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Iwata Confirms Nintendo Network, New Wii U Controller Functions
New submitter DeanCubed writes "In a Nintendo investor meeting, CEO Satoru Iwata confirmed a new Nintendo Network for the company's 3DS and upcoming Wii U game systems. This includes multiple user accounts per console (not tied to hardware, a first for Nintendo) and digitally distributed retail software releases for their online store. Iwata also noted that the Wii U's tablet controller will feature NFC (Near Field Communication) functionality, allowing the ability to use figurines and cards to input visual data to the console. They are hoping to use this to make micro-transactions for paid DLC easier."
Having read both TFA and a few other more detailed articles out there (Eurogamer has a good one), the Nintendo Network looks like a good thing, albeit one which is many years overdue. It'll be good to have the it there, but it's hard to see anybody getting excited about it, given that at best it will bring functionality on a par with Xbox Live and the Playstation Network.
I think the Wii-U is a cause for greater concern. It's going to be launching in difficult economic times. The 3DS did that last year and its initial sales were poor. They've now recovered a bit (though they're still below forecast), but only at the expense of Nintendo having to sell the system at a loss. Now, selling at a loss isn't exactly a bad strategy (it worked wonders for Sony with the PS2), but it's very much counter to Nintendo's historic strategy. The Vita, also launching in difficult times, has had a poor Japanese launch despite a really quite good launch-games lineup. Having seen what the Vita can do, I very much want to own one - but I'll be surprised if its US and European sales don't fall well short of targets. I get the feeling that 2012 is going to be a really bad time to be launching a console - most people are unlikely to be feeling any kind of real economic recovery during the year. Microsoft and Sony have clearly decided to hold on and wait in the hope of a kinder economy; Nintendo, with Wii sales exhausted and their finances at an all-time low, don't have that option.
But more worrying still is the lack of a real public narrative around the Wii-U. The Wii had one of these. Motion control was easily grasped. You could watch somebody demonstrating one - or try a demo unit yourself - and "get" the concept instantly. If you actually used the thing more extensively, you'd come up against its limitations very quickly; the motion control was imprecise and in many cases placed a barrier between the player and the game that meant it ended up less immersive than traditional controllers. But by then, the sale was made. The Wii-U is a much harder concept to grasp. It's a home console which has some tablet-ish features. But how will it work with a room full of people? What will the tablet actually add to the games? And how is it going to be fun at a party with a room full of people with a few drinks inside them?
There are actually answers to those questions if you look around enough at the material that's been made available. But they're not simple answers and they're not easily communicated. On that basis, I just cannot see the Wii-U replicating the success of the Wii's early years. I'm also unsure that the pitch to the more traditional "gamer" crowd will work. There's a lot of frustration with the current generation's techological limitations. But I don't sense any confidence that Nintendo - who, let's not forget, have spent the time since the Wii's launch neglecting this demographic - are the people to usher in the next generation. I also find it hard to imagine developers doing much with the Wii-U's hardware - which is better than the current generation, but not by a huge margin - putting much resource into developing games for it that actually push it beyond what the 360 and PS3 can do. More likely, it will just get a lot of PS3/360 ports, which present little compelling reason for the "gamer" crowd to jump ship from their existing platforms until those get replaced.
The 3DS also suffered from a mis-managed message at launch. It was launched on the basis of "look 3d!" rather than "look, more powerful DS with better graphics". People weren't interested in 3d. A better DS is a stronger pitch and Nintendo have had more success with the 3DS since they switched to it. But I'm struggling to see what the pitch is with the Wii-U.
I've been wrong on calling "Nintendo are doomed" before. But I'm finding it very hard to see a convincing path to success for the Wii-U. The Wii was the right product at the right time (I admit it took me a while to recognise this). But for Nintendo to capitalise on that success, I think they needed to have a replacement ready by the back end of 2009 or early 2010 at the latest. As it is, they've endured a pretty grim second half of this console cycle and are in a very risky position now.
I don't have any practical experience with NFC, but couldn't someone put a NFC reader up to unopened game boxes that have DLC codes in them and steal the codes? Is there a cheap and easy way to prevent people from doing something like this?
Its not what it is, its something else.
Keep telling yourself that. 99.99% of our lives will be nothing but a birth, marriage, and death certificate in 200 years. Some historian will probably use those to do some revisionism on this period.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
99.99% of our lives will be nothing but a birth, marriage, and death certificate in 200 years.
