The Wii U is dead in its current form, admits Nintendo. But what now?

[Lil Frier]

So naturally people who play things other than shooters and have been marginalized have cause to bitter.

Thing is, a lot of those "people who play shooters" aren't ONLY that. Myself included, we play a lot of other stuff. I don't know of anyone who has purchased a console and played shooters. AT WORST, I think that someone I know might only have sports games on his One, but he's got no shooters.

 

[CZroe]

Seriously the thing about the wii game console is that...turning it on is like a serious investment. You have to turn on the tv, then select the input, then turn on the console, then go thru the menu...insert disc, wait for load, go through game menu...

On an ipad you just wake it up, flip over to the app, fire it up, you're in.

but I probably game most on my android phone now.

You do realize that the tablet can do all of this, right? It can power on the Wii U, power on the TV, change input, set volume, etc. What's more is that you don't even have to turn on the TV because the majority of games support play on the tablet screen. Also, a ton of retail games are available on the eShop and do not require inserting the game... just like *gasp* an iPad with the Apple App Store!

Every single bit of that has been addressed.

 

[mmntech]

MatPat has a new video in his Game Theory series on why the Wii U is struggling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyXcr6sDRtw

Gist of it? Nintendo is sabotaging their own success by putting the legal squeeze on the lets play community. Many gamers now are using YouTube and Twitch to get their gaming news instead of traditional sites like IGN, etc. However, Nintendo's strict copyright rules are preventing any buzz from being generated from leading voices like Smosh, PewDiePie, etc. As a result, Wii U is stalling in its early adopter phase, and not gaining traction among mainstream gamers.

Contrast that to Sony, which has made video sharing and the lets play experience an integral part of the PS4. Which could be why it's leading the pack in sales.

Makes sense to me. Video explains things better.

 

[Lil Frier]

The only issue I have with what you are saying is that in some parts of these franchises Nintendo innovates within the franchise.

Like for Mario. SMB1 was very innovative as a platformer. So was SMB3 with its expansiveness. SM64 was probably the most innovative game of all time. Mario Galaxy was also innovative in many ways with control. They don't just get a formula and stick with it (with updated graphics or missions) like many third parties do in every case.

So Nintendo has the capacity to innovate without new IP. The issue is, and I think this entire thread is hammering on this concept, that they have not innovated.

With the Wii U we get rehashed Mario platformers and games that don't use the tablet screen properly and many don't want that. Nintendo had to mark down the sales forecasts for good reasons.

But Nintendo has innovated in the last ten years: the DS, the Wii's controller, the Virtual-Console, console avatars, the 3DS, etc.

The problem is the Wii U is too much money for too little console. At $199 or $149 it would be closer to an instant buy.

I can agree to an extent, but most of your examples are part of the problem, as they're 10-20 years old now. Galaxy was one I never played because the Wii had too much of a gap in functionality for me (third-party support and online) to bother.

But while there might be some new concepts in a few of those games, there's a lot of iteration in the rest. What's the new SSB bringing? What's special about Tropical Freeze, as opposed to all of its predecessors? How is Mario Kart 8 special?

For as much as people want to downplay the "dudebro" shooters, Halo is a pretty solid example of the opposite of stagnation. You can look at each successor and find SOMETHING new to the franchise within, and it's come in a rather-compelling way.

Halo 2: Online play
Halo 3: Power Ups (not the best of additions)
Halo Wars: RTS
Halo 3 ODST: Firefight
Halo Reach: Armor Abilities
Halo 4: Sprinting, Ordinance, Loadouts, Community Maps

Even though the core of Halo is always the same, just the general feel/play style of each feels really different from the next. CoD doesn't try to pull that off AT ALL.

