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edit: nevermind.

 

[Baki]

Man writing the Nintendo PR for the month must take some real creativity

Nintendo Family?

New record set for January. hahaha

Honestly, I wouldn't send out any PR.

 

[neptunes]

Yeah, I really don't think price is the issue with the WiiU

The worst thing Nintendo could do is drop the price this soon, at least for the home console anyway.

 

[Raist]

To be honest, I still don't see the logic of that. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You take games away from a platform in a period of drought, you're just making that platform look even less attractive. Thus, it won't sell to fans, new customers, or anyone.

Ubi "waiting for a bigger install base" is silly because the system isn't going to just magically get a bigger install base without having decent software. Rayman was one of the most attractive developments for Wii U and was heavily promoted to the point of being used at kiosks. Delaying the game was just screwing the Wii U over even more.

If Ubisoft, a major third party company which was there day 1 to support both the Wii and the WiiU (and in the former's case, by far the most supportive 3rd party in terms of software output) decides to delay and port an exclusive, I think it's fair to assume that something is very wrong.

 

[Dave Meltzer]

I think releasing an underpowered console relying on different control scheme is pretty major risk by itself. It is not much different from the original Wii.

It's different because Wii was unprecedented. Doing the same thing again but worse isn't taking a risk it's being narrow minded and thinking you don't have to try.

 

[GavinGT]

Do we know how many people bought their Wii Us on the eShop? Those numbers aren't accounted for and would probably take the monthly total to >100k.

Oh at least 100k.

 

[shinra-bansho]

Price-cut or value-added bundles ASAP

You already got a ZombiU bundle, $390. What more could you ask.

 

[Azure J]

I think releasing an underpowered console relying on different control scheme is pretty major risk by itself. It is not much different from the original Wii.

The problem here is the hook is nowhere near as simple to use/market. It's a great little catch, but it would be served better by a console that wasn't so "maybe, sorta" all the time.

 

[Graphics Horse]

I think Nintendo will rush both games out the door unfinished honestly. It's what they did with Windwaker and a lot of other gamecube games. This is why panic mode nintendo is horrible because we're going to end up with rushed games that aren't finished that could be much better.

At least we get patches these days....

 

[nickcv]

Looking at the 3DS and Wii U launch he certainly is. So either Nintendo got lucky in the previous gen or Iwata has lost his damn mind.

fair enough =P but he's practically betting his job on that figure this time around, it's a different situation

 

[Father_Brain]

'Cause, you know, Nintendo will never release a title again for their system.

Yeah, I'm still fairly confident that the first-party titles we know are coming will be able to turn sales around to some extent.

Of course, anything above (equal to?) GC numbers would qualify as "to some extent," so that's not saying that much. And since I don't see Pikmin 3, Wii Fit U, Game & Wario, or Wonderful 101 as major system-sellers, things won't really improve until Q3 at the earliest.

 

[Mileena]

Bayonetta 2 and The wonderful 101 will save us T_T

Both made by Platinum, so they're pretty much guaranteed to bomb regardless of their quality. On top of that, Wii U software sales.

 

[TheDrowningMan]

"we won't drop the price"

Wonder if this is still true?

It was a lie, but you never announce price cuts beforehand, even if you know a year in advance that you'll make one.

 

[javac]

Man writing the Nintendo PR for the month must take some real creativity

Nintendo Family?

The Wii tablet peripheral is the best selling tablet made for a dedicated gaming console.

 

[SolarPowered]

Time to get those brand spanking new studios set up, Iwata. Should be able to find plenty of ex-employees to fill 'em up.

Nintendo should call up all the people Gabe fired and hire them.

Who is creamsugar?

The Batman of Sales Age.

 

[toddhunter]

Assuming that Nintendo have some kind of plan for righting this ship, they're going to get one shot at it and one shot only, and it has to happen soon.

The other plan is to wait until Microsoft and Sony make a huge mess of the new consoles (based on the Microsoft rumours and Sony...well being Sony).

Then release Pokemon.

 

[RatskyWatsky]

55k is disastrous, holy shit!

