Did the Wii U launch fall flat on its face?

[Knuckle Duster]

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.

Right, so it's better to say: "Oh well, can't do anything now. Let's disregard all those obvious grievances and focus on the media's bitching as a bad thing out of context. Why aren't they talking about the 'good' things the Wii U has to offer? Which is ... ?????"

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.

Development costs and asset creation aren't what I'm talking about. i'm talking about Sony and Microsoft using AMD APUs which are closer to the standard x86 chips AMD will be fabricating anyway, which will in all likelihood drive costs down quicker than custom hardware from IBM. It is also easier to get developers to say "OK, we'll put our game on your platform too." If there is barely any work to be done once they have a path laid out to port their code between consoles & PC's that run on the same hardware.

Nintendo not only dropped the ball, it chased it out of bounds while the rest of the kids are walking away to find something better 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/

Nintendo's console is dead on arrival, offers no significant advantage over the cheaper Xbox 360 or PS3, they've squandered their early launch advantage and are about to face 3 competitors who are bending over backwards to please fans.

You think it's stupid that they hypothetically cease releasing dead hardware, or continue to fight to find loyal customers in the handheld space in the shadow of a planet full of smartphone users? It's far from stupid. It would be great for their bottom line to sell iPhone games on the side.

You're right Nintendo has operated this way for decades, and they're losing the market. DS and Wii were different and a media sensation, 3DS will carry them, but the Wii U won't. Wii U is Gamecube level status quo. Only it's more estranged from developers with the wide gap of not being able to run the code they are marketing. It will fall to Nintendo to bleed money and pay for exclusives, if they ever get ahead by paying for the price cuts they desperately need to ship this redundant and unmarketable console.


They're an out of touch a toy maker, struggling to catch up and add media features people already take for granted. Trying to get software developers to build games on their platform, software developers who have people from competitors pampering their development needs while showing them high profits.

[FuturePrimitive]

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

I feel loved!

We need more members! Street team ASSEMBLE! Sega-16 must magnetize all Sega fans to its hallowed halls!

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Right, so it's better to say: "Oh well, can't do anything now. Let's disregard all those obvious grievances and focus on the media's bitching as a bad thing out of context. Why aren't they talking about the 'good' things the Wii U has to offer? Which is ... ?????"



Development costs and asset creation aren't what I'm talking about. i'm talking about Sony and Microsoft using AMD APUs which are closer to the standard x86 chips AMD will be fabricating anyway, which will in all likelihood drive costs down quicker than custom hardware from IBM. It is also easier to get developers to say "OK, we'll put our game on your platform too." If there is barely any work to be done once they have a path laid out to port their code between consoles & PC's that run on the same hardware.

Nintendo not only dropped the ball, it chased it out of bounds while the rest of the kids are walking away to find something better to do.



Nintendo's console is dead on arrival, offers no significant advantage over the cheaper Xbox 360 or PS3, they've squandered their early launch advantage and are about to face 3 competitors who are bending over backwards to please fans.

You think it's stupid that they hypothetically cease releasing dead hardware, or continue to fight to find loyal customers in the handheld space in the shadow of a planet full of smartphone users? It's far from stupid. It would be great for their bottom line to sell iPhone games on the side.

You're right Nintendo has operated this way for decades, and they're losing the market. DS and Wii were different and a media sensation, 3DS will carry them, but the Wii U won't. Wii U is Gamecube level status quo. Only it's more estranged from developers with the wide gap of not being able to run the code they are marketing. It will fall to Nintendo to bleed money and pay for exclusives, if they ever get ahead by paying for the price cuts they desperately need to ship this redundant and unmarketable console.


They're an out of touch a toy maker, struggling to catch up and add media features people already take for granted. Trying to get software developers to build games on their platform, software developers who have people from competitors pampering their development needs while showing them high profits.

Did you read that article? It brings up some pretty good points about why Nintendo dropping out and going to make games for the iPhone would be a bad thing. Do you really want to see Nintendo go through that horrible slump of shit games that Sega went through for close to a decade after going third party?

