Sure it does. You need to come to grips with the simple fact that the purchasing power of fiat money decreases with time. 70$ today is just 40$ in 1990 money. As a matter of fact, games have gotten LESS expensive since 1990 in real terms, because games back in 1990 sure as hell costed more than 40$.
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You need to come to grips with the simple fact that the purchasing power of fiat money decreases with time.
Which is irrelevant to this discussion. We're not talking about 1990 dollars versus 2012 dollars. We're talking about 2012 dollars versus 2012 dollars.
The discussion isn't 'oh games were so much cheaper in the past why are they so expensive now' because aliquis wasn't accounting for inflation. This is a ' if I buy from a retailer you get 20 dollars, so why don't I just buy directly from you for 20 dollars and skip the 40 dollars going to publishers and retailers'.
You're confusing a monetary issue with a
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sales a * price a vs sales b * price b.
Neither of those arguments say anything about that.
Also if the damn FED didn't printed trillions maybe your dollar would keep its value.
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The FED printing more dollars shouldn't affect the price in Sweeden....
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It likely does anyway.
I don't know if gasoline is much more expensive but if the economy was allowed to survive on the money which was actually available in the system, take loses, clean out the burden and debt and so on demand wouid decresase and with that so would the price.
Now the stimulus and additional debt keep things going anyway at a higher rate than it would otherwise had done.
As far as dollar printing goes though the SEK is way stronger against the dollar than it was before QE 1, 2 and 3 so yes, i
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Last figures I saw had the X360 having a sell through of 8 games per console,
Those are more like per year figures, with PS3 and 360 almost dead even now.
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Like:
Is Zelda worth it and something you really should buy at $20?
Definitely.
Is it a better purchase than something like Angry Birds for $5?
Yes.
Is it something the iPhone doesn't and won't have in the near-term future?
Likely.
Would you rather play real console games on a real console rather than silly simplistic crap on a phone?
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Contrary to what many hardcore gamers seem to believe, casual gaming has nothing to do with quality or price. It has everything to do with time.
Casual gamers simply aren't able or don't want to spend hours learning a game's mechanics, then spend more than an hour on a single level.
Imagine never being able to play gaming sessions longer than 15 minutes. A game like Zelda would be unplayable to such a casual player.
A game like Angry Birds is definitely a better purchase for a typical casual gamer than Zelda,
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Casual gamers simply aren't able or don't want to spend hours learning a game's mechanics, then spend more than an hour on a single level.
Serious gamers don't want the vast majority of their games very long either. That's why a 'big' game these days is 20 hours, and a typical one is 7-10. Looking at my list of games completed in the last 4 months (19 games completely) about half took less than 15 hours, give or take how you want to count Dawnguard.
Serious gamers play one or two games seriously (MMO, online FPS etc.) and then the rest of it they just chew through and move on.
Some of it is presentation and attitude, people think Torchlight, b
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That's partly because no one wants to develop a game for the Wii when it's massively underpowered compared to the 360 or PS3.
That and Nintendo's developer qualifications scare away small-time developers who would be happy with the lower graphical complexity associated with the Wii. (See Bob's Game.) So these developers stick to mobile phones and tablet computers unless a game design requires physical buttons.
Although just dance managed to do well as a franchise.
Yeah, that song had two sequels: "Tik Tok" by Ke$ha and "California Gurls" by Katy Perry.
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That and Nintendo's developer qualifications scare away small-time developers
That's always a challenge when dealing with console guys. Those crazy requirements are good for consumers, but hard on developers, especially when the Apple App store and Google play just don't have the same requirements.
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Someone sold more consoles and more software....so plz define "pitifully few" and then come again with who wouldn't want to develop software for them?
(Software numbers are easy to find and current...hardware numbers are harder to come by...these are 2011 hardware numbers...but solid source.)
Xbox360
Consoles: 39 million
Games: 618 million
PS3
Consoles: 30 million
Games: 595 million
Wii
Consoles: 59 million
Game
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The problem was Nintendo never put any quality control on third party software
That's not true at all. Remember the "Official Nintendo Seal of Quality?" In fact, that was one of the reason so many developers were happy to jump ship to the other options when they became available, since Nintendo's "quality control" crossed the line and wandered deep into the category of "censorship" in the NES/SNES days.