 

[Doc Holliday]

Well I usually don't say this, but they deserve the shitty sales. They had so much time and this is what they came up with??

-Nintendoland and NSMBU till march!
-No VC,
-Slow OS,
-Took forever to get dates on some games.
-Horrible marketing campaign
-horrible account system
-expensive considering the price and worst of all

Even with amazing games they are going to have a hard time if there is no buzz. At least the PS3 felt like a luxury item when it launched, Wii U just feels old :/

 

[MrDaravon]

...both titles are already in playable form. Hell, even Retro's title was rumored to be in playable form last year. One or both of them is coming out this year.

Have they explicitly said that? As far as I can tell they only just now formally announced Mario at that Nintendo Direct and said they'll be showing it for the first time at E3, and I can't find anything about Mario Kart having a date or being shown at all yet. Assuming both titles are being shown for the first time in June I'm hardly assuming a launch on either this year. Not impossible I suppose, but it's not like the Wii U being in trouble is a new thing; if they had either one of those titles in a state that was showable why wouldn't they have done that instead of just saying that they'll be at E3 at the last Nintendo Direct? Although I suppose if that IS the case that's just the latest in a hilarious string of poor decisions they've made regarding the console.

At this point I don't factor Rare in at all since we have seemingly no goddamn idea what they've been doing for pretty much years at this point. It'll probably be rad, but that's a pretty big wildcard.

 

[Skiesofwonder]

I think Nintendo can easily afford to price this thing at $200. They already said the current loss is negated from a single software purchase. It's nothing like the hit Sony was taking with the PS3.

That was an incorrect report.

 

[Visualante2]

Oh at least 100k.

It's a transitional phase for the industry, these numbers don't really represent the system's true performance.

Will be interesting to see how NTDOY fares on the markets tomorrow.

 

[B.O.O.M]

New record set for January. hahaha

Honestly, I wouldn't send out any PR.

Wii U continues to go to places no other HD consoles has dared to go before!

but yea no PR might be good. But they might just highlight 3ds sales

 

[MikeE21286]

Turn that shit around, Nintendo, cause that 8-10 Billion $ warchest you have is gonna shrink fast.

Nah, it won't disappear.

It just won't grow fast.


I think the sanest option for the conservative Nintendo company is either super aggressive "panic mode" Nintendo or super conservative.

I could totally see Nintendo taking their ball, going home, focusing on 3DS to build profits and eeking some out from WiiU to last long enough (maybe 4 years) to hold off the demands to develop mobile and then deliver their next gen console.

New console out fall 2016.

 

[Pachterballs]

Do we know how many people bought their Wii Us on the eShop? Those numbers aren't accounted for and would probably take the monthly total to >100k.

gotta keep the faith alive...

its a CONSPIRACY.

 

[serplux]

No it won't, the big crash is not going to happen. Way to many things have to go wrong in order for it to happen.

We'll see. Video gaming isn't going to go away, I agree with that. But too many developers are going out of business.

 

[Instro]

"we won't drop the price"

Wonder if this is still true?

If it happens it won't be until there is some software to back it up. A price drop alone would be pointless right now I think, particularly when it the console is already being sold at cost or at a small loss.

 

[Portugeezer]

Do we know how many people bought their Wii Us on the eShop? Those numbers aren't accounted for and would probably take the monthly total to >100k.

Good one.

 

[beast786]

This is why Nintendo was equal at blame for Rayman delay.

Nintendo is responsible to protect its platform, they should have made sure the deal to work. Look what MS did to protect its platform early, threw money at JPRG , GTA DLC to make its platform vital and attractive . That 3rd party momentum is part of what it's enjoying right now.

On the other hand you have Nintendo that just stood there with folded arms while the only game worth buying in a horrible desert of software gets lost as exclusive and delayed.

Nintendo has money in its war chest, but it totally chose not to protect its platform. And when they did spend money , they spend money on a sequel that BOMBA sales wise. You can afford to do that when you have a luxury to afford a Bomba.

losing Rayman was a big lost to Nintendo and showed there failure to handle third parties. Nintendo fans AGAIN pointed there guns at a wrong target, writing petition to Ubisoft? They should be putting pressure on Nintendo, Its there platform you bought and are responsible for this piss poor support.

