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El Estrago Bonito posted:Kids are still super loyal to Nintendo, it's just those kids are all on mobile platforms (specifically DS/3DS) and a lot of them don't really have the money to branch into the home console market. It's much cheaper to get your kid a handheld obviously, and those kids are still heavily in the Nintendo pocket just like they were in 1998 when Pokemon was the hotness on Gameboy. But speaking from experience I had a GBC and a GBA but never a GC because while I could save up enough money to buy a GBA at launch, getting twice to three times that much money just to have a Gamecube was way out of my budget range. The Wii was less so because it was, at least for a large portion of its life, pretty low in price and families were buying them as family entertainment items not just as things for the kids. Well, if the rumours of the new Nintendo console are true, they've finally cottoned on that, nowadays, people associate Nintendo with handhelds, not home consoles. The rumours are saying it's going to be along the same idea as the Wii U, but the controller can operate independently. So it can be a handheld, or it can hook into a home unit.
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Oct 23, 2015 12:19
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Splatoon is a loving brilliant game concept. I've never played it, and I never will, but "how do we make an FPS nonviolent so we can sell it to families"? loving 
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Oct 23, 2015 13:50
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Nintendo really is that niche market though. I bought a gamecube and only ONE game for it: Super Smash brothers Melee. And I have probably played that game more on that gamecube than any other game on any other console, its that addictive and fun. I have Wii and am currently frustrated because it won't read my melee disk and I don't have a Wii U to play the newer Smash, and the Wiiu is still some ridiculous $300 amount. I'd say Nintendo is probably a master of marketing and branding, even to the point where not-good-games get tons of praise and retail success- as a brand. As far as product marketing and technical ability...not so much. I had no idea when the Wii U officially launched, it just kind of showed up with a new Smash Brothers game.
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Oct 23, 2015 14:49
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Since all the way back in the N64, Nintendo's market hold was basically "make a decent console that people will only buy a few absolutely killer top shelf games for." The Wii U is where that strategy has started to falter as the "killer top shelf game" list shrinks with each new iteration of the model.
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Oct 23, 2015 15:24
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Full Battle Rattle posted:Halo always does well for the MS crew, I think. The master chief collection was a buggy mess and Halo 4 died as soon as call of duty came out
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Oct 23, 2015 16:22
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Jastiger posted:Nintendo really is that niche market though. I bought a gamecube and only ONE game for it: Super Smash brothers Melee. And I have probably played that game more on that gamecube than any other game on any other console, its that addictive and fun. I have Wii and am currently frustrated because it won't read my melee disk and I don't have a Wii U to play the newer Smash, and the Wiiu is still some ridiculous $300 amount. Forgive me for possibly asking the obvious, but if you have a Wii, why not get Super Smash Bros. Brawl? As for Wii U sounding like an add-on for the Wii, they've done an even dumber thing with the newest iteration of the 3DS hardware, which is called - I couldn't make this up if I wanted to - "New 3DS".
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Oct 23, 2015 16:32
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The new 3DS should be called Gameboyorgirl2000
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Oct 23, 2015 16:36
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Since we're talking about Nintendo, I always felt Nintendo never going back to the Gameboy name was a bad move.
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Oct 23, 2015 16:38
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Besesoth posted:As for Wii U sounding like an add-on for the Wii, they've done an even dumber thing with the newest iteration of the 3DS hardware, which is called - I couldn't make this up if I wanted to - "New 3DS". I haven't bought a portable in a long time and was in the market to get a 3ds recently, and it honestly took me longer to figure out that the new 3ds was actually an improved iteration than I'm proud to admit. Also, intentionally naming your product so it's almost impossible for a customer to know if they're googling for the right thing is the dumbest move in marketing.
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Oct 23, 2015 16:44
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CommonShore posted:Another factor with the Wii U is that it didn't have any kind of branding differentiation. I'm not a big follower of consoles, and it wasn't clear to me until someone spelled it out that the Wii U was an entirely new system and not just some fancy peripheral for the Wii. The Playstation and XBox series have done a good job of giving newness to their consoles. The nintendo series did an amazing job, up to the Wii U of making sure people knew that new was new, both in the name and in the appearance of the unit. I'm seriously wondering how in your mind Microsoft has done a great job differentiating their new console when they named it what basically everyone called their original console in casual conversation since about 2007 or so.