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ESPN authorization (Score:3)
it has ABC(ESPN) sports, for streaming, finally I can say f the cable bill!
Are you sure it doesn't A. require a name and password issued by a pay TV provider, or B. query your cable ISP's database to see whether the current DHCP lessee of a given IP address also has a cable TV subscription that includes ESPN?
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It also assumes C. you can save money by dropping cable because the price for just internet (either with the cable company or a competitor if one exists) is lower than the bundle price.
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Some other consoles have offered ESPN streaming, the trick is that you can only stream that if you have a cable subscription that includes ESPN and is provided by the same company as your internet connection. Did you really think they'd let you get away so easily?
One big difference (Score:1)
The iPhone and iPad hadn't been introduced yet. The casual gamers have already moved on to other things.
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Your fallacy: assuming that they're not ready to move onto something new yet again.
Re:One big difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Valid point, but there is a niche within the niche. Ever since the Wii Nintendo has been marketing towards the "family night" crowd. You'll see in almost every ad a group of family or friends taking rounds at having a blast at whatever happens to be on the screen. This still appeals to a great number of people and it is hard to get excited about the idea of sitting around in the same room with your iPhones/Droids playing Words With Friends (unless, I dunno, you were having some sort of tournament?).
Physical buttons (Score:2)
Still mail order (Score:2)
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The Wii's strength among the casual crowd was always local multiplayer. You can't get much of that from the iPad and with the iPhone it's practically impossible. It fills a completely different role than the iP*s, it's not for passing the time on the toilet or on the commute but a main activity in the living room.
The Wii U is a different matter and I don't see it taking off with the Wii's new audience.
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When Nintendo introduced the Wiimote, it was a try-it-to-understand-it proposition, and trying it is IMHO exactly what caused so many people to run out and buy it.
A lot of people are now in to touch gaming when they would barely have been into gaming at all, thanks to the plethora of touch-enabled phones, tablets and pmps out there. Touch gaming is a concept a lot of people are already familiar with - the gamble comes with getting enough people to convert from the devices already embedded in their daily hab
I miss my Atari 2600 (Score:3)
We had the Wii - managed to score one the weekend it came out. But after about 18 months it became apparent this was going to have some real dumbed-down titles. A few stick out in my mind, most notably the Endless Ocean [wikipedia.org] and Endless Ocean 2 [wikipedia.org] games. I miss those enough I've been thinking of picking up a Wii after the Wii U comes out to replay them, when the price drops.
As for the Atari 2600 I had as a kid - I recall that having a greater variety of games that were almost more challenging. I don't miss it enough to buy the controller/ROM combination, but I distinctly remember titles we traded with friends and played for years. Maybe some of that is nostalgia for long summers and the lack of overall console variety then, but I was distinctly unimpressed with the Wii; with the notable exception the two titles I mentioned above.
When our Wii gave up the ghost I relented and bought an XBox for my son and that's been a great console - a good variety of games and ab online game store worth dropping some dough on. There will have to be something extraordinary for my generally Nintendo-friendly family to even consider by a Wii U. They lost us with the terribly poor game selection on the Wii and DS systems.
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As for the Atari 2600 I had as a kid - I recall that having a greater variety of games...
You mean such diverse titles as Space War, Space Invaders, Space Adventure, Space Attack, Space Canyon, Space Cavern, Spacechase, Space Grid, Space Jockey, Spacemaster X-7, or Space Shuttle: A Journey Into Space? Or perhaps you were thinking of Stargate, Star Raiders, Star Ship, Star Fox, Stargunner, Starmaster, Star Strike, Star Trek: Strategic Operations, Star Voyager, or one of several Star Wars games?
I also had an Atari 2600 as a kid, but fail to share your level of nostalgia.
Recycled titles (Score:2)
Or perhaps you were thinking of Stargate
SG-1 or Atlantis?
Star Fox
Could players do a barrel roll?
