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Can the Wii U Survive Against the PS4 and Xbox One?
An anonymous reader writes "Now that both Sony and Microsoft have announced their next-gen consoles, and we've gotten solid information about their hardware, technology, and features, Eurogamer asks whether Nintendo's struggling Wii U will be able to hold its own once the new competition arrives. 'Wii U has tanked — there's no other way to put it — with even the release of traditional big-hitters like Dragon Quest 10 failing to make a dent in the Japanese market. If you believe certain analysts, April saw things getting even worse in the U.S. with the Wii U shifting under 40,000 units, easily outsold by the 360 and PS3 — and, even more embarrassingly, the Wii.' If the Wii U doesn't see a miraculous turnaround, Nintendo may be left with the difficult choice of whether to port its software to competing consoles. It'll also serve as a bellwether to see if the big gamer complaint about the new Sony and Microsoft consoles — that they're only partly about games — is honest. 'At a time when the goal of its competitors is to own the living room, the extent of Nintendo's ambition is simply to be in it — a dedicated games console, and no more.'"
... can the game industry survive expensive AAA games?
THQ recently went bankrupt, EA's stock has taken a huge dump from past highs and activision survives mainly by WoW and Call of duty. At this point the next console generation is the least interesting console generation in a long while. Since games have become some multi-headed hydra of trying to be a jack of all trades, master of none in order to sell games to the lowest common denominator. Most modern games are little more then movies /w over simplified gameplay at this point.
A revolution in tools is needed to scale back team sizes and game development costs and that's decades away. If anything the game industry is probably the most out of touch industry looking for fast $ by releasing games too early with little to no changes.
Yes. Yes it will.
Consoles in general are going the way of the dodo. This all-in-one media center thing is pretty stupid, you can get a nettop/boxee/android based player for 50-100 bucks that can do all the advanced interactive media features Microsoft and Sony are so excited about (play netflix and youtube).
I don't know if people are stupid enough to pay 5-6 hundred to Microsoft or Sony for the same functionality.
I don't expect to see record breaking sales from any of the big three consoles. But Nintendo is smart to keep the cost down (oh noes hardcore gamerz, it doesnt have 32 core mega gigablips), and trade off their in house titles.
Nintendo consoles end up in kids bedrooms, not living rooms. Things will pick up for them after a price drop. Nintendo doesn't need to outsell Sony or MS, they play their own game. They just need to sell enough to keep pushing out the Mario and Zelda titles.
Considering that sales of the Wii U have *spiked* since the Xbox One announcement, I think it's pretty clear that Nintendo can survive.
What's different about this generation? That most third-party games are ignoring the Wii U? Guess what - that happened with the Wii and Gamecube (to a lesser extent) as well. No good launch titles? Look at the 3DS - dead on arrival, but it's picking up, and while it's not the runaway success of the DS, it's no failure.
Hell, the only "different" thing about this generation is how badly Nintendo botched the naming (a lot of consumer confusion because "Wii U" sounds more like a new hardware iteration of the Wii than a new console). But fortunately, Microsoft came out with an even worse name for their console.
And Nintendo also has the advantage of having a strong focus on games. Sure, they don't actually have too many actual games right now, but even when talking about the hardware, their message is always "how it makes better games". Compare to Sony's distractions with Youtube uploading or "social gaming", or to Microsoft's "it's a set-top Windows 8 box that also plays Call of Duty" abomination of a conference.
But there's one fundamental reason why Nintendo can survive Sony and Microsoft - they don't care. Most Nintendo console owners buy them to play Nintendo games, which isn't the case for Sony or Microsoft consoles. First-party games might boost the other consoles up, but they always exist as much to play third-party games as first-party.
So the only threat to Nintendo is... Nintendo. Which, admittedly, it a pretty big threat right now - a lot of their recent games have been going downhill (Skyward Sword, Other M), and they haven't yet come up with a good killer app for the Wii U.
Nintendo is not Sega. It has plenty of hit first party titles and franchises and knows how to execute them well, Wii U is only selling poorly because such titles have not been released, or even announced, yet.
A few years ago, Nintendo adopted a really bizarre politic of not announcing their own games until a short time before they are ready to launch, so the landscape of the Wii U is completely empty.
The situation will likely change after E3 (or not).