 

[Amir0x]

Completely and totally agree. In that Mario on 3DS thread I made earlier someone brought up the comparison of Disney. They've expanded so much from their original animation roots and now own a large portion of the movie industry. Nintendo has expanded at a very slow pace, and now is unable to keep up with the lack of 3rd party support they have. They are forced into making sequel after sequel because that's the only way to sell their systems and now these are taking too long to create with the lack of personnel and studios

+1

Yeah, and the situation isn't ENTIRELY dissimilar to Disney though... because for a very short period of time, they were floundering after traditional animation was failing in this country and they were relying strictly on their Pixar partnership (before they made the hard deal with Pixar). It was an old dinosaur having trouble adapting to modern times, but they finally did the hard thing and made the deal work. And now Disney is on a lot better footing, reaching out and grabbing LucasArts and shit like that.

Nintendo might be in for another down period where they have to re-evaluate their priorities. As much as many of their hardest core supporters don't mind eighty three Mario games every week, and as much as they say it doesn't matter as long as they're good, the truth is that is not enough to draw in the new customers Nintendo needs to stay relevant.

Without the mass market appeal of wiimote, they have to rely on games that provide potential customers with a wide range of big unique properties, and without third party support (which is most certainly partially Nintendo's fault as well), they have to do it themselves. You can release a game like Xenoblade and not even try to market it (to say nothing of its disastrous territorial release state). Are they going to let X die the same way?

They have to be willing to take those risks. They have to be willing to put SOME Mario (and Zelda and Donkey Kong and whatever) games in a freezer and tell themselves 'you know what, this is painting us into a corner, and we can't always be this company. We can be that company at times, but the modern market demands we become something else as well.'

And that doesn't mean abandoning core Nintendo philosophies like being fun for the entire family. It means challenging themselves to come up with new ideas that are unrelated to what they've done before, sometimes that tells customers that this is a system they MUST own because they can't get anything like this experience anywhere else. If a customer wanted to play some Mario games once in a while, the current status is they can just buy a 3DS and pay $160 and be done with it. They have to make Wii U special, and the pad - like I've been saying for a while - is really a traditional controller with DS functionality. It's good for some things, but it's not going to change the game. And so they should have turned their attention to changing the game with their software and partnerships...

Yeah there is an astonishing amount of content and polish to that game, I love it. It was also the first game in ages I paid full price for, so I'm hoping it's doing well and I'm glad I did my part.

As for Nintendo, that just about sums up my feelings towards them. I certainly do not want them to fail and be gone forever, but looking at their consoles and their current output, it's just not enough to get me back on board.

Yeah I really liked it. It's no perfect game, but it's the first really true traditional jRPG I loved in ages (I liked Tales of Vesperia, which is probably the last time I really liked one close to this way). Glad it was made.

Yep, pretty much this. It's kind of baffling how when they were making money hand over foot with the heyday of the DS/Wii and they were the most valuable company in Japan they didn't bother to invest some of that money into growing the company. And especially more pathetic is how they left the Wii to starve for the past two years so what the hell were they working on?

I mean they made SOME investments, but I have to say the ones I've seen have been pretty poor... at least from a global perspective. They have to think bigger then they have been thinking. Hardware gimmicks have always had the same problems: to the people with the type of low attention span that NEW GIMMICKS are the only thing that draws them in, eventually those gimmicks will run out of steam for them and eventually you'll run out of gimmicks to sell them. And in the absence of that, software is where you must turn. And that's where Nintendo has failed to adapt.

They have to have something in the bag, no? I mean Nintendo isn't some omnipresent deity that has something ready for each scenario. They could be actually be sitting on nothing. But we know from Nintendo directs that sometimes Nintendo sit on announcements just for the sake of announcing it when they feel like its right.

Nintendo could have announced all then Luigi games for the 3DS last year, why now? Same with DKCR 3D and monolithsoft title X. And Bayonetta 2. All came out of the blue.

This isn't addressing the whole point your discussing in regards to expanding and partnerships. But in terms of games, I wouldn't be surprised.

