My biggest threats to Wii U:

1. Changing demographic
As we all know the Wii is everywhere. It even founds its way into nursing homes. The socially acceptable gentile culture Pong emulated from Tennis was rebirthed with the Wii. Now that old folks can't do simple wrist flicks, but must move around a large tablet controller, they will become dismayed and alienated from the Wii U demographic.

The "core gamers" who Nintendo neglected with the Wii will be more apt to pick up Sony or Microsoft's console. This is assuming that Sony and Microsoft stick to a traditional console gaming. Regardless, third party companies do not like making non-traditional games specialized games when they could make what they are used to making and have two versions to sell instead of the specialized Wii one. If Nintendo does not secure third party exclusives and establish the console as having a serious third-party support they will be left in the exact position they were with third parties with Wii after the Wii hype died down.

2. Elimination of high budget quality video games from Nintendo.
Being the biggest Nintendo fanboy on the internet wasn't easy. Nintendo Gamecube was the last great Nintendo console. The Nintendo Wii was Nintendo selling out and becoming moneymakers instead of gamemakers. Nintendo started dicking around on how to put the least amount of effort into their games to save costs and sell at high price to maximize profits. The Mario franchise suffered horribly on Wii (see my threads on this), Brawl sucked, etc. Franchises to revive that made sense with the wiimote for Nintendo to release like Custom Robo were completely absent on the Wii. Nintendo thought porting games from Gamecube would be satisfying. They were wrong.

Gamecube established mature games that brought it to Sony and Microsoft: Eternal Darkness, Metroid Prime, Resident Evil 4. Extremely challenging games like Super Monkey Ball and Viewtiful Joe were also established on Gamecube for mature gamers to play. Let's not forget the extremely challenging consummate release of F-Zero, F-Zero AX/GX, by Sega's AM2 division. So now with the Nintendo Wii at its end I ask where are the groundbreaking mature Wii games? No More Heroes? Nope. Mad World? Nope. With the Wii U I see Nintendo edging away from traditional games for their controller gimmicks even more. I see Nintendo completely ignoring the "core gamer". With Miyamoto stepping down to handle small projects, the quality of heavy-funded AAA games overseen by Nintendo producers becomes more concerning. I predict that Nintendo will downgrade AAA games and focus on smaller scale stuff.

Those are my threats I am predicting. Here is another everyone should look into:

With all that said what do you all think are Nintendo's biggest threats with the Wii U and/or 3DS?

Financially, I believe Nintendo posted their first or one of their first quarterly losses last year. I think this has been long overdue and a sign that their antics are finally catching up to them.

I think the 3DS is a sign that they are not sure where to go. 3D is the hot fad of the moment, I don't understand why having anything in 3D is so essential. Especially when it is on a portable that hurts my eyes when the feature is on. I'm not paying $40 or more for handheld games, whether they are "3D" or not. I'm interested in how handheld Sony vs handheld Nintendo goes this time around (and if either make a dent in the market that Apple and handheld devices seemingly have complete control of).

The Wii left a sour taste in my mouth. 90% of the library is shovelware designed to make a quick buck. And the 10% of quality games are hurt by the controller more often than not. I knew motion controlled gaming was a bad thing as soon as I saw it demoed, I was right from the get-go on that. I am happy to see that, unlike Gamecube, they are not afraid to make 2D platformers again.

Wii U? Too early to call. I think having a touchscreen controller is going to end up as a novelty in the end (I think the best DS games are the ones that make little or no use of the touchscreen). That said, Sony and Microsoft are in no hurry to update their consoles and I can't say I blame them: They are too expensive to develop for as is, newer and more powerful consoles would be counterproductive for them at this point because 3rd parties probably can't afford to develop for them. Plus they are making money off Move and Kinnect, branding them as essentially new consoles, for a new generation of casual gamers, so I don't know if they're in any hurry.

Sorry, I don't buy this. You want to know what I consider Nintendo's last great console? Try the SNES. Despite how bloody the battle between Nintendo and Sega was I haven't seen a Nintendo console with a library that has even come close since that point. The GBA is decent toy but there are too many ports to even consider it and then you had to wait for the SP to even see the games.

