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[Steve Youngblood]

Fair enough, but didn't they piss almost all of that away with PS3?

I'd heard something to that effect. I'm sure those more organized than myself in terms of saving sales data can clarify that. But if we run with that for the time being, we are at least establishing that there was a decade's worth of profits to piss away.

 

[Yado]

Heh. It was the best console version of the game and was pretty much the only graphic heavy racer on the system (and probably still is).

So what? There was no demand for that game, it wouldn't have pushed Wii U units regardless of how much money Nintendo/EA funneled into advertising for it.

 

[Maxrunner]

Heh. It was the best console version of the game and was pretty much the only graphic heavy racer on the system (and probably still is).

Nintendo probably wants to promote exclusive content first i guess. Still this would never worth the investment, still 6 monthes later...

 

[-MB-]

Yes, okay. It sure was nice of Nintendo to feature the game in their glorified echochamber Nintendo direct.

Read what Ward actually said though. EA didn't want to print the game because the Wii U's atrocious sales practically ensured they weren't going to make their money back, and Nintendo weren't willing to do anything about it.

I havent heard the echo chamber nonsense ín a while, sure doesn't help your argument one bit.

 

[Colonel Mustard]

commonality with all those titles being that they are all platformers. Platformers selling well on Nintendo platforms is hardly a surprise, anyone into platformers in this day and age most likely is a Nintendo fan.

Edge isn't really a platformer. RUSH is a puzzle game. Toki Tori 1&2 are sorta platformers? More puzzle games.

Disregarding success doesn't make much sense here. Success is success. I suppose well have a better idea at the end of March through April when the eShop explodes though. When your average porting costs are about $15,000, a positive roi isn't a difficult thing to achieve.

 

[Smiles and Cries]

Yeah mang, and EA did something? you know, the actual publishers of the game and funders of Criterion?
Some of you are so fixated on blaming everything on Nintendo you even gloss over the fact that
the actual publisher didn't do anything themselves, as even Alex Ward himself stated.

no one seems to be pissed that The Wonderful 101 bombed its not like I saw this game outside of Nintendo Directs

Nintendo is really bad at marketing in general NFS had no chance to get a push from them we can blame them for doing nothing but it is not like this is Shocking News to anyone who watch good games go out to die on Nintendo platforms

 

[-MB-]

no one seems to be pissed that The Wonderful 101 bombed its not like I saw this game outside of Nintendo Directs

Nintendo is really bad at marketing in general NFS had no chance to get a push for them we can blame them for doing nothing but it is not like this is Shocking News to anyone who watch good games go out to die on Nintendo platforms

Nintendo is sure to blame for W101, since they published it, NFSMWU is NOT published by them, that's all on EA.

 

[Maxrunner]

Also hes he saying EA didnt paid them?

 

[GSG Flash]

Not to defend Nintendo or EA, but this was a late full priced port of an average game (like ME3). Anyone who wanted to play the game already did so at that point.

Nintendo should be slammed for their handling of W101 though. They should have done for that game what MS is doing for Titanfall right now.

 

[Smiles and Cries]

Nintendo is sure to blame for W101, since they published it, NFSMWU is NOT published by them, that's all on EA.

Alex Ward and most of this thread wanted Nintendo to do the right thing

I have been saying it was a lose lose for Nintendo but most here seems to think Nintendo should have done something to support EA's month old port

When we look at the Wii U and the month this game came out there was really nothing else Nintendo was spending advertising dollars on they could have promoted this hard but to me it would have been a lost for Nintendo when a few months later NFS RIVALS had no Wii U logo in trailers lol

 

[Steve Youngblood]

Nintendo is sure to blame for W101, since they published it, NFSMWU is NOT published by them, that's all on EA.

I'm not suggesting that Nintendo should have chosen Need For Speed specifically to throw money at, but I feel like there's a disconnect here. You seem to be under the impression that it doesn't behoove a platform-holder to ever promote a third-party title, and I'm not certain I understand why. Again, I want to make it clear that I'm not saying Nintendo should have promoted Most Wanted when EA wouldn't, but I also don't think doing so would be inherently absurd. There is strategic value in trying to ensure success for third parties.

 

[BennyBlanco]

Damn. Even indie startups not interested in putting their stuff on Wii U.

