The Wrong Time And Place: Why Wii Was Nintendo’s Biggest Failure
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At launch, the PS3 sold about 1.2 million units in November-December 2006 http://www.vgchartz.com/tools/hw_yoy.php?reg=Global&star...
At launch, the WiiU sold about 2.3 million units in November-December 2012 http://www.vgchartz.com/tools/hw_yoy.php?reg=Global&star...
That doesn't look bad at all for the WiiU. Of course, it wasn't as successful as the Wii, which sold at launch about 2.9 million units in November-December 2006 http://www.vgchartz.com/tools/hw_yoy.php?reg=Global&star... but I'd say it was still pretty good.
Furthermore, we are still waiting for most of the interesting games announced for the WiiU to be released (Lego City Undercover, The Wonderful 101, Bayonetta 2), so I think it is far to early to say that the WiiU is a failure. If I remember correctly, many critics also were saying some time ago that the 3DS was a failure!
>Nintendo's console sold just 57,000 units in January, managing to up that number to 64,000 in February.
By comparison, the 7.5 year old XBox 360 sold 302,000 and 281,000 in Jan and Feb respectively.
Also, it seems like the numbers you mention are for North America only, were the XBox 360 has been most successful. If you look at the global numbers, the WiiU still sold less than the XBox 360 but no so bad as it looks when looking only at North America:
XBox 360 January + February: about 850 thousand units http://www.vgchartz.com/tools/hw_yoy.php?reg=Global&star...
WiiU January + February: about 400 thousand units http://www.vgchartz.com/tools/hw_yoy.php?reg=Global&star...
Every major game console for ~10 years has had this issue, and they never seem to learn, and it is actually really relatable in the HN tetchy startup side of things : if you don't have a killer app, you won't drive adoption. Like how Halo is the Xbox killer app, Mario is the Wii killer app, etc. Same with the 3ds and Pokemon. If you want a new console launch to look spectacular, launch it with a platform exclusive of your killer franchise. If the Wii U, for example, launched with the next Zelda game on release, it would have probably crushed Wii sales.
I understand where this "Nintendo must get into mobile" idea comes from. Folks look around on the subway and see that everyone is on their smart phones, and many are playing games. It's still very unclear to me however, to what extent smart phones are affecting Nintendo's business, and how Nintendo should adjust their business model in response.
Nintendo just announced[1] that Fire Emblem: Awakening for the 3DS smashed franchise sales records, selling 180k copies in the first month (a month plagued by shortages[2]) and selling more than a third of those units via their own digital distribution store. For perspective the lifetime sales of the previous Fire Emblem title was only 250k.
This game is selling out at $40 and 1/3 of the sales are online sales that they don't have to share with anyone else (still $40!). One of the main reasons why I don't think Nintendo should become a software only is company that I don't see how they can remain as profitable if they had to adjust their prices for the realities of the iOS market and had to share their profits with Apple. The most profitable games on mobile stores are free to play titles, and while I think Nintendo should experiment here and develop their own F2P games to test that market, I don't see why they couldn't do that on their own platform.
[1] http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/14/3dss-fire-emblem-awakening... [2]http://neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=511036&highligh...
Fire Emblem: Awakening has paid DLC, that is very tempting to buy if you're a Fire Emblem fan. Lucina's full story is available in paid DLC, and the only way to experience it is to purchase those maps.
Anyone who has finished the game will know the importance of Lucina's character. (Spoiler alert btw: don't look her up if you haven't gotten to chapter 14 yet).
Mind you, the majority of Nintendo Fans have a 3DS already.
But this is definitely the minority of the games that Nintendo makes. The thought of playing something moderately fast-pace like "Mario Tennis" on a touch screen scares me. There isn't enough precision, and no touch screen is as responsive as a controller yet.
The major brands: Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Kid Icarus, Donkey Kong require speed and precision beyond that of the touchscreen. Let alone the issue of blocking the screen as you play the game.
Any evidence to support this? Generally curious.
Nintendo is disappointing us because they're not leaving the TV set and going into mobile, and Apple is disappointing us daily because they're not leaving the mobile space and going into the living rooms with a TV set.
Sound about right?
