Nintendo Wii U

[Venice Cull]

Will that happen though if one starts to drag behind?

Yeah - that's my point. If PS4 sells 100 million, and 720 sold only 20 million, third party aren't going to not convert their games to run on the 720, because they are missing out on sales for comparatively little effort (or visa versa). Conversion will be 1% of the money and effort of building the title in the first place.

[Smitty]

Again, there's nothing of the sort going on.

Go back and read the thread.

That'll be a year later then. In which time, we will see similar discussion to the ones going on at the moment if the PS4 and 720 are only selling in the same numbers as the Wii U?

Maybe we will. Either way, I don't think the industry is fucked.

[esar]

What games do "hardcore" gamers play theys days?

The who can win the argument on the internet game.

[Smitty]

Others have offered counter arguments like the state of the economy and more drains on people's money in a much more crowded entertainment market than 6-7 years ago when the 360/PS3 launched.

The state of the economy has been bad for 4 years now. Did game and console sales suddenly drop through the floor?

I must have missed that.

Of course the market may be changing, and perhaps sales will be lower, but i don't see compelling reasons at the moment for the doom and gloom in this thread.

But anyway it's been noted now that Nintendo fans can't accept 'Nintendo are doomed', but they can accept ''consoles are doomed'.

Isn't that totally surprising to everyone?

That's not what I said at all. But I think you know it but just want an argument anyway.

''No I will not respond to the rest of your points''

I don't know what this you want an argument thing is about. This is a discussion forum. I say a thing, you say a thing, I respond etc.

Debating the point with you is not a declaration of war, petal.

[rgraves]

The who can win the argument on the internet game.

Oooh oooh - who's taking the cheapest pre-orders - Zavvi?

[McCoy]

So? Then later.

This discussion is hilarious. Nintendo fans have finally acknowledged that the WiiU is struggling (Iwata isn't considering resignation for nothing), but instead of focussing on that they have instead decided that the real problem is that the whole industry is fucked, and they've turned into self-conscious Cassandras bemoaning just how blind the rest of us are.

Absolutely. And somehow, before we've even got the details, the NDF are announcing that the PS4 won't launch before Spring next year without really much in way of evidence for that and not even allowing for the possibility that the 760 might drop in all territories by the year end. I think things are heading towards the Apply direction of announcing a product and then releasing it. Not announcing it and then releasing two years later.

Plus the best they can come up with is that the PS4 might not be available in Europe before Spring, suggesting that it is very likely that it will be competing with the Wii U this December and probably home to a bumped up Call of Duty game to appease the Yanks at the very least.

I want to like the Wii U but it's not doing it for me at the moment and I really do think that by the time the next gen consoles launch that the Wii U won't be a desirable purchase for the mass market and that the excitement will be directed towards the new very powerful consoles. Nintendo had about a year to really penetrate the market with the Wii U and the evidence currently suggests they are not making big enough strides towards this objective before the new consoles are launched.

[SMD]

No licensee is looking at the hardware numbers, they're all looking at the sales numbers for non-Nintendo software titles, which are weak, hence the comments Mario Wynands heard at DICE (get why he uses that username now?) and if you look at his pessimism about consoles in general, the market isn't big enough to support 3 players in his view. The X360 did worse hardware numbers at launch (due to shortages) but way better software numbers for licensee titles.

The pricing thing has been talked about before, it's retailers fault for training customers to expect it, and the industry's fault for allowing it to get this bad, as Iwata told them this would happen back in 2006, and thus it did.

It just seems counter productive, in my eyes. I really enjoyed Nintendoland and NSMBU and I'm looking forward to Lego City and Monster Hunter. The rest of the third party offerings are either uninspiring or horridly overpriced compared to what I can get on the 360 or PS3.

Yeah, I saw that Iwata quote earlier, surprised how early in this generation he said it. Pricing is just horrendous, barring a top game, early adopters just seem to be penalised unless they trade it in equally as early.

Why did anyone buy a 360 or PS3 then? I mean, they could carry on playing Halo 2 for the rest of their lives presumably.

They wouldn't have to spend £300+ to play Halo 3, no?

But that's my point, early adopters will always buy the latest and greatest but they're not enough to sustain the market - people are quite happy waiting to get a price point they want to jump on to. Especially since we've already seen that the current gen started with a lot of ports from the PS2 era.

I want to like the Wii U but it's not doing it for me at the moment and I really do think that by the time the next gen consoles launch that the Wii U won't be a desirable purchase for the mass market and that the excitement will be directed towards the new very powerful consoles. Nintendo had about a year to really penetrate the market with the Wii U and the evidence currently suggests they are not making big enough strides towards this objective before the new consoles are launched.

Dude it came out at the end of November.

[squirtle]

The state of the economy has been bad for 4 years now. Did game and console sales suddenly drop through the floor?

I must have missed that.

Of course the market may be changing, and perhaps sales will be lower, but i don't see compelling reasons at the moment for the doom and gloom in this thread.

But anyway it's been noted now that Nintendo fans can't accept 'Nintendo are doomed', but they can accept ''consoles are doomed'.

Isn't that totally surprising to everyone?