 

[Bgamer90]

So what? There was no demand for that game, it wouldn't have pushed Wii U units regardless of how much money Nintendo/EA funneled into advertising for it.

It more than likely would have sold better on the Wii U if it had better advertising.

Nintendo probably wants to promote exclusive content first i guess. Still this would never worth the investment, still 6 monthes later...

Don't know why people keep on bringing up "6 months". FYI, Burnout Revenge on the Xbox 360 came out 6 months after the PS2/Original Xbox version and still did well. Time of release shouldn't really matter for fun pick up and play games like arcade racers. We aren't talking about a single player AAA game or a sports sim.

 

[Scum]

I don't think he will reconsider his stance on Nintendo, he wanted something from Nintendo and it did not happen so Nintendo came out as the bad guys in his eyes

To be honest this is the same kind of presentation I would guess Platinum made for Bayonetta 2 at Nintendo

the difference being Bayonetta 2 is a Nintendo Wii U exclusive while Need For Speed Most Wanted U was a months late port owned by EA

so it was a very hard sell and he did not get the support he wanted from Nintendo

maybe he is also pissed at all the Wii U owners that did not buy his game so why port his new game to Wii U?

Well, he's a grown man. I'm sure he knows what he's doing. Good luck to him and his future endeavours. Hopefully he'll find a favourable publisher elsewhere.

Not to defend Nintendo or EA, but this was a late full priced port of an average game (like ME3). Anyone who wanted to play the game already did so at that point.

Nintendo should be slammed for their handling of W101 though. They should have done for that game what MS is doing for Titanfall right now.

They've been absolutely pathetic at promoting their games. :-/

 

[Smiles and Cries]

I'm not suggesting that Nintendo should have chosen Need For Speed specifically to throw money at, but I feel like there's a disconnect here. You seem to be under the impression that it doesn't behoove a platform-holder to ever promote a third-party title, and I'm not certain I understand why. Again, I want to make it clear that I'm not saying Nintendo should have promoted Most Wanted when EA wouldn't, but I also don't think doing so would be inherently absurd. There is strategic value in trying to ensure success for third parties.

I think if Nintendo had helped Alex Ward and Team we could have seen something very different whatever game Alex Ward is working on right now could have been an Wii U exclusive instead of a rant of how Nintendo yet again was blind to a 3rd Party developer

hindsight mind you

they still have a long way to go to get 3rd parties to want to help them

 

[charlequin]

Maybe I'm a bad businessman, but I wouldn't give EA jack. Sure they had the leverage, but that doesn't give them the right to be jackasses about it.

That's your prerogative, but as a shareholder, a console owner, or an employee, I'd much rather work for a company that makes decisions based on likelihood of success than pride and a misplaced sense of fairness.

At this point Nintendo's been acting for over a decade like someone who had a bad breakup once and now ruins every new relationship with pettiness, jealousy, and paranoia. Nintendo had a co-marketing gig for exclusives go bad in the PS2 generation, so now (in this mindset) it's impossible that this could ever work again.

Everyone seems to expect Nintendo to afford the same loses that Microsoft of Sony can eat but Nintendo does not really have other huge businesses outside of games.

This is actually an argument for Nintendo (who have let their gaming business rot and have nothing else to fall back on) to actively court publishers with whatever tools they have, not to keep playing conservatively.

In general, if there's something that all the other platform holders do and which is rather necessary for ongoing success in the business, if you can't afford to do that thing you probably should get out of the market.

Sony and Microsoft's games divisions haven't been profitable ever.

That's... not even remotely true?

 

[Maxrunner]

Damn. Even indie startups not interested in putting their stuff on Wii U.

Dont go too much at kickstarter han?and alex ward is anything but indie...

 

[Tripon]

Nintendo probably wants to promote exclusive content first i guess. Still this would never worth the investment, still 6 monthes later...

So do MS, and PS, that's why we hear about exclusive content, and such for big titles like 60 minutes of exclusive content for Watch Dogs, AC, etc.

The over $50 million DLC missions for GTA 4 MS paid for, and that wasn't even for exclusivity, that was just timed releases.

So I can understand on some level why Nintendo would look at that, and find it fucking crazy that MS and Sony are spending all this money and whatever profit they could have made as platform holders down the drain for stuff they would have had anyway.

Still, Nintendo needs to figure out what they can and can't do for 3rd parties a lot better currently.

That's... not even remotely true?

