Nintendo Switch

[Alex W.]

I think the Wii had the advantage that it sold its appeal to onlookers and peers very easily. I don't know about everyone else but I dragged mine to families' houses on Xmas and boxing day and everyone wanted a go because it was so obvious what was fun about it. No abstraction.

 

If the NX is about having real console games everywhere, having one or two big, current, recognisable third-party titles to make that obvious to every potential customer on the bus will matter a great deal. Get CoD on there.

[Guest]

13 hours ago, Fatsam said:

Exactly. They got the marketing right for Wii, but the console was successful because it was a fucking great idea that felt incredibly novel and had a system seller at launch. Intuitive controls that your granny and 2 year old can use wasn't dreamt up by marketing people.

 

In contrast, Wii U looked uninspired. And everyone could see it wasn't going to sell anything like as well as the Wii from the moment it was revealed. No amount of decent marketing was going to change that.

 

You should work for Nintendo with insight like that.

 

How is the NX going to do?

[DarhkFox]

19 hours ago, Super Craig said:

The Wii had a killer app in Wii Sports and the potential for tons of new experiences due to the different control options. The Wii U was basically a DS for the TV with no killer app.

Does make me wonder if things would have been different if Super Mario Maker was released as a launch title.

[Stanley]

5 hours ago, Alex W. said:

 

If the NX is about having real console games everywhere, having one or two big, current, recognisable third-party titles to make that obvious to every potential customer on the bus will matter a great deal. Get CoD on there.

I don't think it's just going to be about that. Nintendo games sell Nintendo hardware, certainly no one will be interested in COD over PS4 or Xbox.

[Protocol Penguin]

7 hours ago, Sarlaccfood said:

The WiiU had enough going for it to not be a disaster (although I agree it was never going to sell like the Wii). It's just that the message about what it was so confused from the off.

The Wii U was doomed from its very concept, which Nintendo should have abandoned on the drawing board, TBH. But as they went with it, they should've known better than to have messed up with the branding and console design. Making it look like a Wii, giving it a near identical name - no wonder people still think it's a "tablet controller for a Wii".

[RubberJohnny]

Weirdly the Xbox 360 didn't have the problem of people thinking it was an addon for the Xbox, despite the nomenclature being identical to "Wii U".

 

The problem wasn't the name, it was that no one gave a shit anymore. No one has ever come up with an anecdote where they corrected someone that it was a new console and they ran out and brought one.

[mushashi]

6 hours ago, Alex W. said:

If the NX is about having real console games everywhere, having one or two big, current, recognisable third-party titles to make that obvious to every potential customer on the bus will matter a great deal. Get CoD on there.

 

But we already have a pretty big, repeated hint from Ubisoft as to what it's primary target market is, and announcing Just Dance as their first game confirmed for it just underlines it, they could have chosen to confirm one of their other games instead, you never hear the same language used for consoles from Microsoft or Sony before launch:

 

 

Quote

 

"We announced that we're developing Just Dance for NX and we have other surprises that we will announce later, but we also believe Nintendo has the power to reinvent the way families are playing," Corre tells me. "Nintendo is a fantastic powerhouse of brands that are really cherished by a lot of fans and families... I am still impressed by the reoccurrence of success and appetite even today for the Nintendo franchises on the current system."

 

 

Quote

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said: "On the NX, what we have seen is really great. We think having a new machine coming is going to help the industry to continue to grow and to take a lot more casual players back to the industry."

 

Quote

 

“We have always appreciated the relationship with Nintendo, the co-creation and the fact that they are really concentrating on quality - they have fantastic brands,” he told MCV at Ubisoft's E3 booth in Los Angeles.

 

“And they are addressing the family market in a very different way, their own way, which we appreciate. We have done a lot of products and successes with Nintendo in the past, and we believe that the NX will recapture a lot the lapsed Wii players. So we will see when they release it, but we are confident.”

 

 

Which is pretty much the same language used in the recent MCV story about software support by the un-named exec discussing it. It's doubling down on Blue Ocean, as the Red Ocean is more bloodier than ever.

[Alex W.]

1 hour ago, Stanley said:

I don't think it's just going to be about that. Nintendo games sell Nintendo hardware, certainly no one will be interested in COD over PS4 or Xbox.

 

I agree, but the only way they're going to communicate "you can play Real Games any time, any where" is if someone sees a "Real Game" they recognise running on one of these things outside of the home. They need at least one big recognisable franchise for that. That's Nintendo's challenge.

 

Without active messaging nobody's going to see some Nintendo handheld console and conclude that it's going to be anything more than a new DS. And the best kind of messaging Nintendo's had over the years is people seeing other people using their machines.

[Stanley]

Wii didn't need that, DS didn't need that, why should this be any different? 

[Alex W.]

The Wii and DS didn't sell on people seeing their easily-recognisable selling points in person?

[Dudley]

1 hour ago, RubberJohnny said:

Weirdly the Xbox 360 didn't have the problem of people thinking it was an addon for the Xbox, despite the nomenclature being identical to "Wii U".

 

 

I think the difference is Xbox is a brand name.  People barely even know that's Microsoft.  Same with Playstation, that in itself is a thing.