And you may not be talking about asset creation but that is what the big factor driving up game development is. It's not programming, as everyone is using easy to use libraries and premade engines these days. Custom Hardware woes haven't been a serious problem since the Saturn. The PS2 and PS3 had somewhat similar problems, but not nearly as bad as you are trying to make it out to be. Programing for Custom Hardware isn't a problem when you are going to be using a prebuilt engine like Unreal 3 or 4 anyways.

And again, I'm not saying Nintendo is blameless. But what they are truly blamable for and what the media is sensationalizing are two entirely different things.

Honestly I think the Wii U has plenty to offer now and on the horizon. The Gamepad controller I find pretty nice. I love my DS and being able to play an HD consolized version of that concept I find great. The Wiimote is nice, but a touchscreen can give very nice accuracy for certain games that the Wiimote lacked. I love the idea of some games being playable on the Gamepad instead of the TV. It makes the system portable around the house as well as allowing me to share the TV with other people. As for games, I really am excited for Bayonetta 2, Wonderful 101, and Windwaker HD. When those get closer to coming out is probably when I'll get a Wii U, unless something else comes out sooner that I'm equally excited about.

[Barone]

Nintendo's console is dead on arrival, offers no significant advantage over the cheaper Xbox 360 or PS3, they've squandered their early launch advantage and are about to face 3 competitors who are bending over backwards to please fans.

You think it's stupid that they hypothetically cease releasing dead hardware, or continue to fight to find loyal customers in the handheld space in the shadow of a planet full of smartphone users? It's far from stupid. It would be great for their bottom line to sell iPhone games on the side.

You're right Nintendo has operated this way for decades, and they're losing the market. DS and Wii were different and a media sensation, 3DS will carry them, but the Wii U won't. Wii U is Gamecube level status quo. Only it's more estranged from developers with the wide gap of not being able to run the code they are marketing. It will fall to Nintendo to bleed money and pay for exclusives, if they ever get ahead by paying for the price cuts they desperately need to ship this redundant and unmarketable console.


They're an out of touch a toy maker, struggling to catch up and add media features people already take for granted. Trying to get software developers to build games on their platform, software developers who have people from competitors pampering their development needs while showing them high profits.

This.

Comparisons with Saturn, GC or even the DC have been made but I really find some extra "issues" in comparison:
-DC launch line-up was very impressive and had several games well received both by gamers and critics. Also, it was, initially, much more successful than its predecessor (Saturn) in US. All that unlike the Wii U.
-Saturn had its hardware/development related issues but the console did had a ton of extra power compared to the last gen ones and some clear advantages over its same-gen competitors in some aspects. Unlike the Wii U.
-GC was never a major success but if you take its library you'll see better 3rd party support than the Wii and the Wii U IMO. Also, its hardware was superior in several instances to the main competitor of that gen, something that will never happen with the Wii U.

Still trying to borrow some examples from the past:
-The Wii U, as the Sony and MS rumors/announcements come, seems to be using a CPU that will be, at least, as underpowered as the 3DO's was in comparison to PS's and Saturn's.
-Wii U marketing (partially thanks to its name) seems to be as confusing as the 32X's was at some point; many people don't know if it's an add-on, a hardware upgrade, a whole new console or whatever.
-Wii U's sales numbers of the last 3 months are kinda Jaguar/3DO/32X-bad if you consider what's the console market size right now.

I really don't want Nintendo to go out of the console hardware market but, going as it is now, it wouldn't surprise me if they come up with a depressing announcement some point in the next year or so.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

I really don't want Nintendo to go out of the console hardware market but, going as it is now, it wouldn't surprise me if they come up with a depressing announcement some point in the next year or so.

They probably wont. They still have a buttload of money they are sitting on and the 3DS has started to print money, and it doesn't even have a major Pokemon game out yet.

[Barone]

They probably wont. They still have a buttload of money they are sitting on and the 3DS has started to print money, and it doesn't even have a major Pokemon game out yet.

Well, hopefully you're right but things are already ugly and the main competitors of the next-gen are yet to get in the ring...
If they go handheld-only it will very sad to me as well, since I hate handhelds.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Honestly I won't be surprised at all if PS4 and the Next Xbox don't perform very well in sales either. There's honestly no games announced for either system that interest me in the slightest. Not to mention we don't know what their launch prices will be.

Some console gamers I've spoken to are really pissed that PS4 and the Next Xbox are coming out because they don't want to have to replace their PS3's and 360's. This generation really went on too long.