Which is why Facebook has introduced timelines, and Ancestry has indexed old historical documents. Historians will have a lot more to go on.
But historically, Nintendo has been opposed to the sort of public social interaction and sharing seen on Facebook. On DS and Wii, players cannot communicate unless they have mutually exchanged friend codes out of band.
But, will it have games geared for people OVER 5 years old?
Games for people over 5 are called school and career, where winning and losing have a deeper meaning and there are few second chances.
You could say the same thing about TV / Movies, Sports, Art etc... and you'd still be wrong in every instance. Games are entertainment. Entertainment has always been an important part of human culture. Be thankful that your schooling and career are so joyful and interesting that you never need entertainment... Not everyone is so fortunate.
I feel like the online component is a place where Nintendo had an opportunity to excel and they completely dropped the ball. The Wii had connectivity all along. It's storefront worked fine. But that was all. The Opera browser sucked, and still sucks. First they charged for it, but because it sucked they finally gave it away. You could add friends somehow, but it was some convoluted confusing manner of trading codes with each other and typing them in onscreen. They had downloadable games but no support for downloadable content (I'm looking at you, myriad of trivia games). Why? The Wii could have been a pioneer in living room web browsing and content but had nothing of it. It seems like Niintendo didn't thing this 'Internet' thing was going to take off or something.
And so now, they start to make an attempt at an online component but it's not going to be available to the millions of units already out there. Sigh....
The cynic in me wants to say that if "school" was a game, it would be one which flashed up big signs saying "YOU WIN" and "1,000,000,000 POINT BONUS MULTIPLIER" every few seconds, until suddenly it was over and around 75% of players were then faced with a sign saying "Game over. Guess you sucked after all."
But then, I'm a hopeless cynic.
"The 3DS did that last year and its initial sales were poor."
The 3DS may have had sales figures that weren't as good as they were expecting, but having sold 15million units quicker than either that Wii or the DS, I have to wonder just what those forecasters were smoking at the time. The attach rate of the console was pretty poor at first but that was mainly because the hardware launched without any first-party titles alongside it.
"What will the tablet actually add to the games?"
Rephrase that question to what will the Wii-U bring to tablet games, and keep in mind how popular the touch screen has become as a gaming interface in the mobile arena. I think that's a smart angle to go for. Nintendo promised the world with motion controls, disappointed everyone at first, but then lived up to that promise (for a price) with MotionPlus. Considering that Wii-U works with Wiimotes, MotionPlus might get a chance to shine and revitalize enthusiasm for motion control like Kinect did.
"I'm struggling to see what the pitch is with the Wii-U."
That's probably because they haven't pitched it to us yet.
Crashed and burned? They have sold 95 million Wii's http://kotaku.com/5879478/the-wii-will-sell-a-hundred-million-eventually
Nintendo did dominate the Xbox and PS3 to the point where both Sony and Microsoft felt the need to incorporate motion controls. Nintendo also made money on every system and if the Xbox 720 rumours are true, Microsoft appears poised to follow in Nintendo's footsteps with the next console cycle. The Wii did fizzle out toward the end of it's life but it's still a great console that shook up the industry far more than the PS3 or Xbox could ever hope to.
If anything I'd argue the Wii U is the lacklustre console. The Wii is a pretty hard act to follow but this is Nintendo after all and they could easily pull off a SNES here. Only time will tell but as far as the Wii is concerned, I'd hardly call it the flop you imply it is.
I agree with your point about the perception of the Wii's performance as opposed to the reality.
What people don't tend to realise is that there are two broad ways to make money from a console. The "Nintendo" model and the "everybody else" model.
The Nintendo model is to sell the system at a profit - even if not a huge one - and then sell first-party games at it for a profit. This has to be quite an aggressively focussed approach and it generally results in putting out hardware that third party developers aren't interested in. But this doesn't matter, because you're making money off your own efforts. Nintendo didn't do so great with this strategy with the N64 and Gamecube, but it worked perfectly with the Wii, for the first 3 years. If they'd had a successor ready to go and repeat the trick in 2009/10, they could have made life very difficult for Sony and Microsoft. It's a "quick win" strategy - to sell consoles at a profit on day 1 these days, you need either a very high price point (3DS) or very weak hardware (Wii). If you go for the latter option, you will go obsolete quite quickly - so better stack up those early profits.
