Did the Wii's success actually help or hurt Nintendo?

Firstly, this is not a topic dealing with Nintendo's handhelds, only their consoles. Secondly, this is not one of my anti-Nintendo rants, I'm going to lay out reasons why I think the Wii can be retrospectively viewed as genuinely poor machine in spite of its tremendous market performance because that performance made Nintendo far too complacent which has gone to hurt them today.

I know this question will get an immediate, "Uh, no.....billions in the bank is not harming them" responses, but now that the Wii is in the past and we're once again where we were before any of it happened (with each of Nintendo's systems on a general trend of worsening decline ever since the NES with the Wii being a rare anomaly), let's take the long term into account.

What did the Wii really do for Nintendo? In my estimation its immense success allowed Nintendo to:

• completely ignore at its own peril elements of its gaming infrastructure that are important to gamers (better online, HD).
• allowed them to maintain policies that they couldn't have afforded to get away with as easily had they not had the bankroll that the fervor of motion controls brought in to obfuscate them.
• not investing to expand their studios to expedite software output (they only did this a short while back, after realizing they needed it after not being able to depend on Wii's crazy sales when they dropped off, or worsening third party support.
• seen by many as turning their back on the core consumer to grab at the casuals, gamer resentment grows worse.
• worst of all, Nintendo seems to have no understanding at all as to what made the Wii a success, and therefor the transition to the U has been nothing but one massive cluster-**** entailing not only offering a confusing machine to consumers, but a fragmented audience that they don't even know quite what or who to focus on.
• feeling they don't need to mass market the U as they believe the Wii brandname would've carried them.

Sure, the Wii brought in truckloads of financial success for Ninty, but in doing so that enormous influx of money blinded them to underlying problems that'd been plaguing the company for years, and it unfortunately enabled them to sit on their asses doing barely anything to move it forward in areas necessary (not only to catch up from the past) but also working on the now to help lead up to its successor to prepare for the future, which is largely why it's suffered so much up to this point.

This is why I laugh when anyone tells me Nintendo or its management looks ahead. They most certainly do not, at least didn't during the Wii's success, and that's exactly why they are where they are today. So if you believe that the Wii has benefited Nintendo in other ways than simply monetarily, how so?

In the short run, it definitely hurts them.

In the long run, it's a whole lot more complicated. I'm actually feeling a bit under the weather right now, so I'll post a full analysis later, but thanks for the intelligent thread, Mirko!

it would have been great if they stuck to motion controls this gen and just beefed up the console...

they turned their backs on the wii casuals....they went right back to the gamecube/n64 era...

they hurt themselves.

I think that it helped them while it was being released but it hurt them in the long run. Ask people who own a wii about how much they play with it. Many might've bought it but it doesn't mean that everyone who bought it played it regularly. The reason I'm not buying a Wii U like I did with the Wii is because the Wii disappointed me in the third party game department. I could hardly trust anything besides the first party games.

I lost trust in them after Wii. And the fact that their new console is named Wii U makes me not want to buy it because it reminds me of the Wii. I really do think the Wii hurt them in the longrun.

I know everyone has different reasons for not buying a Wii U and this isn't the main one.

Essentially: they hurt themselves and helped themselves at the same time

Yes.. but their inability to adapt to an ever changing market has hurt them more.

No. They made boatloads of cash last gen and reestablished themselves as a force in the home console market. The Wii U is a quality system. Great library, the only system that's backwards compatible, and the last system that's free to play online after Sony caved. The reason the Wii U hasn't sold better is because they didn't market it as a brand new system (showing only the tablet and not the system at E3 was a huge mistake). The name added to the confusion. There were no compelling games at launch to show off the power of the system. I love NSMBU, but it's kinda fugly when you compare it to Rayman Legends and Tropical Freeze. Nintendoland is nowhere near as good as Wii Sports was. The price-point was wrong. And they pissed EA off by not bending over for origin (which I applaud). They'll most likely finish 3rd this gen because of those mistakes and events, but it'll still be my favorite Nintendo system since the N64.

