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Comment by bryanh | Hacker News Reader

Interesting that they are pretty much abandoning their massive lead on casual gaming (which is a way bigger market than hardcore gamers). My parents enjoy playing Wii, but I don't see them buying/playing a console with 4 extra screens.

Sounds like a gimmick to this guy. I have a feeling Microsoft and Sony are giddy as hell because Nintendo is about to drop the ball.

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Why do you say that they're abandoning the lead in casual gaming? I assume it's their comment that "new system that will be more powerful than the PlayStation 3 or the Xbox 360". If so, being more powerful than a PS3 or XBox 360 isn't remarkable considering those devices are 5-6 years old and that's about 16 Moores-law-years ago. Being more powerful than a PS3 places you in casual gaming territory; being hella more powerful than a PS3 places you in hardcore gaming territory.

The big thing about the Wii was how accessible the controller was to every member of the family. You just point it at the screen, even your grandparents can do it! Touchscreens, not so much.

That makes no sense, the iOS devices reign supreme for casual gaming.

They don't reign supreme for sitting on your sofa with your family. You wouldn't expect the average grandmother to feel comfortable using an iPad to control a game. The Wii was focussed on the whole family being included. Also, four people sitting on a sofa staring at individual screens isn't the most sociable either.

They haven't abandoned the casual gaming market, they've conquered it and now they're moving up the tier where Microsoft and Sony have retreated and where those two may meet their doom. See http://classic-web.archive.org/web/20080325182052/http://mal...

I've gotten used to dismissing people who dismiss Nintendo's next things as mere gimmicks. "It's a toy" is often the hardest criticism: well so what, we're talking about video games not deadly weapons.

Nintendo releases the Wii, Wii stalls next-gen consoles by shifting the focus of other companies to create movement sensing peripherals. The Wii moves on to the next market, that is some good strategy right there.

"It's a toy". What do you think nintendo is making!?

Before saying your parents don't want one, it might be worth waiting to see what exactly is presented at E3.

For instance, what if the four controllers can essentially function as light tablet computers networked centrally to the console?

Their lead in casual gaming isn't so massive if you consider that their competitors in the "casual gaming" space include not just Xbox and PlayStation but also iOS, Android, and Facebook games.

That's just in the American market, too. In equally important Japanese market, you have to throw Gree and DeNA in there too.

The Wii's appeal is about multi-player gaming in the same physical space.

iOS, Android, and Facebook don't compete with Wii on that count at all. MS and Sony have made efforts at this, but still, the Wii is the most genuinely social gaming system.

Nintendo is about multi-player gaming in the same physical space.

They've paid a token effort to online gaming and digital distribution, but every platform they've released since the NES has focused on playing with others in the same room.

I remember people saying this about the Wii before it came out.

The Wii was Nintendo's first console in a long time to be more than profitable. If they pull the Wii's success off again, people will be less skeptical on the next one.

They also said it about the DS and 3DS. Nintendo has an incredible track record of coming up with innovative devices, people are just haters. :)

(Just lets not mention the virtual boy...)

Nintendo also has an incredible track record of not being able to foster healthy relations with third party developers, and being outright hostile to indie developers (see: http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/03/21/fils-aime-nintendo-not-...). The Wii, outside from the first party titles, was pretty much a wasteland at least compared to the offerings of Microsoft and Sony. This I think has led to the Wii having a fairly low attach rate and, at least anecdotally, the number of consoles that were bought for Wii Sports and have been gathering dust ever since.

In 1998 (N64) Nintendo made $1.2 billion in profits, which at the time was being compared to their previous record of $1.25 billion in 1993 (SNES).

There's no public information about how much of that was N64 profit and how much was Gameboy, but at least based on a private Nikkei investigation they said, "This success is attributed to the performance of the N64 and Game Boy, as well as its compatible software."

I couldn't find anything concrete about the Gamecube with a quick search [edit: Gamecube was also clearly profitable; see below link], but I just saw vague information that the Gamecube was profitable but less profitable than any other system up to that point.

Either way, it's common knowledge that Nintnedo sells all of its systems at a profit, so even only selling 20 million Gamecubes, it's unlikely it resulted in a loss, especially after you figure in the ridiculously high first-party software sales.

[1] http://ign64.ign.com/articles/062/062086p1.html

Edit: Here's some concrete information on Gamecube profits.

"GameCube sales leap doubles Nintendo Q2 profits."

From: [2] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/30/nintendo_q2_results/

I didn't say they were unprofitable.

Well, nothing prevents nintendo from using wii controllers and games on the new console, and possibly scaling them up to make them look better. Just lookup Wii HD on youtube to see the games running on 1080p on an emulator.

Also sounds like now you will be able to buy DS and Gameboy games from the marketplace as well.

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