As stated above, Sony did make a lot of profit during the PS1 and PS2 days, and probably squandered all of that away during PS3. The PS4 seems to be a profitable venture so far, and a lot of that is because Sony regained the disciplined they lost during the PS3 era, especially in terms of their hardware choices.

But I don't think MS ever said that the XBox division were overall profitable. They may had a year or two of profitability, but their concept for XBox was always a loss leader and trojan horse strategy and profitability second.

 

[Yado]

It more than likely would have sold better on the Wii U if it had better advertising.



Don't know why people keep on bringing up "6 months". FYI, Burnout Revenge on the Xbox 360 came out 6 months after the PS2/Original Xbox version and still did well. Time of release shouldn't really matter for fun pick up and play games like arcade racers. We aren't talking about a single player AAA game or a sports sim.

Almost anything would sell better with better advertising, but when people don't want it, they don't want it. It was a bad idea to port it to begin with, who asked for this? There couldn't possibly be a substantial number of people itching to play this 6 months later on the Wii U. Nintendo could tell, EA could tell, why throw money at it?

If this were an exclusive or something people were really looking forward to and EA/Nintendo dropped the ball I would understand why he would be upset, but really...

 

[Scum]

At this point Nintendo's been acting for over a decade like someone who had a bad breakup once and now ruins every new relationship with pettiness, jealousy, and paranoia. Nintendo had a co-marketing gig for exclusives go bad in the PS2 generation, so now (in this mindset) it's impossible that this could ever work again.

This is actually an argument for Nintendo (who have let their gaming business rot and have nothing else to fall back on) to actively court publishers with whatever tools they have, not to keep playing conservatively.

In general, if there's something that all the other platform holders do and which is rather necessary for ongoing success in the business, if you can't afford to do that thing you probably should get out of the market.

I'm never going to see that 'We're going to reset, think and act on a global scale' Nintendo, am I? :-(

 

[TheChewyWaffles]

Japanese mentality does not work like that.

Are you an expert?

 

[Captain Tuttle]

Seriously. I challenge anyone in here to list one bad thing to come from unions.

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/FBI-Racketeering-Bust-245978371.html

This is not an isolated case, I've personally been exposed to intimidation by union thugs

It's rare but it happens, especially in union towns like Philly. But the vast majority of union members are law abiding citizens.

On topic, this doesn't surprise me to read about Nintendo

 

[charlequin]

It isn't unthinkable that the 3DS sales have simply been better. From Beril's Gunman Clive sales thread:

The fact that Android sales are massively outpacing iOS sales on a similar curve to the 3DS vs. Steam situation indicates the effect we're looking at here. When you have a platform that's under-adopted and as a result under-supported, titles that are solid but wouldn't necessarily be absolute top-tier can flourish as people try to weed through crap. We saw this with retail games on Gamecube (look at how well totally random stuff like Tales of Symphonia did in the US) and we see it now with some DD shops.

The Wii U and 3DS are definitely experiencing a bit of this. There isn't as much support as Steam or XBLA/PSN, but as a result titles that would be second or third tier elsewhere can get a chance. Trine 2 is much easier to promote on Wii U (where it's a polished, well-constructed title that many people will enjoy) than on Steam (where it's a title that's mostly just not quite as good as some of the other similar options.)

This is a very real phenomenon, and it's absolutely worthwhile for indies to pay attention to this as a possible factor in their platform decisions, but it doesn't really scale up. You could do this with retail games in 2003, but nowadays even really big games don't sell well at retail (and the Wii U itself doesn't sell well enough to provide the needed install base.)

As stated above, Sony did make a lot of profit during the PS1 and PS2 days, and probably squandered all of that away during PS3.

This isn't a reasonable method for evaluating a company's profitability. You don't just add up numbers from the beginning of time and say "oh, in this entire field of business they're profitable or not." That'd be like counting sports team records from the time they were founded -- it has the result of making current operations increasingly unimportant to the totals, and it doesn't reflect the actual reality of the operating business.

You have to compare distinct periods of time, either a yearly basis (what shareholders use as a reasonable strategic chunk) or per-project basis (with something like a console, you amortize it so that costs are upfront and lead to profit later -- so it's reasonable to analyze a single cycle as a whole.) By either of these methodologies, both Sony and Microsoft have had periods of profitability.