The "everybody else" strategy with console profits is to sell the hardware at a loss, not worry too much about first-party games development, but let third party games developers make your money for you. Remember, MS and Sony cream a good chunk of cash off every third party game sold for their system. Their only investment in producing those games has been a trivial amount of cash on certification. If the system is successful in attracting third party developers, then it becomes a source of "free money". This is a slower-burn strategy. Third party developers are nervous early in a console cycle, while the installed base is still small. You have to suck up a loss in those years. But then you've got a cash-cow out there and you can just sit back and milk it with minimal effort.
My instinct is that while Nintendo may exit this generation with the largest installed base, in overall terms, they may well be looking at chugging home in third place again, because they waited too long to jump to their next generation hardware (and had to do so in poor circumstances).
Nintendo needs the U _now_ and they need it to be ~25% more powerful than current generation gaming consoles.
They need the Wii U now and they don't need it to be really any more powerful. I mean it'll make sense to make it more powerful, but does it *need* to be more powerful?
They need games. Bad. The problem with the Wii was that everyone's grandma bought one for Wii sports and never picked up another wii title after that.
I think that more powerful hardware will lead to more developers signing up, but, keep focus on what's actually important here.
Games.
Also an HDMI socket would be nice too.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
On a more serious note: I really hope Nintendo will have some good games this time.
Because that dumb Mario five...thousandth edition thing they do with all of their titles, is really sucking.
Everything is so childish and dumb. For a grown-up, the thing is utterly useless.
Sometimes it feels like the music they listen to in the future in Demolition Man. You know, with every "band" being a childrens' choir.
What seems to be your boggle? Your face is all tense and angry, like you need to go use the three sea shells. Perhaps some music will enhance your calm.
Good things from the garden
Garden in the valley
Valley of the jolly green giant!
For a console that crashed and burned, it sure is following the same standard patterns of a normal 5-year Nintendo console lifecycle. I'm pretty sure they were still much more profitable this generation than the GameCube generation even including this years sales.
I found the trick with Wii games was to go into them with an open mind and try not set too many expectations. You'll enjoy them a lot more that way. There is a distinct culture difference in Wii games that just flies over the heads of many people. (Example: Nintendo games tend to read like a book. They don't do voiced dialog. That is not necessarily a minus even though people like to pretend it is.)
We are seeing a lot of paragrim shifts in software from the tablet interfaces appearing in projects such as Gnome 3 and the motion controls appearing in the Wii or Kinect. The holdouts will only move forward kicking and screaming.
The thought of hanging myself at my student loan organization doesn't bug me as much when I think it might make a differ
I don't anticipate buying the Wii U and hate the single tablet controller. I think it is a stupid decision. But they have a lot of third party developers confirmed to be making Wii U games well before the hardware is ready to launch.
And this won't be two Wii's. The hardware is considerably faster.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
The wii sold well, but was a terrible console. It just had masterful marketing by Nintendo. Ms realized this for Kinect, and poured a ton into marketing it as well.
But if you look at the wii itself, it was underwhelming from day 1. Poor game selection, save for a handful of first party titles, and the novelty wore off fast. It was bought, played for a few weeks to months, then sat on the shelf collecting dust for the rest of the generation.
Actually, they waited about the right amount of time. The problem is, MS and Sony are waiting a year longer, putting Nintendo into dreamcast territory. showing their cards this early means both their rivals know exactly what is on the table and how to counter it. Ms will most certainty push their 'console as the entertainment system for the family' angle, and bundle in Kinect, while sony will probably bundle in their own camera, as well as continue their multimedia path and PSV/ps3/4 inter connectivity.
They better come out with this quick. It's amazing how quickly they crashed and burned with the Wii. This is what I call an "I told you so" post.
It seems like only a year ago (and it probably was) when any time you said the Wii was in trouble someone would come and tell you how wrong you are and that the Wii is "totally pwning Xbox and PS3". I think anyone could see the trouble was heading to within 1 year of the Wii coming out, but nooooooo. "Oh, you don't know how much the Wii is dominating Xbox/PS3!".
Well, no - it wasn't. It was selling at a small profit for Nintendo but nobody was buying very many games. It was old technology, it looks like crap. It was a gimmick that flashed brightly for a while because of the innovative controller, then it died almost as quickly.
Nintendo needs the U _now_ and they need it to be ~25% more powerful than current generation gaming consoles. I wish them well, I think 3 major platforms is perfect and want them to stick around but I was a bit annoyed by the blinders people had regarding the Wii.
Nintendo profited from every Wii made. Sony and MS lost lots of money on every PS3 and 360 sold until recently.