The state of the economy has been bad for four years now, and over the last year or so, the bite of the cuts and the general lack of money is really starting to show. Look at all the big chains going out of business at the moment or being very close to it (and ironically, a lot of them are entertainment shops). Look at the shit going down in so many European countries. I know there's a counter argument about Apple doing well and hardware sales of entertainment stuff doing well in austere times, but I'm not sure these kind of austere times have really been experienced before to this degree over such a large number of countries.

As a gamer, I fear for my hobby, and that's got nothing to do with Nintendo is doomed, but more of a general fear that gaming as I know it and enjoy it, may have to change to such a degree that it becomes unrecognisable to what has gone before.

[Camel]

What games do "hardcore" gamers play theys days?

Street Fighter x Tekken (2013)

[squirtle]

Absolutely. And somehow, before we've even got the details, the NDF are announcing that the PS4 won't launch before Spring next year without really much in way of evidence for that...

And where, pray tell, is your evidence that it is coming out at all this year?

[McCoy]

Yeah - that's my point. If PS4 sells 100 million, and 720 sold only 20 million, third party aren't going to not convert their games to run on the 720, because they are missing out on sales for comparatively little effort (or visa versa). Conversion will be 1% of the money and effort of building the title in the first place.

How do you explain that the Xbox with a very similar sales ratio was home to a very large quantity of multi format titles then?

I think by the time both consoles were established there were very few high profile third party games which didn't appear on both consoles and a large number of previously exclusive PS2 games which were also ported over.

Historical evidence suggests that in the situation you describe then the machine with an active userbase of 20 million will still receive ports of most games released. Even the Gamecube which, as most Nintendo consoles, wasn't that appealing to third parties still got a number of the same games (Burnout is an immediate example) that PS2 and Xbox got.

It's all determined by the cost of conversion versus the profit derived from making the game available on an additional format and if previous trends are anything to go by it appears that the finances heavily lean towards releasing on as many similar platforms as possible regardless of the total amount of consoles sold. The only reason this will differ is if it is prohibitively expense to either develop for both consoles or to port the completed game over to the other console.

This is slightly academic since the smart money is on the 760 continuing to lead in the states, the PS4 leading Japan with Europe leaning towards the PS4 but not to an overriding extent and with UK favouring the 760. Basically a stalemate in terms of hardware sales.

[Not Thread Owner]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-02-13-meet-scram-kitty-the-game-that-proves-the-wii-us-got-a-bright-future

[mushashi]

It just seems counter productive, in my eyes. I really enjoyed Nintendoland and NSMBU and I'm looking forward to Lego City and Monster Hunter. The rest of the third party offerings are either uninspiring or horridly overpriced compared to what I can get on the 360 or PS3.

Yeah, I saw that Iwata quote earlier, surprised how early in this generation he said it. Pricing is just horrendous, barring a top game, early adopters just seem to be penalised unless they trade it in equally as early.

But as he said, a top-rated game sold mere 10Ks when they expected much more.

I think you are getting the Iwata comments about pricing the wrong way around, he said you shouldn't cut prices.

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/events/060607qa/index.html

Read Q3 for his exact words on the subject of pricing.

However, if the suggested retail price of any and all software is marked down in 6 months or 9 months, the customers will learn the cycle and wait for the discounting, which will simply aggravate the decreasing sales of new software. We need to be cautious about this.

[SMD]

But as he said, a top-rated game sold mere 10Ks when they expected much more.

I think you are getting the Iwata comments about pricing the wrong way around, he said you shouldn't cut prices.

http://www.nintendo....07qa/index.html

Read Q3 for his exact words on the subject of pricing.

No, I got that That's what I mean, if you know a game isn't going to sell for less than half the release price after 2 months, you have to be extremely incentivised to buy that title, otherwise it's a no brainer, yeah?

As for the title, do they mean Black Ops 2?

[McCoy]

Dude it came out at the end of November.

Dude, I'm not making this up, it came out at the end of November and has already missed Nintendo's own internal sales targets. However way you spin it, missing your own sales expectations is not a good thing. Add to that missing the market's expectations and having problems with third party support doesn't suggest that all is rosy in this all important year of needing to establish itself.

[squirtle]

Yeah - that's my point. If PS4 sells 100 million, and 720 sold only 20 million, third party aren't going to not convert their games to run on the 720, because they are missing out on sales for comparatively little effort (or visa versa). Conversion will be 1% of the money and effort of building the title in the first place.

Was it? Wasn't that what Scott was saying in the first place? They'll start off on a level footing, but if one surges ahead, we may see stuff cancelled on the other one.

[SMD]

Dude, I'm not making this up, it came out at the end of November and has already missed Nintendo's own internal sales targets. However way you spin it, missing your own sales expectations is not a good thing. Add to that missing the market's expectations and having problems with third party support doesn't suggest that all is rosy in this all important year of needing to establish itself.

Who said it was rosy? My stance has been:

a) it's still too soon to make any sort of prediction on the Wii U, since we don't know anything about the competition (one week! ) and we've been promised a good E3.

b) even without the Wii U, the market seems to be in a slight decline and we don't know how many early adopters there will be, again because we don't know about the competition or when it'll be released.

