| >> |
No. 181094
>>181084
While it's true that there are no fresh takes of their properties on the horizon (except for Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze), they can't rely on their core franchises as being the only real games for the system.
To really move units, especially since casuals have dropped them like a rock, they need something with nigh-universal appeal. A Final Fantasy or Mass Effect, Borderlands or Dead Rising. And, just like their own franchises, it has to be fresh, not an extended port.
>a peripheral with no clear strong function
Which is another failure of Nintendo. While I think the Gamepad was the wrong way to go about things, it still has a ton of potential. Wasted potential, because for some reason they never considered local multiplayer with the Gamepad despite many of their popular games (Smash brothers, Mario Kart) being heavily local Multi-player. Choose your plays in Madden without giving your opponent any idea what they are; give commands and manage your team in Pokemon Stadium; change minute features, costumes, spells, and more in Crystal Chronicles while the "bucket" moves the party. But they were so consumed with making the Gamepad do everything you can do on the TV that all they can really tout is "asynchronous gameplay", which is a nice ability but won't sell systems. If they had made the Gamepads of lesser graphical quality (I'd halve the screen size) so that the system could handle four at once, and made this available from day one, it would have opened a lot of doors. (Though it could still be the case that no one would walk through them.)
As it stands, we might get support for a second Gamepad at once, which is better than nothing, but still a poor decision.
>>181085
>Giant Bomb discovered that they can take their Wii Us with them when they travel play them at the Airport/plane (iirc) using the tablet screen.
This is a nice feature (especially if traveling with a family and you have a long layover), but A) not all games support GamePad-only play (especially if they want to actually use the GamePad for something novel and more than just a second display) and B) even with its smaller size it would annoying to carry around an entire console, adapter, and Gamepad only a few hours of play if you can find an empty outlet. (Not to mention the crap you might have to go through in security.)
I feel that Nintendo sacrificed far too much to get this functionality into the system when there's very little need or desire (at least in America, many families are multi-TV households; this could be more of a Japan thing, where it's far less likely for kids to have their own TVs in limited space.)
>they have consistently turned a profit for the past thirty or so years straight
Not quite: http://www.polygon.com/2013/4/24/4259328/nintendo-posts-loss-wii-u-sales-weaker Granted, they still made a "small" ($71 mil) profit thanks to a weak Yen, but without that it would have made their second year in a row of losses. But before that, you're right: they had continual year-on-year profits, even during years where their consoles floundered (thanks in part to rarely selling units at a loss and to having a strong handheld market during those times.) However, even if the Wii U and 3DS both fall completely flat, it won't kill them: http://beefjack.com/news/will-nintendo-ever-use-1-05-trillion-yen-war-chest-to-invest-in-to-mobile-and-social-games/ Thanks to their profits, Nintendo has a war chest of $13.7 Billion with which to dig itself out of any hole in the next 10-20 years.
That's why I'm so hopeful that the Wii U and the 3DS will bring them back down to Earth and make them realize that they need to make a system not only for their own games, but for everyone else's.
|