It should be noted that there is a good reason 1/3 of people bought it online: supply was too low. I would have bought the physical game but it simply wasn't available.
So, mindlessly following the fad du jour is what passes for bold nowadays? Bullshit. Let's think it through. Imagine we suddenly decided to give up control over Nintendo's whole product. Instead, we put our ass on a plate for Apple and Samsung, primadonnas par excellance. All that for the privilege of becoming suppliers for a market of undiscriminating, volatile buyers, very reticent to part ways with their money. Of course, we would give Apple & Samsung at the very least a 15% cut, and completely alienate a devote user base that has very deep pockets. Not to mention our first-rate talent [1], who would either be pissed off and go to Sony/Microsoft, or just be easily acquired by any other insipid mobile development gaming startup with deep pockets. Add to that your product being trivial to copy, now.
Sounds familiar? This is just the Wii, recasting Apple/Samsung in the role of Nintendo, and Nintendo in the role of those shitty third-party developers no-one gives a fuck for today, desperately begging for a Rovio-style massive luck out. Congratulations, we just made millions for our competitors, while simultaneously blowing the fucking Mariana's Trench on our feet. Even Emperor Hiro Hito would think it too much kamikaze.
[1] This would be the finisher. Like Sony shitting over Square-Enix. Lose Miyamoto, Kondo, Aonuma... and you're done.
Partnering with Samsung / Apple would be resigning their position, and then forcing their games to be sold at the $5 / game level to compete in Samsung / Apple's marketplace.
Nintendo continues to make a profit selling $40 games on their handheld system. Why should they give up the revenue advantage on their custom platform?
I can't even think of a single multi-million dollar title for handhelds, outside of Bejeweled (which existed long before the smartphone era). Tablets / Phones need games on them for sure, and the market is there... but I'm not really seeing anyone get to the revenue levels of Nintendo games.
Gamers require precision in their controls first of all, and they also require that their fingers don't cover half the screen while playing. There are no good fighting games on tablets / smartphones. There are no platformers. The FPS experience absolutely blows in comparison to anything else.
No one buys a Smartphone / Tablet to game. No one goes out and seeks the iPad for the perfect "Angry Birds" experience. No one picks the Galaxy Note 2 to get a leg up in "Draw Something".
As I stated before, yes, Tablets / Smartphones eat a bit into the Nintendo handheld market. But so did dumb Cell phones in the past with Bejeweled. Indeed: Bejeweled was a paid app with 75 million purchases and 150+ million downloads... its success far exceeds even Angry Birds of today.
But go back to the early 2000s, and lets see you argue that the cell phones should be included in the market share of "handheld consoles". They are a different market. People don't buy Tablets or Smartphones to "game". Tablets and Smartphones are useful devices yes, but they satisfy a different market.
No gamer worth his salt will be satisfied with poor touchscreen controls with an internal compass and accelerometer. The fact that the Wii / DS managed to get a few dozen million "temporary fans" who were wow'd by that sort of thing is interesting... but that is not the market that will support the gaming industry in the long term.
I am making a distinction between mobile consoles (e.g. PSP, DS, Gameboy) and home consoles like the Xbox, PS3 and Wii. I think the latter group is safe, for now. There are very good reasons to have home consoles, in addition to tablets and smartphones. It's the former that's under threat. Anecdotally, I've seen what friends' and coworkers' kids (ages: 5-14) get excited about. We've talked about how they seem to be content with the current game library on the app stores and don't really care about mobile consoles. Furthermore, I've seen more kids playing on a smart phone, or a tablet, next to their moms out in public, than I've seen them play on a DS or equivalent. This is bad news for Nintendo. Again, it isn't necessary for mobile devices to take the entire market, if they take a chunk, it hurts Nintendo incredibly. The hardcore mobile console gamer market, isn't nearly as big as you think it is. Certainly not big enough to sustain the entire industry. Finally, smartphones and tablets are only going to get more ubiquitous and they are going to get even better, making it that much harder to justify spending extra money on a mobile console and that much harder to justify lugging yet another devices around (in addition to your smartphone and tablet).
