The Nintendo Switch

the fallon factor did jack fucking shit for the wii u

i might be reading the Wikipedia page wrong or it might be lying but it says the WiiU has outsold the XBone by over 4 to 1 so Nintendo must be really hurting

looks like for some reason those wikipedia xbox sales figures stop in 2014 as opposed to sep 2016 for the wii u? here's some golobal total sales figures correct as of june last year

PlayStation 4 Total Sales: 42,183,599

Xbox One Total Sales: 21,679,269

Wii U Total Sales: 13,139,054

Yeah that's the thing, are people underestimating just how much Wii U has bombed? Because there still seems to be a lot of "but it's the nintendo software that'll sell it" thinking here plus some "kids will love it" but a) neither of those saved the Wii U and b) kids aren't a big enough proportion of gaming's audience any more for you to make them your key target and still sell the kind of volumes consoles do these days.

And yeah, one triple A game at launch and it's one which is also being released on a console I already own (in fairness not many people already own that console so that's not the biggest problem).

(xp)

(yep and those total figs include a year of extra sales for the wii u versus xbox one)

Actually it's odd that they didn't show any Pokemon Stars footage given that it's already confirmed? That really does have potential as a system seller and you'd think they'd be able to get it out within the first few months at least, given that it's basically a port of an already finished game.

one triple A game at launch and it's one which is also being released on a console I already own

i'm pretty sure this has never happened before, although i'm open to being corrected, but it doesn't seem like a great omen does it? and it'll be eight or nine months before mario odyssey comes out, assuming of course it manages to hit its launch window. that's a long time to wait between blockbuster releases

The thing with Wii U, is that it was just like a "better" version of the Wii (who cares). Switch is like "Here is the next generation of both our console and our handheld and working in the digital age." Its a complete reboot of everything and is made totally replace your Wii, your Wii U, your DS, your reliance on "disks," and has an IRL social component that doesn't involve people coming to your living room or bedroom. There is no way this thing isn't going to be huge even if it totally sucks ass

Twilight Princess was Gamecube / Wii, just as the obvious comparison.

But was not the only AAA, true.

IDK Gamecube was fairly successful and I think that went like 2 years from launch with Smash Bros as like the only top-flight title. this is just what they do.

Its a complete reboot of everything and is made totally replace your Wii, your Wii U, your DS

unless you actually want to keep playing the games you've bought on your wii, your wii u, or your ds, in which case you'll have to keep them cuz it's not directly backwards-compatible and nintendo have not been shy about asking users to pay for the same games over and over again on their systems

Uh no? Gamecube had Luigi's Mansion at launch and Mario Sunshine within the first year.

The last clause there is not really necessary for your point, and also nonsense - I can play my GC games on my Wii, and my Wii games on my Wii U.

xp to bg there - though lol at Luigi's Mansion as a top-flight title.

i do think nintendo at least is aware of how much a flop the wii u was, given how much of their switch lineup is retooled reworked versions of the wii u catalogue.

the switch does have some advantages with the general public over the wii u. the name, for instance. i talked to a surprisingly large number of people who thought the wii u was the same as the wii. very hard to sell a console your target audience thinks they already own.

the question which is still open is whether nintendo can survive as a first-party-only console maker. decades of open hostility towards third party software companies (designing systems that are difficult and expensive to program for and then failing to promote third-party games) have taken their toll, and the wii debacle seems to have been the last straw.

couple that with the, uh, questionable leadership situation since iwata's death and, you know, i want them to succeed, but i'm a little uncertain as to how they will.

The last clause there is not really necessary for your point, and also nonsense - I can play my GC games on my Wii, and my Wii games on my Wii U

good luck playing your 3ds virtual console super mario world on your wii or your wii u without paying for it again for each

There's a decent breakdown here of why this isn't looking all rosey: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-01-13-nintendos-precarious-reveal-runs-risk-of-switching-off-fans

But I dunno, it's not like I'm not going to get one of these myself, probably not at launch but definitely in time for Odyssey - I'm a sucker for non-linear mario games and I'm lucky enough to have disposable income. It's just that I also work in games retail analysis and I know how hard it's been to shift nintendo stuff in general over the last few years. I'd love this to be their big comeback, but it already feels like they're making too many of the same missteps they've made with other recent platforms.

