Monday, March 3, 2014

Japan? Who needs Japan?

Certainly not Sony, who in the end managed to tie the Wii U for sales immediately before the PS4's release in Japan, with both sitting at 5.8 million units sold as of February 22. Sure, Japan isn't nearly as good of a market for home consoles as North America and Europe, but this scenario paints a very grim picture of Nintendo's prospects. Of course it's something we already knew, but I find myself increasingly wanting Nintendo to start reconsidering its place in the console market. That is, unless they really mean it when they say they'd rather close shop entirely rather than become a third-party developer.

19 comments:

  1. Nintendo doesn't need to go third party. Nearly nobody want them to. Remember the 3DS was a complete flop at its release as well and now it's selling like crazy. At worst, they'd start specializing in handhelds. Right now my Wii U and 3DS answer all my gaming needs. For anything else, I always have my PC.
    (And before you ask, yes I often play my Wii U, I have easily over 700 hours accumulated on Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate and I think both Pikmin 3 and Super Mario 3D World are fantastic games well worth buying.)

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    1. The 3DS didn't need nearly this long to take off, though. If SSB4 doesn't change things up, they're in serious trouble.

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    2. That, I can agree with. However, even if SSB4 still doesn't change their situation, just dropping the Wii U entirely would still be committing a Sega. There's no way I'm buying any other home console for at least 3-5 years and I'd be very pissed if they dropped entirely the one I did bother to get. And I wouldn't be the only one. If they ever dare to do that, they should at least give Wii U owners pretty big discounts and advantages if they ever want to be forgiven.

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    3. Oh, I wasn't really talking about Nintendo abandoning the Wii U in the middle of the generation, it was more along the lines of seeing it through, THEN jumping ship.

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    4. I see. This could be a possibility then... It's pretty sad when a console's main gimmick is better used by a third party company than the ones who created it themselves. Ubisoft is doing a fantastic job at cleverly implementing the Gamepad into gameplay, something Nintendo themselves has yet to impress me with... There's Nintendo Land which is admittedly very fun to play, especially with friends, but I don't think it counts... Pikmin 3 do use it very well, but not in a clever and unexpected way. It's more for convenience than anything.
      Other than that, there's what ? Wii Party U ?
      I remember over a year ago being so hyped up about all the possibilities of asymmetrical gameplay. How naive I was to believe Nintendo would try to innovate by emphasizing on that. I guess they chickened out.

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  2. I think everyone is being a TAD too hyperbolic regarding Nintendo. They have enough assets and other divisions that the failure of one console is not going to put them into bankruptcy. Sure the failure of this console may make the next one a harder sell but there's too many variables to say one way or the other. Either way, keep in mind that the number one reason to buy a Nintendo console is because of their exclusive games (first party, namely). If they put those on other consoles, well then why the fuck should anyone by a Nintendo console anymore? The moment they put their property out as third party software, their hardware division is a dead man waiting, and that is not the path Nintendo wants to take nor should it be. Not while they have a history of successful consoles (hey sometimes shit fails) and still the go-to console for handheld gaming. Personally I think a lot of these people want Nintendo to fail, and I'm not quite sure why because a lot of these people are themselves fanboys, except to say "told you so"

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  3. Come on, they survived the virtualboy! As someone who stopped buying home consoles after the dissapointacular gamecube period, playstations are still glorified DVD players to me.

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  4. All I play is Nintendo Games and sometimes games on Steam. How bad can Nintendo be doing when they still dominate the majority of my gaming purchases? Sure I'm one person but there has to be other people like me where all they play is Nintendo released games with the odd Playstation or Steam game every once in awhile.

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    1. With much of the media (even specialized ones) often acting like the Wii U doesn't even exist, clearly we're a dying breed.

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  5. Nintendo's handhelds will survive though, definitely. They're still performing pretty well in their market.

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  6. Honestly, I don't think Nintendo is at risk of vanishing entirely. Their IPs are worth far too much and I'm sure they'll want to hang on to them. Even if Nintendo goes third-party and develops for other systems, I think that would actually be a good thing for their quality, since they always underperform with consoles and waste a lot of valuable resources in that area. I would like them to stick around with handhelds, though, because their handhelds are always the best on the market and the 3DS is currently in an explosion of amazing content.

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    1. I mostly agree with this sentiment, except I'm afraid of living in a world where sony monopolizes the console market (lol no way xbone is going to have a successor). When something is free of competitors, it no longer needs to compete for brand loyalty, giving them leeway to get lax in quality and screw over the customers who don't have another option (besides not playing console games). Playstation 5's closest competitors will be other DVD and Blu Ray players, so hopefully Phillips will decide to get back into the console market, and since Nintendo has a bitter grudge against Sony, they of course will go to phillips to develop games with nintendo properties o nthe CD-i2 =)

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    2. Guys, stop fantasizing... Nintendo already said they'd rather let their company die entirely than go third-party. Besides, if they continue making handhelds, all their IPs will simply move to be handhelds only. And I don't get where you get that bitter grudge with Sony, VBB. It is widely known that both Sony's and Nintendo's presidents have a deep mutual respect for each other. If anything, Nintendo should still be mad at Phillips for releasing the worst games of both their most widely known IPs of all times. (And LOL a CD-i 2. Stupidest idea ever. Almost as stupid as Nintendo's console names, in fact. If they ever make consoles again, they should at least find a different name to avoid the notoriously bad reputation the first one had)

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    3. Nintendo went to Sony to help them develop a product for a CD based console that would have been the nintendo 64. Nintendo said "nope, this stinks. screw you guys. We'll do something ourselves." and left all the plans on the table. Sony turned it into the playstation. Do you think they like each other after that?

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    4. You're acting as though companies are individuals. (Sounds like Republican rhetoric, actually.) They made a conscious business decision to not go through with it, it wasn't out of spite for Sony, otherwise there wouldn't even have been discussions. Business is business, simple as that. The historical consequences of this fuck-up are another subject entirely.

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    5. Of course companies are people! Do you know how hard it was to get Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny into Who Framed Roger Rabbit?!

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    6. It's so hilarious how wrong you are on so many levels. First and foremost, the CD thing was supposed to be an add-on for the SNES, just like the Genesis had with the Sega CD. Second, the reason the deal didn't go through isn't because Nintendo thought it sucked, but because Sony tried to swipe some of the rights to the games that would be published on said add-on in the process. Nintendo refused because they wanted the absolute exclusivity of those rights. Stop acting so condescending when I obviously know much more than you, thank you. I just said that I didn't get where you got that from. Even though I might have looked like I wasn't really nice by mocking that "CD-i 2" thingy, I was just making fun of the idea, not you.

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    7. But I want CD-i 2 with Hotel Mario 2! Think of the possibilities now that we can have 3D Blu Ray HD video quality on those cutscenes!

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    8. ^
      I now have the official confirmation that VikingBoyBilly has been screwing with us this entire time. Well played. I admit you had me going.

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