 

[ElectricKaibutsu]

It's interesting to hear this. NFS:MW was a truly excellent port. I got a lot of fun out of it and I even tweeted to some of the developers to thank them for putting in so much effort, which I had never before or since. It's such a shame to hear how Nintendo treated them. They 100% deserve to reap what they sow. Do you think they'll learn from their mistakes and improve third party relations? The correct answer is absolutely not.

 

[Exile20]

Damn. Even indie startups not interested in putting their stuff on Wii U.

Yes let ignore the many others that do and focus on this one guy.

 

[Smiles and Cries]

That's your prerogative, but as a shareholder, a console owner, or an employee, I'd much rather work for a company that makes decisions based on likelihood of success than pride and a misplaced sense of fairness.

At this point Nintendo's been acting for over a decade like someone who had a bad breakup once and now ruins every new relationship with pettiness, jealousy, and paranoia. Nintendo had a co-marketing gig for exclusives go bad in the PS2 generation, so now (in this mindset) it's impossible that this could ever work again.



This is actually an argument for Nintendo (who have let their gaming business rot and have nothing else to fall back on) to actively court publishers with whatever tools they have, not to keep playing conservatively.

In general, if there's something that all the other platform holders do and which is rather necessary for ongoing success in the business, if you can't afford to do that thing you probably should get out of the market.



That's... not even remotely true?

A lot of people were not even born when NES came out in the US but even the history of Nintendo would have burned many bridges

If you look back at the arrogance and shady pimp NES days Nintendo the company should have been rotting long ago. They did not play nice back then that Nintendo gave birth to everything that is happening now. Call it Karma.

Iwata and Miyamoto's Nintendo are not as strong and very slow to change so all the enemies and evil history of old Nintendo not even as smart in business as old Nintendo and cannot afford to be. Without the success of the Wii Nintendo would have learn how to play this game better.

I agree what MS and Sony does to gain 3rd Party support is industry standard these days but Nintendo is still up in their own cloud.

I am not sure they can afford to pay the same amounts of money or even if they have enough friends out there who like them.

I don't see Rockstar ever going out of there way to put a GTA on a Nintendo platform, Nintendo is so far out of step with where the industry have been headed this was a children's toy... games were about kids. These days gaming is more and more focused on adult entertainment and Nintendo failed to make the change they never wanted to drop the Disney image. I don't think they know how only the fans who are now grown up beyond Mario would like to see them change.

Bayonetta 2 and X are not getting the marketing push that Sony or MS would have already had for such exclusive games. As much as we want Nintendo to do the normal things we expect from companies in this industry they are always this odd company up in the clouds

 

[andthebeatgoeson]

Why would Nintendo advertise a late NFS port? lol

Because Sony and ms have made it standard.

 

[ultratruman]

By either of these methodologies, both Sony and Microsoft have had periods of profitability.

I don't mean to go off on a tangent, but do we know if Xbox has ever been profitable for sure? I thought investors were worried recently because Microsoft lump Xbox revenue into their EAD division, along with some extremely profitable android patents which may cover up any losses.

 

[Smiles and Cries]

The fact that Android sales are massively outpacing iOS sales on a similar curve to the 3DS vs. Steam situation indicates the effect we're looking at here. When you have a platform that's under-adopted and as a result under-supported, titles that are solid but wouldn't necessarily be absolute top-tier can flourish as people try to weed through crap. We saw this with retail games on Gamecube (look at how well totally random stuff like Tales of Symphonia did in the US) and we see it now with some DD shops.

The Wii U and 3DS are definitely experiencing a bit of this. There isn't as much support as Steam or XBLA/PSN, but as a result titles that would be second or third tier elsewhere can get a chance. Trine 2 is much easier to promote on Wii U (where it's a polished, well-constructed title that many people will enjoy) than on Steam (where it's a title that's mostly just not quite as good as some of the other similar options.)

This is a very real phenomenon, and it's absolutely worthwhile for indies to pay attention to this as a possible factor in their platform decisions, but it doesn't really scale up. You could do this with retail games in 2003, but nowadays even really big games don't sell well at retail (and the Wii U itself doesn't sell well enough to provide the needed install base.)



This isn't a reasonable method for evaluating a company's profitability. You don't just add up numbers from the beginning of time and say "oh, in this entire field of business they're profitable or not." That'd be like counting sports team records from the time they were founded -- it has the result of making current operations increasingly unimportant to the totals, and it doesn't reflect the actual reality of the operating business.

