Did the Wii U launch fall flat on its face?

[The Jackal]

UK supermarket Asda has slashed the price of the Wii U for the second time in two months. This is not good.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/uk-supe...d-time-6407856

Meh, £199 is still expensive. They should of reduced the price to £150 for the "Premium" model not the Basic one, that should of been like £130 or around that. They're still not gonna shift them.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

So basically now it's roughly around the price of the US version correct? If I remember correctly £200 is close to $300 USD correct?

[The Jackal]

So basically now it's roughly around the price of the US version correct? If I remember correctly £200 is close to $300 USD correct?

I think so. It's still to expensive (imo) when take into account there's no games for the bloody thing and you have the 360/PS3 at the same price and they come bundled with a harddrive/ and game.

[Knuckle Duster]

That's just it though, low software sales for new systems is typical. Why on earth should any developer expect millions of sales on the Wii U right now? There's just over 3 million of them sold.

The media has taken the Wii U launch and spun it negatively while completely ignoring the fact that many "issues" are par for course for new system launches. I'd say that is hurting the Wii U just as badly right now. Why would an average gamer buy the Wii U when every news site is reporting it's dead? Bad press has done nothing but fuel the Wii U's problems.

The only real problem with the Wii U is Nintendo's Drought. Beyond that it's just bad press blowing things out of proportion which has created a bad image for the system.

Bullshit. There's the software drought. There's also the lack of standard features and compatibility expected of them in today's market. High cost. A GPU that is customized enough to cause performance problems unless more money is spent on optimization for old games, that won't run expensive modern games developed across the 3 other platforms.

It's ugly on all fronts. Nintendo never learned from the mistakes of the Wii. Sure it will have a handful of good games... at maybe 2 or 3 games per year...

I'm a huge Nintendo fan, and I think it's ridiculous to blame media over Nintendo. Media is resonating with the popular opinion, even from those more casual an optimistic.

It comes back to the point: Why would I want to buy a Wii U? There's no games, and it doesn't do much else that cheaper alternatives can do. Nintendo should have released this thing in 2009 or 2010.

[Lan Di]

And here are my personal favorites in no particular order;

Scarface The World is Yours
Gunblade NY & L.A. Machineguns: Rage of the Machines Arcade Hits Pack
Sin and Punishment Star Successor
Muramasa: The Demon Blade
Sonic Colors
Resident Evil 4
Tatsunoko vs Capcom
Metroid Prime Trilogy
Xenoblade Chronicles
The Last Story
Okami
Castle Shikigami III
Legend Of Zelda Twilight Princess
Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword
Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse - I highly recommend this game. You'll need a hacked Wii to play because it was released in Japan only. There is a translation patch on the net, just google it.
Project Zero 2: Wii Edition (EU import). I highly recommend this game as well but again, you'll need a hacked Wii.

It would be a crying shame if the Wii-U could never offer such stellar games as these.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Bullshit. There's the software drought. There's also the lack of standard features and compatibility expected of them in today's market. High cost. A GPU that is customized enough to cause performance problems unless more money is spent on optimization for old games, that won't run expensive modern games developed across the 3 other platforms.

It's ugly on all fronts. Nintendo never learned from the mistakes of the Wii. Sure it will have a handful of good games... at maybe 2 or 3 games per year...

I'm a huge Nintendo fan, and I think it's ridiculous to blame media over Nintendo. Media is resonating with the popular opinion, even from those more casual an optimistic.

It comes back to the point: Why would I want to buy a Wii U? There's no games, and it doesn't do much else that cheaper alternatives can do. Nintendo should have released this thing in 2009 or 2010.

I'm not saying Nintendo is blameless here. But the media isn't helping and if anything is making things worse. Spec wise I could care less about the Wii U's abilities. The system itself is interesting and it does have some exclusives on the horizon I'll definitely buy the system for when they get closer to releasing. The media taking what was actually a pretty solid launch and driving it into the ground by saying the system was a disaster as early as November didn't help one bit though.

Nintendo is really only guilty of the software drought. The rest of the Wii Us problems (such as low sales, low confidence from developers and consumers, etc.), I'd say are just as much the Media's fault as they are Nintendo's, if not more of the Media's fault in some cases. It seems everyone wants this system to fail and will stop at nothing to report every negative rumor and spin any story into a negative problem regardless of how true they really are. Yet all Rumors on the next Xbox and PS4 seem to get plenty of emphasis on how skeptical the reporters are and how those systems will be the second coming of christ. It's stupidly annoying and I'm not even that big of a Nintendo fan.

[WarmSignal]

Enter bold power.

...maybe the PS4 or Xbox (maybe both) will go the rumored always-online route, or tying games to one console, might help the Wii U's case a bit. Just a thought.

I do agree though, people are giving the Wii U undue Hell for a console that's not been out a full year. Just like they did the 3DS, and now the 3DS has made quite a turnaround.