And don't even get me started on the N64. Talk about a lost generation. Outside a handful of games the console is pretty much a loss. In going with the PlayStation I missed next to nothing.

Okay. How about responding to the thread topic?

(GBA isn't a console btw. And Nintendo purposely treated it as a portable SNES)

I'm not really worried about Nintendo, not in the way most people seem to be. But I'd say that if there is any legitimate threat, it's the departure of Miyamoto. I don't think Nintendo will sink the bottom of the sea without him, but c'mon.

I have good faith that WiiU and 3DS will deliver a solid library of quality games--first-party at the very least. There's a lot of crap out there, but that's true of any system, present or past.

Go f--- yourself. I'll say what I want to say o' ruler of threads.

You wrote something I responded. Since when is any given piece of your post not up for disscussion?

If someone likes the gamecube fine - just don't tout it like it was a freakin' solution for Nintendo. Didn't it end up third that console generation anyway? I'm not acting like the SNES didn't have proplems - I at least mentioned it had a bitter rival - and it wasn't all rainbows and sunshine.

The Wii U looks like it's trying to continue the Wii's least marketable 'qualities': the simplistic, Apple-like colors and aesthetics, but the controller will probably be its biggest problem in the end. The DS's second screen was basically proven a gimmick, save for only a handful of exceptions out of an ocean of useless dual-screen fads.

For Nintendo to recapture their 'core' (lol) audience will be quite hard with the Wii U. The handheld screen will have the 'exclusive' technology with which they'll fail to capture third party support (again), and ultimately, it'll be up to their first party games to determine how few 'true' fans jump high onto the Wii U's deck. Even if it does work out, if Sony or Microsoft want to, they can just update their systems' firmwares and create their own ripoff controller, and then they'll lose the only feature that differentiates their system.

With HD as a factor, Nintendo's probably going to spend even less overall on whatever few games they dish out. But if they stick to their casual antics AGAIN with their exclusives, only 1/4th of them will be good and then the entire system will have gone to waste. And how much are we paying for it again?

Okay. I am curious. Would you say that the quality of Nintendo games has been going down since SNES and that Wii U is just a continuation of that in response to threat #2?

If we are to reflect quickly on Gamecube -- yes it did come in third place -- what put it in third place was [kiddie] perception. Nintendo got over this kiddie image nonsense with Nintendo Wii. They didn't seem to also get over the idea that third party games can't sell well on Nintendo systems because they have to compete with Nintendo. This wasn't necessarily true as Capcom got better sales than thought with REmake, but less than expected with RE0. Looking at Sega's sale numbers from Gamecube, Sega did better on Gamecube than XBOX or PS2 from what I remember. The argument for Wii is that companies churned out crappy ports or side project slop which doesn't excite anyone to offer up big sales numbers. Nintendo Wii did not get treated to any big name third party franchise exclusive besides Monster Hunter (does Xeno series really count as big name?).

And the SNES was losing support from third party to Sega. I also think that Sega Genesis outsold SNES in some parts of the world. The question becomes how does this all add up for Nintendo going into the Wii U? Should they emulate what they did during the SNES era seeing as the N64 was a "waste of a console"? More importantly are there old threats or mistakes that have been dogging Nintendo? If so, what do you suggest they are and how will/could they affect Nintendo?

What does that even mean?

It means gba is a not a console. It is a handheld.

yes (my first serious reply of 2012)

The Wii is everywhere now, but it seems xbox always keeps showing up to wipe off the seat (did you think my reply would stay that way)
while not a fan of xbox because they seem 99% targeted towards first person shooters/online play, they seem to be stealing a hell of a lot of market share.

however, i think there will always be a major cut for nintendo for the people who have kids, or dont care about how crisp the graphics look be when you blow a hole into an enemy with an artillery shell. and those who dont want a dance party or pretend-im-in-a-band sim

Yea. Jeff Ryan referred to this as the "mom advantage". Moms would have to buy games for their sons and need easy names to remember (no weird numbers after the console, just one word, "Wii") and a cheap price as a selling point.