Oh, I'm sure. But, so far, the announcements they've made have pretty much been exactly what I've been saying: I'm excited for some of them, but they're not going to sell your system to new customers. They're going to sell your systems to established hardcore Nintendo fans, and that has always been a diminished group of individuals. I count myself among them, as harsh a critic as I can be sometimes (I hate because I love), but most people don't.

 

[Snowden's Secret]

I'm curious to see the third party Nintendo Direct now. The show is clearly not over yet for Wii U (we are only three months in) but third parties are not known for their patience.

 

[Scum]

like i said over and over: they've been sitting on hordes of money when what they should have been doing is expanding studios, opening up new corners of development and establishing fresh hardcore IPs with mass marketing budgets and making partnerships. They've started the partnership thing, but it might be too little, too late at this point, and they still have failed to do so in a meaningful fashion to appeal to third party support on Wii U. There's no way they should constantly be bumping into the "all our teams are occupied with game development" at the moment when their output is what it is; they need to grow.

It would have been an investment, it would have driven into their war chest, but that's how you make businesses grow: you take risks. And Nintendo has been a shockingly risk-averse company in recent years, at least as it relates to their software.

Yeah! +1
Damn shame that they seemingly wasted two years when they should have been setting up a studio or two to help out.

Now, where's EatChildren and some words of wisd-

This is what happens when you launch a lukewarm console out the gate with a small software library that does little to nothing to differentiate itself from other bigger, more popular, and cheaper systems on the market, have zero software momentum in the subsequent post-launch months, and stuff up your marketing so the mass consumer isn't exactly sure what they're buying let alone why they should.

It's not a matter of quality for what is there. The point is if you don't want NSMBU or ZombiU, maybe Nintendoland, there really isn't any reason at all when you can instead pick up an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 instead and indulge in their far superior software library.

The tablet controll is good. It makes for interesting games and feels damn great to use. But it's not enough to sell the system, not by a long shot. And now they know.

Yeah! +1

 

[Branduil]

Yeah this is pretty much a complete disaster for Nintendo. They should probably get on with their plans for their next console already and try to expand as much as possible prior to its launch. I can see the Wii U only lasting four years like the original Xbox.

 

[direct_quote]

When do the numbers for game sales get released..

 

[Graphics Horse]

Have they explicitly said that? As far as I can tell they only just now formally announced Mario at that Nintendo Direct and said they'll be showing it for the first time at E3, and I can't find anything about Mario Kart having a date or being shown at all yet.

They said playble at E3, which means pretty far on.

 

[Himself]

Assuming that Nintendo have some kind of plan for righting this ship, they're going to get one shot at it and one shot only, and it has to happen soon.

They need:

• Price-cut or value-added bundles ASAP - Nintendoland should be bundled across the board, throw in a Remote/Nunchuk and perhaps phase out the standard package with a price-dropped deluxe for a good start.
• A new ad campaign in the Spring to coincide with the new releases, pushing aspects like off-TV play hard (with the right disclaimer to avoid the UK ad authorities, natch ;-) )
• A steady stream of releases from March onward. Hopefully the delay of games like Pikmin was to ensure that they are able to push regular releases from then on to Christmas
• Reach out to publishers (hopefully already on the go) with whatever they can offer (reduced licensing fees, publishing support etc.) to make the platform as low-risk as possible
• Push their eShop harder, and keep up what seems to be a good outreach to indie devs to get a steady stream of games there too
• If there is any significant third-party support coming (likely only from Japan at this stage) it needs to be shown ASAP. Also show off whatever they can from their Western partners, like Monster, and from their other studios, like Retro. Anything to encourage confidence in the platform's future

They need to hit bloody hard from March/April onwards and blow the doors off at E3, or the narrative is set.

I'm hoping for a new unit altogether. No optical audio out fucking blows.

 

[antonz]

"we won't drop the price"

Wonder if this is still true?

Dropping the price is useless if there is no software to back it up. Nintendo isn't going to double or triple their losses per console sold just to sell a few thousand extra per month

 

[Baki]

Any Vita numbers. That should provide a good laugh.