>No one buys a Smartphone / Tablet to game. No one goes out and seeks the iPad for the perfect "Angry Birds" experience.
No they don't. They pick-up smartphones and tablets for multitude of other reasons and get a gaming platform for free. This has the effect of expanding the gaming market by turning people who would never have purchased a mobile consoles into mobile gamers (e.g. me), but more importantly I believe it also cannibalizes existing market in that there is a segment of population that would ordinarily buy a mobile console, now will not as they are content with the game selection on their tablet/smart phone.
>But go back to the early 2000s, and lets see you argue that the cell phones should be included in the market share of "handheld consoles".
I wouldn't do that because realistically they didn't impact sales of mobile consoles, unlike modern smartphones and tablets. They were also under-powered, clumsy devices with a tiny low resolution screen and no easy way of loading any programs onto them, again, completely unlike modern smartphones and tablets.
So our personal experiences differ. What else can we go on? If we look at historical sales... then the 3DS is selling exceptionally well right now. And Pokemon White 2 / Black 2 have a combined sales of 7.5 million: consistent with previous "partial remake titles" like Pokemon Yellow, Crystal, or Emerald. (remake titles always have fewer sales... but White2 / Black2 came out in 2012, and are thus a better test of the market today)
It took 5 years for the Gameboy Advance to reach 30 million sales. It only took 2 years for the 3DS to reach 30 million. The handheld gaming market has not shrunk. If anything, the 3DS is doing better today than its Gameboy predecessors.
If the iPhone / Android effected handheld sales... you'd think it have done it by now. Or at very least, you'd expect it to negatively effect the 3DS's sales. Why then is the 3DS selling better today than its previous incarnations?
As an FWI, the 3DS was launched in 2011, well after the iPhone and around the same time as the 2nd generation iPad.
This, along with the focus on casual play, is part of the reason why you have a different class of games succeeding on iOS, such as endless runners. Since the controls are harder to get right on a touch device, we see simpler controls succeeding (such as helicopter style "just touch or don't touch" in Jetpack Joyride or simple swipe/tilt in Temple Run).
Now, that's not to say that:
1. Nintendo couldn't write all new games using their IP/brands/characters custom tailored for iOS/Android/touch. In fact, this would probably be the best approach.
2. Nintendo couldn't think up a way to fix this for existing games.
However, my only point is that the idea that Nintendo could just dump their entire libraries into iOS and resell every game they've ever made is a bit naive. But who knows, maybe they would suck but everyone would buy them anyways because they're "Nintendo". I don't think that's Nintendo's style though. I think Nintendo more so than Apple believes in the idea that if you care about software then you'll make your own hardware, or at least, if you care about software you will tailor the software to the device it is running on.
If you think way back to the GameCube, they were king of the hill, so to speak. They had the best hardware for gaming and even the most innovative at the time. No one else had wireless controllers for example.
The reason they lost was because they didn't take the threat of the PS2 and Xbox seriously. They ran a decade long empire in console gaming and were caught off guard.
Sony and Microsoft both knew they needed exclusive content and bought all the 3rd party gaming companies that were building AAA games for Nintendo at the time. With no AAA titles from 3rd parties Nintendo had to double-down and create their own. Zelda and Mario can only go so far.
The PS1 had 100+ million worldwide sales compared to the N64 ~30 million. The PS2 also soundly beat the Gamecube in worldwide sales, and the XBox established itself as a market leader.
The last time Nintendo had dominance in the console wars was the SNES. In fact... one can argue that the 1995 to 2005 decade was Nintendo's worst performance in the console market.
Where are the games for everyone else? I don't want to kill zombies or take hill #423, and I don't need any more versions of Angry Birds.
A lot of people (including me) are waiting for Pikmin 3 before buying a Wii U. I think that game will open the floodgates.
It would have been a bold move, but it may have been disastrous. Right now, the mobile market is owned by Apple, Samsung and Google. They may partner with Nintendo, but on their terms, and always in control of their respective platforms. Furthermore, they don't actually need Nintendo, which means there is only so much concessions Nintendo could gain. So no, there is no guarantee that this strategy will do anything for Nintendo.