How did they go back to the gamecube/n64 era? The N64 was the most powerful console of its gen and the gamecube was only slightly worse than the Xbox but more powerful than the PS2. PS4 and Xbone are far more powerful than the Wii U. If only they had made another gamecube or N64...

The wiis success was just that. What hurt them was everything they did after.

Money is good for companies, really.

Nintendo never really understood what made the Wii so popular. That's why they stopped making games for it and focused on the Wii U thinking it was what "real gamurz" wanted. The Wii was a Corolla or even a Volkswagen beetle and the Wii U is that ugly car that Homer Simpson designed for his brother's company. Everyone was behind the Wii U on the Interwebs, EA offered the infamous "Unprecedented alliance"... Until people in the real world were able to actually try the damn thing and it bombed. It's not a horsepower issue. It's a mojo thing. Things either click and resonate with people or they don't.

Help.

They have tons of cash-in-hand to invest in great first party exclusives.

Their ability to name and market the Wii U is what hurt them.

the games and controller interface is what i meant. power doesnt matter as much as that.

Whether the Wii hurt them more or not, is all about economics. The Wii did all those things you mentioned, but then again, when did Nintendo ever not have those sentiments about themselves? That part about ignoring core gamers, thinking their formula would work forever...and thinking that consumers will go to them instead of them coming to us....has always been Nintendo's problem, even prior to the Wii. The way I see it, Nintendo is a dinosaur company that has been around too long. And as the saying goes, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Nintendo's age in this industry makes them extremely resilient to adaptability and change. So Nintendo's weaknesses were as apparent 10 years ago as it is now. The Wii gave them a pinch of confidence that perhaps their business model is still as relevant now as it was 20/30 years ago. The actual impact of that pinch of confidence on Nintendo is quite difficult to measure.

Sony and MS had first crack at the motion controls that eventually landed on the Wii. Both of them turned it down. Both of them had a chance to put Bayonetta 2 on their system. They both passed.

Nintendo takes risks and that shows with their systems. I am a big fan of the motion controls. After they improved it with the motion plus, it became what it should be. Problem is that the gamepad killed what could have been a true HD Wii system. They were even arguing about the idea of a gamepad back when they decided on the motion controls. I'm sure that whoever thought of the idea is in the doghouse today, but the billions made on the Wii is something they should never regret. Nintendo has been the only profitable company in gaming this whole time.

3rd party publishers seemed attracted to the Wii at first because it had such a quick growing userbase. Unfortunately that userbase didn't want third party games. Granted there was a lot of shovelware for the moderate consumer to sift through, but gamers weren't that responsive even to the better third party titles either. Publishers didn't stand a chance even when the Wii was a success, they weren't going to be any better off when the Wii U wasn't selling.

Problem with 3rd party support for Wii U was that half the games were old ports of games so old their time had passed being viable on the market. Besides, gamers with PS3s and Xbox 360s weren't going to buy another $350 system to play the same games their current consoles could play. The system didn't sell, there was no userbase to sell games to (or at least what they were putting out), and that deminished publisher support, and lack of publisher support in effect hurt consumer support; it was a catch-22.

I guess the Wiis success was responsible for the Wii U. Wii sales started to slump and Nintendo got greedy. They tried to maintain momentum haphazardly and rushed the Wii U out without flushing out 3rd party support in the exclusive area, they simply wanted a system to play the same games PS3 and Xbox 360 had, and far too late. Sony and MS tried communicating with developers to design a system they wanted to make games for, Nintendo instead made a system that they wanted and not one designed with the developer concerns in mind.

Lots of things can be attributed to the Wii U's failure. I for instance believe that the success of the Wii and Nintendo DS both complimented each other to drive sales of both in tandem. The 3DS and Wii U both having rough starts probably did the same in the opposite. The Wii also had a large gimmicky fad thing going for it, not to say it wasn't a genuinely fun system to play, but nonetheless its success was very much attributed to being a fad. The Wii U could not not match that, rather the GamePad seemed more like a gambit.

