Good lord, I’m having déjà vu yet again! Three months into the life of the WiiU, we’re already seeing the cycle repeat itself as it did with the 3DS; sales start to stall, and third parties are no where to be seen. According to the NDP, WiiU versions of games are selling worse then the Vita! (…Vita still counts?) Nintendo didn’t do enough to advertise the WiiU and court third parties! WiiU is now doomed!
…
Nintendo isn’t to blame for this current mess. The people who are to blame are game journalists not reviewing games properly, gamers refusing the buy the system because its “not next-gen” and third party publishers not allowing developers to put games on the system. WiiU, like Wii, isn’t considered “true next-generation technology”, despite the fact third parties have been bitching about wanting a WiiHD for the last four years. You got it now, what is stopping you!?
If this is what is stopping you, you need to get a fucking reality check. The touch screen can make your game better (or hell, put off-TV play on it!) if you took the time and effort. Oh, wait, it takes too much effort to port a game to WiiU because the audience hasn’t grown enough yet. Guess what? The Orbis and Durango audience doesn’t exist. Developers who have focused just on the PS3 and 360 audience have paid a hefty price and shuttered, many of these by publishers. The same ones who are refusing to put games on WiiU. THQ? They are dead.
I really don’t care if Nintendo announces a surprise price cut tomorrow for WiiU tomorrow; if they do the same thing like the 3DS, free games will make me a happy clam but I hope it doesn’t cause Iwata to resign. Hope you are happy third parties, game journalists, and gamers; Nintendo is struggling console-wise, and its your fault. Hope you enjoy your next-generation consoles that could supposedly lock out second-hand games! Want Nintendo to go third party, something you have so desperately asked for many years? Haha, be careful what you wish for.
Now if you will excuse me, I have a backlog of games to finish.
Pietriots 
The only fault I can lay at Nintendo’s feet is that they didn’t advertise the Wii U enough. The third parties failed Nintendo…again. Reviewers in their rush to be FIRST, didn’t even take the time review the games properly. Most of the big 3rd party multiplats that were being paraded around as not coming to Wii U, turned out to be lackluster. I would say the entire console market is very slow right now, people are just focusing on Wii U because it’s new and an easy target (even though it’s already sold over 4 million units worldwide iirc.
Notice that when Wii U gets the definitive version of a game (NFS, Tekken etc) very few people have anything to say. But when there’s bad news for Nintendo, 50 websites have it as front page news.
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Nintendo tried a multi-media blitz with the 3DS, but that didn’t work. Growing pains are normal in the console. Amazing how when the PS3 was struggling not many people were trolling it. WiiU has great games for it already, but it took PS3 TWO YEARS for that to happen.
I fucking hate this industry and this fanbase we call “gamers”.
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This is why we have the Miiverse. A place free from trolls and people who just love to start shit.
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Sort of the same reason there weren’t many first person shooters on the Wii, despite the damn system being perfect for them; it’s too much effort for third parties to adapt their development for a control scheme that ISN’T dual analog. No, let’s just claim that the Wii is too “weak” to handle our games, and continue to s**t out “Yet Another WWII Shooter 5: Buckets of Blood 3: IN SPACE Director’s Cut Edition Final 2”.
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True. Besides the lack of good advertisement, Nintendo hasn’t really messed up. They’ve done more than enough to be fair and give 3rd parties their time to shine, and they screwed it up. And the ones who didn’t screw it up (ZombiU) got bad scores because reviewers judge it as a completely different genre. Places like Digital Foundry go well out of their way to show how one shadow in a Wii U game is slightly less pretty than in the 360 version. And obviously the hugely stupid Rayman Legends debacle. Then, of course, we have the “gamer”, and their unbelievable hatred for Nintendo. What’s wrong with a video game company trying to put out affordable hardware that innovates and doesn’t make them lose money every year? Why would people poor hate on that?
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Because it’s kiddie. It dares to have games with colours other than brown and gray. It’s not fill to the brim with sports games, racing games and games that have blood spraying out of the enemies like a fountain just for the sake of it.
People who are new to the industry and hate Nintendo, do so because that’s the cool thing to do. Look at almost all of the most popular console gaming commentators on Youtube. Most of them are ardent Nintendo haters. It gets views. It brings out the haters and Nintendo defenders. So being a new gamer going to youtube , trying to find out what people are playing so you can join them, and everybody’s saying “Nintendo’s crap. They got no games.” Most people are sheep, so you know how that’s turn out.
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That attitude makes sense among people new to gaming. You’d think that journalists, the people who are supposed to be gaming enthusiasts, would act differently, but sometimes they’re just as bad.
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They stand to profit from people hating Nintendo. They get money and free games from Sony/MS and they get more hits for their websites.
They also help to push the idea that graphics is the most important thing, allowing Sony/MS to make powerful consoles and overcharge for them. That will in turn drive up development costs and make for a hostile development process, where if a company’s game is not successful, they’ll most likely go bankrupt after one flop.
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The price means absolutely nothing when consumers aren’t excited. There’s a much bigger problem here.
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The next step that 3rd parties will demand from Nintendo
A) Publish their game
B) Advertise it
C) Develop it
D) 3rd party collects all the profit, and then ports it to other systems anyway.
Then and only then, will 3rd parties think of doing business.
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Too bad their current business model makes them die faster. =D
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“Nintendo isn’t to blame for this current mess.”
Of course it is. They put out the product, it’s their fault if it doesn’t sell. Why aren’t consumers excited? I dunno, but it sounds like good editorial material.
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This isn’t like the 3DS launch, where Nintendo was partially to blame for not having things ready. Things were ready for the WiiU launch, the major issue is that close-minded gamers, game journalists and third parties just don’t give a shit.
Nintendo could advertise WiiU more, but would it help against game journalists and gamers who just don’t care and need everything spelt out for them? Pietriots wouldn’t exist if this problem didn’t exist.
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I’m not sure, I think there are a few reasons the console hasn’t been doing well that are Nintendo’s fault. Like a general lack of advertising (although video game advertising in general seems to be kind of rare over here in the UK) for the Wii U and its games and hence no one really being aware what the system actually is. Or perhaps their quite possibly clever but flawed strategy of holding back the more well known titles to compete with Sony and Microsoft’s next systems in an attempt to kill any hype they might have while releasing the system about a year early to try and build up an early advantage. Interesting plan (save 3D Mario, Zelda and Mario Kart until the more hotly contested 2013 holiday season), bad for Nintendo’s current situation (the lack of big games out in the first six months or so of 2013 means the Wii U is going to be practically dead for half the year).
So while the lack of support from third parties and customers isn’t their fault, their poor marketing decisions and debatable release strategy isn’t helping either.
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