The Wii U is failing for one reason only: it is a truly awful product - an unmitigated design fiasco for which Nintendo deserves some special punishment in the market. Why? Let me count the ways. The wifi implementation is a complete disaster (maybe the antenna?) Sitting right next to an old Wii, the U failed to connect to wifi (read the endless online complaints about this) - it took hours just to do the initial OS update (I used to set up networks for a living.) The device itself is painfully slow in the simplest interaction - click a menu option and you can sit and wait for ten seconds or more to get a response - it is like the entire GUI is written in interpreted basic running on some early edition x86 ... The U console is a neat idea, but terribly implemented - if you're playing old Wii games the entire device enters some primitive emulation mode, and the U console becomes inactive. Conversely, if you're using the U, the Wii motes become inactive. Unlike on the old Wii that plays DVDs or the PS3 that plays Blu-Ray, the Wii U has no such utility. Wii Motion Plus is still not standard, etc.etc. Fortunately the market for game systems is pretty efficient, and customers are clearly voting with their wallets against this turkey.
Actually if Valve pulls off their Steambox you'll have the best of both worlds, machines designed to be ready to go out of the box but with multiple vendors competing to lower costs and give you choice. That said its been reported that the PS4 and Xbox Stupid (Sorry I'm not calling it Xbox One, Xbox one was a Celeron 733MHz big green and black box that was easy to hack and make into a media tank, this thing is a corporate DRM wet dream) are both gonna be north of $400 at launch which means frankly you could build or buy a decent PC that can game for roughly the same price only again thanks to competition you can buy the games from multiple vendors which keeps the prices down.
I do wanna know WTF is going on at MSFT though, because frankly if I didn't know any better I'd swear somebody was trying to torpedo the company from within. I mean you take a console, which the whole reason people buy a console over a PC is because all you really need is the console and a TV, hassle free and simple to use, and you then tie a fucking boat anchor of phone home DRM that makes the system into a useless hunk of plastic if it can't call home every 24 hours (Fuck even Steam gives you 30 days between connections with offline mode) but that isn't enough so just to make absolutely sure the system goes down about as well as finding a flaming bag of shit on your doorstep you put a bullshit mechanism that locks every game after a single install behind a paywall? So the only other advantage, the ability to rent games, trade games, and buy used, is completely destroyed in a move so nasty that an antitrust investigation really needs to happen? I'm sorry but if I was told the facts without anything else I'd swear a mole was sabotaging the company.
So I'm just glad I switched my boys over to Steam and PC gaming, because between this and Sony with their "Oh we have the same paywall thing but its up to the publishers whether or not they want to use it" which means spoiler alert! EA and Activision and probably Ubisoft will ALL use this bullshit it has made one thing perfectly clear which Angry Joe in that video points out....there is no longer ANY advantages to owning a console over a PC, and a hell of a lot more downsides. Now you will be forced to install everything to the hard drive (which with the Xbox S is a lousy 500GB like that won't run out damned quickly) and it will ALL be tied to a single account thanks to the DRM...huh...doesn't that sound familiar? Kinda like...ohhh I don't know...Steam only without the MUCH lower prices that make it worth using? Basically they've turned the new consoles into nothing but a PC but expect you to pay console prices for games but with none of the upsides to having a console!
So as for TFA from what I understand the Wii U is the only one that is actually still a console in that you can rent games, trade games, buy and sell used games, the other two are just overpriced PCs. If the Wii U can hit the right price point I can see those fed up with the wallet raping the other two are planning buying the Wii U if they aren't ready to switch back to the PC. Personally I think we are gonna see a new PC golden age as a gaming device, I really do. Never before has it been so simple to hook a PC into a TV thanks to HDMI being everywhere, you can get a much better variety of design in controllers that will work with the PC, and thanks to Valve and the Steambox you'll be able to walk into any Worst Buy or Wally World (as well as any mom & pop shop like mine) and just look for the Steam sticker and know it'll game right OOTB. And most importantly thanks to competition you'll have plenty of choices when it comes to where you buy your game, hell if you never wanted to spend a dime you have an endless amount of FTP games to choose from. Being on a PC has never been better and these companies are shooting themselves in the head by focusing on how they can wring every penny instead of making a compelling product, PCs are gonna be THE way to game IMHO.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.