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Who is a "casual" gamer anyways? (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I can tell, the definition of a "casual" gamer is "anybody who isn't a 15-30 year old male". I mean, I still hear of puzzle adventure players (who tended to be middle-aged women) being seen as casual gamers, while the people who play really quite simple hack-and-slash games (which appeal more to younger men) are considered hardcore. The mistakes, I think, are:
1. to aim most video games at a particular demographic and then wonder why nobody else is getting interested in them, and
2. hire young male game designers and wonder why they can't write a great game that appeals to older people or women.
It definitely has nothing to do with the difficulty or intracacy of the game.
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A little late to the party, but...
Hardcore applies to gamers where the buyer wants a specific product. It doesn't matter how good, or unique, or complex the game happens to be; the key factor is that the customer watches the trailers online, pre-orders, and pays $60.
Casual gamers play something to pass the time. They don't really care what game they are playing as long as it isn't overly involved or boring. When given the choice between two games with a high price disparity, they will buy the cheaper game.
C
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It's not that they can't, it's that the kind of guys who try to become video game designers usually don't.
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All of them. Hardcore these days means something like "not absolutely mainstream". The term's been watered down heavily by marketing divisions.
already sold out (Score:5, Informative)
Best Buy and Target have already stopped taking orders for both the deluxe and regular systems, and Gamestop has sold out of the deluxe systems. So it's already eerily similar to the Wii's pre-launch situation, and that console was very hard to find for months.
So no, there's little evidence that a rocky start is in store.
Re:already sold out (Score:5, Informative)
Best Buy and Target have already stopped taking orders for both the deluxe and regular systems, and Gamestop has sold out of the deluxe systems. So it's already eerily similar to the Wii's pre-launch situation, and that console was very hard to find for months.
So no, there's little evidence that a rocky start is in store.
Yes, and even the rhetoric is similar. Both pre- and post- launch, as sales of the Wii consistently far outpaced those of the XBox 360 or the PS3 [wikipedia.org], self-defined "gamers" continued to talk about the Wii as if it were a minor player in the market. It's like these guys are sitting there covering their ears and shouting "LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!".
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It's like these guys are sitting there covering their ears and shouting "LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!".
If I had a few billion dollars for every time the "hardcore" proclaimed that Nintendo's latest gaming system would be (or is) a flop and it ends up (or is currently) dominating ... I'd be Nintendo since the just before the launch of the DS.
What I find really funny is that they tend to want Nintendo to make a console that is on par with the most powerful of its generation, while not taking any risks on 'gimmicky' controls or features -- the Gamecube strategy.
Which still made Nintendo money, just not nearly
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The main questions will be how many of those will wind up on eBay, and further more how many will be returned to the store within 30 days if they aren't able to be sold for a profit?
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Bayonetta is a button mashing game... (Score:4, Informative)
...with lots of automated violence. It's more casual than something like Pikmin by miles.
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A slight diversion from topic, but what exactly is that genre of game called, anyway? I usually see them referred to as "Devil May Cry"-style, which doesn't seem like an actual genre, just a way to express what it is in comparison to a well-known game so that you don't have to say what the genre is and then explain it...
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Hack-and-slash / beat-em-up? Unless you mean something specific for the focus on agility & avoiding being hit, in which case I don't have a good name for it either.
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The common term is "character action" which tells you about fuck all about the actual game but seems to mean roughly "more evolved beat 'em up" since most actual beat 'em ups from the arcade era are actually pretty awful games with the depth of a puddle. Basically if it's third person and has melee with a combat system that's not too basic it's character action (if it's more about shooting it's a third person shooter, if the combat isn't as important as exploration and puzzle solving it's likely an action a
Lost to me. (Score:1)
Their milking of characters is no longer a funny joke, but a sad reality. I never look at the Wii catalog and see anything that peeks my interest. I still believe the motion controls to be a silly
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I'm sad that Sega is giving them the only release of Bayonetta 2, but that's all I've lost. I won't be buying a Wii U until I can get one for $50 behind the counter at Publix, if even then[0].
