Nintendo Posts Yet Another Loss, Despite Mario Kart 8 203
redletterdave (2493036) writes Nintendo posted its third loss in four quarters on Wednesday. Even though Mario Kart 8, its big first-party game released in May, shipped more than 2.82 million copies by the end of June, the Mario-themed racing game was not enough to help Nintendo's struggling Wii U console perform in this particular quarter. The company said it lost $97 million between March and June. Nintendo shipped 510,000 units of the Wii U in the June quarter, bringing the total to 6.68 million consoles sold — it's a big jump from the 160,000 units it sold in the same quarter a year ago and a small improvement over the 310,000 units it sold in the March quarter. Still, the Wii U is still lagging behind the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles, and Nintendo must also contend with mobile games available on Apple and Google's app stores, which cost but a fraction of a Nintendo game.
Here's an idea! (Score:4, Insightful)
Open up your platform so that anybody who wishes to can program for it, that way you aren't dependent on just a few titles.
They should stop making consoles (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Here's an idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean nintendo's price-fixing and marketing gimmick?
Re:Here's an idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's 1983. Atari just settled a lawsuit over Activision's ability to create games for the 2600, and did not get a restraining order against the practice. Shovelware is running rampant, and many of the companies creating the shovelware are small startups. Games are not selling because they were overall fucking terrible. Stores lose a ton of money on having merchandise they couldn't sell. Many of both the distributors and developers are going of business. The distributors that are diversified and survive, like Toys 'R Us, refuse to use inventory space on games. It's a business decision they're making based on what happens when games are completely shitty.
In comes Nintendo with a way to ensure that truly shitty games don't make it onto their console, and they rejuvenate an industry that almost killed itself entirely with too much openness.
Again, this isn't some hypothetical bullshit argument about whether open source is superior on moral grounds from someone who holds no real stake in the outcome. It's what actually happened in the industry.
Re:Nintendo Has an R&D Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Here's an idea! (Score:4, Insightful)
But it's not 1983 any more. Shelf space is not really an issue. An abundance of crappy games does no harm in the age of the internet since they can easily be ignored.
Back then gems would not find their way into stores because they got drowned in all the crappy games. Now with all the information at our fingertips this won't be an issue. Opening up a platform now will make it more successfull and it will result in tons of great games which can easily be recognized.
Re:Here's an idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you tried browsing in the iStore, Google Play, or to a lesser extent, Steam. If you just want to see what is there, you have to wade through pages of flappy bird clones, runners, and all the other crap just to see anything interesting. Don't count on ratings either, many of the good games get bogged down with "Overrated - 1 Star" and "Doesn't fold my laundry - 1 star" while the horrible shit games get enough 5 star reviews (usually by the developer and their friends) to at least look legitimate.
I'm buying games, not consoles (Score:4, Insightful)
If there's both Zelda and Metroid made for the Wii U, I'll strongly consider buying it.