Huh? I swear that 90% of the pumped out crap on the shelves looks like family-friendly carnival games. And maybe 2-3 titles aside, I don't see this at all.

Please tell me Wii Fit isn't your idea of Nintendo getting over their kiddie image, since it targets middle age moms instead.

There was a lot more wrong with Gamecube than a supposed kiddie image crisis. Try the President of Nintendo pinning their hopes on an impractical GBA setup for multiplayer games vs, say, actual online gaming (which Xbox got very right and PS2 got kind-of right). Nintendo prodding 3rd parties towards this horrible setup and basically losing every drop of 3rd party support before they mercifully abandoned it. Was I really supposed to be excited about a remake of Metal Gear Solid 1 as a major 3rd party release? Basically two lost years of releases before Wii came out. A controller with a useless D-pad and not enough buttons compared to other systems (totally useless for Capcom fighters). No good 2D platformers. A VERY controversial Zelda game that was not what most people wanted and is regarded as one of the worst entries in the series (and to show how much of an after-thought GC had become, they push Twilight Princess back into being a Wii launch title and delaying it for eons on the GC).

Nintendo made all this better by giving us a controller to wiggle while playing.

Nintendo Wii is the accomplished 'E for Everyone' rating for a console. You have little kids, businessmen, rappers, and more playing Wii. Yes, Nintendo getting moms to play games gets the female vote of confidence. Nintendo tapped into the female demographic with DS and Wii and this contributed significantly into changing their image and massive sales. The Nintendo Wii console got over the kiddy image despite all the game library garbage because of it's sleek look and much improved marketing campaign.

It really wasn't impractical. Chances were if you had a Gamecube you had a gba. Nintendo was never pinning their hopes on GBA setup. To describe the pack-in bundle Pac-Man VS and TLOZ: 4 Swords as if they were the focus of the Gamecube's multi-player is pretty absurd. Now getting Gamecube owners to do LAN battles for Mario Kart was daunting or your "impractical" despite how awesome it was.

And considering that XBOX 1 didn't have Halo 1 on Live they didn't get it very right. I sure as hell played it online through other means though. While this may sound ignorant XBOX only really had Halo to play multiplayer wise. Gamecube had better multi-player games (non-FPS) than XBOX and PS2. I don't think it was an awful decision to avoid online last generation as Gamecube gamers and XBOX owners actually played with 4 people in a room. Not having a great AAA multi-player game to play online didn't damn PS2 (Socom. meh). I do agree that Nintendo seriously dropped the ball with Wii's online and friend codes this generation.

What horrible setup? The GBA connectivity? Are you kidding me? The gba connection was very minor. It was never utilized properly for stuff and stuck to small bonus content. (The Splinter Cell GBA connectivity could have been really great) Nintendo couldn't prod anyone to do shit as they all were with Sony. To get people to do anything they had to be bought off for exclusives as Microsoft did to get support. There also was the royalty issue which kept smaller third party support from developers like SNK from not happening.

Well you had that or Raiden...

Serious fighting fans play with an arcade stick. Non-issue. As for EA games like SSX, yea they were better off played on PS2.

How many 2D platformers were even made though last gen? Klonoa 2? DK: Jungle Beat was fantastic and I thought the best DK game ever made.

Nothing was controversial about Zelda: The Wind Waker's look to me. That's the "kiddy mentality" talking. The game still looks amazing. Nintendo delayed Twilight Princess simply because it did not have a AAA game to launch Wii with.

So judging from everything written your threats are about (1) lack of standard traditional gamepad, (2) emergence of shovelware, (3) poorly utilized online play, (4) absence of 2D platformers, (5) controversial Zelda games, and (6) acquisition of major third party games.