 

I'm not sure Wii had that, it was still a "Nintendo". no-one ever believed there was a company called "Wii".

[mushashi]

The Wii was as much a brand name as Game Boy or iPhone is, they explained the logic behind calling it the Wii U, just nobody seems to like the official explanation, even though it has that typical Nintendo logic behind it, much like the name Wii does.

[Stanley]

28 minutes ago, Alex W. said:

The Wii and DS didn't sell on people seeing their easily-recognisable selling points in person?

I didn't say that. They didn't need Call of Duty. They sold because of Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Brain Training, Nintendogs etc.

[RubberJohnny]

That wasn't what Alex said either.

[Stanley]

He said they need a big AAA franchise like Call of Duty. 

[RubberJohnny]

He said it would sell based on seeing people playing console games portably - the key appeal - just like people saw the Wii's key appeal.

 

8 hours ago, Alex W. said:

I think the Wii had the advantage that it sold its appeal to onlookers and peers very easily. I don't know about everyone else but I dragged mine to families' houses on Xmas and boxing day and everyone wanted a go because it was so obvious what was fun about it. No abstraction.

 

If the NX is about having real console games everywhere, having one or two big, current, recognisable third-party titles to make that obvious to every potential customer on the bus will matter a great deal. Get CoD on there.

 

CoD was an example, not the appeal itself.

[Stanley]

A bit vague. 'if' NX is about having real console games anywhere then I'm sure they'll provide their own software to demonstrate that best. They won't rely on COD or any other big third party games. 

[Fatsam]

Yeah, as is always the case, Nintendo games will ultimately sell this thing better than any third party offering.

 

Having the system out and about allowing people to see just how good Nintendo's "console" games are is a biggie though . There's currently billions of people out there that have no idea that they need Splatoon in their lives. NX can help change that. Zelda Breath of the Wild is unlike any Zelda that's come before. NX will give more people the opportunity to experience that.

[Stanley]

Completely agree. Breath of The Wild is a real console game in every sense. There's also the danger that if they try and port say COD it will just look inferior to the bigger console versions, especially with the upcoming Neo and Scorpio.

[Alex W.]

1 hour ago, Fatsam said:

Yeah, as is always the case, Nintendo games will ultimately sell this thing better than any third party offering.

 

Having the system out and about allowing people to see just how good Nintendo's "console" games are is a biggie though . There's currently billions of people out there that have no idea that they need Splatoon in their lives. NX can help change that. Zelda Breath of the Wild is unlike any Zelda that's come before. NX will give more people the opportunity to experience that.

 

Yeah, but I guess what I'm saying is that if Nintendo want people to understand that this plays games that are in the same leagues as the major franchises, they'll want to have one of those franchises to get the message across. They need to have a way of demonstrating that Breath of the Wind isn't "just a handheld game" and having something on the system that lets you shoot mans in the grimdark helps convey that idea.

 

I have far less confidence in this idea than my effort explaining it would suggest, it's not going to make or break it.

[Dudley]

3 hours ago, mushashi said:

The Wii was as much a brand name as Game Boy or iPhone is, they explained the logic behind calling it the Wii U, just nobody seems to like the official explanation, even though it has that typical Nintendo logic behind it, much like the name Wii does.

 

But people didn't get it did they?

 

I know people who are into games who didn't even realise it was a new format.

 

Nintendo's branding has been a cluster fuck the whole last decade really.

[Not Thread Owner]

7 hours ago, RubberJohnny said:

Weirdly the Xbox 360 didn't have the problem of people thinking it was an addon for the Xbox, despite the nomenclature being identical to "Wii U".

 

 

 

47 billion Wii owners were non-gamers who didn't even consider the Wii a console. All 324 Xbox owners knew the 360 was a new console.

 

Entirely different situations.

[sid]

My god I cannot bloody wait to play this new zelda. Talk about a system seller...

 

i wonder what the launch games will be. Luigis mansion 3 maybe or perhaps a super tennis game....a 1080 remake would be decent also. Pikmin 3 almost certainly.....

 

nearly here!!!!

[Mr Do 71]

5 hours ago, sid said:

My god I cannot bloody wait to play this new zelda. Talk about a system seller...

 

i wonder what the launch games will be. Luigis mansion 3 maybe or perhaps a super tennis game....a 1080 remake would be decent also. Pikmin 3 almost certainly.....

 

nearly here!!!!

 

Animal Crossing, I bet.

[the_debaser]

I'm fully expecting a new wave race, excitebike/truck, advance wars, adventure of lolo, earthbound and 1080 (although I'd prefer snowboard kids). 

[Nespresso]

2 hours ago, the_debaser said:

I'm fully expecting a new wave race, excitebike/truck, advance wars, adventure of lolo, earthbound and 1080 (although I'd prefer snowboard kids). 

Yes! I'd love me a new Snowboard Kids game. When was even the last time we had a proper arcadey snowboard game? 

[Stanley]

SSX?

[Nespresso]

54 minutes ago, Stanley said:

SSX?

Yeah exactly. 

[Stanley]

I thought SSX was pretty arcade like.

[Fatsam]

And it was also shit unfortunately.