What is the Wii U's position after the conference last night?

[BRiT]

Is it even relevant that the Nintendo Wii U doesn't get a fringe sports game? It's called American Football for a reason.

First of all, go troll somewhere else.

It does if you intend to sell your product in the fringe country of America. The Madden NFL games are always in the top-10, if not top 3, sales charts for America. But hey, who would want a slice of a title that sells 5 million units or manages to sell 1.6 million units in 1 week.

 

[Exophase]

They are probably loosing money selling at that price but it's better to sell than not sell at all.
Also prices in the UK (and in the EU) have VAT included, which if I am not mistaken is at 20% for video games.

Thanks, I forgot all about that.. that makes the base price only 124.17 GBP.. at current exchange rates that's not even $200.

The current price in Japan is also around $250 after exchange rates, but that's just because the Yen dropped a lot in 2013. GBP has been more stable.

 

[(((interference)))]

First of all, go troll somewhere else.

It does if you intend to sell your product in the fringe country of America. The Madden NFL games are always in the top-10, if not top 3, sales charts for America. But hey, who would want a slice of a title that sells 5 million units or manages to sell 1.6 million units in 1 week.

Ah but does it sell as much as the real football games

Though FIFA 14 also doesn't seem to be coming out for Wii U.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_14

The situation's only going to get worse for Nintendo once the ad blitz and buzz around Sony's and MS's new machines really picks up.

 

[Cjail]

So far neither COD Ghosts or BF 4 were announced for WiiU.
Maybe they will be announced but I think EA and Acti prefer to invest resources and money on the PS4 and Durango versions than on the WiiU one.

 

[Pressure]

First of all, go troll somewhere else.

It does if you intend to sell your product in the fringe country of America. The Madden NFL games are always in the top-10, if not top 3, sales charts for America. But hey, who would want a slice of a title that sells 5 million units or manages to sell 1.6 million units in 1 week.

I'm just arguing the point that people don't buy a Nintendo console for a Madden game to begin with.

All Nintendo Wii exclusive games sold more units than any Madden NFL game, despite only being available on one platform versus Madden, which were available on pretty much every platform.

 

[tuna]

Sports games have a new version every year, Nintendo releases one Mario Kart per platform.

Also, FIFA sells quite a lot, more than almost all Nintendo games.

 

[Brad Grenz]

The sales of Madden on WiiU must have been truly awful for EA not to run afoul of their exclusive licensing contract with the NFL by forgoing a release this year. AFAIK they are required to support all the major consoles.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Maybe the NFL thinks Wii U is a controller for Wii?

 

[digitalwanderer]

I had no idea just how awfully the Wii U was failing until checking some of these threads, thanks for the info/entertainment peeps! Very much appreciated.

 

[swaaye]

I sometimes wonder if anyone outside of these forums knows of WiiU's existence. The general public seems to be rather oblivious to it.

 

[warb]

I've still never seen an ad for the WiiU. The Wii and DS ads with various celebrities playing were ubiquitous.

 

[BoardBonobo]

At least it's making the VIta look like a run away success...

 

[Cjail]

DICE: Frostbite 3 has never been running on WiiU. We did some tests with not too promising results with FB2 & chose not to go down that path. (Source here)

This might be why BF 4 is not coming WiiU.
This also could rule out possible WiiU port of the Star Wars titles that EA will make using Frostbite 3.

P.S.
This is probably also useful for the tech investigation thread, should I post it there as well mods?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I expect future SW games to be next-gen only, ruling Wii U out. We shouldn't look for Wii U ports of any games not coming to PS360.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

It seems Nintendo will distribute a compiler (or an interpreter in the firmware?) to run android games/apps into the Wii U:

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/20...artphone-apps-for-console-boost/#.UYkJ3sr7Ata

I think this would make the most sense in the Vita, not the Wii U. The Wii U tablet controller doesn't even support multi-touch.

 

[Exophase]

Interesting development but I don't think this will be a game changer for Nintendo...

These days lots of tablets with gaming controls are coming out; the already released JXD 7300 is pretty decent. And even though they run the software natively they (at least the better ones) offer comparable or better battery life due to Nintendo's grossly inferior battery.

Add that with the need to be tethered to a running Wii U with spotty connection reliability, lack of multitouch, and what will probably be limited game availability instead of the entire Android library, and the whole thing looks pretty unattractive. Hard to think that people will want to buy a Wii U over much cheaper alternatives that do this better, unless they're not aware of them (at this point Nintendo would at least have much better brand visibility). Some relevant parties will also opt for the much cheaper OUYA as well.

I can't even see it being enough of a push to get people who were on the edge with the console.

I agree with the comments in the article, Nintendo would do far better with the opposite approach of putting their own games on phones and tablets. They don't have to give up their hardware or cede to their competitors; regardless of what they say I think the public still generally views phones, tablets, consoles, and handhelds as separate domains.

 

[Grall]

The Wii U tablet controller doesn't even support multi-touch.

I was like, "woot!" first, but then I read the above, and remembered. Yeah, you're right. That's going to break SO many games.

Not that I really care anyway, as I wasn't planning on turning to android apps anyhow. Haven't even turned my wuu on even once since january actually. Also, if this thing is really going to run android stuff and this isn't a BS rumor, what about android malware...? Will nintendo be running their own vetted android app store then or what? Because google's marketplace sure isn't either safe or secure, and neither is any other for that platform I suspect.

 

[Exophase]

I also doubt they'd even be able to get very good game compatibility, what with being PowerPC and all. Hence why they seem to be offering migration tools instead.

 

[Grall]

Isn't android using a java framework for its executables, meaning the underlying CPU wouldn't actually matter? Isn't there a bunch of intel x86 android phones out there...? I never heard of any incompatibilities with them.

 

[Exophase]

Isn't android using a java framework for its executables, meaning the underlying CPU wouldn't actually matter? Isn't there a bunch of intel x86 android phones out there...? I never heard of any incompatibilities with them.

Android apps use Dalvik (bytecode VM converted from JVM/compiled from Java) but they can use native code via NDK. A lot of software that's available on both iOS and Android will have the core code compiled in order to share a common code-base because you can't use Java on iOS. It's also the preferable choice for performance sensitive routines.

NDK is a fat binary format so it can contain both ARM and x86 code simultaneously, but there's no official PowerPC support. Intel phones also have an ARM binary translator, which offers maybe 50% native speed at best. So they don't have a lot of compatibility problems even with apps that use NDK w/o x86 builds, but that doesn't mean the performance is always great. You'll be hard pressed to find a review goes deep into game performance on the few Medfield/Clovertrail+ phones in common usage. At least on S|A they tried two games and one worked fine while the other ran poorly.

Either way, Wii U is starting from a much worse position.