I really loved my GameCube, in many ways it was the best console of it's generation. But it just couldn't compete with the library of games the PS2 had.
It was kind of sad to read this. There are some thing in the article, like the idea of a console as a toy for fun, that are so quintessentially Nintendo and why I love them. But it's also so clear that it's not the direction the market went. You can see how the 3rd party problems got worse and the beginnings of the disaster that Nintendo's on-line efforts. There are points where it's just so clear their arrogance is causing them serious problems.
I really love Nintendo. I hope they can turn themselves around before it's too late.
I mean, Nintendo is not perfect by any stretch, but afaik it's not like they're on the ropes. The DS line is still immensely profitable, and they've had mixed success with consoles. There's no need to act like they're on the brink.
From what I've read online about Wii U sales, they may have a big problem. I haven't read anything about the holiday season so they might have turned it around. But I doubt it. There was no significant discounting or console bundles. I thought they'd release a Super Mario 3D world bundle to move sales .. surprising that they didn't do this in the US.
From what I've read they had fairly strong sales leading up to Christmas for the WiiU. It sold well in Japan for instance, but with little competition because the PS4 was late being released there and no XboxOne. They had enough sales to crash the online system with the number of new people trying to register accounts. But nowhere near the numbers they were projecting, of which may take quite a while before they hit their target, if ever. It cannot really compete with PS4 and XboxOne numbers.
But that matters little because they dominate with the 3DS. In terms of handhelds they have little competition. Nintendo can survive the WiiU if they're smart about it, so I doubt they'll be out of the game anytime soon.
They just need to stop doing the stupid gimmicks they pass off as innovation and focus on their strengths, making fun games that everyone can enjoy.
I still remember the first time I played Super Mario 64. That game had an impact on me like none other. I had played 3-D games before, but with the level of control over Mario and the realism of his movements, that was the first where I felt like I was inhabiting a virtual world. I truly believe that's the greatest game of all time, from a standpoint of historical context.
And I still remember seeing The Legend of Zelda for the NES in a commercial on TV. It was the first game in which I felt I could explore in any direction, and I loved being a sword-swinging hero in a fantasy land! These days I don't really play video games, but I'm still hoping Miyamoto has more surprises in store for us.
The Wii was their 'blue ocean' strategy. Let MS and Sony squabble over the hardcore gamers, Nintendo would go after the other 80% of the population. The strategy worked amazingly well.
The problem is, they didn't capitalize on it. A lot of people with a Wii didn't buy much software. The Wii had no real online component, despite being released a few years after the introduction of Xbox Live. Over the lifetime of the Wii, Nintendo appears to have learned basically nothing about online services. Sony & MS kept improving their online experience.
The Wii had the ability for downloaded games, but it didn't work that great. They were oddly tied to the console, and that was never fixed. Meanwhile it worked great for Sony and MS.
But years later, when the WiiU and 3DS came out... they had the same problems. Games tied to hardware (not accounts), terrible online components. They don't have the success to draw in third parties (on the WiiU), so they're having serious problems. That's four generations running of poor 3rd party support.
And they seemed to learn the wrong lesson from the 3DS. They tried something interesting with the Wii, and it worked pretty well. They tried it again with the 3DS, and it's basically failed. Even Nintendo is making games that don't use 3D. So when the WiiU came... it was full of new (and expensive) gimmicks. So the 'just games' console cost most of $400.
Sony, on the other hand, actually learned from the PS2 and PS3 and simplified. They didn't try to cram new exotic hardware in the console, and that made it easy for 3rd parties and cheaper to produce.
I don't think Nintendo will ever recover on the WiiU. I hope they can last long enough to fix things for the next generation.
Nintendo also do a bizarre thing with the software. The platform bindings are in an "ios" (eg the provider for wifi, controllers, memory, storage etc). Rather than use one, and upgrade it over time, new versions are installed alongside older ones. Each game/app says what it uses, and the system loads that ios when the game/app loads. This results in least risk of bugs, but it also means that new functionality won't be made available to existing titles. Only one ios can be running at a time.
This software architecture is not conducive to what you expect from modern systems with hypervisors and multiple things running alongside the games and apps. Read more at http://wiibrew.org/wiki/IOS
As far as the current gen goes, I see only the Wii U as an actual console. XBone is an always-on camera on a consumer PC and I have to pay to get online. PS4 is a consumer PC without a camera and I have to pay to get online. They have nothing that won't come on the PC that's worth playing.
And for the 3DS the two problems I see are the low pixel density of the screen and the motion controls. The low pixel density means I see different jaggies (aliasing) with each eye and that feels weird. The motion controls don't mesh well with the need to always keep the system at a precise tilt and distance from my eyes, but in games without motion controls it works reasonably well. I wonder if any game studio would decide to not use the 3D feature, but instead push better graphics.