The global attach rate for the Wii is about 7.7, while it's around 8.5 for the PS3. The 360 has an attach rate of about 9.2 in the US, and less globally (I don't know the number).
The Wii has sold about 100 million units and the PS3 and 360 are sitting at around 60 million units.
Nintendo is the developer of most of the top-selling games on the Wii, so they get 100% of the profit.
For the PS3 and 360, the bulk of softare sales are for games developed by 3rd parties - MS and Sony only see the royalties from those sales.
Here's a chart for you (old, but still reflective of the situation):
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/edit/img/images/blog/5615/profit_chart_consoles.jpg
But, will it have games geared for people OVER 5 years old?
Games for people over 5 are called school and career, where winning and losing have a deeper meaning and there are few second chances.
From the ESA report:
Around 68% of U.S. households now play computer or video games and it's not just the youngsters in the family that are doing so. While the average age of a gamer is 35, over a quarter (26%) is age 50 or over. The bulk of gamers are in the 18 to 49 year age range.
Dammit, how dare I challenge your preconceived notions with abhorrent facts! What a cad I am!
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Your comparing school to old school gaming where you could actually lose. School is more like MMORPGs. Nobody "loses" no matter how bad they are, and winning just means you spent enough time grinding.
> Games.
Dead Space: Extraction
Donkey Kong Country Returns
ExciteBots: Trick Racing
Lara Croft - Tomb Raider: Anniversary
House of the Dead: Overkill
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Mario Kart Wii
Okami
Rayman Raving Rabbids
Rogue Trooper: Quartz Zone Massacre
Super Mario Bros. Wii
Super Mario Galaxy
Super Mario Galaxy 2
Tetris Party Deluxe
Wario Land: Shake It!
Worms: Battle Islands
You were saying?
next gen is going to suck. I hope these next devices don't sell. All I want is a console I can put my game into and play it on some controllers. i hate motion control. really, i hate it. I hope microsoft or Sony bring gaming next gen. nintendo is a lost cause
Considering the comparisons made by journalists between the Wii U and "XBox 720" specs are that there's only about a 20% difference in power between the two (about the same difference between PS2 and the original XBox), I'm calling bullshit on your statement.
A certain segment likes to claim that no one ever played their Wii, but that is clearly not correct. If no one played their Wii, no one would have bought games. The companies making games would have seen that every game after the initial release just sat on store shelves. Game development would have died out withing 12 months. Retail stores would have seen that they never sold any Wii games, and would have stopped using valuable shelf space for them.
That has not happened. Go into any Toys R Us, Target, Costco, Gamestop, K-Mart, WalMart, etc... They all have very large Wii sections. This is even now when the Wii is at the end of it's life, and it's successor has already been announced. Making the claim that all of these stores have been dedicating huge amounts of valuable shelf space to a product line that doesn't sell is a might extraordinary claim, and thus needs more evidence than an anecdote from members of a minority group.
My own anecdote is that I got my household a 360 for Christmas this year. On Christmas day, we spent about 45 minutes enjoying the 360, and appreciating how cool the Kinect is. We then spent about 3 hours playing Fortune Street on the Wii.
The Wii was terrible like the 2600 was terrible.
The fact that tons of other games were produced, and stores committed years of very valuable shelf space to them is pretty good proof that you are completely wrong that no one bought anything beyond Wii sports.
...the first thing I thought of was "Skylanders".
Skylanders uses RFID for its "Portal of Power", not NFC, but NFC is essentially just building on RFID anyway, and is backwards compatible with existing RFID infrastructure and tags. The "Portal of Power" may have been a gimmick, but it was a very profitable gimmick that was popular with the kids. Incorporating that kind of functionality direct into the Wii U controller is a stroke of sheer genius from Nintendo, IMO. RFID tags are cheap. $0.15 for a passive (unpowered) tag, $0.50 for an active tag. It'd be quite inexpensive for developers to incorporate those into their products and merchandise to have them interact with games on the Wii U.
But look at this
Wii sales in 2011 were clearly far below sales in 2010 At least for the Chistmas season. They "crashed and burned" almost as low as Xbox and PS3 during the Christmas season. Clearly Nintendo is in trouble!
err no?
There's the non gamer market that didn't buy games beyond what was packed in with the console. The attach rate for the Wii isn't that bad, it's actually way better than the 360's. I was working on some faulty preconceptions.