 

[GuardianE]

I want to know how much DmC sold.

 

[friskykillface]

55k 0_o holy shit
welp i better get ready to be mad and pissed at a price drop coming asap


hmmm if 3DS got GBA games that aren't available for purchase then Nintendo will give us gamecube games?

 

[yon61]

I think Nintendo can easily afford to price this thing at $200. They already said the current loss is negated from a single software purchase. It's nothing like the hit Sony was taking with the PS3.

That apparently was a misinterpretation of something Reggie said IIRC. They're losing at least $60 on the hardware it seems.

Unbelievable situation Nintendo have put themselves in. The 3DS was bad enough, but what we have here is on another level entirely.

 

[MrDaravon]

It's a transitional phase for the industry, these numbers don't really represent the system's true performance.

Obviously, everyone needs to relax and look at how it's doing 5 years from now.

They said playble at E3, which means pretty far on.

If so that's great, but unless they get them out far ahead enough of next-gen launches it's not going to be a momentum changer; just selling it to people who are already going to buy a Wii U at some point for exclusives anyway.

 

[B.O.O.M]

The Wii tablet peripheral is the best selling tablet made for a dedicated gaming console.

Excellent!

 

[Heart Attack]

You already got a ZombiU bundle, $390. What more could you ask.

Such a bargain... /sarcasm.

 

[javac]

Both made by Platinum, so they're pretty much guaranteed to bomb regardless of their quality. On top of that, Wii U software sales.

I know it to be true, but my heart cannot take the pain.

 

[Eusis]

Wait, Ni No Kuni just barely missed? I have a feeling NPD numbers would be WAY more interesting if they expanded to 15 or 20, because there's always mega popular games that'll hog up all the spots and thus make it uninteresting to look at except when something manages to be a surprise success (like, uhh, DmC it seems.)

 

[DasMarcos]

I think Nintendo can easily afford to price this thing at $200. They already said the current loss is negated from a single software purchase. It's nothing like the hit Sony was taking with the PS3.

I believe this quote from Reggie was proven wrong or taken out of context.

http://www.mercurynews.com/top-stories/ci_22013695

Link to the original interview with correction.

So no, it isn't that easy for the Wii U to turn a profit.

 

[Mandoric]

Way back in the Xbox 1 days Microsoft wanted to buy Nintendo. Obviously Nintendo would never let that happen but I wonder if they'd be interested in a partnership. WiiU ain't coming back without a miracle so nintendo needs a console platform to develop on. A partnership would benefit both sides a lot.

I'd bet on a reverse Wii U, a 3DS with a TV base station rather than a console with a handheld packed in, long before that. One thing Nintendo does share with Apple is that the software is a value-add for the hardware rather than vice-versa.

I also think that, no matter what, the Wii U's lifecycle is going to be cut short GBA-style. Even if it keeps selling, it's simply too much to their advantage to be at an innately disruptive point in the console lifecycle as long as they pursue disruptive price/performance points anyway. 2015 WiiW, 2018 4DS would also clear up the issues with software focus and franchise fatigue that are partially responsible for Wii U's launch issues.

Then again, :gafanalysis, I've just guaranteed that in the year 40,000 Iwata will reign from a skull throne as an ancient cult worships the mysteries of the Wii U GamePad.

 

[Pie and Beans]

 

[lenovox1]

I think Nintendo can easily afford to price this thing at $200. They already said the current loss is negated from a single software purchase. It's nothing like the hit Sony was taking with the PS3.

Nintendo said that Reggie was wrong when he said that. And Nintendo cannot afford to lose billions and billions of dollars due to one systen, even for one quarter. That's too much of a loss, and I doubt it would help that much.

 

[Baconsammy]

I'd be totally ok with all three new gen consoles crashing and burning if the handhelds were doing fine in the West.

But they aren't.

Still, everything will crash and burn anyway.

The other two crashing and burning is a Nintendo fan's wet dream, I get that, but you can bet they're going to have a lot more help making sure that doesn't happen than Nintendo had, and the only people Nintendo have to blame for that lack of support are themselves.