Also Luigi's Mansion was a GREAT game fuiud. Actually so was Star Wars Rogue Leader and that was a gc launch title too.

forgot Mario Sunshine was out in the first year. I thought that came out much later

Luigi's Mansion was dumb. No replay value and you could beat it in 2 days. Rogue Leader was pretty good. But yeah there was a big kerfluffle about how GC really screwed the pooch by not launching w/ a Mario title

personally I think they whiffed hard on the Virtual console - I mean it came right in the middle of the age of Xbox Live, speedruns, and full-on 8-bit nostalgia, and yet they couldn't leverage it into any more exciting than a fancy emulator that was unnecessarily boxed in

I have no disrespect for either of those games, but were they really AAA unit-shifters?

Also how many platforms is 'recent platforms' there?

a handheld with 2.5 hours battery time... i'm old enough to remember the atari lynx. whoever's running nintendo right now perhaps doesn't.

my spouse is a big nintendo fan. we picked up the wii u on launch because it was going to have pikmin on it and we were worried about shortages. pikmin didn't come out for another six months or so and we needn't have worried. nintendo has all of the power to accurately gauge demand of a centrally planned state. for this one, the xenoblade sequel looks promising. if/when it comes out stateside we'll pick up a switch. the mario game... well, it'd have to be really good for us to drop $360 on a mario game.

it probably will be great though

wld nintendo make more money making games for all platforms than having its own 2nd tier platform

probably not

Particularly if, like the Wii, they were making a profit on every console sold. Which is in fairness a reason why their sales dominance wasn't as impressive as it might appear - the competitors were more focussed on deep markets that would buy more games for longer.

do u think it wld be a better strategy for nintendo to view its consoles as loss leaders like the other boys do

Anyone watching the stream? This Snipperclips game is great stuff, Nintendo at their weird yet accessible best

I don't think Nintendo should adopt the strategies of the other boys, good way to become undifferentiated and bad

I do think they should adopt some end of history approach to the console cycle tho

xp I don't see why. Playstation and Microsoft need to be since the hardware required is so powerful and cutting edge. Nintendo's graphics and processing power haven't really been a selling point since the N64.

I do think they should adopt some end of history approach to the console cycle tho

― slathered in cream and covered with stickers (silby), Friday, January 13, 2017 1:03 PM (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what wld this look like

I do think they should adopt some end of history approach to the console cycle tho

― slathered in cream and covered with stickers (silby)

i don't know what this means. i thought "end of history" was some marxist thing.

francis fukuyama demos the new zelda instead of miyamoto

hmm that seems bad

some anti-marxist thing tbrr

in Fukuyama's version it means everybody just agrees video games are as good as they're ever going to be, shuts the fuck up about it and plays endless iterations of CoD for the rest of forever

imo that'd be selling and creating consoles games and that don't see the march of hardware capabilities and the increasing budgets of AAA titles as inevitable

have a library of all the popular games of past generations available on the new consoles, whether via backward compatibility or the ability to download new copies of existing titles you owned on old consoles. if people want to create technically uncomplicated side-scrollers reminiscent of mario or classic mega man, encourage them. the opening up of consoles to have online markets that are similar to steam has led to a bunch of games that are retro-seeming but also very innovative

don't know what Nintendo's role in that could be tho unless there's room for some kind of Super Mario World of Warfare

filthy bleeding mario staring into distance "squishing mushroom men is hell"

rerelease original super mario kart with cleaned up graphics and internet play, no reason not to

i'm okay with the lower specs in the same way that i'm like, okay with not having a 4K tv... feel like current or even last gen tech is good enough. does anybody else share this view? thanks :o)

yeah basically, the gap between this console gen and the previous has never felt justified in terms of advancing tech, and the fidelity of TV images is probably exceeding the capacity of human eyes to process that shit anyway

and STOP TRYING TO MAKE VR HAPPEN FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

ha they will never stop

https://i.imgur.com/cjG159h.jpg

vr is gonna be extremely cool in 20 years

yeah I've played it and definitely got the feeling that I'd be way into it if I was 13 and not 30, though my brain would probably completely melt from playing it so much

probably gonna be awesome in 5 years given how much money's poured into it. whether or not it has any staying power is yet to be seen a guess. right now it's just a neat party trick.

i figure it'll be time to buy a VR machine when there's a must play game for it. afaict all the hype is about the technology - i haven't heard of a single platform exclusive game being hyped.

probably gonna be awesome in 5 years given how much money's poured into it.

think people have been saying this about 3D movies since at least 1950

plus lots of video games involve you getting jumped by vicious monsters and the current level of realness of that is plenty for me thx