 

[CZroe]

See, that's the vibe I get from the term. People want to sound like they're somehow ABOVE the console-centric shooters and turn their noses up at them, despite the fact that when you consider what most of those folks talk up, it's stuff like Mario platformers, where the difficulty is solely about timing, and nothing about real strategy. I like the Mario platformers for that timing-based difficulty, but call Call of Duty or Halo "dumbed down" because of regenerative health is just stupid, IMO. I can accept (and agree with) hatred for the Target Assist in it, because that mechanic is illogical (it's like it's there to help those player keep up with their PC counterparts, but they don't play cross-platform, so it's pointless).

I have played plenty of CoD and Halo, both with friends/family (none of us would qualify as whatever the heck a "dudebro" is), and by myself (the more-common aspect). What's funny about that "play with your dudebros" thing is that if you actually play these games online, you'll see that the VAST majority of people are playing without mics (my biggest gripe about playing an FPS online).

At the same time, I grew up watching my dad on Unreal and Quake, and the first shooters I played online were Quake III Team Arena's Urban Terror mod and Unreal Championship on Xbox LIVE. I wouldn't at-all say that one type of shooter is a more-valid option than the other, but I WILL say that playing Counter-Strike (which is OK) is one of the most-infuriating experiences I've had in an FPS, because of how overly-inaccurate they make the guns.

Ramblings aside, my point is that this whole "dudebro" ideal seems childish.

Excuse me, but I was comparing them to other shooters when I brought up regenerative health. Also, I made it clear that I play them too but I prefer classic skill-based shooters online (Quake III Arena) and immersive campaign modes for dudebros. I lament the dumbing down of platformers similarly, like getting so many lives that you'll never get a game-over and game-over not really meaning anything anyway because you are right back where you were as if you had infinite lives. I am infuriated that Nintendo started making character directional controls only relevant to the camera when the movement starts as if it makes things easier (camera moves and you don't have to adjust your angle to compensate) when it actually FORCES you to stop and start for no reason (reset your controls). It seems that they finally stopped doing this because Wind Waker HD doesn't have this problem.

 

[ViRGE]

Nintendo has seemingly given up on new IP. What are people excited for in the near-future? The fourth SSB and the EIGHTH Mario Kart. People clamor for HD remakes of old Nintendo titles.

Nintendo still invests in original IP. Unfortunately it's not paying off as of late. The Wonderful 101 did okay critically, but in terms of sales it underperformed, even after taking into account the smaller WiiU user base.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Thing is, a lot of those "people who play shooters" aren't ONLY that. Myself included, we play a lot of other stuff. I don't know of anyone who has purchased a console and played shooters. AT WORST, I think that someone I know might only have sports games on his One, but he's got no shooters.

I know plenty. All you have to do is look at the for sale section in Craigslist to see how common it is. They only play the 3-4 AAA shooter games and that is it.

 

[CZroe]

Well, I'll be damned on the Pokemon thing. I guess I was completely wrong on that one, eh?

You were wrong on every one of those. Nintendo is already disproportionately popular with the majority of female gamers and has done a lot to cater to them and yet you think they aren't and that it is the reason for their poor performance. "Nintendo's problem is that they are not doing what they are doing!"

It's not just Wii Fit and female Pokemon trainers. This has been going on a long time. Try:
Animal Crossing series
Nintendogs
Fire Emblem (stars Lynn)
The entire Touch! Generations series (mostly crosswords, puzzles, brain training, and card/board games)

This stuff is ten years old.

More recently, there's:
Super Princess Peach
Nintendogs and Cats
Wii Fit U
I could go on and on.

Even the ones that don't cater directly still try to be inclusive. Did you forget that Metroid has a female lead? Peach, Daisy, and more are playable in many mascot racers, sports titles, and platformers? Kirby? Pikmin? Starfi? Heck, I don't even know that Starfi isn't a female and it's just one of many vague cutesie characters.

There was no valid complaint or insight in that "observation."

 

[purbeast0]

RE: Call of Duty vs Mario.

For me, Call of Duty is mindless because it is effectively random what happens. Even the best players don't do better than like a 4:1 k/D ratio, meaning that there is still a decent amount of randomness going on.