They've managed to not just "milk into boredom" but actually antagonize me into abandoning their core franchises that I've been a fan of since The First Days. First, the abomination that was Metroid: Other M, which took all of the "cool points" that the prime trilogy had earned for itself and flushed them down the crap
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Mario has seen a high recently, while the GC/GBA era was pretty meh for him the Wii saw the Galaxy games (extremely positive critical reaction, Metacritic score at times the highest of any game in the database!) and following the DS iteration got New Super Mario Bros Wii (extremely high sellers, the DS one broke all Mario sales records, the Wii one still sold over 20 million showing that the general public still loves this style more than the 3D style) and the 3DS got Super Mario 3D Land which also got a to
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I can understand your frustration with Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword. Motion controls just aren't for everyone, it's that simple. I wouldn't say motion control was a gimmick, but making them default with normal controls optional may have been a better way to go.
Mario 64 was possibly the finest 3D conversion for a 2D game ever seen - everyone else followed Nintendo's recipe after that. Sunshine was a bit of a let-down, but honestly, how do you follow a game that ground-breaking? By breaking even more g
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I played Galaxy. It was fun, but all it really added to the Mario 64 "recipe" was motion-sickness. When you said "everyone followed the recipe after that" you weren't wrong. Nintendo did, too.
Nintendo has introduced some great new titles and franchises in the past ten years or so - so don't ditch the platform just to spite the software.
As for the new titles... none of them appeal to me. Not even a little. So why would I stay with the platform if the software is worthless to me? Hell, even if the software was good, I'd be giving this one a pass, based on Nintendo's ongoing "War on Ergonomics."
The Broader Appeal of the Wii U (Score:2)
it's harder to see the broader appeal of the Wii U
The broader appeal of the Wii U is that it is no longer just a video game/fitness machine, it is now a TV set-top box and an intelligent TV remote as well. It is an aggregator of multiple internet-driven entertainment choices. The opportunity for Nintendo to may serious money is immense. I can sense the determined hand of Reggie Fils-aime ( Nintendo US CEO) behind Nintendo's newest push.
EXECUTE Betteridge's Law of Headlines (Score:5, Interesting)
No. But it goes beyond just the law, for a number of reasons:
Wii was introduced before the housing bubble burst and long before the global economic recession. People had the idea that they had money to spare, whether or not they actually did. This helped fuel generic consumer interest along with the "newness" that is motion controls. In addition, the new price points puts Nintendo out of that "sweet number" they had in 2006. The $250 price point for the Wii at release in 2012 dollars is $285; the cheapest model is $299, and wages haven't kept up with inflation.
Motion controlling was a big thing when the Wii released--while it was not exactly new tech, Nintendo managed to mainstream it and make it work (sort of, the Wiimote Plus greatly improved this but still had issues.) Furthermore, the controllers for other consoles were seen as "intimidating" to your average consumer due to the myriad of buttons and inputs on them (whether or not this is true I don't know, but it was common thought both then and now). The Wiimote was extremely simple and could be used as a controller harking back to the NES days.
The Gamepad doesn't offer anything in the "wow-factor" to pull consumers in. Touch-screens have been around for quite some time (the original DS had a touch screen, after all) and everyone is tablet-crazy these days so it acts like a me-too. In addition, it integrates all those scary buttons. Furthermore, at least to someone like myself who is a regular gamer, the controller looks horribly clunky (my understanding from reading testimonials of those who have been able to hands-on is that it actually works decently, but that's not going to stop perception of those on the outside.)
The Wii U is, from my understanding, about as powerful as the 360. While I can understand that Nintendo wants to focus on user interface, they can't ignore that having a lower-powered system hurt them greatly this last gen. It wasn't the controller, it was the system processing power that kept a lot of otherwise-multi-console games from coming to the Wii (and when they did they were relatively bad). Nintendo has caught up, but as soon as the PS4 and XBox720 come out (supposedly in the next 18 months), they'll be lagging behind once again. Furthermore, by tipping their hand this early, it gives Microsoft and Sony a chance to integrate whatever features into their next system and likely do it better (the Kinect and Move have their own issues that will likely be firmed up and integrated better for the next console cycle).
A big selling point for the Wii was that it came with Wii Sports. The Basic (read: cheap) version of the Wii U comes with no games (except whatever demos or utilities they have on the system, like TVii), which only intensifies the economic issue. This may be intentional, though, as the tie-in (how many game were sold per console) for the Wii is extremely low, especially compared to the other consoles. By forcing "casual" consumers to buy games off the bat they can increase that number this time around; many bought the wii, played Wii Sports, and then never bought another game.
