Wii could be the fall of Nintendo
Ah, Nintendo, you have given the world some of the most memorable characters in video games. Who can forget their first time finding out that the princess was actually in another castle, or playing their first song on the ocarina in “Zelda?” Yes, Nintendo truly paved the way for video games as a pastime in homes today. So then, how is it that Nintendo is quickly losing the respect of many gamers who once loved it so much?
Garrett Estrada
Simply put, Nintendo decided that their once-loyal fan base just isn’t as profitable these days as the average “casual gamer.”
The Wii, which became the nation’s had-to-have-it item during the past couple of years, has been a phenomenal success for Nintendo. If things continue on the same track, however, it could end up as a long-term disaster. Here’s why: Nintendo designed a console that specifically targets people who don’t usually play games, and therefore doesn’t earn as many hard-core gamers as Microsoft’s Xbox 360 or Sony’s PlayStation 3.
It might not seem so bad, especially if one notices the way Wii Fit and a few other popular titles are selling, currently trumping most games on the higher end systems. However, this is a trend that cannot and will not last. Most games that have been made for the Wii but developed by companies other than Nintendo have sold poorly. As a result, the Wii is releasing games that are cheaper and lower quality to make up for the low sales. The official industry term is “shovelware,” referring to the endless number of low quality Wii games being produced to try and make a quick buck.
Efforts have been made by companies like Sega to make games for the Wii that appeal to the hard-core gamers that normally do most of their playing on either the PS3 or 360. Titles like “MadWorld” and “The Conduit” both were received well by critics but failed to sell. If there were any games that would bring a “hard-core” audience back to the Wii, it most likely would’ve been these.
Secondly, the Wii has sold fewer and fewer games each month for the entire year of 2009. Granted, it still outsells all other consoles on the market, but since most homes that wanted a Wii now have one, Nintendo’s console will soon face a rather sharp drop in sales. Considering the recent price cuts of both the 360 and PS3, the Wii has also lost its image as being the cheap console, being only $50 less than its competition.
Perhaps most important is its lack of features. The Wii doesn’t have a built-in hard drive, no real online support for games, outdated visuals, and you can’t even watch movies on the thing. The only thing it had going for it was the motion controls, which both Sony and Microsoft are going to be incorporating into their consoles sometime next year.
Nintendo has had a good run, and trust me, they have made a great deal of money from their little system, but with Sony and Microsoft both kicking it into high gear this year, Nintendo’s dominance might finally come to an end.
Garrett Estrada can be reached at arts-entertainment@nevadasagebrush.com.
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16 Responses to “Wii could be the fall of Nintendo”
You seem to write more of your opinion than actual facts here. Being that you’re a journalist(I assume), I woult think you would back up what you say with some facts, but I don’t see hardly any presented here in the article…please research BEFORE writing your next article.
You said, “Most games that have been made for the Wii but developed by companies other than Nintendo have sold poorly.” What is your definition of poorly?
There are 56 million plus sellers on the Wii, compared to 34 on the PS3 and 68 on the Xbox360. 66% of the million plus sellers on the Wii are from Third Party Publishers…so more than HALF of the million sellers on Wii are from other companies other than Nintendo.
You also said, “Titles like “MadWorld” and “The Conduit” both were received well by critics but failed to sell.” I don’t know what information you looked at, or what your definition of “well” is, but The Conduit is sitting at an average review score of 69 out of 100… getting “Mixed or average reviews”.
Madworld is sitting at 81 out of 100, or “Generally favorable reviews”.
A couple of quick rebuttals to your semi-facts/opinions:
“The Wii doesn’t have a built-in hard drive…”: Correct, but it does have 512mb of internal flash memory and has SD card support, so you can download and upload games to/from the SD card if you run out of the 512mb.
“…no real online support for games…”: Compared to Xbox Live which you have to pay $50 for, no…or even compared to Sony’s online service, it’s lacking…but that doesn’t mean the online doesn’t work. The main issue with Nintendo’s online you failed to mention is their use of Friend Codes that aren’t exactly friendly.
Games like Excitebots: Trick Racing, Animal Crossing: City Folk, Call of Duty: World at War, and The Conduit work well once you get into the matches. Call of Duty: World at War was done extremely well on the Wii and the online is extremely smooth and quick to get into matches…even the review scores for COD:WaW on the Wii were very close to it’s “HD” counterparts.
“…outdated visuals…”: Compared to the Xbox360 and PS3, yes…but visuals don’t always make game play…and the Xbox360 and PS3 are dated compared to gaming PCs.
“….you can’t even watch movies on the thing…”: You are incorrect if you mean DVDs, because you can, http://gizmodo.com/5036483/dvdx-homebrew-hack-brings-full-wii-dvd-playback-doesnt-require-modchip, though it requires downloading certain applications to the Wii.