Now, I'm sure that for the really high level players, those that memorize how long it takes for powerups to respawn, there is some greater strategy, but that is more along the lines of figuring out the seams of the gameworld and exploiting it.

Mario doesn't have this greater strategy aspect, but everything else about the game is much more under my control compared to COD. If I die it is because I wasn't quick enough, not because of something random. Aim really does matter a lot, and it isn't reliant on inhuman reflexes like COD.

So while there is "greater strategy" in COD I don't really like it that much personally and don't find it enjoyable.

All of that said, I loved COD's SP campaigns for the artistic effect.

the bolded is a big reason that i am such a fan of fighting games. when you lose, it's because you got outplayed. there is no randomness or factors from your teammates or other people on the playing field. the fact of the matter is, if you lose, you got outplayed no matter which way you want to try and swing it. the same can't really be said for shooters.

and no, i'm not saying shooters don't involve skill, because they involve a lot of skill.

 

[CZroe]

I can agree to an extent, but most of your examples are part of the problem, as they're 10-20 years old now. Galaxy was one I never played because the Wii had too much of a gap in functionality for me (third-party support and online) to bother.

But while there might be some new concepts in a few of those games, there's a lot of iteration in the rest. What's the new SSB bringing? What's special about Tropical Freeze, as opposed to all of its predecessors? How is Mario Kart 8 special?

For as much as people want to downplay the "dudebro" shooters, Halo is a pretty solid example of the opposite of stagnation. You can look at each successor and find SOMETHING new to the franchise within, and it's come in a rather-compelling way.

Halo 2: Online play
Halo 3: Power Ups (not the best of additions)
Halo Wars: RTS
Halo 3 ODST: Firefight
Halo Reach: Armor Abilities
Halo 4: Sprinting, Ordinance, Loadouts, Community Maps

Even though the core of Halo is always the same, just the general feel/play style of each feels really different from the next. CoD doesn't try to pull that off AT ALL.

Mario Kart is a bad example because ethe gameplay has changed far more than Halo has over the iterations. Take the first four into account: Super Mario Kart was completely different from Mario Kart 64 which was completely different from Mario Kart Super Circuit which was completely different from Mario Kart Double Dash. Just take one look at Double Dash. The only way Halo has deviates that much was to completely change genres (RTS). Guess what? Mario Kart is already a genre departure (originally platformers). The Mario series exists in almost every genre! Do you deny it?

 

[Ichinisan]

What's Nintendo on, their Seventh? Generation of Pokemon games, and they just now added female trainers.

Come on. Nintendo's efforts are totally targeting the under 17 year old boy market.

My point isn't that girls don't like Nintendo games, but there's a lot of discussion about Nintendo ignoring the older male market, but they're mostly ignoring the entire female market as well, where that might be there better opportunity, since that Sony and MS have the older male market cornered pretty well.

Edit: poofyhairguy made a good point about the Wii Fit. The Wii Fit certainly had female targeted marketing, and was very successful.

Well they had female opponents in the original Pokémon games.

 

[Ichinisan]

MatPat has a new video in his Game Theory series on why the Wii U is struggling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyXcr6sDRtw

Gist of it? Nintendo is sabotaging their own success by putting the legal squeeze on the lets play community. Many gamers now are using YouTube and Twitch to get their gaming news instead of traditional sites like IGN, etc. However, Nintendo's strict copyright rules are preventing any buzz from being generated from leading voices like Smosh, PewDiePie, etc. As a result, Wii U is stalling in its early adopter phase, and not gaining traction among mainstream gamers.

Contrast that to Sony, which has made video sharing and the lets play experience an integral part of the PS4. Which could be why it's leading the pack in sales.

Makes sense to me. Video explains things better.

I hope they come up with a way to stream games like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus on PS4.

 

[purbeast0]

I hope they come up with a way to stream games like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus on PS4.

you can stream anything you are playing with the built in twitch now i thought?

