Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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.
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 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.
Or they should go retro and call it the WiiNES. Anyone want to play with my WiiNES?
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.
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)
Exactly. I'd say it's more of a case of the competitors closing a gap on the Wii, while the Wii is still significantly cheaper than either.
Plus you have to consider that since every single Wii ever sold has motion control out of the box, every single game can be developed with motion control as a standard feature. For the PS3 and Xbox... developers have to consider developing games for consoles that may or MAY NOT have motion control capabilities. Remember folks, this is an EXTRA COST option on PS3 and Xbox... it means you can't take it for granted that motion control is available. As a developer you have to support both non-motion control and motion control controller interfaces for your games on those platforms.
From a dev point of view I'd much rather develop for the Wii than to have to take this into account. For the Xbox and PS3, the early adopters have already bought the "upgrades"... where does the growth then come from now that the honeymoon is over? I'd be interested to see the installed-base numbers of consoles vs. motion control devices sold separately. Probably not a pretty picture.
It's not arguably the most successful console this generation. It flat out is the most successful console this generation by any reasonable metric. The Wii has practically sold more units than the PS3 and 360 combined. It dominates software sales, too. And unlike the PS3 and 360, the Wii was selling for a profit from day 1, meaning Nintendo has been making money off it from day 1. The only console that could reasonably compete with it in terms of "success" would be the DS. Nintendo is in an amazing position right now.
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.