From that we can cross off 2D platformers being a threat as Nintendo will most likely release a 2D platformer after designing Mario 3DS to feel that way. I feel like Nintendo gamers would still find people to play with in-person than online with Mario Kart U and Smash U. I can see Nintendo doing great things with online, but the controller has me worried they will botch it up somehow. I'd say the controller leads to shovelware leads to lack of major third party games. They are getting Ninja Gaiden 3 so that is a step up for Nintendo as hack-n-slash action games and Tecmo were notably absent from Cube on.

Themselves.

Um, no...Never make assumptions. Those are my reasons why Gamecube was not that great of a console, not why the Wii U is threatened. Wii U is threatened because Sony and Microsoft have moved in on their little "family friendly" scheme and have taken market share (as has Apple and every other cellphone maker), forcing Nintendo to actually live up to their reputation as one of the greatest gaming companies of all time. They can't get away with the BS they did the last 3 console generations. I can't spell that out any more clearly.

However, that may work in Wii U's favor because Sony and Microsoft do not have known plans for next gen consoles yet (if they do, I am out of the loop on them). Especially in Sony's case, after the PS3 fiasco, I doubt they will rush their consoles to market. Nintendo may launch Wii U and have the next gen market to themselves for two years. Who knows right now.

If you think the GBA Connectivity was just a small part of why GC finished 3rd in that console race, kindly recall the Q Fund (basically paying developers to use the gimmick) and that it was being given a really hard push in the holiday season of 2004. When 2005 rolled around, they didn't have anything else that year or the next except for extremely scant offerings, most of which were pushed back (Twilight Princess) or canceled (Kirby). In other words, they quit, they threw in the towel after their gimmick died out and effectively gave Xbox the #2 spot. It wasn't like Saturn, where Sega was financially crippled and was being blown out of the water, GC had a massive fanbase and Nintendo turned their backs on it, despite having plenty of resources to remain competitive. And that was around the time period I got fed up with Nintendo and I haven't been particularly fond of them since.

I actually agree with Ashley: The last Nintendo console I really enjoyed was the SNES.

edit: yay, my computer loves to double post!

Don't even really recall Q Fund. Looking it up apparently it was used to get around Sony and get a Final Fantasy game on GC.

Eh. RE4 came out in January of 2005. EGM in a review and all the other doomsayers declared that not even RE4 could save the "dying Cube". Gamecube really couldn't win the propaganda war around that point. I do agree that Nintendo screwed over all their fans by withholding Super Paper Mario, TLOZ: Twlight Princess, DK: Barrel Blast, and Kirby 4-player co-op. And we didn't even get to see what Project Zero was.

The super secret stuff like Project Zero made last gen very interesting. There was MEGATON. Then there was REVOLUTION. Nintendo does need to figure out a way to hype the Wii U up some more.

The Wii has Xenoblade, making it an automatic winner over the N64 and the GC.
The GC had very few good exclusives to speak of.
The Galaxy games are VASTLY superior to Sunshine, although I know you don't agree on that, vert.
And, as has been said, the GC had no good platformers in the first place.

In other words (and IMHO) the Wii is a MUCH better console than the GC and I'd say the N64 as well (most N64 games that were any good can be downloaded for the Wii anyway).

That said, man, the Wii U? I dunno...
I don't think I'll be jumping right on top of it when it releases, unless it has a VERY strong launch line-up, which it likely won't.

Also, the controller. I'm curious to see what they do with it, but the possibility of streaming the game on it doesn't interest me in the least, and it looks kinda dumb, doesn't it?

I see your point here, but IMO Nintendo has put themselves in a horrible position technology wise, and it truly starts with the wii. We all know the wii isn't a graphical powerhouse (I'm not as concerned about this like a graphics whore) and considering what Nintendo was aiming for it was a smart move at the time. But in trying to play horsepower catch-up the Wii-U it will be in between generations (or rather in between Sony and Microsofts machines) and will be, I don't really want to say outdated, but going againist machines with a little more under the hood - possibly meaning Nintendo may be behind the eight ball for a tad for generation or to until things even out. This isn't an exact science though and Nintendo could pull it off - I mean they did it with handhelds for years despite not having the most advanced hardware of the bunch. Obviously GAMES the most important thing. Still, for people that lost interest in Nintendo's first party products/series generations ago third party products are (I'm getting sick of listing this as a weakness of Nintendo consoles) are just going to be a make or break point for the Wii-U.

