9 years ago
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Wii U’s End—And a New Nintendo Console—Might Be Here Soon
Unlike its competition, Nintendo was resolute at last month's E3 Expo in its pledge to not talk about the future.
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I don't know how to feel about this. On the one hand, the WiiU is an incredibly niche console, even moreso than anything else that Nintendo has produced thus far. But at the same time there's so much damned potential in the machine still that it seems kind of bizarre to me that they'd be abandoning it so quickly, and it makes me wonder if the NX is going to be a new traditional console, or if it's going to be something different like a Kinect that extends the current console's life by a few years.
With all the talk that Nintendo has been preaching with their ideas of connectivity for the new loyalty program, their burgeoning focus on mobile development, and the rumors of WiiU development winding down within the next year or so, it could honestly be anything. It's just unlike them to kill off something so quickly.
Considering Nintendo's track record for 'innovation', I wouldn't be surprised if the NX becomes a mix of some of their previous consoles, as well as some emerging trends. It's definitely going to be interesting to see what they come up with.
But I also fear that it's going to be too gimmicky as they expand into mobile gaming.
It honestly reminds me of when sega during the Saturn era, obviously Nintendo has way more money then sega ever did, but the way they have been driven out of the console race so early is concerning... They really need to get back third party support, cus there's no way anyone's using a Nintendo machine as their sole console without any cross platform games available.
I feel that at this point they have completely given up on competing with other consoles like xbox or playstation. Realistically, their best bet is to try to become the "Family Device" that is relatively cheap and simple to use.
The same way the Wii ended up. It really is sad. I wish they start bringing their games to mobile. I would buy one of those adapters for my phone if it means I can play The Legend of Zelda with my phone. But I really dont see this happening anytime soon. They will release a Pokemon game on mobile but its a puzzle type game. Hopefully this will pave the way for more.
I think part of it is that for nintendo, America is really just the secondary market. Their market share in Japan is outrageously high (like 60%-70%) and so long as they keep selling in Japan, there won't be much incentive to distribute on third party hardware.
Still I feel like if their entire NA or EU markets were to disappear overnight it would hurt, and they would notice. That's a sizable pile of cash they're neglecting.
I'm interested in NX, if it happens to be a new console, I'm hoping for some kind of backwards compatibility (Nintendo still seems to be consistent on that forefront). My personal opinion is that's why xbone and ps4 got wrecked at first, I might be wrong on that but my friends still are on xbox 360. It seems that was inevitable because they both weren't x86_64 (PowerPC legacy crap on xb360). Happy that Microsoft at least made an effort with pseudo-backwards compatibility.
If it turns out to be some novelty accessory (like the Kinect) I don't have high hopes because you know how that works out in the past (and not just for Nintendo).
Interesting article but there are still a handful of pretty awesome games coming out for the Wii U in the next 12 months / year. I don't think it's quite dead yet, though I certainly wouldn't call it alive and well... :\
BTW would you mind also snapping to /t/WiiU? :)
I've added it to /t/WiiU.
I don't own a WiiU, myself, so I don't keep up on all the news for that platform. I just found this to be interesting because the WiiU hasn't been out for that long, I didn't think.
It hasn't relative to other consoles of it's generation. We've only gotten about 3 years out of the Wii U where as Xbox 360 and PS3 owners got about 7 out of their consoles. It's a shame, there are a few stellar games for the Wii U but Nintendo has made more mistakes than advances with this one. A great console would be a Nintendo console with a controller and games. Period. If they took a break from the gimmicks they could really turn things around for themselves. (that and fixing up their onlineplay/friends/dashboard mess they've made out of the Nintendo Network)
PS: Thanks for including us! :D
Happy to include whoever I can (where appropriate, of course) :)
I haven't had much time to keep up with video games (console or PC) in the past few years, so I only knew that the WiiU was relatively new and not usually (sadly) mentioned in the 'top tiers' with the Xbox and PS4, which is too bad because I've always liked the Nintendo line.