I also take issue with the marketing issues people bring up, like saying Nintendo didn't advertise enough to let people know the Wii U was a new system. Sure, yes, many people didn't know about it, but I don't feel that's why. Nintendo didn't exactly promote the Wii extensively either. Again, the system was a fad, that means the system thrived from buzz, word of mouth, sensationalist reporting. It wasn't advertising that made the Flurbie such a hit. Nintendo couldn't achieve that reaction with the populous, with media, and to that degree public knowledge failed because there wasn't the stir the original Wii had.

Hurt.

Financially It helped Nintendo. But It really hurt them in the long run. Poor Hardware and Too much Reliance on the Casual Market and lots of Back Turning on the Core really hurt them and the WiiU is proof of that.

Fortunately it seems that Nintendo has saw that and are taking steps to fixing the wrongs that the Wii brought and making them right.

(Also with that said I loved the Wii)

The Wii did nothing but help them, what hurt them is how they responded to that success.

It hurt Nintendo more than helped them because it made them arrogant into thinking that the Wii name alone was going to propel the Wii U to success. Needless to say it didn't.

The Wii didn't change gaming. Remember when it was codenamed the Revolution? That it was going to change gaming and establish motion control as the STANDARD? It didn't do that. Gaming is still predicated on the traditional button layout. How many high profile blockbuster games use waggle nowadays?

Not to mention the only thing casuals cared about when they bought a Wii was WIi Sports......that's it. They didn't give a shit about Zelda, or Xenoblade, or Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Once that got stale, they forgot about it and went back to playing online poker and Angry Birds.

So in the end, no the Wii's success didn't really affect anything in the long term.

Well when they focus on the hardcore gamer their sales are poop. So can you blame them for what they did with the Wii?

Their biggest mistake was the name...Wii 2 would have got the attention of casuals but Wii U was just confusing and stupid.

With that said...Wii U is a beautiful little gem of a system for a hardcore gamer. Much like the N64 and Gamecube it will have a much beloved library of games even if it missed out on big third party titles.

I think Nintendo understood very well what made the Wii successful. The problem is that they thought the same thing would happen with the WiiU.

Every bad mistake Nintendo made with the Wii U (and 3DS) could have been avoided.

Their previous successes clouded their judgment, but they aren't why Nintendo under-performed this gen.

For some reason Nintendo opted to make a console and handheld tailored to the markets of 2006 rather than systems fit for 2012 and onward. They straight up ignored the threat of tablets and smartphones, how big online gaming had become on consoles, and the needs/desires of 3rd parties.

It didn't help them that they also chose to make products that weren't different-enough from their old products while retaining the almost the exact same name. Many people still see the Wii U and 3DS as "slightly upgraded models" of the Wii and DS.

Nintendo just needs to come back down to Earth, and open their ears to devs and consumers.

Excellent thread, Mirko.

From my perspective, the Wii was an inevitable outcome. They saw an opportunity with an untapped market and they grabbed it, which in turn resulted in massive financial gain, and that was more than welcome considering how the N64 and Gamecube performed. What business wouldn't opt for such a strategy?

Unfortunately, that indeed put a stigma on Nintendo's brand, a low powered machine focused on casuals and gimmicky controls, i remember how mostly everyone that held gaming as a hobby disliked the Wii because of this, how many developers ran away from it and ignored the system in comparison to the HD twins. I've seen many examples of younger gamers that just don't look at Nintendo with the same eyes as they look at Sony & Microsoft because of the Wii. And in this respect, the Wii hurt them.

I don't think their reputation and brand will ever change, and that is a little sad personally, because i love their games, and i love the Wii. It's a genuinely great system filled with fantastic exclusives and is a excellent retro machine via VC. The Wii is in my personal list of top 5 systems ever made.

It's a God damn shame Nintendo didn't have the foretelling to invest in a different strategy with the WiiU. I think they had their motives to do what they did, that much is obvious, i won't claim i would know better as an outsider.

But in my opinion, they should have rolled out a more powerful machine backed by a balls out aggressive marketing campaign pointing out its strength and differentiation from the Wii, with a different name to boot.. such as Wii 2. That name would have made it clear that it's a successor, and not something els (which was a real issue early on as we can remember with all the confusion surrounding the gamepad, whether it's an addon or not).