[Knuckle Duster]

Nintendo is more to blame than for just a software drought. They designed the machine. It's an expensive and half-baked console with a crappy online ecosystem that sets an odd standard for developers, when the other titans of the industry are being pressured to keep costs down & being praised for switching to x86.

It's not the media inventing problems, it's the media reporting the glaring problems with the final product. Nintendo is stuck between generations, squandering the only advantage of being there in the first place (Software), and they need to bleed a lot of money to fix it with subsidies. It's a brand new product that's only as good as end-of-life competition.

What we'll see going forward here is whether or not Nintendo is still cool under pressure, or will they radically fuck themselves over with a few words of Bernie Stolarism.

They are loss leading both platforms, they are going to implode and downsize if they don't start shoveling out product people want to buy soon.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

The other two are being pressured to keep development costs down, not system costs. The Development costs for the Wii U should be equal to the current gen systems and lower than next gen systems.

Spec wise I could care less really. I liked the Generations better when the systems had different specs. It made for more unique libraries. The bitching about the Wii U Specs is like bitching about the Genesis specs when compared to it's competition. We knew what the Wii U was going to be for months before it came out, anyone expecting it to be on par with a top of the line gaming PC was just plain stupid. Bitching about it now isn't going to change anything. Bitch about the real problems like the software drought, the overly negative media, etc. That's where your bitching can actually make a difference.

And I didn't say the media was making up problems, I said they were reporting things as major problems that were simply par for the course as far as new system launches go. As for Nintendo imploding by supporting 2 systems, I don't know what planet you are on but last I checked the 3DS had bounced back and was doing fine:

http://kotaku.com/5984276/dont-look-...hine-out-there

[Knuckle Duster]

The other two are being pressured to keep development costs down, not system costs. The Development costs for the Wii U should be equal to the current gen systems and lower than next gen systems.

They're pulling development costs and system costs down together at the same time. AMD fabricates similar APUs already for the PC industry.

Spec wise I could care less really. I liked the Generations better when the systems had different specs. It made for more unique libraries. The bitching about the Wii U Specs is like bitching about the Genesis specs when compared to it's competition. We knew what the Wii U was going to be for months before it came out, anyone expecting it to be on par with a top of the line gaming PC was just plain stupid. Bitching about it now isn't going to change anything. Bitch about the real problems like the software drought, the overly negative media, etc. That's where your bitching can actually make a difference.

The real problem is piss poor design from the start, leading to developers not seeing any incentive to build games for it, leading to consumers seeing no reason to buy it.

Nintendo is trying to ass-kiss the indie scene now, to beef up their software. It's all they can do, as they bleed money from paying off retailer price cuts and money hatting the big developers for exclusive content. If I was an investor in N, I would be pissed right the fuck off and praying for Apple or Samsung to absorb them and put a bullet in the platform.


The media is doom and gloom about it, because all of these things add up to significantly harm and would eventually kill Nintendo if continued for more generations. The Software drought isn't what the media is complaining about, because it's expected, as you said. As I said before though, it's just the icing on the cake.

We can say "Well, specs are meaningless! It's the games that matter!" - That's fine, but I can get 10 times the games on a PS3 or 360 for less money, and it's cheaper. What does Nintendo offer here? A half-assed step above the Wii which mostly collected dust for a lot of gamers that turns off developers who make the games we want to buy in the first place.

I think Nintendo should immediately roll heads in management on both sides of the Pacific.

[FuturePrimitive]

Enter bold power.

BOLD POWER...

[Lan Di]

I don't know what planet you are on but last I checked the 3DS had bounced back and was doing fine:

http://kotaku.com/5984276/dont-look-...hine-out-there

I agree 100%, but it looks as if NOA is up to its censorship bullshit yet again. Link-->http://kotaku.com/the-ass-nintendo-d...-see-487825312

[TrekkiesUnite118]

It's a problem you can't do anything about at this point. Bitching about it is just a waste of time. Imagine how the 16-bit era would have turned out if all the gaming media and developers of the time just sat around and bitched about how the Genesis could only display 64 colors instead of making do with it? That's pretty much what's going on with the Wii U.

And development costs have nothing to do with how close to PC architecture the systems are, but more on the expected standards of those specs. The high costs go more into the asset creation and marketing, not the actual programming for the systems. The developers of Xenoblade have stated that if they wanted to do it on an HD console it would have cost way too much with the huge environments at the time. The reason is the assets would have needed to be significantly higher quality, which would take more time and people to do.

Praying Nintendo be bought by Apple is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. Investors panicking because of how Nintendo does business is no ones fault but their own. Nintendo has operated this way for decades, they should have known that going into it.

Also here's a pretty good article on the idea of Nintendo making iPhone games:
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/0...-iphone-games/

[FuturePrimitive]

I agree 100%, but it looks as if NOA is up to its censorship bullshit yet again. Link-->http://kotaku.com/the-ass-nintendo-d...-see-487825312

Pointless censoring! There's nothing to censor! She's even giving you the look like, "You didn't...even...KNOCK?!?! You're dead."

[Bottino]

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to FuturePrimitive again."
Damn.