Again, being that I’m assuming you’re a journalist, and you get paid to write articles, I expect you to write on facts, not just your opinions…RESEARCH BEFORE YOU WRITE!
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Basically… what Scott said!
Go Scott!
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Really? I mean, REALLY? I agree with some of the points written in the article, but overall this is just poor.
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You also forget that the Play On service just launched for Wii and that has support for Hulu, Netflix and Youtube all of which provide movies for viewers.
Call of Duty: World at War was a hardcore title that sold over a million on Wii as was Call of Duty 3.
The “Casual” market that Nintendo has also consists of many young gamers who only have a Wii and will grow up into potential “hardcore” players who remember their younger days and associate that with Nintendo, much like many people our age did.
All of the claims are easy to refute and show just how wrong the hardcore audience was and is when it comes to Wii.
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Today, we learn that Garrett is a bitter HD-gaming fanboy.
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The video game industry as a whole is converting to mainstream consumer. Look at games now compared to the past. Games are easier but still satisfy, thats where Nintendo has found the formula and now companies want in on it.
Mario was so good because it was accessible to just about anyone. How? The object is simple… you move left to right on a screen you jump and you beat the boss and get the princess.
What makes Halo so good? It was because it was accessible to just about anyone. How? Controls Controls Control!
You have it all wrong when you say Nintendo has give up on their fans. Yes we had a dry year in 2008 but that was not because they did not give us enough games they spoiled us the year before!!!!! Metroid Prime 3 and Super Mario Galaxy… then few months later Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Kart Wii.
Not to mention, THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO PLAY METRIOD GAMES ARE THE FANS!!! But Nintendo still puts effort in to releasing them why because they care about us.
Nintendo has one weapon… Miyamoto he is a visionary, they are the most important people in any industry they have a vision and a purpose. As long has he still works at Nintendo, Nintendo will always remain number one.
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Basic law of economics says they might have run out of people to sell the Wii to at $250, but just like Sony and Microsoft, there are customers waiting for the price drop. And there is no reason to believe that pool of people isn’t bigger than what Microsoft and Sony will get with their price points. Therefore, Wii still outsells the competition and we’ll be reading this article again by this guy 3 years from now.
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Not a video game player, but what Scott wrote pretty much dominated what this journalist initially wrote.
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honestly I can’t tell if this guy is talking seriously or just being sarcastic.
this has to be the worst time to say the famous catchphrase “Nintendo is doomed” with them being most profitable company in this industry. and FYI 3rd party titles don’t sell on Wii because they’re hardly good and have almost no advertising. titles like Mario, Zelda and Smash Bros have sold more than 6 million units each.
this “arcticle” only shows the writer’s wish and nothing more.
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…….
Oh dear God….
You gotta be kidding……
NINTENDO IS MAKING TONS OF MONEY AND GATHERING MORE PEOPLE AND YOU ARE SAYING THEY ARE DOOMED?
Really?! just answer this: is Nintendo making a wii HD console or the xbox/ps3 are having motion controls?
who are the losers again?
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microsoft and sony didn’t die because nintendo won the past three years. so will nintendo.
it doesn’t matter if nintendo’s selling less than the others. i think the most important thing is that nintendo will always be a very important company. and will always create interesting machines.
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Funny. I could’ve sworn I read this article almost en verbatim before. Oh wait, I have, on about five hundred other sites, making all of the same uninformed claims and nonsensical conclusion-jumpings as you have here. The term “hive mind” seems to be on the tip of my tongue, for some unknown reason…
Seriously, this is getting old. If it’s supposed to be an opinion piece (which is what it sounds like, as there don’t seem to be many facts present), then why does your opinion perfectly echo the opinions of about half a thousand OTHER opinion pieces out there and add absolutely nothing new to the discussion? Why are your arguments identical to the letter? Why are your assertions similarly off in la-la land and ignoring actual hard facts?
Trying to claim that it’s some sort of “universal opinion” is pretty shallow, as if it were genuinely universal, it wouldn’t bear repeating every two days by some new poster in what suspiciously resembles a pre-assembled “article” that was slightly edited to not draw attention to the fact that it’s all but identical in content to the rest of them. If you’re a viral marketer, please try harder to conceal the fact. If you’re genuinely expressing your opinion, please consider doing some research before deciding that it must be true because you want it to be true. Reality doesn’t work like that.
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Wii released in 2006.
Before that all the core gamers went wild when seeing the Wiiremote in 2005 revealed at TGS.
WE all thought about the possibilities of how OUR games would be changed controlling them more interactively.
But since the times Nintendo mentioned about simply specs not mattering anymore I think a lot of CORE gamers were dissapointed right off the bat in that sentince alone and Nintendo STILL to this day never revelaing the official specs sheet of the Wii publicy liek MS or Sony do all the time and tout procesing power and memory etc etc
The domino effect of that continues to this very day to this very minute….NO HD and minus some features 360/PS3 have (that could be implemented..in a Nintendo way) and you have some p’d off “CORE” gamers.