It help and i dare everyone who speak against nintendo or you will be banned from this site.

sure the same arguments could be levelled at the PS2 and thats considered, by many, to be the grestest console of all time.
sony falling behind in online. intentionally making a complicated console to tie developers to the PS platform, relying very heavily on 3rd parties and so on....all PS2 strategy and all incredibly successful for that console.

its also false.

there is no question the wii helped nintendo. had they gone the PS3/360 route they would have been wiped out. they had to try something different and it worked incredibly well for the wii.

the problems for the wiiu have nothing to do with the wii. at the end of the day the concept of the wiiu is a harder sell and the console lacks its exclusive killer app that shows off what the gamepad can add to gaming. the idea of gaming on a tablet like device is also not new. so the market has reacted with Meh.

put it like this....why pick up a wiiu over a PS3 or 360? the PS3 and 360 cost less, have a massive backlog of cheaper games and provide pretty much the same experience (not even nintendos own games make great use of the pad). graphically there isnt a massive difference between them either.

so whats nintendos sales pitch for the wiiu? the games coming out at the moment only appeal to people who bought a gamecube. it has less games than the PS3 and 360 and it costs more. it doesnt have the multiplats and even if it did they would be vastly inferior to the PS4 and X1.

contrast that to sonys pitch with the PS4: you can have the most powerful console on the market, with the best version of multiplats (which are the system sellers in the industry at the moment) for the same price or less than the competition.

or the wii: wii sports, motion controls and accessible games for all the family for a pocket friendly price. it also had games that appealed to different members of the family.

so when designing their next console nintendo need to think "what is the clear message we can send out with this new console?".

Wii U had no games when it came out and was completely overshadowed by hype for next gen consoles. It doesn't help that it was named Wii U either.

You guys really need to read more Sean Malstrom......

"So the Wii will be viewed as a poor machine because of what nintendo made with its successor? The **** am I reading here? Nintendo had their hands on the market's pulse during the Wii, and didn't during the WiiU. This failure to respond to mainstream trends twice in a row doesn't retroactively make the Wii shit. Thats not how devices or anything in life is evaluated."

Read my OP title, please: It's "Did the Wii actually help or hurt Nintendo", it's not, "Was the Wii a success?" or whether the U has bearing on that. We all know that when viewed by itself what the answer to that is. This topic is not a focus on the Wii by itself, it's about whether taken into account Nintendo's entire strategy thus far, has it helped them or not? Do you believe the Wii's prominence held an overall negative or positive impact on Nintendo's business strategy as a whole as they've chosen to pursue it today?

"Why bother elaborating when you already pointed out that the Wii disrupted the downward trend. Its a success and in every way an absolute win by Nintendo and anyone's standards, period."

See above.

"Again. All of these points you perceive as failures that preceded the Wii U's release have absolutely NOTHING to do with the Wii. All the right decisions were made with the Wii and any oversight in preparing for their next platform is a problem that should only affect how you evaluate that next platform. Problems don't work backwards and ruin or nullify good decisions made on previous devices."

I don't believe I ever said they did.

But problems plaguing previous platforms absolutely translate directly forward into the present. If you don't believe that decisions affecting the company, previous hardware, and the advancements that hardware brings over a generation does not constitute an evolution of a business strategy, then I don't know what to tell you. Every single console generation builds upon the preceding and passes down its "lineage" to its forebear in what it offers and works to improve, so to speak. In online, in building a specific audience, in digital distribution, everything. You simply cannot evaluate a current-gen platform without also retroactively looking at what has been done in previous generations to see whether it has helped or hindered a company in their current situation. The decisions and actions made by Nintendo during the Wii's lifetime extend far past just the Wii and vastly impact the Wii U as well. It's exactly inaction during the Wii's lifetime that is why the U is having such a hard time. My whole argument.

The Wii was a phenomenon I won't argue against, but it was predicated 90% on the furor and novelty of the promise of (ultimately unfulfilled, imo) cheap motion controls. That is what brought in the money. Through the Wii's success, Nintendo was allowed to further stagnate a period of what.......6+ years (?), laughing all the way to the bank the whole time, while doing jack shit to attend to elements of their business that would now be conducive to the approach they seem to be taking with the Wii U presently....things such as working on better third party support, bettering online, modernizing digital policies, expanding their VC, investing in expansion. Nintendo was on a general decline with each system of theirs ever since the release of the NES until the Wii hit. Had they not had the benefit of the Wii's immense gain that really had nothing to do with what they've traditionally offered (if it had, wouldn't the U be performing just as well?), do you think they could've afforded to be so lackadaisical in addressing and modernizing areas of their business that might have been causing that steady decline and may be many of the reasons that they are suffering today?

