Anyone still think Wii U will "win" "next gen"?

Will Wii U be the best selling console over MS and Sony's offerings?


  • Total voters
    152
  • Poll closed .
If Nintendo gives its Metroid Prime trilogy a Windwaker HD treatment I'm buying a WiiU. Heck, I'll probably buy one for a cheap up-resed port. 3 of the best games ever released as far as I'm concerned.
 
Run the textures through a modern resampling, upscaling algorithm and enable anisotropic filtering instead of trilinear, improve particle systems, add some more visual effect pizzazz, fullscreen antialiasing, and improve the lighting... What else needs to be done? Nothing! :)

The metroid primes are a modern classic, just as much as any zelda.
 
Confession time: I stopped playing Metroid Prime for the GC at the third level or so because I found it incredibly boring (and frustrating to always having to kill the exact same enemies again whenever I re-entered a room/area). Never bothered for the sequels after that.

Well no, actually.. a couple of years later I bought the MP: Hunters for the DS because of all the rave reviews and never finished that one either. I got stuck in a part where I had to make a weird jump in ball form, halfway through the game.. and quit the game out of frustration after spending way too many hours trying to make a stupid ball jump with a certain timing.

Anyways, my point is that while I do believe lots of people like the Metroid Prime series, I don't think it's such a hit that a remake would somehow save the Wii U.

What could save the Wii U this holiday season would be releasing right now Mario Kart 8, Star Wars: Battlefront 3, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Final Fantasy VII remake, all of them at least as 8-month timed exclusives.
Plus ports of GTA V, Diablo 3, Minecraft and Battlefield 4.


Yeah, it's impossible. So I think saving the Wii U this holiday season is pretty much impossible too.
 
So does Nintendo limp along for a few more years, think about going next gen again?

Or do they go handhelds only, try to carve a niche while mobile devices sell more and more games?
 
So does Nintendo limp along for a few more years, think about going next gen again?

Or do they go handhelds only, try to carve a niche while mobile devices sell more and more games?

I think the company's current management is stupidly stubborn and hard-headed enough to make the whole company go down by flushing more and more money into the Wii U's production lines and paying up studios to get 3rd grade ports with little to no return.
And then they lower the volume of orders from factories and ICs, the price per console goes up and there goes the chance of reducing the price to an (IMHO) appropriate price of sub-$200.

It's still good that the 3DS is healthy and holding the fort, but I also think we'll see the Vita rise in 2014 because of the PS4's 2nd screen integration, eventually eating into the 3DS' profits too.


If I was an investor, I'd be promoting a change of CEO and board of directors. Hopefully, that will happen in the next few years before they pull a Nokia.
 
What would they gain by blowing their cash hoard on an unstable house of cards like sony? They should rather invest into samsung or apple instead... That's where the real money is these days. ;)
 
Whoever Nintendo bought, surely they'd make a mess of them too? I don't trust Nintendo's philosophy. What they need is someone else like Sony designing the machines with Nintendo weird priorities, and Nintendo offering gimmickery and games. Nintendo's waggle + Sony's Move would have been the perfect combination last gen with PS3 being an HD Wii and PS3.
 
Whoever Nintendo bought, surely they'd make a mess of them too? I don't trust Nintendo's philosophy. What they need is someone else like Sony designing the machines with Nintendo weird priorities, and Nintendo offering gimmickery and games. Nintendo's waggle + Sony's Move would have been the perfect combination last gen with PS3 being an HD Wii and PS3.

I always felt Kinect and Move would be a perfect combo...
 
Yeah, it's kind of bleeding obvious that nintendo's shit at designing hardware, and also shit at figuring out what kind of hardware they REALLY need - while crappy ole wii sold a lot, it also started pancaking (increasingly) in sales about halfway through this gen, and lots of systems did not see much use at all - if any.

They're also shit at software development. Wuu's menu system is ugly and terrible, and even though half the RAM in the machine is reserved, menus are also still agonizingly slow roughly a full year after launch. That's just incredible - except not in a good way.

Nintendo has made some fun games in the past, maybe if they were only consulting on the system design, without any veto powers or such, and only focused on making actual games, then things would probably be better for everyone. Nintendo themselves included.