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Oct 23, 2015 17:03
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Ryoshi posted:I'm seriously wondering how in your mind Microsoft has done a great job differentiating their new console when they named it what basically everyone called their original console in casual conversation since about 2007 or so. Well, XBox XBox 360 XBox One? Ok, you're right namewise, that doesn't stand out so much. As I said, I'm not a huge console person, so I wasn't thinking about that in too much detail. But my point still stands, because the differentiation between "One" and "360" is what's important for communicating that the thing being sold now is not the thing being sold a little while ago, and it's not the thing you have right now. Nobody is going to confuse the 2001 and 2013 models when a 2005 model had dominated the market for so long. On top of that, the XBoxes also don't look like each other at all - the 360 and the One look nothing alike - whereas the Wii and the WiiU follow pretty similar design schemes. (Besides, everyone I know calls it "Original XBox" or "Old XBox")
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Oct 23, 2015 17:13
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CommonShore posted:Well, I wish they would embrace the name "xbone" because I vaguely remember them putting out something to discourage people from saying it, which would never work. Just start calling it THE BONE in press releases. Don't hire me for marketing purposes.
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Oct 23, 2015 17:16
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Since we're talking about dumb moves in marketing and Nintendo, the three specifically I can complain about are: 1) Nintendo sticking to cartridges: If not for cartridges, FFVII would have been a N64 title. A lot of developers jumped ship over this format and Nitnendo's stubborn resistance to new tech. 2) Online acceptance: Another pillar that Nintendo refused to budge on, as they didn't see it taking off on console and/or they wanted to protect kids or some dumb poo poo. I still remember how gamers how to create their own tunneling program to play Mario Kart online on the GC (look up Warp Pipe Project). Also gently caress friend codes and all that poo poo. 3) Publisher restrictions: Categorically a success on Nintendo's part, but during the life of the NES, Nintendo would restrict publishers to releasing a limited number of games each year; I think publishers were restricted to....three titles a year, I believe? Nintendo, in their defense, had their reason -- the videogame industry had collapsed from the glut of terrible videogames prior, so to ensure that history didn't repeat itself, Nintendo put in place restrictions to prevent the same happening on their console. To get around these restrictions, publishers would create a new company to publish under (see Konami and Ultra Games). Taken all together, you can see how Nintendo became and stayed a stubborn videogame giant that really only have themselves to blame for losing the crown they held. CommonShore posted:Well, Man, this brings to mind something that has always bugged me but no one but me seems to remember...the original Playstation was often referred to as the PSX; PS-X was even the alternative name it was going to be given if 'Playstation' wouldn't have worked. Flash forward to 2003, and Sony releases (only in Japan) a console capable of PSX/PS2 play with DVR and I think some programmable Linux feature or something, called....the PSX. Seeing it named the PSX has always bugged the hell out of me because the PSX was and will forever be to me the original Playstation. BetterToRuleInHell has a new favorite as of 17:58 on Oct 23, 2015 |
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Oct 23, 2015 17:40
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They should have called it xbox360noscope
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Oct 23, 2015 17:46
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BetterToRuleInHell posted:1) Nintendo sticking to cartridges: If not for cartridges, FFVII would have been a N64 title. A lot of developers jumped ship over this format and Nitnendo's stubborn resistance to new tech. This one is especially tragic because cartridges actually were superior to CDs in many ways - they were faster to load, less prone to permanent damage, and could hold save states on the medium (as opposed to the memory cards that the PS1 and Saturn used). But they were inferior to CDs in the two ways that ultimately mattered most to publishers: CDs held more data and were much cheaper to produce. (Also, onboard saves would have presented a problem for multi-medium games like FFVII.) Handhelds continue to use cartridges because handheld games can get away with being a lot smaller than console games, and because cartridges have become a lot cheaper and more storage-dense since the N64 - a 3DS cart can hold 8GB, which publishers would have murdered for in 1995. Also, the PSP, which used mini-CDs, highlighted another problem with CDs - the drive gets unpleasantly warm, which is only rarely a problem in consoles but causes real trouble with handhelds. SneezeOfTheDecade has a new favorite as of 18:14 on Oct 23, 2015 |
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Oct 23, 2015 18:12
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Besesoth posted:Forgive me for possibly asking the obvious, but if you have a Wii, why not get Super Smash Bros. Brawl? Oh! I do have Brawl, but my wii doesn't play it. Combine that with no wavebirds and a big home theater set up, I can't really play my Wii in an effective manner:( I've actaully REALLY been looking to borrow someones Wii U just so I can try the new brawl out but...$300 to try a game? Nahhh.