Nintendo also has a lot of uphill battles with 'core' gamers, too:
--Their online capabilities seem to still lag entire generations behind the competition (those horrible friend codes will apparently make an appearance on Wii U [ign.com])
--Aforementioned power
--A number of AAA games they have announced are mere ports of games have been out for some time
--Internal Storage is limited to a max of 32GB, important as digital sales increase; however, this can be expanded (supposedly easily)
--Games, games, games, games. Nintendo didn't learn from the 3DS, apparently--the launch window library is fairly "meh", and we don't even know launch titles except for NSMBU
I've been a devout Nintendork for my life, fighting many a troll online for the Gamecube
Why there are buttons on the GamePad (Score:2)
The Gamepad doesn't offer anything in the "wow-factor" to pull consumers in. Touch-screens have been around for quite some time (the original DS had a touch screen, after all) and everyone is tablet-crazy these days so it acts like a me-too. In addition, it integrates all those scary buttons.
So for a touch-screen-only device, how would you recommend making effective control for a platformer without scary physical buttons? I tried playing a game using the on-screen gamepad paradigm on a tablet, and I kept missing the buttons because I couldn't feel where my thumbs were relative to the buttons [pineight.com]. That frustration is part of why the Wii U GamePad still has buttons instead of relying on a single flat surface with a capacitive sensor.
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My point wasn't that it should be touch-screen only. My point is that by incorporating the regular layout with an otherwise-familiar touchscreen, they bring in the "too complex" factor that can scare off casual consumers, especially the older crowd. I don't think it's a bad idea for a controller, but it's not helpful to capture the casuals. (Also that having a touchscreen isn't a big deal these days.)
I actually like the idea of controller with a touchscreen; I was quite sad that the GamecubeGBA link didn't
They are counting on a gimmick the 2nd time around (Score:2)
And that is dangerous.
The motion control on the Wii was largely a gimmick. While there were a few games that made really effective use of it or could be made well without it, most didn't. They just translated certain gross motion in to the equivalent of a button press, they didn't really do much special. However for all that, it intrigued may people and they wished to have it. The gimmick worked.
Ok fair enough, but that kind of stuff tends to be very hit or miss. People can see a gimmick and say "meh" even
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Games, games, games, games. Nintendo didn't learn from the 3DS, apparently--the launch window library is fairly "meh", and we don't even know launch titles except for NSMBU
The Wii U launch game list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wii_U_games [wikipedia.org]
Giving up on motion control (Score:3)
I think the main thing that disappoints me about the Wii U is the way it completely abandons motion control. I bought a Wii for Wii Sports. I had minimal interest in classic Nintendo titles, and absolutely no interest Xbox/PS3-style games. Then there was MotionPlus and Tiger Woods Golf, and that was fun for a long time. EA makes the same game on other platforms, but I have zero interest in mashing buttons together in order to simulate a golf game.
Since then, I've bought a handful of different games, some of them with pretty traditional controls (with lame waggle "enhancements") (e.g., Galaxy), and that's been fun, and I love Nintendo's creativity in a lot of their titles, but, still, the motion controls in something like Skyward Sword are far more interesting to me than anything else.
Enter Wii U. Doesn't do anything to push the motion control technology forward. Doesn't even ship with motion-sensitive controllers or a sensor bar. All that is abandoned in favor of a touchscreen melded with traditional gaming controls. I have a hard time seeing how new games (the next Zelda, for example) are going to improve on the experience I enjoyed the last time around -- because now Nintendo's going to be all about producing games that take advantage of the new controller. How do they even release a new Sports for the Wii U? Seems like that title is just put on hold...
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Nintendo did a pretty crappy job of actually using the motion controls and third parties were often even worse. They forgot that motion controls require adjustments to game designs if you don't want them to feel tacked on (standard game designs are built around buttons and assume characters that can perform everything perfectly so motion controls get turned into on/off affairs where they're obviously inferior). Motion controls add many more ways for humans to mess up and that should be incorporated into the
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It says in a few places that things can be controlled by "tilting" the Wii U Gamepad, and some things are controlled by turning it sideways and "aiming" using it, so I think it sort of sounds like it actually is a traditional Wii controller in some regards, but there probably won't be any more solid info until more people get their hands on it (or maybe when NDA's expire?).