P.S. The one thing that worries me about the 3DS is the lack of homebrew. Flashcarts are already available but only for piracy, I still can't run my own software on the device.
The PS4 has a number of exclusives e.g. Uncharted, Last Of Us, Little Big Planet which are system sellers. And if you think the PS4 is just a regular PC then are you missing a lot. The unified memory and asynchronous compute aspects are important differences from most home PCs.
The PC is the one that is likely to struggle since fewer and fewer people are buying desktop machines. And laptops/tablets are all about battery life.
Well I don't care enough about those to buy a PS4 just for them. And the PC has been dying since forever. I grant you that the unified memory, etc. is really nice, but as we've seen from e.g. the PS2 - how hard it is to program for a system doesn't really matter in the end. And the PC is not in any way hard to write programs for.
It's not really fair to call the 3DS a failure. While the launch was rough, the 3DS has definitely recovered. Hopefully, they will be able to pull off a similar turnaround with the Wii U.
However, I'm not totally optimistic. The Wii U has been an absurd marketing disaster.
3DS as a console isn't a failure. But I think it's safe to say that the 3D part of it is one - and Nintendo admitted as much when they brought out the 2DS earlier this year. Officially it's just a way to create something parents are more comfortable buying for their children. But it's also an open acknowledgement that the autostereoscopic adds so little gameplay value that there was little or no incentive against shipping a version of the system that lacks it.
That's my take on the 3DS. The 3D part is a failure. Most people seems to turn it off and now Nintendo is releasing games that often disable it. The hardware wasn't ready at that price point.
My other problem with the 3DS is that they still haven't learned how to do downloadable software or online games properly. They're making the right noises on these issues... but it's not like it should have been a surprise.
On the downloadable software front I've finally just realized that Nintendo doesn't even want my money, especially when it comes to Virtual Console titles.
Can't figure out any other good explanation behind why they still won't let me buy Minish Cap. Sure it made sense a couple years ago when they wanted to make people who bought a 3DS before the price drop feel special. But that's far enough in the past that they're not earning any additional goodwill from it, so it's morphed into something more like, "Making sure these people still feel whatever shred of special-ness they might still feel from being 3DS Ambassadors is more important to them than earning more of my money."
Got similar suspicions about why they refuse to make SNES and N64 games available on 3DS Virtual Console.
The hardware wasn't the issue. The hardware at nearly any price point would most likely fail. The whole 3D on a 2D surface thing was a stupid fad that only manufacturers thought was a good idea. The 3D on a 2D surface is a failure pretty much anywhere you look. The only time it could be considered a success is when the consumer has little choice, such as a movie only being shown in 3D with no old-fashioned 2D option.
The only time 3D works is when it is not presented on a 2D surface, such as a VR solution.
Or a web browser that puts high-scoring HN submissions in the foreground and lower scoring items in the background. (Has anyone done a red blue glasses chrome extension for this?)
Apart from that the 3d is neat, but pointless. I'm sure there are some games that use it sensibly, but most don't.
It's weird to see so many racing titles on iOS and so few on 3 DS.
I applaud the effort to bring hardware / sensorial innovation on handheld devices, but yeah the 3D ended up in the gimmick bag. The only time people turn it on is to show how it is to newcomers so they understand why they turn it off.
The biggest problem is its name. Many people think it's just an extra peripheral for the Wii, and it's difficult to pronounce (at least, it feels awkward when I say it; I get an urge to abbreviate to "Wii"... and I think we see the problem there).
I really enjoyed my WiiU much more than I expected to. I think the hardware and the platform are really cool. They should rebrand.
I think I got the 3DS on the day or soon after it came out. I was really pissed at the quality, that they lowered the price so soon, and that their "compensation in games" to the original purchasers was a joke. I forget the details but I recall they initially said they'd give 7 games to original buyers ... later it turned out that the set of games they were giving were old, old, old ... I think some were even black and white. WTF!
It was initially 10 NES games, and they followed it up with 10 GBA games a couple months later. Nothing in black and white, but I think the oldest was Super Mario Bros, which was admittedly about 25 years old at that point.
The attach rate was pretty good for the Wii, unlike the competing consoles, by using older, simpler technology, Nintendo sold the Wii consoles at a profit as well.
Power wise that was supposed to be (roughly) accurate. But Wii Sports was so successful I think it made the 'Nintendo is for little kids' image much stronger. At a time when Nintendo could have really used more mature and 3rd party games those publishers might have been scared off by the shovel ware system for people who aren't between 14-65.
It was kind of sad to read this. There are some thing in the article, like the idea of a console as a toy for fun, that are so quintessentially Nintendo and why I love them. But it's also so clear that it's not the direction the market went. You can see how the 3rd party problems got worse and the beginnings of the disaster that Nintendo's on-line efforts. There are points where it's just so clear their arrogance is causing them serious problems.
I really love Nintendo. I hope they can turn themselves around before it's too late.