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Oct 23, 2015 18:42
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PhazonLink posted:Since we're talking about Nintendo, I always felt Nintendo never going back to the Gameboy name was a bad move. I agree. I think Gameboy is probably the only system name in my lifetime that no grandparent has screwed up saying or embarrassed themselves shopping for. It's It's clear, and simple, and elegant of a name that pictures perfect mnemonic devices in the shoppers' heads--a boy playing on his little video game. The whole DS name game seems explicitly designed to have Nintendo shoot themselves in the foot and ruin christmas.
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Oct 23, 2015 19:04
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Choco1980 posted:I agree. I think Gameboy is probably the only system name in my lifetime that no grandparent has screwed up saying or embarrassed themselves shopping for. It's It's clear, and simple, and elegant of a name that pictures perfect mnemonic devices in the shoppers' heads--a boy playing on his little video game. The whole DS name game seems explicitly designed to have Nintendo shoot themselves in the foot and ruin christmas. Sales of the DS counter your point, as the DS prints money for Nintendo. Oodles and oodles of it. Personally the best handheld was the Gameboy Advance SP. ALL HAIL CLAMSHELL DESIGN
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Oct 23, 2015 19:07
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It's really the most recent generation of Nintendo stuff (3DS -> New 3DS and Wii -> Wii U) that's been truly horrible marketing. DS -> DSi was slightly confusing, but I really want to know what's going through their heads that they launch two major product lines in a row that are not only tough to discern as new things, but incredibly hard to google effectively.  e: 3DS vs New 3DS is probably a case of not giving a poo poo about non-Japanese markets actually, since the name is "New 3DS" even in Japan, so there wouldn't be as much confusion as if it were called 新しい3DS. Panic! at Nabisco has a new favorite as of 19:22 on Oct 23, 2015 |
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Oct 23, 2015 19:20
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Thing is, the Wii U has been one of the best decisions to buy I've made in the last couple years. Especially for the party games. Wii Party U has a ton of great mini games to play with friends, many of which utilize the touchscreen very well to pit 1 person against the others. NintendoLand has several mini games that do the same (Mario Chase is insanely fun, as is the Luigi's Mansion ghost game.) The Wario Ware game uses the touchscreen in a lot of really creative ways too. The "Gamer" game set is both fun and terrifying in a hilarious way, but the best mini game in wario ware is the Orbulon pictionary. You get a word on the touchpad and have to draw it, and the other players try to guess it. You get a point for every correct answer someone gets, and everyone else gets a point if they were the first to guess correctly. Everyone gets a turn to draw. And then of course you have Splatoon, Smash Brothers and Mario Kart 8. It's really a fantastic system if you like to play games in the same room as your friends, and I feel like there is so much potential for the system that's not being used. The touchscreen may be a gimmick, but when used well, it's really good. Which I think is a really big shame at how badly the marketing has failed. I feel that there are a lot of really great games that will never get made because of the lack of success and 3rd party support for the system.
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Oct 23, 2015 19:23
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quote:It's not stupid, because it's a We - You!
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Oct 23, 2015 19:23
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It's really not the same thing at all, because for the most part the New 3DS games aren't exclusive to new 3ds. There are a few more features, like amiibo support (lol) but in general you won't accidentally buy a new 3ds game and not be able to play it. Wii U appears to be the same kind of incremental upgrade, but if you buy a Wii U game for your Wii it won't work. This is a huge difference, and the reason they should have come up with a new name (or just made the Wii U a peripheral in the first place).