The way I see it, the money the Wii brought in did Nintendo absolutely no favors except buy them some time. It did not progress their business. It allowed this company, already known to be stubborn and slow to change, to remain largely languishing in antiquity in both philosophies and policies that are doing nothing but further impeding and alienating them now. Personally, I think if the Wii had been an utter failure or had kept that down-sloping trend going as it has been all these years, Nintendo would've been forced to act sooner, and they'd in turn be in a much healthier position today.

"So why exactly should we be laughing at Nintendo's management?"

Don't get me started. If you need to be told, you've not been paying any attention or simply don't want to see. And if you wish to compare the financials of Nintendo to the likes of Sony, then I'd advise you look at Sony's gaming division in relation, not the entire corporate entity.

Well it hurt the WiiU, because no way it was going to sell like the Wii. People bought a Wii who had not bought a console for years, just to play Wii sports. Those people weren't going to "upgrade".

Only manchildren that live in their mother's basement and virgins jerk off over Nintendo's cash reserves. McDonalds makes more money than any other burger joint but it doesn't change the fact that their cardboard burgers taste like shit. You could have all the money in the world, but that doesn't mean jack shit if you're doling out ancient tech or raping other people's wallets with yearly rehashes of Mario 0383083 because the morons are stupid enough to buy them over and over even though its the same stupid game with prettier graphics, or a piss-poor online service with dumbass friend codes.

No point in having a massive warchest if you're shortchanging gamers of things that could have been better.

Hard to say, I sure know the name of it didn't help though lolz. Blunder there and since it looks and sounds so much just like another Wii, is probably why some people don't want to bother purchasing it, however handhelds don't seem to be doing too bad in that department, definitely know that I've been playing way more Nintendo games on my handhelds such as the 3DS lately.

But then again... 2DS? Nah.

Well uh it's like u said they made millions it helped end of story don't need a essay to know that

You seem angry lol. Please tell us more about how you feel.

Let it all out. Its gonna be ok, child.

Another internet myth propagated by uninformed people or console war parrots that value system wars ammo over actually knowing if the shit they are saying is true.

Here are the facts:

NINTENDO Wii------------------

• Wii = over 8.72 attach rate (average number of games sold per console) as of last year
• hw: 100m
• sw: 872m

PLAYSTATION 3----------------

• PS3 9.62 attach rate (average number of games sold per console) as of last year
• hw: ~78m
• sw: 750m

So in average PS3 consumers bought one more game than Wii owners as of 2013. So where do these stories of Wiis just for Wii Sports come from, the large fanboy book of Tales of the Ass?

Since then Wii numbers up until Setptember of 2014 are:

Hardware: 101.23 million

Software: 901.43 million

I don't have recent PS3 data to compare but regardless the 2013 numbers will do just fine to put these dumb claims to rest.

The Wii's success ended up hurting consumers. Nintendo lazily tried to replicate the same Wii financial achievement with the Wii U by slapping on a gimmick with underpowered hardware and features.

Your're right

They bought Wii Fit and Just Dance as well. Wii owners have an extensive game collection.

First off, PS3 sold 80 mil, not 78 mil....get your facts straight. Secondly, attach rate doesn't tell the whole story buddy. I'm talking strictly about casuals here, since the whole point of the Wii was to appeal to grandmas and women who don't care about videogames. My point still stands that they didn't care about games like Silent Hill or Xenoblade, they don't care about core titles that appeal to the rest of gamers, which is why they skipped out on the Wii U. Attach rate doesn't tell you who bought what game, or what their playing habits are. Why do you think most 3rd parties are reluctant to put their games on the Wii?