[Knuckle Duster]

Did you read that article? It brings up some pretty good points about why Nintendo dropping out and going to make games for the iPhone would be a bad thing. Do you really want to see Nintendo go through that horrible slump of shit games that Sega went through for close to a decade after going third party?

What does it matter if they're not releasing games on the hardware they sell now? They're in decline. The horrible slump of shit games is already here, only it's not being sold to everybody. They are milking everything.

And you may not be talking about asset creation but that is what the big factor driving up game development is. It's not programming, as everyone is using easy to use libraries and premade engines these days. Custom Hardware woes haven't been a serious problem since the Saturn. The PS2 and PS3 had somewhat similar problems, but not nearly as bad as you are trying to make it out to be. Programing for Custom Hardware isn't a problem when you are going to be using a prebuilt engine like Unreal 3 or 4 anyways.

That's the point. Modern game engines are coming out that won't be able to run on the old hardware without a lot of work, and certainly the Wii U would be feeling that burn twice, since the hardware itself isn't similar enough to x86 for game engine developers to target and optimize it easily. They stand apart right now as the oddball console that requires extra effort and no increased sales benefit.

And again, I'm not saying Nintendo is blameless. But what they are truly blamable for and what the media is sensationalizing are two entirely different things.

Honestly I think the Wii U has plenty to offer now and on the horizon. The Gamepad controller I find pretty nice. I love my DS and being able to play an HD consolized version of that concept I find great. The Wiimote is nice, but a touchscreen can give very nice accuracy for certain games that the Wiimote lacked. I love the idea of some games being playable on the Gamepad instead of the TV. It makes the system portable around the house as well as allowing me to share the TV with other people. As for games, I really am excited for Bayonetta 2, Wonderful 101, and Windwaker HD. When those get closer to coming out is probably when I'll get a Wii U, unless something else comes out sooner that I'm equally excited about.

I think Nintendo completely shit the bed on this generation, and being as strong and impressive as they are is the only thing going to allow them to break even in a few years. I hope I'm wrong, and I hope they show up beyond E3 with a huge list of must-have games. Looking at their recent history though, and it's a safer bet to expect disappointment.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

What does it matter if they're not releasing games on the hardware they sell now? They're in decline. The horrible slump of shit games is already here, only it's not being sold to everybody. They are milking everything.

The shit shovelware on the Wii isn't the same as the titles Nintendo makes. Aside from Other M I can't really think of a Nintendo game I've recently played that I didn't enjoy. Yeah they are milking Mario and Zelda to death right now, but the games they are making aren't bad games by any means.

That's the point. Modern game engines are coming out that won't be able to run on the old hardware without a lot of work, and certainly the Wii U would be feeling that burn twice, since the hardware itself isn't similar enough to x86 for game engine developers to target and optimize it easily. They stand apart right now as the oddball console that requires extra effort and no increased sales benefit.

Yet those same developers have absolutely no problem porting them to the highly customized and weaker hardware of smartphones. The Wii U still has Unreal 3 and plenty of other engines for it, and Unreal 4 could be ported to it if someone took the time to do it. The high cost of games this generation isn't in the programming, it's in the asset creation. That's the point I'm trying to get you to understand.

[kool kitty89]

Why would any developer want to recompile and optimize old games for the Wii U when spending money on PS4/Durango/PC development is so easily merged now, and the Wii U itself can't move software like a 360 or PS3 can? Nintendo sells it at a loss and it's still too expensive. They priced themselves out of being able to compete.

The traditional Nintendo software drought is just icing on the cake to this problem. I think they have the resources & IP to barely break even in 4 years, if they start money hatting all over the place right now for good games people want.

They're trying, but they're also doing stupid shit like avoiding E3 and showing off terrible marketing.

This is a major problem . . . the WiiU requires significant effort on the part of developers to just convert old/new-ish 7th gen games over to the WiiU due to the odd set of bottlenecks.
had the system been at least modestly more powerful in every major category for technical performance (compared to last gen consoles -especially the 360), then this wouldn't be an issue and cross platform games should have been pretty well covered for 3rd parties even with some enhancements over PS3 and 360 versions.

