We don't actually know they are ditching Wii U.

They'll never go toe-to-toe with Sony & Microsoft.

djchump wrote:

They'll never go toe-to-toe with Sony & Microsoft.

To get ports, I think they have to. And they really need ports, it's obvious that they can't produce enough content on their own now.

Liveinadive wrote:

We don't actually know they are ditching Wii U.

Yeah, but they probably are. They can hardly develop for that and another new platform.

Nintendo is basically about the hail Mary holy mother of fuck play. It pays off fairly often.

The Nes was released after the videogame crash.
The wii, the Ds were massive gambles next to the continuation strategies of Sony and Microsoft.

I think out of everyone Sony is probably the worst. They just keep promising the world and live off the fumes off third parties and hype and boringness.

Since Spencer has come the xbone is something I can get behind.

retroking1981 wrote:

Think how well Wi U was supported initially. FIFA, CoD, Batman, Ass Creed, Mass Effect.....

weren't they all generally inferior than existing 360/ps3 versions though?  Buying lesser versions of games you've already got isn't a great incentive to move to a console for me, so it's not surprising they didn't sell that well, especially when you factor in that you knew that was the limit of the performance of the new console, and the ps4/one were just around the corner.
if the Wii U had of been a step up in performance at the time, so that you were getting the best version of those games, i think a lot more people would have been tempted.
The problem for them now is (if they wanted to compete directly on hardware level), at the time of the Wii U they could have released a more powerful machine than their rivals at a competitive price...now i think they'll struggle to (noticeably) out-perform the ps4/one hardware without going in at a much higher price point...so the best they'd get is a nintendo console that can match the existing hardware, and hope enough people have been holding off upgrading that will buy the nintendo console for mario and fifa...

Call it the Nintendo 1 maybe

Functional. I haven't heard of people bleating tbecause it's down too often but that's probably because it functions as a means for players to get online rather than a multimedia platform

Even a similarly specced machine wouldn't be enough to bring back the 3rd parties. They'd need assurances about launch windows and stuff I think. No one wants to bring out a game on the same platform as Mario, Kart and Zelda.

@RamSteelwood I agree.

What I'm mainly getting at is that the Wii U failed with at least having ports. I can't see the NX having any support at all, I really can't.

Ubisoft got burned with the effort they put into the Wii U and something obviously happened between Nintendo and EA regarding that unprecedented partnership. Not getting support from those two alone will probably turn off Activision and anyone else.

Its just something that will spiral into everyone turning their back on it regardless of if its the most powerful system on the maket or another console with a unique angle. Even if it does mirror the success of the Wii it would take those companies at least a year to get SW out.

@ retro... agree, i don't think the NX would get that kind of 3rd party support regardless of it's power, (unless maybe it's built so similarly to the others that a port was utterly trivial, which isn't really Nintendo's style).  i would like to see a Nintendo console with the power and media capabilities of one/ps4 and all the big 3rd party games, but i don't think nintendo will try and i don't think the 3rd parties would be bothered either.

i don't blame the 3rd parties for the Wii U ports, i blame Nintendo for hobbling it out of the gate.  They chose the gamepad over performance, when it seemed pretty clear all along the gamepad  would be a gimmicky thing only nintendo would make much effort to utilise.  There was never a chance that EA and activision would build their key franchises around the gamepad screen, even if you could think of a 'critical' function it could add to the games.  I wouldn't even be surprised if the 3rd parties had signed up to wii U expecting it to have a bit more horsepower than it ended up with.  I've said all along, if the Wii U had contained maximum 'performance' for it's £300 price, and they'd sold the gamepad as an optional extra, then they might have had a chance at gaining a big market share before the ps4 and bone came along...Nintendo could have had a year or two with the 'best' version of fifa/cod on their hardware, drawing in the punters, so that by the time one/ps4 launch developers may have already been working to wii U as the base spec and the punters think "it's not worth £450 for that marginally shinier version of fifa"..and thus Nintendo take over the world.

but i digress, this is not the time to imagine a different history so i can have my cake/console and eat/play it...

the Nintendo NX, eh?  I have no idea what they will do.  But it will probably be a bit odd and different, and also a bit disappointing, and make you go "Hmm, that's quite interesting, but i can't see it replacing the ps4/bone as the first choice consoles".... 


@Live, interesting stuff...i think in summary they're damned either way!  it's hard to see how they can attract the gamers not buying nintendo stuff (and the games not on nintendo stuff), or not piss off those that have already bought it.

The the WiiU can and did have the superior titles though. And they were ported. Releasing before the PS4 and Xbone means even without the gamepad they'd never match their performance.

Perhaps if they'd ditched the gamepad, titles could have been developed for the Wii U first - as it could have been decently powerful, but releasing first means it would have been notably less powerful than PS4 and Xbone. Also because they wouldn't want to release at the price point Sony and MS did.


So actually, I think now is their best chance to actually regain parity if they want to go that route.
It wouldn't cost that much to use off the shelf architecture with a similar performance.

The recently released games can be cheaply ported - it's probably worth a punt for the big publishers, especially if Nintendo put more effort in which I thought they said they were going to do - to be easier to develop for, and work with etc.

And new titles can then run on the NX too.

I genuinely reckon this will be a combined console as expected and will be backwards comparable one gen. Handheld will do 3DS (no 3D) and console will do WiiU. NX software? No fuckin clue

How didn't Nintendo capitalise on the success of the Wii? Do most Wii buyers even know what the WiiU is?

I mean, say this comes out in 2017. Say the handheld is 3DS level - without 3D. What is a 2DS going for now? £80? That and a cheap WiiU (by then) can go for £200 I'd reckon.