[McCoy]

And where, pray tell, is your evidence that it is coming out at all this year?

It's not a secret that many third parties are prepping next gen games as we speak and are under the impression the systems are launching this year. Of course, no official announcements have been made but it is reasonable to assume that the developers making the games have got a time frame that they are working to, presumably after discussions with Sony and Microsoft, and so their statements that they expect games to launch at the end of the year carries some weight.

It's not concrete by any means but neither is any suggestion that they won't launch in Europe until 2014. On the balance of probabilities though I'd suggest that the assumption that one or both of the machines will launch by the year's end is fairly probable.

[MojoChin]

Dude, I'm not making this up, it came out at the end of November and has already missed Nintendo's own internal sales targets. However way you spin it, missing your own sales expectations is not a good thing. Add to that missing the market's expectations and having problems with third party support doesn't suggest that all is rosy in this all important year of needing to establish itself.

Apple iz teh doomed!!!

[McCoy]

Who said it was rosy? My stance has been:

a) it's still too soon to make any sort of prediction on the Wii U, since we don't know anything about the competition (one week! ) and we've been promised a good E3.

b) even without the Wii U, the market seems to be in a slight decline and we don't know how many early adopters there will be, again because we don't know about the competition or when it'll be released.

I accept both of those points, we can probably both agree that at the present time the Wii U has missed expectations and has to get back on track quickly.

[SMD]

I accept both of those points, we can probably both agree that at the present time the Wii U has missed expectations and has to get back on track quickly.

Of course, I just find it hard to see this as Nintendo's imminent doom or crushing victory. The next gen ought to be a lot closer between all three if all goes well.

[McCoy]

Apple iz teh doomed!!!

I'm sure Apple would be the first to admit that they would have preferred to have met their sales expectations rather than have failed to meet them. I'd even go so far to argue that Apple are looking more and more at risk from Android phones, specifically, Samsung and this may be the first evidence of that.

[McCoy]

Of course, I just find it hard to see this as Nintendo's imminent doom or crushing victory. The next gen ought to be a lot closer between all three if all goes well.

I hope so. I love Nintendo and the Wii U is the first launch I've skipped since the SNES. But so far very little that they have shown so far has excited me and I fear that we may have a Wii situation in a year or so where the Wii U just looks horribly outdated compared to its competitors.

I also think there is a wide perception from us lot that Nintendo may have to do more than simply release a new Zelda game or another Mario Kart. I think a lot of us hope that the franchise games, specifically Zelda, will head in a new original direction this time around.

[SMD]

Nintendo Direct tomorrow!

http://www.nintendo.co.uk/Misc-/Nintendo-Direct/Latest-Nintendo-Direct/Nintendo-Direct-698557.html

[SMD]

I hope so. I love Nintendo and the Wii U is the first launch I've skipped since the SNES. But so far very little that they have shown so far has excited me and I fear that we may have a Wii situation in a year or so where the Wii U just looks horribly outdated compared to its competitors.

I also think there is a wide perception from us lot that Nintendo may have to do more than simply release a new Zelda game or another Mario Kart. I think a lot of us hope that the franchise games, specifically Zelda, will head in a new original direction this time around.

£300 is a lot of money either way. However you want to rationalise it, it's a fair chunk of money for something that you can guarantee will not hold its price. Whether it's 3 months or a full year, you're paying extra for early access.

The sooner Nintendo can sell the 'proper' Wii U bundle one penny shy of £200 is the sooner it'll be more palatable for people to take a punt. That's how much I paid for it and I don't feel like I've lost out. It's my personal opinion but I feel like it's something that most people can share. As exciting as new hardware is, I'm going to stand aside if they launch for £400.

I know there's a lot of pressure on Nintendo to produce original IP but it'd be a good middle ground if they worked with other studios on collaborations. Not expecting a Mario game that isn't wholly designed by them but I guess in theory you could see a new Starfox or Wave Race with other developers.

[Venice Cull]

Was it? Wasn't that what Scott was saying in the first place? They'll start off on a level footing, but if one surges ahead, we may see stuff cancelled on the other one.

I'm not sure people are reading what I said, or my writing leaves much to be desired (probably this).

I'm saying stuff won't be cancelled, because conversion between similar heavyweight platforms is infinitesimal compared to the development costs. Ports are a no brainer - regardless of how far ahead one platform is.

Or am I misunderstanding what you're saying?

[pulsemyne]

WiiU version of need for speed has been shown and by jingo it looks pretty.

I think the arguement of the wiiU being only as powerful as current gen consoles is over.

[angel]

Yep, it is only as powerful.

[pulsemyne]

Nice troll there angel.

Anyway it's using the PC assets so the textures are much better. Shadows also seem better as well. A very very nice port and it seems they really thought about the game and how to make it better for the WiiU.

[Harsin]

I'm sure Apple would be the first to admit that they would have preferred to have met their sales expectations

I thought Apple met their own sales expectations, they just didn't make the numbers predicted by various analysts causing The Verge and the like to collectively shit their pants.