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Oct 23, 2015 19:31
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I think my biggest issue now with the Wii U is the whole Amiibo craze being applicable to every single game they make, jumping on that sweet Skylanders money making machine. "Want to 100% this game? Better hope you can find all the figures to buy..." Don't get me wrong, it's GENIUS marketing, but it's awful for limited consumers/parents. I think the one that makes me the most mad is LEGO Dimensions hopping on that bandwagon where you have to buy all the game sets to build all the characters they've added to the video LEGO world and then some. I quite love the LEGO games, I think they're great casual fun, often with incredible attention to detail and humor (I just about died when I realized if you hover over most of the characters in LEGO Batman 3's selection screen they sing their own version of the 60's TV show theme, often with individual jokes attached). I totally buy the total package DLC packs with the games off of steam. But asking for you to buy dozens (Wikipedia lists thirty-seven purchasable physical content packs besides the main game set, none including duplicates) of real world lego sets (which aren't cheap) is a bridge too far. I'd love to play the game and have all the fun with the various franchises (The Doctor Who pack has it so when you die as the doctor you come back as the next one down the line regenerating! The Tardis interior changes too! Tom Baker Doctor alongside Scooby Doo fleeing from the T-Rex from Jurassic Park in the Ecto-1? How is that not amazing??) but I'm not going to because I definitely can NOT afford the massive selection of add ons, nor do I have the patience to keep track of all the parts to build quickly...
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Oct 23, 2015 19:36
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Calling a game "New whatever" is so shortsighted I don't know how anyone ever thought t was a good idea. It's a terribly boring name. It usually doesn't make any sense since New Mario was more of a retro Mario game anyway. Plus what do they new for the next one? Now New Mario is the old one, and you have to call the new one "New Mario 2" or "Even Newer Mario" or something dumb like that.
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Oct 23, 2015 19:53
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Master Twig posted:Which I think is a really big shame at how badly the marketing has failed. I feel that there are a lot of really great games that will never get made because of the lack of success and 3rd party support for the system. The Wii U has been out for about three years now and still doesn't have any Zelda / Metroid games. It's hard for third party developers to take the system seriously when Nintendo obviously doesn't.
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Oct 23, 2015 19:54
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aardwolf posted:The Wii U has been out for about three years now and still doesn't have any Zelda / Metroid games. It's hard for third party developers to take the system seriously when Nintendo obviously doesn't. It has 1 billion mario games.
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Oct 23, 2015 20:26
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zelda's often slow. And I don't think following Other-M that Nintendo has much faith in the Metroid franchise. Like, the only announcement recently was a game for I guess the New 3DS (ugh) that was basically prime hunters' online mode. And without Samus iirc.
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Oct 23, 2015 20:28
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Master Twig posted:
The system got a fair amount of 3rd party support at the beginning of its life (in part because since the 360 and PS3 were still major platforms so they already had games that could run on the WiiU's specs) and their sales were atrocious. Nobody is supporting WiiU anymore because the sales just aren't there and they can't even do ports because of how much weaker the hardware is.
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Oct 23, 2015 21:20
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CommonShore posted:the 360 and the One You finally figured out why they called it the XBox One. Nothing is more prestigious than having people call your product, "THE ONE"  Of course, this backfired entirely. I myself call it the XBox Keanu Reeves.
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Oct 23, 2015 21:39
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Isn't Nintendo troubles with modernization a cultural thing? Young devs and employees suggest newer things [read: things every other company else is doing] but the older Executives shoot down the ideas and that's that. You're not suppose to question the boss due to them being older or your superior and so things stagnate. Or maybe I'm talking out my rear end.
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Oct 23, 2015 21:45
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I read an article some time ago that explained that Nintendo was a huge pain in the rear end to work and develop stuff with, can someone link this?
