I love Nintendo and the Wii U but the pricing of Nintendo Wii U games sucks. Years after some of their games have been released they're still $59.99 to buy brand new. Then there's a lack of gaming studios devoted to the Wii U. The Playstation has it's own niche, the X-Box has it's own niche of gaming studios as well. I think Nintendo should invest in a brand new subsidiary that is allowed to "think outside of the Nintendo box" and make new crazy games, while taking full advantage of the Wii U. There is much potential I think with the Wii U and that is what made me buy it, sadly not many have taken advantage, or the companies that do they make their Wii U version too late for it to matter for most. It's like GTA and PC, too late but GTA is a big enough game to still sell plenty. Another thing they should really do is create new franchises, that is something Disney does all the time. Bring a new show, sell as much product for it as they can, rinse and repeat.
Nintendo has historically never made adjustments to the pricing of their products, except for when the games enter a "nintendo selects," classification, or only after extended periods of time (Mariokart 7, 2011, is worth $29.99)
This has the effect of not trampling on the resale market as well as keeping sure that sales don't slump because people are waiting for a price reduction. If you want to buy a Nintendo game, then you just buy it.
"There's a lack of gaming studios devoted to the Wii U." There is at least one notable exception to this: Monolith Soft whose Xenoblade series has been a godsend for the JRPG genre.
Pokemon is, in my opinion, a uniquely valuable franchise, however, above and beyond anything else Nintendo has in the magazine. You've got multiple generations that have grown up with it, between the games, cards, TV show, merchandising, etc, etc. It distilled the essence of fun, but grindy, rpgs down into an almost perfect form, and wrapped it up in a kid-friendly package (despite the fact that you're really playing what amounts to a Roman lanista or Michael Vick simulator)
I don't think Mario or Zelda or Donkey Kong, or any of the other beaten-to-death Nintendo IP is on the same level.
Knowing Nintendo's stubborn management, I wouldn't be super surprised if they just announce that they will make their own Android phone and make Pokemon Go exclusive to it.
Niantic was a Google internal startup that was spunoff in late 2015 so it could take $30m investment from Google, Nintendo, and The Pokemon Company (and later a $5m series A)
The takeaway is that Google has a whole lot of skin in the game and really wouldn't allow such an exclusive deal like you might speculate.
Microsoft should buy out Nintendo, make its games and franchises available for Xbox & PC, and sell the specialty Nintendo hardware like the WiiMote or that TabletController as accessories. It could also roll Kinect under the Nintendo add-on brand.
Depends on how you look at it. With games: Minecraft and Halo didn't get any worse so far. On the business side, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SQL Server, and Analysis Services all got better, often to the point you don't remember them NOT being Microsoft products anymore. Microsoft also created a better Java, they just called it C# (ok, a bit snarky in that last one)
That's an excellent point and very relevant. Rare was a Nintendo "second party" developer (Nintendo exclusive developer but not officially owned by Nintendo) who produced tons of classic games for Nintendo and was very successful. Battletoads, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Banjo Kazooie, Donkey Kong Country, etc.
They then started looking to be bought out (hoping to be bought by Nintendo) but Microsoft ultimately bought them. After moving to Microsoft, they made Perfect Dark Zero (terrible), Viva Piñata (unsuccessful), Kinect Sports (moderate success), and a single possible bright spot, the upcoming Sea of Thieves that's looking pretty good.
Rare is a great example of how Nintendo and Microsoft differ and why it wouldn't necessarily be a huge success.
Microsoft acquired a word processing company, and the owner claims that became word. I can't remember the company, and there isn't as much lore around it as the qdos purchase.
Judging by the stock of late I would say the wealth of their shareholders. Which is the actual goal of a corporation as opposed to improving products after acquisition which is just one of many possible means to that goal.
Hardware has predictable margins, if not predictable sales. Software prices tend rapidly to zero.
Am I right in thinking that Pokemon Go is the first Nintendo game to use the "free-to-play" business model, where all sorts of progression is gated behind ongoing coin purchases?
This has been true for at least 10 years but Nintendo could not react to it. Shame that such a huge content company was to get lost in hardware and old biz models when the way forward was very obvious. Netflix does not build netflix boxes (I think).
You're comparing Wii with PS3 and Xbox 360, both of which had successful next-gen consoles released in 2013. Wii+WiiU in past 10 years: 113m, PS3+PS4: 124m, Xbox360 + Xbox One: ~94m.
There's no games for that console, and very few new ones are still to come out. I've got a wii u, but I still have the same games I bought in the year of launch - Mario Kart 8, Mario 3D World, Mario Super Mario Bros U - can you see a pattern here? Xenoblade is meant to be good but I don't have time for a 100h+ JRPG, and any other genres are avoiding the WiiU, if you want a first person shooter, a sports game, a racing game, you will go with the competition. Not to mention that non-mario Wii U games just look very poor when compared to PS4/X1.
You totally missed my point. You were comparing the Wii to the Ps3 and Xbox 360, which isn't fair, since both of those consoles had dramatically reduced sales due to the PS4/Xbox One, not the Wii.