I do think however that Nintendo should have some sort of an app presence on mobile devices. Not necessarily putting marquee titles on the respective app stores (although, why not get some exposure and test the waters), but maybe experimenting with second-screen options for the 3DS or Wii U. For example, there is no reason why an iPad or an iPhone cannot play the role of the Wii U GamePad, or why you couldn't play (stream) your NES/SNES games from the Wii store to your android device. There's potential there, but I think Nintendo is too stupid, short-sighted and stubborn to see it.
Nobody besides Microsoft, is going to make a high end mobile device, that updates every year with high end games. Nintendo and Sony are not going to take the risk of going against Apple, Samsung, HTC, and Motorolla. They're losing some money now in order to not lose more money in the llong run. They're investing time to professionally tackling these established mobile companies.
Think about it: if Nintendo doesn't even release a dumb downed version of Pokemon games, Donkey, Kirby, Mario, etc. on "certified" mid-end Android devices that's because they don't want to take a 30% cut on their sales.
The larger demographic is not noticing but we're at that point where it's about online services in a Steam vs. PSN vs. Xbox LIVE world. Until the larger demographic notices this they will squeeze all life from consoles until people move to mobile devices with PC specs capable of running decent games.
You're discrediting the company who took design ideas from flip phones and created the GameBoy Advanced SP. They're obviously waiting for Linux to evolve and for Samsung to get their act together on providing enough high-end chips so their timing is not off. Again, all while losing money but they're not RIM, they've AT LEAST acknowledged making pokemon games in 3D with Pokemon X/Y, they'll make the money back in software.
Don't judge Nintendo by the Wii and its descendants--consoles are increasingly irrelevant, and "casual game" consoles doubly so. Multiplayer = internet play, these days. Nintendo knows that: the Wii U is a definite niche product, aimed straight at those rare instances when you actually have lots of people in a living room who want to sit around a TV and play the same video game at the same time. Playing games with your kids, or at a party; not fragging d00dz on a leaderboard. It's why the Wii line's online story is so bad: the whole console is aimed at the multiplayer you do offline.
So, as I said, don't judge Nintendo by the Wii. It's not their main business any more. Instead, judge Nintendo by the DS, and its descendants. It's increasingly where all of Nintendo's actual "game" games have gone. And its online story is becoming better and better with each generation--it might actually become a phone one of these days, who knows. (I could see Nintendo buying a Japanese phone company, firing all their industrial+UI designers and putting the DS people in charge, and then building a "Nintendo DS" that happened to internally be an Android phone.)
I think the idea of "mobile phones" as a thing is going to pass. They're all just computers that happen to be able to make calls. Put cell radios in laptops and portable gaming systems and no one needs to choose between bringing their phone or their DS, or their phone or their tablet. Almost every computing device should also be a phone, in my opinion.
Every few years, someone tries this exact idea and fails. Plus, I don't want someone interrupting me when I'm in the middle of a Megaman boss. Thats just stupid.
I think this is unlikely, but I'm charmed by the idea.
I think another component is that the Wii was a bit cheaper at its launch and its closest competition (price wise) was the aging PS2 and the XBox 360 Core model at $299. The Core model lacked wireless controllers and initially lacked HD capability and I seem to be unable to remember any of my high school friends buying one (though I'm sure they sold well enough on their own), instead opting for the more expensive model.
Today the $299 WiiU has to compete with the still excellent $199 XBox 360 and $270-$350 PS3 Bundle Packs (Console + Games + extra Controller + additional Content). This is a lot harder sell especially since a lot of the multi platform titles are going to look just as good, if not better, on the 360 and PS3.
Yet it was succesful since it launched early, was cheaper (and profitable from day one) and had something innovative(wii remote) And they tried to use that same formula this time with the wii u(the new thing is te tablet like controllers) and their sales have been abysmal, but I wouldnt count them oit just yet, i wouldnt be suprised they go into a heavy marketing campaign when the launch of the ps4 is nearer
Overall the market has moved to mobile they unfortunately didn't it.
Guess they still could embrace it by making apps for Android and iDevices, ones that turn those devices into Wii U tablets and Wii remotes. Ha ha though your kid using your iPhone as a Wii remote, better have a durable case!