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Wii 2 Unlikely For 2011, Maybe In 2012
An anonymous reader writes "As discussed on Slashdot earlier this year, the lack of a next-generation Wii may be hurting Nintendo. That doesn't seem to concern the company's US chief, Reggie Fils-Aime, who said this week that a Wii 2 might not appear until 2012. He wants to sell a few million more consoles before a successor is launched. So, no Wii 2 for 2010 or 2011 — meanwhile, the PS3 and Xbox consoles get motion control support and other content enhancements. What does that mean for the success of Nintendo's gaming console business? Has the innovator been out-innovated due to a sluggish product roadmap?"
means no new consoles. Duh. When things pick up THEN I'd expect a new console.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The Wii only started losing steam this past year, and they still sell boatloads of them every month. Granted, it's a much smaller boat than it was before, but they are still moving units. Even though the current generation of consoles are starting to directly impact the potential complexity of games, they still have a bit of life left in them...Wii included. Here's to hoping that Nintendo focuses more on the hardware this time. Don't get me wrong, there have been some amazing games released for the Wii (Muramasa: The Demon Blade being one of the better ones), but I'd like to see more emphasis on gaming prowess rather than a focus on the "general" market.
Not that I expect that to happen; Nintendo is a business, after all...
Living With a Nerd
Ok. Great. Now, how about a few more words, because the one doesn't really help much.
Nintendo has been raking in a metric buttload of cash off of the Wii.
Remember the fact that the Wii *hardware* made a profit from day 1, while the PS3 and the 360 sold at a loss for many many years.
What have they been doing with all that cash? R&D of course. Do you actually think Nintendo is just sitting around on their hands? They are not stupid.
In all likelihood they are just laughing their butts off at Sony and Microsoft pushing over themselves playing catch-up, meanwhile sitting on some revolutionary new console that will be surprise announced in the summer to come out next Xmas.
nintendo should go roman and call it the wiiii
Unless they can come up with something very new, and very original, and something that's a lot better than just an incremental improvement to their current system, I don't think they are going to be a serious competitor in the industry after the next generation of consoles has run its course.
What makes it even worse is that Nintendo is probably going to have to depend heavily on backward compatibility in their next generation console, which limits the directions they can take with it.
This, I think, is it for them. I think they might be down and out for the count.
I remember when Atari was king of the consoles with the 2600... but they didn't innovate quickly enough as competitors came out either.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Right now the Kinect is $200 and the PS3 Motion is $100 plus $70/controller according to Amazon. So just to add motion control to the 360, you have to shell out what you would for a new Wii. You can get a Wii used from Gamestop with a decent warranty for $120. And browsing the Kinect games, they look like the same stuff available on the Wii: some Sonic knock-offs, the EA exercise stuff, Deca Sports... Unless the Kinect and Motion can put out some must-have titles, people who don't already own a 360 or PS3 will likely opt for the Wii.
Why would they bother? Microsoft and Sony are skipping a new generation of consol in favor of adding motion control to existing systems. Even with a year's delay,Nintendo will beat Microsoft and Sony to the next generation console. They still have good motion control and can draw from the Wii as well as Kinect for a new generation. Nintendo is in excellent shape.
The Wii's game catalogue will look a whole lot better now that both the 360 and PS3 have their very own shovelware minigame motion system platform to lower the overall quality of their software releases.
The Wii's motion controls were evolutionary, not revolutionary.
Nintendo obviously believed the motion controls were revolutionary - the Wii codename was revolution. Look inside the battery compartment of the Wiimote and you'll still see the code RVL-003.
In any case, it did revolutionise gaming input in a tangible way and brought a whole new demographic into gaming as a result.
Nintendo has been in business for a lot longer than almost any company you can name (1889!) and have seen off some enormous rivals several times (Sega, Atari, etc.).
Nintendo make profit on almost everything they release.
Nintendo make big releases every now and again, stringing them on with life support in the form of games that turn out to become famous in their own right.
When Nintendo do plop down a new console it's invariably innovative and top-of-its-game (not necessarily the best hardware, but definitely better in gaming terms).