No one cares are about the Wii anymore. That's why everytime I go into Gamestop the Wii games get relegated to a small seclusive section while PS3/PS4/Xbox360/Xbone games take up a huge brunt of wall shelf space where they can easily be seen.

@MarkAndExecute said:

First off, PS3 sold 80 mil, not 78 mil....get your facts straight. Secondly, attach rate doesn't tell the whole story buddy. I'm talking strictly about casuals here, since the whole point of the Wii was to appeal to grandmas and women who don't care about videogames. My point still stands that they didn't care about games like Silent Hill or Xenoblade, they don't care about core titles that appeal to the rest of gamers, which is why they skipped out on the Wii U. Attach rate doesn't tell you who bought what game, or what their playing habits are. Why do you think most 3rd parties are reluctant to put their games on the Wii?

No one cares are about the Wii anymore. That's why everytime I go into Gamestop the Wii games get relegated to a small seclusive section while PS3/PS4/Xbox360/Xbone games take up a huge brunt of wall shelf space where they can easily be seen.

1) As I've said many times in that post; Those are numbers gathered in a 2013 analysis!!!

And it doesn't fucking matter if it sold 80, 90 or 200. Wii still has an average of nearly 9 games sold per unit, which brings us to...

2) Don't move goalposts. You implied the Wii's user base mostly bought it to play Wii Sports and nothing else. You were proven wrong. End of story.

Own up to your mistake.

3) Anecdotal evidence of your Gamestop shopping experience or random selection of games to prove core games didn't sell when that was never your original claim, makes it clear you are tap-dancing and doing all sorts of mental gymnastics to worm your way out of the fact that you are wrong about the Wii Sports thing.

I could name plenty of traditional million selling games on Wii, but that would be falling for your little diversion.

It put money in the bank for them....that never hurts.

Go ahead...name them. And no, I'm not moving goalposts cuz my point has remained the same is that casuals don't care about core games. Lol but that still doesn't answer my question though....who on average is buying 9 games per system? Moms? Grandmas? Or some crazily obsessed hardcore Nintendo fanboy with 1000 games stashed in his mother's wardrobe who routinely buys 5 shovelware games a month even though it sucks but buys it anyway because the boxart looks purdy? Or that same fanboy who buys nothing but Nintendo games? Did grandma go out and buy Metroid Other M or Super Smash Brawl? That's my point. Casuals don't care about core games. That's why you don't see them running crazy like gushing teenyboppers at a Justin Beiber concert over the Wii U.

1) What is it with Wii haters and their obsession with old people. Christ, its like a knee-jerk reaction or the go-to insult when there is nothing more intelligent or factual to be said. Wii was also popular with older demographics...the horror!

2) So wait, what are you saying here? That the "crazy obsessed nintendo fanboys" were the ones inflating the attach ratio by buying games in the hundreds?

LOOL are you for real? Did you have your tinfoil hat when you typed that? The aliens might be listening you know!!!

Super Smash Bros Brawl sold around 12.14 million copies btw. And Twilight Princess nearly 6 million on Wii alone. You think this was the work of nintendo loyalists alone? Where are these loyalists on Wii U then? By your logic we should expect the same number on Smash Wii U, right? No, and you know why? Because many of those who bought Brawl were also CASUALS. The same you say aren't now running over the Wii U in the many tired, uninspired and absolutely pointless jokes about Nintendo fans you sprinkle all over your poor arguments.

You are tripping over your own shit and disproving yourself. You are doing half the work for me, so thanks for that I guess.

Well over the short term it obviously helped them. It was their biggest home console hit by a wide margin, generated profit from each console sold, and generated Massive profits from the huge sales of several first party titles that thrived with a larger install base. It also gave them a lot of positive publicity not only on gaming sites, but in general media as well. The Wii/DS era was clearly the Zenith of Nintendo.

Over the long term I've always argued that it's hurt them.

Their dual runaway successes in the DS and Wii caused them to bloat the size of the company, making them less able to react to changing market forces and contributed to their inability to stay in the black when their hardware successors failed to generate remotely comparable install bases. It reinforced wrong headed thinking about what consumers generally want in a home console, gave shield to Nintendo's incompetence in building a modern online platform, and - worst of all IMO - has been leveraged by existing management to keep themselves running the company long after it became clear that a new direction was needed.