I mean... They ordered a DX10 console years into the DX11 generation... What the shit! :LOL:
 
I always felt Kinect and Move would be a perfect combo...
The best platform would be Kinect+Move + games from all three parties including Nintendo's creative use of novel interfaces. The ideal console would be a cooperative effort. But that's generally true of all human endeavours. Competition leads to unique advantages in some fields, and no one product that incorporates them all, meaning consumers are stuck with (often awkward) compromises. Well, that's going OT.

If Nintendo pull the plug on Wii U, I expect them to produce some new hardware, or leave the home console space. There's room for a high-end machine. given new techs in 2014, a new console in 2015 could provide Nintendoisms + core games in better fidelity than XB1+PS4 (although maybe we'll see something like the Xbox 1.1??)
 
Nintendo has the cash to hire all the hardware expertise they need.

Didn't they do that with Project 64 and N64?

But it didn't sell too well so they have to differentiate in other ways.

The Wii is more the exception than the rule, as far as some unique feature winning over the market.
 
Nintendo has the cash to hire all the hardware expertise they need.

Didn't they do that with Project 64 and N64?

No in that case they bought the design from SGI, as I understand it a design that SGI had been shopping around that at least one other vendor had turned down, probably for cost reasons.
 
I don't understand japanese biz culture at all. Or maybe Nintendo is some sort of special case. Iwata would be flogged in most of other countries - 9 million units of Wii U's shipped by the end of fiscal year - That ain't nothing but a lie. Not delusion, not naivety, just a damn lie. Their board of directors are just bunch of yes man and even investors don't seem to punish 'em (only down pitiful 1,49% ).

They all behave so irrationally that I don't have guts to short 'em... or invest 'em. I did buy few k's worth last june and now I have no idea what to do with 'em. Do the investors buy Iwata's BS, or have they already calculated massive miss on financial year target (on both 3DS and Wii U).

And yes, I want Nintendo go 3rd party. Something like IOS / Android Pokemon with microtransactions. Heck, if Supercell's Clash of Titans can be worth several billion, something like Pokemon would be absolutely huge.
 
I don't understand japanese biz culture at all. Or maybe Nintendo is some sort of special case. Iwata would be flogged in most of other countries - 9 million units of Wii U's shipped by the end of fiscal year - That ain't nothing but a lie. Not delusion, not naivety, just a damn lie. Their board of directors are just bunch of yes man and even investors don't seem to punish 'em (only down pitiful 1,49% ).

FWIW, Iwata's last voting for CEO was "historically bad" for an incredibly traditional company like Nintendo. I think he got something like 92%, which was a first in the last 30 years or so to go below 98%.

So... erm.. yeah, Iwata isn't going anywhere unless he steps down willingly.

I wonder what Reggie's honest thoughts are on this.
 
I don't understand japanese biz culture at all. Or maybe Nintendo is some sort of special case. Iwata would be flogged in most of other countries - 9 million units of Wii U's shipped by the end of fiscal year - That ain't nothing but a lie. Not delusion, not naivety, just a damn lie. Their board of directors are just bunch of yes man and even investors don't seem to punish 'em (only down pitiful 1,49% ).

They all behave so irrationally that I don't have guts to short 'em... or invest 'em. I did buy few k's worth last june and now I have no idea what to do with 'em. Do the investors buy Iwata's BS, or have they already calculated massive miss on financial year target (on both 3DS and Wii U).

And yes, I want Nintendo go 3rd party. Something like IOS / Android Pokemon with microtransactions. Heck, if Supercell's Clash of Titans can be worth several billion, something like Pokemon would be absolutely huge.

Well... that's Japan. You don't go and make a fuss, just leave things as they are and ignore everything. That's how companies here work, that's how society here works.

Basically you get a job and you do "something'' (most Japanese don't do shit at work, just busy trying to look like they are actually doing something), you can't get fired and you will eventually be promoted just because they have to. At some point everybody here becomes a manager. Pencil sharper manager, doormat manager etc. And everybody always says yes to everything. No opinion what so ever. Not that having one is a good idea because you'll just get frustrated that Japanese are unable to change anything.

So basically you have to be lucky that at some point the right guy makes it to the top and then good things might happen.
 
Well... that's Japan. You don't go and make a fuss, just leave things as they are and ignore everything. That's how companies here work, that's how society here works.

Basically you get a job and you do "something'' (most Japanese don't do shit at work, just busy trying to look like they are actually doing something), you can't get fired and you will eventually be promoted just because they have to. At some point everybody here becomes a manager. Pencil sharper manager, doormat manager etc. And everybody always says yes to everything. No opinion what so ever. Not that having one is a good idea because you'll just get frustrated that Japanese are unable to change anything.

