Nintendo Could Base Comeback On Improving Peoples' Health 129
Nerval's Lobster writes: "It's no secret that Nintendo faces significant challenges: revenues are down, rival platforms such as Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4 are attracting a lot of buzz, and iOS and Android have made significant inroads into mobile gaming. Rather than double down on its core business, however, Nintendo reportedly sees its salvation in new, nongaming segments such as... monitoring your health? 'We have now redefined entertainment to mean making it fun for people to improve the quality of their lives,' Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata told a company strategy meeting, according to The Wall Street Journal. But he refused to part with more detail about Nintendo's plans, except to claim that whatever's in the works isn't a wearable device along the lines of Nike's FuelBand or the FitBit, and it isn't an iteration of the Wii Balance Board, an accessory that measures the user's weight and center of balance while playing games."
Re:Great plan Nintendo (Score:5, Interesting)
Nintendo released Wii Fit about five years ago, Walk With Me for the DS about four years ago, the 3DS with a step counter three years ago, were discussing a Wii pulse reader until two years ago, and just last year released a new version of Wii Fit that incorporates an upgraded version of Walk With Me.
I know that's a bit much to go over but you've been so spectacularly counterfactual that I have to wonder if you just hid away from gaming entirely for the last half decade to have drawn the conclusion that it was "the latest bandwagon" for the company.
Re:Anything to not admit they screwed up (Score:4, Interesting)
The WiiU's performance has little to do with it launching 18 months before the PS4 and Xbone. They could've launched a system maybe 80% as powerful as either of those using the parts available, as opposed to something that's 120% as powerful as a PS3 or 360. The low performance is a design trade-off that was necessary if they wanted to have that touchscreen controller in the box and a price south of $500. Nintendo did well betting on low prices, new input methods and low performance on the Wii; unfortunately, they bet wrong by attempting to repeat the trick in an era where mobile pricing has put cheap gaming into a "race to the bottom".
They should've staked out the high end with Sony and MS where mobile is less disruptive, but the WiiU would have been too far along in development by the time that issue became clear. (Sony have recently remarked that they could tell the Vita was going to have problems with mobile well before it launched in 2012, and have had to try to change the console's goals without the opportunity to change actual product.)
Re:Feels pretty backward (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Kind of serves them right (Score:4, Interesting)
Nintendo's problem is and always has been they put the bare minimum spec hardware in their devices, make a big fanfare of some gimmick, charge an arm and a leg for it and hope they can coast far enough for the next gimmick to show up. ...
Actually, you are very wrong. Nintendo put out a bunch of successful consoles, without gimmicks for decades. NES, SNES, Gameboy, N64, Gameboy Advance, Gamecube, Nintendo DS. During that time only 1 gimmicky item, the Virtual Boy. I wouldn't call most of those consoles bare minimum hardware specs either.
The Wii was the first "real" console with a gimmick, the wiimote. And underpowered hardware. And it did well. And Nintendo has been behind the curve since then.
IMO, Nintendo needs to get back to it's roots. A lot of it's fan base is older now. We don't want to jump around, or wave our arms to play games. We want to use a controller and have fun. We got big TV's that can really support 4 way and 2 way gaming at the same time. So you know, our kids (not that I have any) can play with us, and have fun with us.
And I'm going to keep saying this, where the fuck is my Pokemon MMORPG? The fact that there hasn't been one only shows how Nintendo doesn't understand the gaming market anymore (IMO).