But ultimately my point was that what's important to the Wii U is what's ultimately important. Games.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
And what about the recent announcement by THQ that they're no longer going to develop licensed games aimed at kids because the money just isn't there?
(Although my personal opinion on that bit of news is that they're merely looking for a scapegoat to blame for bad sales when the real culprit is crappy derivative programming that parents finally caught on to)
You almost had me there for a second. But two things you failed on:
1) "Posting anonymously to dodge NDA" -- If you're really in a development situation with an NDA, you would know that anything you write at work can be read by the boss and merely "posting anonymously" is still an incredibly risky move that could very easily get you fired. Any developer with even an iota of intelligence wouldn't take that risk just to troll on slashdot.
2) "two wiis" -- rehashing the old and tired insult that the next generation of Nintendo hardware is merely "Two current-generation units duct-taped together" was soooo 2005.
But good luck on your next trolling run!
Donkey Kong, Mario, Excitebike, Zelda, Kirby, Metroid, Fzero, Star Fox, Pilotwings, Kid Icarus, Pokemon, Earthbound, Fire Emblem, Animal Crossing, Pikmin, 1080, Wave Race, Super Smash Brothers, Wii Sports, Xenoblade, Battalion Wars, WiiFit, Endless Ocean, and yet you say they just rehash Mario. This is a firm with the largest catalog of diverse and successful games ever made and yet you make it seem like they rely on a singular franchise.
Couldn't be less enthused about a new console then Wii-U. Wii turned into a huge disappointing largely because of the strict adherence to produce juvenile games and a stunning reality that Nintendo invested $0 into any innovation outside motion control. Wii is last Nintendo product I will own, period.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
there's nothing stopping you from hooking up four USB gamepads to a USB hub, loading up ZSNES, and getting some four player Turtles in Time action going on.
1. Turtles in Time for Super NES came out before the multitap, as basscomm pointed out. 2. Super NES cartridges don't fit in a PC without an obscure German adapter sold only online.
And that's not to mention all of the games you can play exclusive to the PC that are fun in their own right
Do you know of a list of worthwhile PC-native games supporting two to four gamepads?
Its more like crashing and burning
What would be interesting is to see how much money the platform has generated aside from high console sales. While PS3 and Xbox have not sold as many consoles, I would argue that overall those platforms have been far more profitable in the long run. Xbox has their Live subscriptions, Sony has Home generating a solid amount of money through micro-transactions. There is a lot more activity in game development on PS3 and Xbox. Finally both Sony and Xbox re-invigorated their platforms with motion control at a time when people got sick and tired of the Wii.
Overall I think most people bought a small handful of titles for the Wii while people with a PS3 or Xbox360 have purchased far more software in the same amount of time, that is more important to overall success. Game developers have been pulling away from Nintendo development due to low profitability, Nintendo is going to shrink to almost a walled-garden platform where only Nintendo and a select few will want to develop for Nintendo consoles.
Look, not saying Nintendo is going bankrupt, but you can't continue to compare Nintendo to Sony or Microsoft, Nintendo has created its own market intended for kids, period. While some adults might enjoy a few kiddie titles, Nintendo has pretty much given up on adult gamers, and it looks like that is not going to change. If you are going to purposefully limit your market then you are going to limit your success, period.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I will respond to this information with a true gamer's response: I will buy a Wii U the day Pikmin 3 is released. Basically, content is king. I know people bash the Wii a lot, but I realized when organizing my shelves the other day that my SO and I have managed to collect more Wii games than I've had for any other system in my life. Some were great, some were so-so, but I don't regret any of the purchases.
The wii was a success due to the innovative new controls and a comparatively low pricepoint. admittedly the wii can be a lot of fun. firing up wii sports with people who would never normally touch a game (my dad and others) was great. and there are some good games out there.
however that time is over. looking at gamespot wii has had almost no good 3rd party games out in a while. i haven't bought a new one in ages. and Skyward sword while an ok Zelda game hit me hard because i played skyrim at the same time and i realized how weak the wii was in a hardware sense. even going for the artistic semi cel shaded style Zelda:SS has mediocre graphics and some abysmal interface shortcomings (selling insects was such a ridiculously cumbersome task it wasn't even worth trying). all i could do was wonder was how beautiful SS could have been with the power of a modern PC.
the problem i see with the wii-u will be hardware limitations. i wonder if it will even match the existing 360 or PS3 for graphics. if it doesn't it will be crushed when PS4 and 720 get released and all the AAA titles skip over it again. as for the handheld gimmick they have tried pushing since the GCN/GBA days and i don't se it ever being that relevant in singleplayer and too limiting in multiplayer.
