Many people would already consider the Wii U a failure based on the January NPD numbers. Doom and gloom is the order of the day, very similar to the way annalists chronicled the demise of the 3DS early on in its lifecycle. Clearly Nintendo benefited by launching the 3DS before the Sony Playstation Vita, judging by the latest sales data, but can the same be said for the Wii U?
What do you think? Did Nintendo do right by releasing the Wii U ahead of Microsoft and Sony?
Releasing a console first doesn’t necessarily mean success for any console manufacturer. One only needs to look to the Dreamcast for the evidence of that. The Wii U surely hasn’t gained as much traction as Nintendo has hoped in the few months that the console has been on the market. The lack of new, compelling games has certainly hurt the console in the short term, but does that mean that the console will be a failure in the long run? Not in the slightest. Why is that? Because Nintendo is Nintendo.
Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Star Fox, Pikmin, Metroid. All of these properties are games that will only be possible on Nintendo consoles. Nintendo banks on this, they understand that there are consumers who only buy Nintendo consoles to play Nintendo games. This has been the case since the beginning of time. I have a buddy that only has 6 games for his Wii. Wii Sports (which barely counts), Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and Donkey Kong Country Returns. All Nintendo published titles, and all arguably some of the best games released this generation.
In this aspect, Nintendo could certainly survive solely off of their own independent properties if it was completely necessary. Sure third party titles such as Boom Blox and Carnival Games certainly help the bottom line, but if it comes down to it, Nintendo could survive on their own.
So should Nintendo have waited to release the Wii U until Sony and Microsoft revealed their plans for their own home consoles? Not necessarily. Sure they may have been able to better understand what the PS4 and Xbox 720 were able to produce spec-wise, but Nintendo hasn’t necessarily been concerned with that as of late. What is really important to Nintendo is that their consoles offer the best experience to play Nintendo games on, and in that aspect they have consistently succeeded.
If I only played Nintendo published games on the Wii U, I would be a happy camper. If the Wii U doesn’t sell quite as well as the next Microsoft or Sony box, I won’t lose much sleep. All that matters to me is that I get to play the next Zelda and Mario title on the console, and that they are as excellent as their predecessors were.
i think is good for nintendo having launched the wiiU first, by the time the ps4 and durango are out wiiU is gonna have at least one heavy title ( mario kart or 3d mario) and that will push sales and give them a couple of million consoles of advantage.
I really think they should've waited and worked on the buggy hardware. I haven't had a single shoddy hardware from nintendo until the wii u the crashing and freezing from over heating is ridiculous it ruins most games for me because I don't know when it will crash on me, but it is almost guaranteed to crash at least once when I turn it on.
A small percentage of all mass produced consumer electronics are duds. I think it's in the 3 to 5% range. The fact that your Wii U is shoddy does not mean that the wii u in general is shoddy… It just means that you're one of the unlucky ones.
On the other hand… the Xbox 360… It,s been reported that it's failure rate was over 30%! Now that's a shoddy product. (The early ones at least. I believe they solved the design / manufacturing problems… If you buy one now it probably has a more typical failure rate.)
It's stupid to judge if a console is good or bad based on the specs (another lesson that Dreamcast gave to us). If you have the most wonderful hardware with the lamest games, well…
I think that it would have been a big mistake to launch the Wii U with the same specs as it is now later. In fact, I believe that the Wii U should have been released at least a year earlier if not more than it was. The Wii was all but dead but we had to wait and sit through two E3's to learn about the Wii U and with its current gen specs, launching so late after the Wii had lost so much momentum was a mistake. Having said that though, the game situation would have been much worse than it is now, and it would probably have launched at an even higher price. I personally don't care that Nintendo have given up on the spec war, that's fine, but in doing so, they sacrifice third party support. They should have learned this lesson from the Wii. The only way around that is to develope more 1st party games. Nintendo needs to buy up more dev teams, and throw publishing money at 3rd parties for more exclusive games like they are doing with Bayonetta 2 for example. Some might argue that system exclusives don't matter any more, and to some extent they are right. They don't really matter for the ps3 and 360, both similar specced systems, with almost identical multi platform games. But they mattered for the Wii that couldn't keep up graphically. The same will apply for the Wii U. It will needs its exclusives to compete with the next round of Sony and Microsoft consoles.
I think them releasing a year before is smart since the specs are most likely lower. What will save the wii U, assuming that ms and Sony do not blatantly follow the wii u path except with better specs, is software that takes advantage of the uniqueness of wii u. And that advantage is that the wii U is a soured up HD DS. Now when the DS was released it took awhile before we saw software that really showed how unique the DS experience is. Now it's great that you don't need the tv to play most games, and that you can play 2 screen coop with your buddy in black ops, but these should be standard features in every wii u game. Whatever worked for the DS needs to be brought to Wii u in full force. I'm sure many can dream of what DS franchises would work great for Wii U in full HD glory. I'm just not seeing those kinds of game experiences yet, Nintendo published or not. And given that there is already a precedent to this, we should be seeing these type of experiences earlier than what the DS saw.
*souped up Wii U*
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