Nintendo is an inventor. They toil away in their little sheds for years in complete secrecy until one day they walk out, plop something into a business person's hands and blow everyone away. Then while the market are still reeling from that, they just wander quietly back into their shed and aren't seen for another few years when they rinse and repeat.
Precisely BECAUSE they aren't saying "Oh, no, our competitors have something new, we have to copy it in our own way and get back into the game" is why they are able to do what they do. They don't really care about Kinect, or anything else - they have money enough to last a decade, and that gives them a decade to make something even more spectacular without having to worry about the day-to-day running of the businesses. Wiis are still being sold but they have enough to go back into their shed and devote the next few years to R&D and playtesting which the other rivals *cannot*. They will have their own ideas, which might work (Wii) or might flop (VirtualBoy) but will be away from the conventional elements of the time that are competing in the market. And when they deliver their next invention, people will give them millions and, because of using their brains and not just throwing expensive hardware at a problem, they will invariably make profit on every unit sold.
It's also true that they decide what they want in the next, say, Mario game. They decide what they want to be able to do. Then they build a console around that, not the other way around.
You can try to make Nintendo look foolish and show how "you know better" if you want, but invariably you will end up with egg on your face. Nintendo know their market better than anyone - they almost single-handedly invented it. Leave them be. The "Wii 2" (which it will almost certainly NEVER be named) will be to the Wii what the Wii was to the Gamecube, or the Gamecube to the N64, or the N64 to the SNES, or the SNES to the NES, or the equivalent trail in the handheld markets. It will take years to arrive - you'll have just about forgotten about your Wii and Nintendo will be absent from the market for a year or so - and then it'll blow your socks off. After a few months people will complain that it doesn't do X or Y or that it's "outdated" or "underpowered" while Nintendo will have another decade's research money under their belt and be working on the next one.
Nintendo know what they are doing. Sod Wii 2. I want whatever the next stage is - which will be more advanced gameplay-wise than anything on the market in the next few years.
Had they called their current console "Wi" instead of "Wii" they could have just tacked that single 'i' for the 2.0 version instead of adding an entire '2' and thus rising the length of the console's name to 4 characters.
Just think of the money they could have saved in marketing by saving all that ink, commercial time, reusing old characters and such.
Not to mention all that accumulated saving down the road with Wii3 (Wiii) and Wii4 (WiW).
They must be kicking themselves in the ass right now for being so shortsighted.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I disagree.
As far as Move goes, I don't see that as out-innovating the Wii. From my point of view, the PS3 is several years more advanced than the Wii (in both the base hardware and the motion control hardware), they've had years more of research to benefit from (both their own research and what others in the industry and academia have researched and demonstrated), they have the benefit several years of sitting back and learning from the Wii's mistakes and shortcomings, and with all of that benefit they've managed to brute force a solutions that is only slightly more capable than the Wii, and looks stupid and inelegant in the process.
As far as Kinect goes, I have a lot of respect for what they've done there. Rather than just tracking the position of some sex-toy-looking orbs, it actually analyzes the scene to extract skeletal structure information from the players movement. It's quite technologically advanced. Very impressive in the way it operates and the capabilities it provides. Yet the one thing that REALLY bugs me about it is that it is a purely controller-less design. Being able to play controller-less is pretty cool, but a lot of games will suffer or be impractical without buttons to press. Using an existing controller 2-handed kind of defeats the purpose of Kinect's advanced capabilities, the existing 360 controllers aren't conducive to single-hand use, and releasing a future add-on-controller-for-the-add-on-kinect is just completely out of the question.
So no, I don't really feel that the Wii has been out-innovated much. Move is pretty pathetic and uninspired considering how much later it came than the Wii, and Kinect is really impressive and innovative in ways but has a fatal flaw. I think it will take until the next generation before someone truly outdoes the Wii (when they can combine the Kinect's sensor technology with the Wii/Move controller system)
There have been 'improvements' on what Nintendo did - but I wouldn't really call yet another motion sensor an 'innovation'. (Think how many MSFT 'innovations' you just yawned at, as they were things that existed elsewhere long ago).
Nintendo innovated the console market by bringing those controllers.
It was Sony/Microsoft who jumped on it later - to claw back marketshare lost to Nintendo.