 

[Ichinisan]

You were wrong on every one of those. Nintendo is already disproportionately popular with the majority of female gamers and has done a lot to cater to them and yet you think they aren't and that it is the reason for their poor performance. "Nintendo's problem is that they are not doing what they are doing!"

It's not just Wii Fit and female Pokemon trainers. This has been going on a long time. Try:
Animal Crossing series
Nintendogs
Fire Emblem (stars Lynn)
The entire Touch! Generations series (mostly crosswords, puzzles, brain training, and card/board games)

This stuff is ten years old.

More recently, there's:
Super Princess Peach
Nintendogs and Cats
Wii Fit U
I could go on and on.

Even the ones that don't cater directly still try to be inclusive. Did you forget that Metroid has a female lead? Peach, Daisy, and more are playable in many mascot racers, sports titles, and platformers? Kirby? Pikmin? Starfi? Heck, I don't even know that Starfi isn't a female and it's just one of many vague cutesie characters.

There was no valid complaint or insight in that "observation."

Starfy

 

[Ichinisan]

you can stream anything you are playing with the built in twitch now i thought?

Last time I attempted to try various game streaming services for PC, they had changed to make it extremely difficult to do for free without spending big money on special live encoders for PC games and such...even with services I had previously used for free.

Anyway, I'm really hoping they come up with a way for me to play all the Team Ico games on PS4.

Game # 3 (The Last Guardian) will probably end-up as a PS4 release. That's basically what happened with the original Ico (developed as a PS1 title, but development ran too long and it had to be released for PS2).

 

[Fulle]

You were wrong on every one of those. Nintendo is already disproportionately popular with the majority of female gamers and has done a lot to cater to them and yet you think they aren't and that it is the reason for their poor performance. "Nintendo's problem is that they are not doing what they are doing!"

It's not just Wii Fit and female Pokemon trainers. This has been going on a long time. Try:
Animal Crossing series
Nintendogs
Fire Emblem (stars Lynn)
The entire Touch! Generations series (mostly crosswords, puzzles, brain training, and card/board games)

This stuff is ten years old.

More recently, there's:
Super Princess Peach
Nintendogs and Cats
Wii Fit U
I could go on and on.

Even the ones that don't cater directly still try to be inclusive. Did you forget that Metroid has a female lead? Peach, Daisy, and more are playable in many mascot racers, sports titles, and platformers? Kirby? Pikmin? Starfi? Heck, I don't even know that Starfi isn't a female and it's just one of many vague cutesie characters.

There was no valid complaint or insight in that "observation."

Nintendo's done a lot better with being inclusive recently. With 3D World, as an example, Peach and Rosalina as playable characters... Much to my young daughter's approval, for sure. She also has had some fun with a few of the titles you mentioned....

Yet, I still feel girls are an afterthought sometimes. New Super Mario Bros (all of them), and 3D Land, didn't feature any playable female characters. The Wii U version of New Super Mario Bros has 4 different boy characters to play.

I was totally wrong on the Pokemon thing, but Pokemon related marketing hadn't really presented me with anything that showed the female trainers up front and center.

Anyway, I do think there's some opportunity there for them to cater to the female market more, even if they're already doing a bit of that. More so, than I believe they're going to win back the dudebros during the Wii U's lifecycle. I'm pretty certain that ship has sailed.

 

[JujuFish]

Depends. My sister loves a lot of the stuff Nintendo offers as-is. She never once complained about being a female trainer. But, since you brought it up:

http://www.giantbomb.com/pokemon-trainer/3005-1619/

You could be a female since the third generation of games, which launched back in 2002.

Since the second generation (Pokemon Crystal).

 

[Lil Frier]

Excuse me, but I was comparing them to other shooters when I brought up regenerative health. Also, I made it clear that I play them too but I prefer classic skill-based shooters online (Quake III Arena) and immersive campaign modes for dudebros.