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Oct 23, 2015 21:51
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Choco1980 posted:I think my biggest issue now with the Wii U is the whole Amiibo craze being applicable to every single game they make, jumping on that sweet Skylanders money making machine. "Want to 100% this game? Better hope you can find all the figures to buy..." Don't get me wrong, it's GENIUS marketing, but it's awful for limited consumers/parents. I thought it could have been a gamechanger if they kept the characters at low prices like the current minifig ranges. One minifig and the data disc as the basic unit, and then larger sets for vehicles and terrain. They'd sell like hot cakes. As it is I'm sure they're going to make bank anyway, but pricing it as the cheap competition to Skylanders and the Wii thing would develop its own niche and fit in with the modular elements of the brand. The lego games are surprisingly good fun in a basic way. I can play with my niece and it's not too difficult for her, but there's enough variety in the missions and dumb jokes for me not to be bored witless. I really enjoyed tooling around New York as Iron Man in the Marvel one and found myself playing without her to unlock characters too. Not been a bad release yet I don't think.
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Oct 23, 2015 22:01
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stringball posted:I read an article some time ago that explained that Nintendo was a huge pain in the rear end to work and develop stuff with, can someone link this? Any Japanese or Korean company is a huge pain in the rear end to work with, due to massive cultural and societal differences.
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Oct 23, 2015 22:02
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stringball posted:I read an article some time ago that explained that Nintendo was a huge pain in the rear end to work and develop stuff with, can someone link this? Scroll down to the section about the NES catridges -- in summary, Nintendo built their NES empire with a iron grip on 3rd parties. Nintendo prohibited publishers from releasing more than five titles a year, Nintendo was the sole manufacturer of cartridges forcing publishers license them, and among other things Nintendo wouldn't buy back any unsold cartridges, forcing publishers to assume all the risk. Then, of course later down the line we have other examples as mentioned prior -- Nintendo preferred their own proprietary devices like N64 cartridges and GC discs, and their reluctance to popular tech like online gaming, etc. If you want a really good look into Nintendo, read up on Hiroshi Yamauchi, the man who transformed Nintendo into the powerhouse it became. Fun fact about Nintendo and Yamauchi -- he was majority owner of the Seattle Mariners, and later on he sold his ownership over to Nintendo of America.
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Oct 23, 2015 22:06
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Thanks for the replies, but I actually found it! http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-secret-developers-wii-u-the-inside-story
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Oct 23, 2015 22:34
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If you've never read it, the book Game Over is a great writeup of the video game industry from the early days of SPACEWAR to the end of the SNES era and Nintendo features heavily in it. Yamauchi was like every xenophobic 80s stereotype of evil Japanese business executives made flesh, and the way they skirted regulations (like selling the NES with the Zapper and R.O.B. so it would be classified as a toy rather than a computer system) is really entertaining in its shamelessness.
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Oct 23, 2015 22:36
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Sleeveless posted:If you've never read it, the book Game Over is a great writeup of the video game industry from the early days of SPACEWAR to the end of the SNES era and Nintendo features heavily in it. Yamauchi was like every xenophobic 80s stereotype of evil Japanese business executives made flesh, and the way they skirted regulations (like selling the NES with the Zapper and R.O.B. so it would be classified as a toy rather than a computer system) is really entertaining in its shamelessness. One of my favorite anecdotes from that book was about a light gun arcade game Nintendo was debuting in Japan, where right before the unveiling they discovered that the sensors on the clay discs stopped working, meaning that they couldn't detect the signal from the guns. Nintendo couldn't afford to shut down the debut so they had someone behind the scenes manually entering in real time the registered hits and calculating the scores of the players, all hidden without nobody knowing. It was a hit, and Nintendo sold more of these at different locations, all based on a game that didn't even work at it's premiere.
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Oct 23, 2015 22:44
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Choco1980 posted:Since all the way back in the N64, Nintendo's market hold was basically "make a decent console that people will only buy a few absolutely killer top shelf games for." The Wii U is where that strategy has started to falter as the "killer top shelf game" list shrinks with each new iteration of the model. The idea behind the N64 was that between birthdays, holidays and allowance Nintendo's target market (at the time boys between the ages of 6-16) have enough money to make one big game purchase every quarter. Therefor Nintendo built a system around releasing a killer first or second party title every four months.
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Oct 23, 2015 22:44
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And that game was Conker's Bad Fur Day. 
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Oct 23, 2015 22:51
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Away from gamechat, but with all the PUMPKIN SPICE poo poo these days, I am somewhat unsurprised to see loving cat litter that promises to smell like pumpkin spice. Is that before or after the cat shits in the box?
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