The gamble Nintendo took in being consevative with the Wii's power may come back to bite them in the ass, if it hasn't already.

The Wii U is in exactly the same boat as the Wii in that respect.
The Wii also went up against machines with much more under the hood because it was between 2 generations, and it never seemed to suffer from it in terms of sales.

The problem with the Wii U is that Nintendo has admitted they're trying to win back the "hardcore", and I have the impression they don't really know how to do that anymore. The "hardcore" is more likely to whine about graphics (if their definition of the "hardcore" is the millions of people who loyally buy Call of Duty every year) as well, and the "hardcore" is also likely not going to want to be seen with that ridiculous controller in their hands.

I think this was what I was trying to say minus the controller bit. I think it kind of got lost in there somewhere. I'm worried about Nintendo locking themselves out of massive third party games based on hardware power like the Wii. That's something the hardcore segment is going to be concerned about like you said.

But you say the Wii has never suffered in terms of sales. That may be true so far but can anyone say it's remaining days look too bright? Correct me if I'm wrong but outside Xenoblade is there anything noteworthy coming out during it's last stretch? When you combine that with other sources in the casual gamer market taking a slice of that pie is anyone else worried the Wii's final hour may look pretty bad? Not saying that should define the Wii but how a system goes "out" is pretty important.

Such an odd topic. Nintendo is doomed since 1889. Or at least all its rivals seem to want to make everyone believe this while endangering the traditional games industry through exponentially rising costs and schizophrenically endorsing the unsustainable a dollar per game DLC and social gaming fads. Not that Nintendo is perfect, far from it, but it's financially sane and unlike most oversized publisher still daring. We need more companies approaching the market with Nintendo's philosophy, not less.

I'd say Sony and Microsoft did a pretty good job ripping off their motion-sensing idea. Now we have all 3 consoles flooding the market with useless gimmicky junk, instead of just 1. But hey, whatever sells, I guess.

they need to put it to more practical use.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop … inals.html

Yeah, I have to admit I was surprised how well Sony and Microsoft did there. I figured people wouldn't go for it and see it for what it was. I was wrong there.

Me-too-ishm is just a short term copycat success, that's not what I'd call Nintendo's philosophy. Sony is still bleeding money. Microsoft is still essentially only successful in one region. The industry is still heavily struggling with excessive expenses.

I agree and we can all see how Wii's casual gamer success is drying up. I think Nintendo and Wii U will be fine if they make a steady string of high quality exclusive "must-have" games that are played normally (read: without wiggling a stupid controller) as well as stuff that references their past (since no one else has access to it). It's when they start prodding people towards certain ideas they have that I get annoyed with them. I would have felt the same about the Phillips CD system or the DD if either had become relevant, as I do with the whole Wiimote setup or the GBA connectivity.

I'm just speaking for me personally, since I guess I'm not the target audience of stuff like Wii Fit and graphical prowess means next to nothing to me.

I don't know about this. If the "high quality exclusive 'must have' games" are the same franchises they've been every console cycle (Mario, Zelda, Metroid blah blah blee blah yeah, yeah they're good no shit) Nintendo is never going to gain me back as a customer - but then that would probably never happen anyway given my passive interest in gaming anymore. Still, after a while you just get so jaded with seeing any given franchise all the time and for the life of me I can't even remember when the last time I actually wanted a to buy a (current) Mario game.... maybe Mario 64? But no, Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy VII put a quick end to that.

Let me rephrase that: I don't want to see Wii Fit, Wii Sports or whatever stupid mini-game fest of the month branded as "high quality exclusive 'must have' games" (and no, I don't care if they come with a free controller or not. *cough*), nor do I want to see another 2D console Mario where I have to wiggle the controller to get basic movement out of my onscreen avatar.