In fact, several developers commented on that during the pre-production stage working with the existing development hardware. The formal release hit things hard with the more constrained hardware, and especially the weak CPU. Several developers were forced to redesign/scale-back and/or further optimize the games beyond what they'd been working on (or planning) using the dev hardware, and others just dropped development entirely, and this doesn't seem to have gotten better either. (Bethesda comes to mind in dropping their WiiU development plans entirely after launch, and given their relatively CPU bound games, it's not that surprising)


This isn't a repeat of the Wii hardware-wise . . . it's worse and just weird. (actually, the WiiU next to the 360 is kind of like the SNES next to the Genesis hardware performance/feature wise -except their release dates were much closer obviously)



Lack of DVD and BD movie player support is a major weakness too . . . with consoles becoming more and more popular as home theater devices (similar to HTPCs) and with Bluray (and especially DVD) licenses relatively inexpensive now, it just seems like a crappy trade-off to make on Nintendo's part.

[JCU]

Why would any developer want to recompile and optimize old games for the Wii U when spending money on PS4/Durango/PC development is so easily merged now, and the Wii U itself can't move software like a 360 or PS3 can? Nintendo sells it at a loss and it's still too expensive. They priced themselves out of being able to compete.

Explain to me how $299.99 is too expensive. When you look at what the Wii U is and what it's predecessor was, the price isn't expensive in the least. While gamers and analysts seem to believe Nintendo is competing against Sony and Microsoft, reality suggests Nintendo competes against itself and its prior entries into the market.

[zetastrike]

But, guys, it's gonna have earthbound!

[TVC 15]

A big thing people seem to forget with the Wii and 3rd party developers, is the long standing assumption at the time and one that still lingers on that by using older tech that it benefitted development costs and benefited the industry. In actuality the only companies that benefited from the Wii's lacklustre microwaved leftover hardware where Nintendo. I've actually read arguments from developers on more technically minded forums like beyond3d that it actually increased development costs for third parties, most companies had geared up for the next generation PS360 of development, the Wii's lack of feature parity actually meant re-tooling old engines and downgrading assets to work on the Wii for multi-plat titles and numerous other franchises, the Wii did have its own specific development practices such as using very outdated fixed function hardware. Why bother pouring resources into it?

Not every company can do a Monolithsoft and stay strictly tied to one console. Multiplats may be deemed worthless to hardcore neck beards, but they serve to engage semi-casuals and up hardware sales.

The whole argument that the next generation is going to spiral out of control with dev costs is overblown, if anything most development hardware has matured, Sony's OpenGL like API and MS DirectX will make easy cross-platform portability of code from PC, NextBox and PS4, since they all share semi-custom PC hardware. As hardware becomes more powerful coding becomes less-low level and flexible, with mature middleware and compilers. Coders aren't dividing lines of RISC code into a 4kb scratchpad to maximise matrix transforms anymore.

Pseudo-armchair intellectuals (like myself) also assume the Wii-U is great for developers since its lower-spec hardware, yet industry gossip has indicated that the Wii-U development environment has been far from spectacular and mature, along with coding around very specific limitations such as the small EDRAM cache. There is no question that the Wii U can probably perform on a similar level to PS360 hardware, but at this stage in the game their should have been a half jump over that hardware, meaning you could dump recompiled 360 code on the thing along with small optimisations which would have produced better results, where in actuality more time is probably required for you archaic boutique hardware.

Everybody is going to be fighting for the last scrapings leftover in the living room race, we are consistently bombarded with digital content, what makes Nintendo's platform stand out from others, what is there added value? Iterative, tired flavours of old franchises? Nintendo needs more openness with customers and developers from its hardware to its business practices. Still tying purchases to single platforms is an arcane Nintendo example, I buy Super Mario World once I expect to play on all my Nintendo hardware. Nintendo will be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, perhaps the Wii U is a blessing, Nintendo need to go through their own fall before then reaching some form redemption. The question is, is it too late? It was for Sega.

Customers don't care for crappy biblical allegories!

[xelement5x]

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

I would argue that by censoring it they make it look even worse. Who knows what's happening behind that sheet!

[FuturePrimitive]

I would argue that by censoring it they make it look even worse. Who knows what's happening behind that sheet!

She could be the Coppertone Girl behind that sheet! Save the childrens!