To many of these “CORE” gamers Wii is for kids or its sh*t or [insert slander here].
There is no point even bringing Wii up. To thm Wii is dead.
You will soon hear thee same people who all used to disrespect the Wii in one way or the other and who have no plans of ever getting the console….calling NATAL or Sony Motion the best thing since [insert your ow nbest thing ever sinc...comment here?]
This is exactly what the Wii represented when it launched in 2005 to those CORE gamers who resent the Wii.
I admit some features could with a bit of tweak(the ones u you looove so much on 360/PS3)….but you cannot discount what the console has done for gaming in general(INCLUDING CORE/HARDCORE GAMERS!/gaming!)
So yeah…them following the Wii only proves it was right the step Nintendo took in the first place.
heh.
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TYPOs aplenty?
I meant Sentence* I edited my comment so many times I just had to finish off somwhere… so if you find more well you have been warned…plus am doing this from work so…. yeah. :)
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Why is the only thing that’s compared on a Nintendo system is Nintendo vs. Third Parties? It’s always done shallowly. Fine, let’s do this.
Nintendo dedicates true development time and experience while balancing the budget. They target niche and they target the mainstream with specific titles and will often try to go for both. Nintendo hasn’t had all runaway successes on their own system. Fire Emblem and Mario Strikers are great games, they havn’t sold as many games as say Super Smash Bros. Brawl or Wii Fit, but they sold well. Many third parties are finding sustainable sells and even a market on the Wii to sell their titles too.
We are receiving a lot of quality titles this year. Yes, Mad World failed and the Conduit didn’t set the sales charts on fire, but there have been successes in the mature and non-mature third party markets. Red Steel, No More Heroes, Sonic games, Resident Evil. Not all the games were high quality, and those are just a nice tip of the iceberg. Third parties can get good sales on the Wii, and they can do so with quality content. I’m sorry that some of Sega’s investment havn’t been runaway success stories, but quality games fail to sell well every time on all gaming platforms.
Most importantly, not all hardcore gamers have the same interests. World War II shooters may be able to live like kings on the 360 and PS3, but their success on the Wii shouldn’t be ignored. Activision and EA would have abandoned the platform if it didn’t have potential and wasn’t showing results. I’ll admit that I love playing Devil May and Metroid Prime, but I don’t overindulge on those games. I lean more toward games that allow me to become immersed easily like horror games (Resident Evil/Silent Hill) or games that do something exceedingly well and is very fun (SSX Blur/Tiger Woods ‘10) and even games with great stories or style (Zelda/Okami/Muramasa).
Many of the games that dominate mindshare online like Fallout 3 I would never even try to play. Many gamers I met are like that. It’s not that we’re not into those epic experiences, but that they just don’t have the type of appeal that a game like Halo ODST or Ratchet and Clank Future would have on the Wii. (I’d be on both of those games day one if in some alternate really they ever did come to the Wii)
What’s point of shooting at fish in a barrel, missing, then complaining about the guy without a blindfold dooing better? Target us better. Capcom, EA, Sega and many other are really starting to get it.
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Wow, you must not be very good at this reporting thing. Did you not read the latest news that stated that the Wii as of this year is statistically even with 360 and PS3 in game quality. So I really can’t see the logic in writing this article. Worst part is that one of the most anticipated games Tiger Woods was reviewed as the must have version poor graphics and all. I play all of the time online on my Wii, I can stream movies and watch youtube on it along with Netflix through playon. It’s graphics are better then the PS2 which still has great games and the Wii doesn’t have to appeal to hardcore gaming. Have you not learned yet, it’s not the graphics stupid it’s the game play. Halo sold 8 million Halo 2 looked better and only sold 5 million, Grand turismo sold 3 million, wii fit sold 22 million, hardly a graphics powerhouse neither is Mario Kart Wii (17 Million). They have sold 384 million games since release, far outpacing the HD systems. And speaking of exclusive titles, they make up the vast majority of sales on the PS3 and 360. Doing the math the top 5 Wii games have outsold the PS3 and XBox 360 top 20 list combined. No hard drive on the wii, Xbox arcade has the same problem except that it can’t take a 32gb SD card like the wii. Since they have sold 10 million virtual console games it seems like the lake of a hard drive was an issue. I wish people would stop saying the wii sold well because it was cheap. Since it was always sold as a party system it cost most people $310 adding the extra controller set, not to mention bigger families getting three total controllers plu SD cards. Working part time at best buy we always attached to the Wii unlike the HD systems. Average sale exceeded the cost of the 360. I don’t mind fanboys writing articles, but please have facts to support the article.
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