OK, so you named ON "skill-based" shooter, and 0 "immersive campaign" shooters, so I can't say that there is anything to use for comparison, especially since you mentioned Quake, while others are calling it and Unreal the start of "dudebro."

 

[Lil Frier]

Since the second generation (Pokemon Crystal).

Ahh, I misread that. I thought it was saying that Crystal was the last to NOT allow it.

 

[Lil Frier]

Mario Kart is a bad example because ethe gameplay has changed far more than Halo has over the iterations. Take the first four into account: Super Mario Kart was completely different from Mario Kart 64 which was completely different from Mario Kart Super Circuit which was completely different from Mario Kart Double Dash. Just take one look at Double Dash. The only way Halo has deviates that much was to completely change genres (RTS). Guess what? Mario Kart is already a genre departure (originally platformers). The Mario series exists in almost every genre! Do you deny it?

Putting a character in a game is NOT the same as innovating a new genre. Just because Mario Kart has Mario in it, it doesn't mean that it's an innovation from Super Mario Bros. It's just the same character in another genre that is getting its 8 release this year.

And, as I've said before, Snowboard Kids and Diddy Kong Racing were better than Mario Kart 64, which is why I never really bothered with Mario Kart after the Nintendo 64 (that, and I enjoyed my Xbox too much to play Nintendo's consoles more than on the rare occasion).

 

[Lil Frier]

Animal Crossing series
Fire Emblem (stars Lynn)

I'm about to turn 24, am a male, and LOVE Fire Emblem, in addition to liking Animal Crossing on the GameCube (and on the DS, to a lesser extent). Heck, my little brothers called Nintendogs a game for girls, then ended up playing it quite a bit for a while.

This idea that things are catering to girls is dumb. People probably think the same of Viva Pinata, but I thought that game was phenomenal.

 

[Lil Frier]

Nintendo still invests in original IP. Unfortunately it's not paying off as of late. The Wonderful 101 did okay critically, but in terms of sales it underperformed, even after taking into account the smaller WiiU user base.

That's kinda my point, though. Wasn't Pikmin their last successful IP? That was about 12.5 years ago now, the launch of the first one. Microsoft's at least bringing Project Spark, while also paying for Titanfall and Quantum Break as well. That's in addition to Ryse (even if it's a Roman God of War copycat of sorts), LocoCycle (even if it's terrible), and the upcoming games like D4, Below, and Sunset Overdrive.

Stuff comes out that's iterative, of course (the next Halo, Gears, Forza, Fable, etc.), but Microsoft Studios actually has a solid chunk of games in-development that are actually new franchises, so it's not like they're JUST throwing out Halo and waiting for Sledgehammer to carry them with the next CoD.

And heck, Sony's the same way.

 

[shortylickens]

Umm, I was just playing Mario Kart Wii this afternoon and aside from being in 3D, it feels almost exactly like the SNES version. Its fun as hell, but hardly innovative or original.


Maybe Nintendo needs to stop making consoles, stick to handhelds, and perhaps lease their exclusive characters to Sony and Microsoft one game at a time. I bet they come up with more and better things than Nintendo has over their last 4 consoles.

 

[purbeast0]

Umm, I was just playing Mario Kart Wii this afternoon and aside from being in 3D, it feels almost exactly like the SNES version. Its fun as hell, but hardly innovative or original.


Maybe Nintendo needs to stop making consoles, stick to handhelds, and perhaps lease their exclusive characters to Sony and Microsoft one game at a time. I bet they come up with more and better things than Nintendo has over their last 4 consoles.

L O F'ing L @ saying mario kart on wii feels like SNES version.

if that is the case to you, come drive to rockville md and i'll show you how to play mario kart on SNES. you either have the worst memory in the world or have no clue how SNES mario kart feels.

SNES mario kart has a place in my heart.

 

[Maverickbcp]

It's still the best Mario Kart to date.