I like the accuracy of Motion Plus but it loses calibration extremely easy. I constantly had to re-center the controls while playing Zel
More games like RS2 & LOZ:SS (Score:1)
Agreed.
Wii Sports Resort, Red Steel 2, and Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword are the most amazing electronic home entertainment experiences I've had thus far --- I just wish the latter two were longer or extensible via DLC.
Wish Pandora's Tower would come to NA and hope that someone will make a motion controlled RPG.
William
I for one will buy the WII U (Score:5, Interesting)
I will gladly give my money to Nintendo for the Wii U. I am a gamer, with a huge passion for games. Finally Nintendo will provide next-gen gaming on their consoles. Nintendo, compared to Sony and Microsoft, is a company for gamers.
They dont charge you for online play (Looking at you M$), they dont charge you for additional storage by selling you some proprietary hdd. They dont remove features after the sale ( install other OS??) and they dont go in rage mode and start suing their customers. They also did not have any security breaches...
For me it is quite clear, if there will be a game which comes to all consoles, Ill be getting the Wii U version (unless there is a PC version ofc)
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While it's nice for them to not have any of your personal data to lose if they ever got hacked. It makes digital purchases for them worthless.
People have lost or had their 3DS stolen and Nintendo can't/won't transfer the licenses for any digital purchases to their new console.
Microsoft plug the removable HDD into another console, or do through a process to transfer the data to a new HDD.
Sony is actually the most friendly where you activate the console to your account and then can access the content you pur
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And people have gotten police reports and Nintendo doesn't help them. Just because you said that's all they need it doesn't make your statement any more true.
http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/10/nintendo-finally-able-to-rescue-data-from-stolen-systems/ [venturebeat.com]
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Next-gen is such a nebulous, marketing bullshit term. Going by the strict definition it's always the console that's not released yet so you can't buy a next-gen system. So yeah, the Wii U is next-gen until it's released. Then it becomes current-gen and the Wii becomes last-gen. To a marketer next-gen is their own system and everything else isn't (Sony: "Next-gen doesn't start until we say so!").
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Neither does Xbox Live (purely because Microsoft is a tempting target for every hacker/cracker/script kiddy that they have no choice).
The thing though is that Nintendo has nothing TO steal. Games are tied to the device (you don't have to make an account, and yes, you can transfer to another console). Payment requires entering your credit card information over and over again (or using a gift card, also tied to your console).
Breaking into Nintendo is hard because Ni
Is Nintendo EVER going to make a phone? (Score:2)
What Nintendo really needs to do is make a family of kick-ass high-powered Android phones with proper game controls, then make them usable as game controls for the Wii-U.
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Why? The Android software market isn't very profitable currently.
Today's casual gamer (Score:3)
Casual gamers are on their phones. (Score:3)
No.
Casual gamers are playing games on their phones. NIntendo fucked themselves over by not bothering to put out any titles at all for the Wii during its entire run.
Oh sure, you had a couple of Mario games, one Zelda, and... No More Heroes? I think that was about it. The rest were junk, they never released a "greatest hits" $20 version of any titles until early in 2012, and there's nothing compelling in the library.
Jerk off over the hardware all you want. No games -- no sales.
And again, people who want to play a game casually for five minutes at a time are going to whip out their phone and play a $1 game.
Cost of owning a phone (Score:5, Interesting)
people who want to play a game casually for five minutes at a time are going to whip out their phone and play a $1 game.
Provided they have a phone. True, a grown-up interested in video games can almost be assumed to own a smartphone nowadays. But any game rated E or E10+ includes kids as part of its intended audience. A phone capable of gaming costs well over $1,000 once you factor in an iControlPad and the cost of cellular voice and data service for two years. I'm under the impression that a lot of parents can't afford this for their kids, so they buy each kid a flip phone on a $80/year prepaid carrier as a pay phone replacement ("this is for getting a ride home; use the land line at home for long calls") and a DS/3DS for gaming.
