What to do now? Actually cut the price, that would be a good start, and cut it down to the price people will pay.
£120 for the so called “Premium Pack” and I will bite, just to see what it's like..thats affordable enough for a gadget like this that i'll likely never use for anything other than Mario, Mario Kart and Zelda.
I doubt that would happen though, even Nintendo can't take a hit that bad.
Nintendo thought it would be a Wii problem!!
Overpriced, under-specced.
Nintendo were relying on the zealots to fund them - the unfortunately realisation that actually, there are not that many of them now…
Problem I've got with the “U” is that it didn't appear to be a big enough leap from the ordinary Wii. And with the new XBox due this year that's the one that I'd be saving for.
Anyone else think - like I do - that the kind of casual gaming that the WiiU is good at is being attacked by tablets at the low end and PS3/XBox from the top end?
I may have bought one myself, but its the price of that controller that really put me off, what if it was dropped or you wanted another, there not exactly cheap :/
Nintendo are screwed, thinking they were gonna ride on the Wii's popularity but with no games lol. Its specs are slightly better than hardware form 2006, pathetic storage size, it's way overpriced for what it is, the controller tablet is no more than a gimmick.
When the PS4 and 720 hit the market the U is gonna sink fast. Nintendo got lucky with the Wii but the bubble has now burst.
More games will fix this problem, there isn't enough games out for Wii U, and so people are holding back including me and many I know.
Are they expecting a large increase in sales with the release of Monster Hunter 3?
Nintendo need to do something stat.
They literally have until Christmas until they get completely crushed by the juggernauts of Sony & Microsoft.
But tbh there is really nothing that they can actually do. They have failed miserably despite favorable conditions, namely their competition has been two 6 year old consoles which are all but obsolete. Failed to have any lasting impact on consumers during the launch months and subsequent months, and will probably only decline further over time.
Where are the games Nintendo? Why would anyone buy a console when there aren't any games out for it? I've always thought this has been Nintendo's problem since the Gamecube. Nintendo releases some great games for their consoles but they are few and far between. There has been little in the way of third party support for years now - second rate ports don't count.
Anyone else thinking Sega here? Without hand-held which is shrinking nintendo are dead in the water. I think Nintendo would do better to drop their own hardware and sell games on sony and ms consoles and on mobile and tablets. They have fumbled two hardware releases in a row now (possibly three as yes wii did sell well but then dropped off a cliff) Unless they have something to get new customers I cant see them coming back and please not yet another mario/zelda have they no new ideas?
Nintendo created a Wii 2.0 and expected us to lap it all up, lets be honest the hardware is typically Ninty underpowered, rehashing Mario/Kart and Zelda etc will only cut it for so long. Once MS and Sony release their consoles the Wii U will have more then slow sales to worry about it will be dead and buried.
HMV have cut Premium to £200 and thrown in Zombi U - naturally, that is shifting the machine. That is £130 below RRP, though, and when that's what it takes to get sales, is it worth getting new stock?
Spud1
…that i'll likely never use for anything other than Mario, Mario Kart and Zelda…
Exactly, that's all my Wii got used for after the whole ‘ooooh motion control’ gimmick excitement wore off (which was pretty fast). I really think Nintendo's future is to shrink massively, pull out of the hardware arena and just make games for the better consoles. Sad really, the best console I ever owned was the N64
I sometimes wonder about the kind of people who see a product like the Wii U and think, ‘yeah this is going to be MASSIVE’.
This was the most predictable thing to happen in a long time, an idiot could have seen it a mile away!
I wouldn't write Nintendo off, but there is only so many gimmicks they can get away with before they have to do something which is just really good in the traditional sense of the word.
Nintendo need to start porting their titles to iOS and Android stores, they are failing to capitalise on a huge market there. I mean seriously, some of the SNES and gameboy titles would play fine on tablets and smartphones so why not?
dcwt2010
Nintendo need to start porting their titles to iOS and Android stores, they are failing to capitalise on a huge market there. I mean seriously, some of the SNES and gameboy titles would play fine on tablets and smartphones so why not?
Don't forget other possibilities too - Ouya and 3rd Gen “smart tvs” for the Android fans, and this (mythical?) Apple console that Gabe Newell keeps talking about, (or at least it's reported that he keeps talking about).
I'm going to also suggest that - in addition to repurposing themselves as “merely” software suppliers to Sony, Microsoft, et al they could also do a good business perhaps in game controllers for tablets, smartphones etc. All the ones I've seen so far have been pretty shoddily executed - e.g. flimsy.
Failing that - how about trying to persuade one of the big TV makers (Samsung springs to mind) to include Wii functionality into one of their TV's.
Biscuit
I wouldn't write Nintendo off, but there is only so many gimmicks they can get away with before they have to do something which is just really good in the traditional sense of the word.
I think that it's good to have a company willing to take risks and try different things. Sure it's nice to have a machine 3 times more powerful than the last, but all that really do is make things look prettier (I don't think that AI has kept up). Not irrelevant, but it's not going to change the way we play games. Whereas something different can be anything from “What the hell were they thinking”, “just a gimmick”, to something truly revolutionary. I don't think that we are done with the way we interact with a video game console. The future could be very different, IF manufacturers are willing open new horizons.
with EA not supporting it only time before the rest follow suit. sorry Nintendo , this is a duck