So basically you have to be lucky that at some point the right guy makes it to the top and then good things might happen.


Weird... from the contact I have with their pop culture, I thought the japanese were extremely competitive with each other right from highschool up until retirement..
That shouldn't leave so much space for procrastination.
 
It's all a big joke. The education system here sucks. Basically once you passed the entrance exam that has nothing to do with what you'll be studying you have to do extremely bad to not graduate. I've met people who graduated in English literature but can't read any English...

It's the same with all the new salary man every year. They are fresh from University and they can't do anything. That's why Japanese companies already hire people 1 or 2 years before they even graduate. They know they won't know shit after graduating so they might as well hire up front. They'll just look at what Uni you are from and that's it.

Of course, this is putting it in extremes but that's kinda how it goes. The biggest problem is that from a young age any sense of self esteem, thinking for yourself and own opinion is beaten out of them until they are all yes saying spineless salaryman and housewives. The result of this is that Japanese need to be told to the letter what they need to do. They cannot think for themselves.

Same thing at work. Competitive? probably, but in the useless Japanese way. Looks like it's more about how much overtime you work and how often you go drinking with the bosses then the quality of your work. The other day I asked my manager what the goal of our project is, he said he honestly didn't know...

Then there are people who don't do anything all day, or even sleep at work and nobody gets fired. It's all okay. Don't say anything because that might disturb the peace.

Anyway, nobody will ever stand up and say hey this is wrong, we need to do better (well the top brass might do that so they have a chance to shout and blame the people below them) but generally people are very very reluctant to suggest that doing this or that, or changing this or that might improve work quality or speed etc. I tried a couple of times but it's useless, might as well be talking to a rock.

The thing is that nobody is allowed to make any decisions. You always have to go to the manager, he will have to go to another manager, that manager will then have to go to his manager and after that manager goes to his manager the decision to have a meeting about the possibility of maybe changing something could possible happen.

Honestly... I've been in meetings about meetings that discussed a previous meeting. We once had a group of 15 people wasting 8 hours on making some stupid flowchart about who does what. How the hell can they not know who is supposed to do what??

A fun example is my desk at work. Japanese office furneture is made to torture you. My desk for example had a support beam right where your legs would be. Basically it's impossible to sit in a comfortable position with that beam there. So I asked if somebody had a screwdriver. I had a bunch a Japanese rushing to me to remove that beam. Now one of my managers said, with a very big and proud smile on his face, Japanese are always so fast to react to problems, aren't they?! I had to nod yes... but really... any sane person wouldn't have put a fucking support beam at the exact place somebody's legs would be in the first place!

Another fun one is the system we have at my work if you want to go from a contract employee to a "life time" employee. You have to make a test. Japanese love tests. But this test won't have anything to with your work. No, they'll try to make you freak out by giving you ridiculously difficult math questions or try to fuck you up by asking questions in a very weird way all designed to let you make mistakes. How stupid is that? My job doesn't have anything to do with math! would actually talking to the person, letting him/her show what he does, listen to his ideas, talk about the work he does etc, wouldn't that be a much better way of deciding if somebody is good enough to employ for life? I guess they can't do that because nobody has an opinion...

What it comes down to is a whole lot of big words and "look at me'' behavior but very little actually happens. Japanese just love wasting time on things that really don't matter.
 
Erm... your whole post is just describing a typical 80's/90's inflated company with way too many execution layers to ever become efficient.

I don't think that's exclusive to the Japanese.. it's exclusive to the work environment that comes out of such an arrangement.
In fact, I think I could transpose your text to some similar companies where some of my friends work (around Europe and the U.S.) and it would fit perfectly..
 
Except that's how the Japanese deal with everything. Everything is done in a way to complicated cumbersome manner. Try buying a phone here. Better take the afternoon off. I can order a phone and contract in the Netherlands online in less that 3 minutes. And then they give you all sort of shit, I got a mobile wifi hotspot with my phone. Didn't want it because A) I don't need it and B) it would cost me extra money. But I HAD to take it home for a month. Seriously, they wouldn't sell me a phone if I didn't take it home with me. WTF?

Nothing here makes sense. Every time I ask why something is done in a certain way they can never explain. Usually they just say it's the Japanese way (and the Japanese way is best!).

Its difficult to explain, you really have to experience it for yourself to understand just how different it is.
 
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