The Wii was never a good model to emulate for sustained success, because it's success was in spite of so many poor decisions made in design and execution. The Wii was a runaway fad and an iconic product in large part because of how well Wii Sports presented itself to casual and non gaming audiences in short demonstrations. Unfortunately, the platform rarely delivered titles afterwards that worked nearly as well with the controls, and those millions of casual impulse buyers generally lost interest in the system quickly and migrated to mobile when it became the new "magical" gizmo to play for short bursts.

Damn you caught me. Derp derp derp.....

I don't hate the Wii. I actually have one and do enjoy Skyward Sword quite a bit, I just like taking jabs at the Wii because its not the godsend to gaming like the sheep make it out to be, so I'm just telling it like it is. Yeah I know, the truth hurts. Suck it.

Yes, it was popular with older demographics, ones who went and bought Wii Sports and nothing else. Once they realized how lame it was, they went back to playing real golf. Fact is, they are and still remain clueless about Metroid or Smash Brawl because they don't care. They're not a reliable revenue source which is why Nintendo made the Wii U what it is, an overly complicated device designed for core gamers.

As for where the loyalists on Wii U are? I dunno...maybe they thought that having to purchase an overly expensive 2 Wii's duct-taped together was a rip-off, which is why they skipped out and bought a smartphone instead. Its no surprise that SSB and Zelda: TP sold so well...because Nintendo fans buy Nintendo systems for Nintendo games. And also, here's another thing. You know what those games have in common? They use the traditional button layout. To your average grandma...playing a game with that level of complexity is like putting a newb at the helm of a ship.

That's not even addressing what I said about people playing with a Wii. Besides a mario cart night how many people actually play with one consistently?

I NEVER said anything about wii just being for wii supports, I said ask people if they play with their wii often.

And if you wanna argue about attach rates you should argue about how many of those attach rates included a third party game. I bet the majority of them are first party games because no one likes to play jenga or some stupid third party fishing game made my fisherprice.

Sure there's some good third party games but you might as well consider them gems. Wii hardly has a library if we're talking about expansive libraries.

I do admit the first party games are VERY good though.

One thing I want to point out too is that back when the Wii "dominated", the irony was that it didn't really act like the market leader. You know how the market leader typically sets the trends, standards, conventions, business models, etc. Well, if that were the case we should've seen Sony and MS using the Wii-Mote set up for the Dualshock 4 and Xbox One gamepad by now. Instead, what we're witnessing is actually the reverse. Funny thing is Nintendo is apeing Sony and MS's approach -- the 2 SKUs (Basic 8 GB set and Deluxe 32 GB set), $60 games, HD (remember how they once said HD doesn't matter, well it does now), multimedia functionality (Netflix, Youtube, etc). So in essence, Nintendo is actually acknowledging that Sony and MS's way of doing things is the correct way of doing business LOL

It helped; however, Nintendo like so many Eastern companies tend to be a bit slow on change. Nintendo is in a very good spot right now. (I know this may shock people on SW but they make great money with plenty of funds in the bank) What I want to see from Nintendo (short of going 3rd party that is what I really want but is not gonna happen) is for them to improve their online (not holing my breath there), and for them to really get into DLC (they are finally starting that). Aside from that I am very happy with Nintendo. They seem to be different then MS and Sony. That is a good thing after all who wants 3 of the same type of thing anyway?

50 / 50. I think the WiiU was released a year to late. Nintendo got greedy with the Wii and tried to ride out Cash Cow for far too long. The Wii was a great console which had some great games but the last 2 years of its life cycle was quite awful if i remember correctly as the good games where starting to become so few and far between. Nintendo should of started development of games much earlier for the WiiU than whenever they did and had games like Mario Maker as the game to sell the WiiU Gamepad functionality rather New Super Mario Bros, Had Metroid Other M as another Game to show off the controllers functionality and then sold it as a the ultimate console with several good ports of PS3 360 like how NFS MW almost is. Nintendo should have brought more smaller development teams with some of their cash reserves to add more variation to their eshop as it is just started to now not look quite bare bones.