Nintendo Wii U

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Im not sure what to make of this announcement. I dont really understand what Skylanders figures do? But I do know it has sold well, and Nintendo is wise for putting their deep stable of characters to work as figurines. If Pokemon gets involved I bet things will get even more interesting.

They are basically toys that when scanned then appear in the game.

[Gryphon]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this but Ninty are making their own version of Skylanders with Mario etc figures.

We'll know more at E3 but it sounds interesting. The NFP as they are calling it can make them a lot of money

[Ghost]

They are basically toys that when scanned then appear in the game.

Ah ok, thanks. That could be interesting.

[Gryphon]

I'm addicted to Earthbound on the Virtual Console.....such a good game.

[Gryphon]

More information about Hyrule warriors

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost...&postcount=359

[Nyssane]

We'll know more at E3 but it sounds interesting. The NFP as they are calling it can make them a lot of money

I think Nintendo would be very wise to follow Skylanders' footsteps. If anything can rival Disney's version, it would be Nintendo's own.

I'm not ashamed to say I would play a Nintendo-themed Skylanders (I've also played Skylanders; actually quite a fun game).

[MikeP]

I'm actually holding out on Watch Dogs to see how the Wii U version turns out. I think the gamepad definitely has potential for that setting.

[Gryphon]

Nintendo made a deal with Satan because Wii U sales are up 666% in the UK thanks to Mario Kart 8 ( with 2 days tracking)

http://nintendoenthusiast.com/news/r...uk-mk8-launch/

[Nyssane]

Can anyone really be surprised by that, though? Mario Kart has always been a game that sells systems. It and Smash Bros. are Nintendo's top series.

[Ghost]

Im not really worried about Nintendo struggling financially, eventually they will find their footing. At least I hope. Plus the 3DS sales seem decent enough.

My main concern now is that they will abandon the WiiU too soon to move onto the next phase they mentioned where the portable and console gaming will be combined somehow. While that does sound great, i think doing it too soon would annoy alot of WiiU owners and give the already reluctant majority even less reason to be confident in Nintendo.

I recall Iwata saying something along the lines that they will wait until WiiU owners are 'satisfied'. What that means exactly is anyones guess.

[MikeP]

They aren't going to abandon the Wii U early. As bad as things are now, the N64 was as bad if not worse. And they know that will completely destroy consumer confidence if they do that.

[wjowski]

They aren't going to abandon the Wii U early. As bad as things are now, the N64 was as bad if not worse. And they know that will completely destroy consumer confidence if they do that.

Yeah, it's not like they're in Sega territory or anything.

[L.R Johansson]

Yeah, it's not like they're in Sega territory or anything.

No, but they need to freshen up, they really do need to do some changes, in order to remain healthy.

Now, what these changes are, can be discussed in some depth, but I have a few ideas of my own.


1. Keep focus on their games - none of that health-stuff Iwata's talking about.

2. Improve the online functionality - the Nintendo Network needs to be as good as Xbox Live.

3. Virtual Console needs to increase it's back-catalogue - and it needs to be cross-platform identical - you can't have a different library on portable, then you do on home Console. It wouldn't hurt to offer some kind of premium-service as well, similar to what Sony is doing, which would include some extra swag, and a few free games from VC.

4. Release some cheap, yet high-quality mobile-games - to get a footing in that market. This might seem like a strange idea, but by having a presence on mobile, they make sure that children are continuously exposed to their characters, and grow their fan-base. That fan-base will then buy what comes next...

5. Increase branding and licensed goods - bed-sheats, watches, mobile-cases, action-figures, and so on. Nintendo is super-iconic, they really need to use that to its fullest extent - most of the money from Angry Birds aren't from the games, it's the branded goods that they have sold.

6. Strike exclusives from JAPANESE developers - The AAA japanese game-developers are in a bad state right now, and it has to do, to some extent, that they went with trying to appeal to western gamers, by becoming more... Xbox-ie, and it didn't work. Meanwhile, there's a been a lot of rumbling among the fans of japanese games, why so few big japanese titles, aren't available on Nintendo's consoles. The gamers that buy a Nintendo-console, are in general ALREADY fans of japanese games. If Nintendo could see this, they would strike now, and strike hard - GET THOSE JAPANESE EXCLUSIVES!! It would be good for both of you, since the sales of japanese-created games have been dwindling in the west for some time now.

7. Develop hardware similar to their competitors - making sure the next nintendo-console is easy to port to, similar in design to a PC, like Xbone and PS4, is definitely a good thing for their next machine. It will help them to get more developers interested in porting to the machine - if the architecture is similar, then porting will be simpler.


I'm sure we can all come up with more, but these are some of the most obvious things that I figure they oughta' do. So, what do you guys think? Anything in perticular, that you think they need to do?

[Endless_Legend]

Honestly the reason I think Nintendo have so many issues is due to a lot of internal miscommunications or maybe even a power struggle between old guard and the new guard. Fanboys don't like it when you say that iwata or myamoto might be a problem, or at the very least part of the problem.

That really isn't it. Nintendo posted a couple of things online a year ago or so detailing what the issues were. I don't have the link anymore, but here is the general gist:

Basically, what it comes down to is that Third-party developers screwed them.

Every previous generation, they'd kind of treated third party companies as second class citizens, not really caring if they released games or not and not giving them any help in developing. They were making money hand-over-fist on First-party stuff and on hardware, so it didn't matter. Nintendo has basically always printed money until now. this time they decided to really listen to the general market and to third-party devs.

So what did they do? They held-off on releasing their first-party games on Wii-U and concentrated on the DS and 3DS (which is why the 3DS game library is awesome), to give 3rd parties time to release their games on Wii U. (So that N's own 1st party titles wouldn't drown them out and sweep them away, as has happened in previous generations)

Except that... all the 3rd parties delayed and delayed and then cancelled their 3rd party games. Because the Wii-U wasn't selling well. But it wasn't selling well because there were no games out for it, because Nintendo held off on developing/releasing 1st party titles for the benefit of the 3rd parties, and the 3rd parties decided to cancel. Self-fulfilling prophecy, fulfilled.

Basically, Nintendo tried to be nice for a change to 3rd party devs, and got bitten in the rear for their trouble instead. Hopefully, lesson learned: Go it alone, and rely only on 1st-party titles. Given the number of announcements they made at E3, this seems to be the case.

They really are the Apple of the gaming world.

[Spider-Prime]

I'm more excited for the Nintendo stuff that was shown at E3 than the other stuff for PS4 and xbox.

I can't wait for Smash Bros, I hope the online is finally fixed compared to Brawl. If it is, I will be playing that one for ages.