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I'm trying to figure out what kind of filter you're using that includes Mario, Zelda and No More Heroes but ignores all the other good Wii games (not saying NMH was a good game but what exactly made you pick THAT ONE?).
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I see you had trouble filling out the list too. ;)
Doesn't really matter, my ex took the Wii when she moved out and I bought an XBox instead.
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You can just use Metacritic to get a convenient list [metacritic.com].
I'm casual, want more, no DVD, no deal, too little (Score:2)
We're a family of casual gamers. We don't game a lot, and when we do they tend to be games many can play together (Rock Band, Glee, etc.). We also play more traditional head-to-head games, but all gaming comes in spurts, days/weeks where we do it a lot followed by months where we don't. The Wii worked for us.
But that was then.
Since then, we've slowly gotten tired of more and more remotes, more and more devices, and we've slowly discovered more and more on-line distractions. Hey, we just finally signed up
Lower Power (Score:2)
How did having a lower power machine help Nintendo in the last console generation?
Will Microsoft and Sony bring 500-700 dollar machines to market this time?
Will concentrating on the user interface pay off like it did last time for Nintendo?
Consoles sold from last generation:
Wii 96 million, XBox360 68 million, PS3 66 million.
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By having the cheapest machine on offer, and still sell it for more than it costs to produce. It also helped by making the developers concentrate on the games, instead on graphics. But developing software licensing is a hell, so this last one didn't help as much as it could. (If something kills this generation of game consoles, it will be licensing.)
If t
Same old thing. (Score:2)
I'd like Nintendo a whole lot more if I didn't hate the Mario world so much, and it's all about the fucking, boring, racist and campy mascot everywhere on every title in every iteration. It's not funny. It's not sexy. It's not cute. As a pop culture icon, it's just as dull as it's always been and the only reason left to insist on it (in the US) is to pander to Generation Xs and Generation Ys who think they're Generation Xs.
Gamers....and Wii (Score:2)
They have nothing to do with violent games, time spent playing, or anything else I've seen mentioned so far. What they are is euphemisms for "PC gamers". And this is true regardless of platform - PC=Xbox and Playstation is a bite off of that market. So what defines them? THEY ALWAYS WANT MORE OF THE SAME, but bigger, faster, and flashier. Minimal to no fucus on innovation or fun. We've been living th
Nintendo will be bankrupt in 5 - 10 years. (Score:2)
Apple stole the "adult" casual gamer market and pretty much assured that any child of these adults are also highly invested in games on the Apple platform. I can't get my niece and nephew off my iPad or iPod touch when they come to visit. When you have a platform of Free to $4.99 games that keep children interested for hours, what is the point of the Wii U?
Nintendo is trying to mimic Apple's success my mashing (more like mangling) a touch pad with a game platform, and I think this is ill conceived. Its c
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no, but they get a little closer every generation
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Haha. No. The Wii/DS generation was extremely profitable for Nintendo and far more successful than the Gamecube/GBA generation before it. Now the 3DS hardware is profitable again and Wii U hardware is supposedly profitable right from the start, so Nintendo's prospects are pretty good.
Sony, on the other hand, is in serious trouble. If anyone's getting out of the console business, they'll be first to go.
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Sony, on the other hand, is in serious trouble. If anyone's getting out of the console business, they'll be first to go.
Actually, Sony's console business is doing pretty well, making money on both hardware and software especially the latter. Sony's losses are due mainly to getting completely hammered in the tv market. (Koreans set took it upon themselves to drive Japan out of the TV market and by all appearances are now just mopping up.) What Sony can't afford is another disastrous specs war with Microsoft. I expect, next generation neither will be foolish enough to try to cram state of the art hardware into a space that jus
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They release plenty of new games but whenever they announce multiple games everybody only cares about the Mario and Zelda parts, the rest gets overlooked (with the exception of some of the Wii Whatever games). Yet games like Excite Trucks/Bots, Fluidity, Xenoblade, Sin & Punishment, Pushmo, Picross 3D, etc generally receive a lot of praise by critics. Of course there are also duds which I won't bother trying to remember right now. Stuff like Steel Diver.