In much the same way - in the phone world, the iPhone was the innovation. There is virtually no new phone that doesn't just try and piggy back on the path paved by the iPhone. Even if there are Android phones that have more CPU power, cheaper, ... They weren't the innovators. Someone else (at Apple) had the big idea on how to revolutionize the market, all the others came years later - then touting other features.
Take it - the fact that Android was multitasking before the iPhone wasn't as much of an 'innovation', as the iPhone itself was to any phone preceeding it.
The über-powerful PS3 or XBox 360 primarily introduced newer hardware - something that was expected to happen - everyone does it.
The Wii brought something new, something unexpected to the market - hence THEY were the innovators, and even if they aren't on the forefront now - those that are are 'optimisers' at best, but not innovators, not pioneers, not people trying something NEW.
Has the innovator been out-innovated due to a sluggish product roadmap?
Counterpoint:
No.
Nintendo pretty much has a different market segment of casual gamers. Younger kids who are into the franchise (Pokemon, Mario, etc. and other exclusives are all over the elementary schools... never heard anyone there ever mention Halo or even Final Fantasy). Kids don't care about system specs... hell, they won't even watch TV if it's not a cartoon, so I surmise they actually expect the cartoony "8-bit look" as a sign that a game is actually "for them".
Finally, the hardcore gamers will have a Wii anyway just for the heck of it.
Nintendo can milk this cow, the Wii teat, for a while longer. Then once publishers actually start releasing interesting games for the PS3 and Kinect motion controls, they can come out with the next big thing out of cycle.
I surmise it would be some kind of augmented reality thing, so they can sell more cheap widgets with each game, that the kids will bring to school and lose and have to be replaced.
The five-year-rule is a long-standing tradition for console generations going back to the Atari days (even through several recessions and the console "collapse" of 1982). Both the 360 and PS3 are starting to show their age at this point (especially the 360, which doesn't even have a blu-ray drive), with no new console generation on the horizon. The 360 is now 5 years old and the PS3 is 4, and neither has even announced a new console generation. I'm tired of my console dropping further and further behind PC's, while all MS and Sony want to do is release lame Wii knockoff controllers. I'm tired of consoles that aren't powerful enough to handle MMO's, require multiple disc swaps to support the latest games, and slow to a crawl with modern high res textures.
Screw Nintendo, and screw Move and Kinect. Give me a new console generation!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I really don't care what age a game was designed for. If it's fun, it's fun. If it has a good mechanic and control scheme and lets me skip any cutscenes that piss on my mind, it's a good game. Better crap graphics than crap input. I want my framerate, but other than that, for some games the graphics on the Atari VCS are overkill.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They aren't too excited about rushing a product to sale for a couple of reasons
The main reason is...they don't NEED to. The Wii is still the number one seller out there, and has universal appeal. The PS3 is the elite blue ray graphics console, and the 360 is the FPS console. Both have their niches. The Wii won't be in trouble because everyone, from 8 year olds to grandmas in assisted living centers, can and does play the Wii. Yeah, the "gamer" niche isn't there, but really, that market isn't that big in comparison. Plus, you still have to shell out $500-$600 for a DECENT 360 or PS3 with motion control, whereas you get a Wii for half the price, complete with access to all Nintendo's proprietary games.
The second reason also goes to the PS3 and, especially, the 360. When the PS3 came out, it was priced way out of reach, and manufacturing wasn't yet up to par with mass production for a good price. They lost money. The 360 was made by Microsoft. In other words, like their OS's, it was buggy as hell and had its own version of the BSoD(red ring, anyone?) The Wii? smooth release, no major issues, priced for volume, and fun for a broad audience. I guarantee that, when the Wii 2 or whatever it is called comes out, the same will be true.
Nintendo has been in this business for decades. They know what works, and they listen to what works, not a bunch of flamers looking for the next big shiny.
"Has the innovator been out-innovated due to a sluggish product roadmap?"
Umm, in case you didn't notice, the 3DS is Nintendo's next big innovation. The next Wii will follow after that. Nintendo doesn't just throw a bunch of shit against the wall and sees what sticks, like Sony does. They make a concentrated effort and focus.