Whether the games themselves are good or bad is up to the player. But I don't want to see any kind of controller wiggling in the followup Smash Brothers game, for example. It will be my bad luck that Nintendo revives Kid Icarus (on console) or Balloon Fight and it turns out to be some kind of strange wiggle-fest instead of a high quality game.

There is one feature of the Wiimote that will keep it being used since it's very accurate: Pointing. The Wii is still my most played system as that pointing feature allows for very speedy real-time strategy teamwork gameplay in the case of Pro Evolution Soccer Wii. The issue with the Wii is that it's in too many people view a niche platform that just happened to sell too much, turning the system into a perfect use case for self-fulfilling prophecy with little people both on developer and on customer side looking beyond the "core image" of being "casual waggle fests". This again results in contrary cases (like the aforementioned PES Wii) being too hardcore for the remaining audience while it's revolutionary gameplay and controls not possible elsewhere get completely ignored.

Nintendo is good at making new gameplay suggestions (like Iwata likes to put it) by introducing new control possibilities, in many cases paving the way for bigger changes in the industry on how games are played. Nintendo on the other hand is a classical "arcade" games developer similar to how Sega used to be, developing software and hardware in conjunction, not a service provider, so all those suggestions often end up being one shots (albeit perfected and as such often ridiculously successful) with the remaining possibilities left for other developers to pick up. And that they don't do more often than not. Instead it's usually an endless repetition of whatever "tried and true" check boxes are hip at that moment until the market is saturated.

Edit: To add something more on topic, in Japan with handhelds dominating over home consoles the 3DS after the price drop showed that Nintendo understood how to expand the more casual audience of the DS to include much of the audience that made the PSP a late success over there. With the Western market still focussed on home consoles the challenge for Nintendo's Wii U is now to expand the audience of the Wii to include more of those of Xbox360 and PS3. Being a technical generation behind is regularly cited as a reason the Wii is not getting many adaption of popular HD games, it will be interesting to see how Nintendo is going to approach this issue in Wii U.

i.e. Announce Monster Hunter games.

You know, I was thinking of this thread the other night I was reading an article on Gamestop through Gamefaqs. The topic was that industry "experts" were predicting one of the three console makers wouldn't survive the next generation and it gave reasons why and why not for each company.

The more I thought about it, the more and more I liked the idea of Nintendo throwing in the towel and just making games and handhelds for some reason. That may be due to my general disinterest in the company and their games in general but something about the prospect really worked for me beyond that. I know some would totally hate the idea solely based on tradition but Nintendo's games would be good regardless of what console they'd be on and they'd be free of trying to drum up third party support.

Still, I know Nintendo is too competitive to do that...

That would be terrible for Nintendo. Going third party would hurt the quality of games as they'd end up doing multi-platform support instead of console exclusive (and if Microsoft or Sony did buy Nintendo for exclusives they would kill off their rival and we'd end up with a monopoly). Exclusives tend to be better as they focus resources all on one product (no porting process) and on harnessing one particular consoles strength. Nintendo would have a harder time learning how to use Sony and Microsoft's hardware and would have to go through that awkward developer stage.

This also wouldn't allow them to implement new ideas beneficial to the industry through hardware (i.e. pressure sensitive trigger buttons). Both Sony and Microsoft designed their hardware to stop working on people to get money, so I wouldn't want them to have divided control over the console wars. Then you have to factor in that both companies are in a much better position ripping off Nintendo (Playstation controller = SNES controller, analog stick invention = N64, D-pad invention = Nintendo, etc). Microsoft and Sony also get to watch Nintendo and improve to more ergonomically superior product designs (XBOX original controller versus Gamecube controller) or new features (Gamecube Wavebird Wireless being the first first-party wireless controller).

The Wii U is damned to draw comparison to Apple's iPad by the press. (The name is strategic to in copying this U fad: AT&T U-Verse, iTunes U, ...) Hopefully Nintendo will use this as an opportunity to pickup Angry Birds and be more friendly to users to develop apps or whatever for WiiU. They won't get into a war fighting over crap indie games or other cellphone games. I wouldn't mind seeing them bring back Electroplankton for this console.

heh heh, that plan worked like a charm...