I wanna eat bacon and butter and BUCKETS of cheese, okay? I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in the non-smoking section. I want to run through the streets naked with green Jell-o all over my body reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly might feel the need to, okay, pal?
Good-bye
The attach rate on the wii is HORRIBLE in the extreme. IN this metric PS3 and XBOX DESTROY nintendo.
Good-bye
THe problem is, not only is nintendo going up against Sony and MS, they are going up against Apple and Android too. Those Kal-El tablets are going to be BEAST for gaming. HDMI out, bluetooth controllers, its gonna be killer. The 7" Kal-el (penta core) Asus MeMo is gonna sell for $250. Its going ot be a very bumpy road for nintendo.
Good-bye
All Nintendo has to do is make a Pokemon MMORPG and they got the killer app for the Wii-U and the Nintendo Network.
Unless of course, they try to make it a WoW killer.
Be seeing you...
Now all that's left to see is if the Wii U will be Nintendo's 7800.
--- Do you believe in the day?
Seen their financial results lately?
Yeah.
If the Wii-U fails, they're out of the hardware market. They survived the Gamecube generation because of the GBA and the DS, which they were selling at a hardware premium, with a solid 3rd party software lineup bringing them in free money. The 3DS is... finally... selling (though not quite as well as expected). But it's selling at a loss and with a pretty crap 3rd party lineup.
I disagree about underwhelming.
My own anecdotal piece: I went through four years of college, and the Wii was a popular item through all four years. Granted it was a very small selection of group games (MarioKart, Smash Bros, New Super Mario Bros, etc), and sometimes we'd watch someone playing a single player (Zelda, Mario Galaxy, etc) but the Wiis I saw in college were not dust collectors.
My own anti-anecdotal piece: my own Wii has largely been collecting dust. I don't have most of the group games (or the groups to play them). Though I have pulled it out again for Skyward Sword that I got for Christmas. While my Wii may not be getting a ton of use, I don't regret getting it and don't think it was just a mere novelty.
What about it?
No, it wasn't. The stores listed about attest to that, and have put huge amounts of money behind their view of the subject.
Now THAT is the real question. Of course, that is the risk that each system faces when it is released.
erm, yes the first loss in 30 years... oh no shut down the whole company!
Come on, don't be so naive, Nintendo is sitting on a huge pile of cash from all their previous successful (at least financially) generations, they can afford to innovate and try to push the envelope. I'm glad they do it! They'd easily survive a Wii-U "failure", they have a great knack of making money consistently.
Wow, you still don't get it. It crashed and burned. Have you seen Nintendo's financials? They are _hemorrhaging_ money. Sony and Microsoft are still selling well, Nintendo is dead in the water unless they come out with a new one quickly.
Have you seen Nintendo's financials? They are in trouble, which is why they need to develop a new console asap. How long did the Wii last compared to the Xbox or PS3, can you remind me?
No, it means Nintendos financials are crashing and burning because, among other things, the Wii isn't make them shit for money.
Yes, I have seen their financials. I think you've confused Nintendo's corporate losses with Wii sales, but the truth is that a combination of currency exchange rates, slow 3DS sales and lower game sales than expected are to blame for that.. Without the Wii sales, their losses would have been much heavier.
The Wii somehow still sold in greater volume than the Xbox and PS3 over this past Christmas season. Nintendo has sold 95 million units to date... just a bit less than twice as many units as either Xbox or PS3 have sold. The question "How long did the Wii last compared to the Xbox or PS3?" makes no sense since the damn thing hasn't stopped selling.
Ummm - the Wii destroyed on the attach rate also.
It had 132 different games that sold over 1 million copies, 2 that sold 10 million plus, 4 that sold 20 million plus, and 2 that sold over 30 million copies (and I'm not counting Wii Sports here).
It also had another 18 games that sold 900k+ copies.
Sony would have sold their mothers to have that kind of sales performance.
Next time its best to keep quiet when you don't know what you're talking about.
Hahahahahahaha - their financials are because their money is in USD holdings, and due to the strong Yen, and piss-poor US dollar, there is an $864 million FX loss on the currency conversion.
But, you probably don't understand a word of what I just said.
Shareholder owned companies don't get to sit on huge piles of cash for long. Those little things called "dividend payments". Sega went from "mega-successful console manufacturer" to "out of the hardware game" very quickly indeed in similar circumstances.