You have to compare distinct periods of time, either a yearly basis (what shareholders use as a reasonable strategic chunk) or per-project basis (with something like a console, you amortize it so that costs are upfront and lead to profit later -- so it's reasonable to analyze a single cycle as a whole.) By either of these methodologies, both Sony and Microsoft have had periods of profitability.

I think you are spot on with why indie games do well on eShop, until recent months on Wii U you did not even have to search for the games you only had 6-8 pages to go through to find the title you were looking for no the lack of games have a lot to do with getting more sales.

Alex Ward has a new company if he does not want to risk betting on eShop I don't think people should say this is a poor move.

By the time his game is out there is no telling what shape the Wii U will be in.
If I had a game company this is not where I would even put some of my eggs.

 

[boiled goose]

Nintendo is the problem.

NOA is completely out of touch with the market today. they are absolutely clueless.

Of course Nintendo as a whole has tons of issues mostly related to being completely behind on services and adapting to changing consumer expectations about digital goods.

 

[Ken Masters]

Jesus, hearing shit like that makes me feel fucked up for being a little pissed towards the game, I get it, EA and Nintendo are at fault here and the devs did a brilliant job on the game.

We need unions in the industry or something...shit.

Are you willing to pay $70-80 games? If not, then don't complain about there being no unions because publishers sure as hell aren't going to just eat the added cost

 

[Petrae]

Nintendo has about 1996 levels of third party support. Amazing.

Considering that former third-party publishers who used to support Nintendo platforms-- Acclaim, Midway, and THQ-- are now nothing but history, WiiU third-party support is scary kinds of desolate, with dim support at best on the horizon.

It really is as close to a Nintendo-only platform as we've seen since Virtual Boy.

 

[XenodudeX]

Nintendo fucking blows sometimes man. Jesus.

 

[faridmon]

If anything, This makes me respect Criterion a lot more. Too bad they are owned by the worst Video company out there. No wonder Ward bailed out.

Nintendo as well. For Shame. For shame.

 

[Maxrunner]

Nintendo is the problem.

NOA is completely out of touch with the market today. they are absolutely clueless.

Of course Nintendo as a whole has tons of issues mostly related to being completely behind on services and adapting to changing consumer expectations about digital goods.

I would dare and say noa doesnt have any rights to make these decisions...its all japan who does and thqts probably the problem.

 

[Chindogg]

Nintendo is the problem.

NOA is completely out of touch with the market today. they are absolutely clueless.

Of course Nintendo as a whole has tons of issues mostly related to being completely behind on services and adapting to changing consumer expectations about digital goods.

Nintendo fucking blows sometimes man. Jesus.

What part of "EA didn't even print the game on discs to Europe" did you not get? Does no one fucking read these threads anymore? Nintendo clearly fucked up in marketing this but what more could they do when EA didn't even put in the effort to actually release the game in the region it was created?

 

[geomon]

The more I hear about the inner workings of the industry the more disillusioned I become.

 

[Lunar15]

Nintendo makes great games.

Everything else they do fucking sucks.

 

[Scum]

@Maxrunner - And that's why I want to see that change. NoA & NoE should be in a position in this day and age, to have the autonomy to look after their respective regions.

A lot of people were not even born when NES came out in the US but even the history of Nintendo would have burned many bridges

If you look back at the arrogance and shady pimp NES days Nintendo the company should have been rotting long ago. They did not play nice back then that Nintendo gave birth to everything that is happening now. Call it Karma.

Iwata and Miyamoto's Nintendo are not as strong and very slow to change so all the enemies and evil history of old Nintendo not even as smart in business as old Nintendo and cannot afford to be. Without the success of the Wii Nintendo would have learn how to play this game better.

I agree what MS and Sony does to gain 3rd Party support is industry standard these days but Nintendo is still up in their own cloud.

I am not sure they can afford to pay the same amounts of money or even if they have enough friends out there who like them.

I don't see Rockstar ever going out of there way to put a GTA on a Nintendo platform, Nintendo is so far out of step with where the industry have been headed this was a children's toy... games were about kids. These days gaming is more and more focused on adult entertainment and Nintendo failed to make the change they never wanted to drop the Disney image. I don't think they know how only the fans who are now grown up beyond Mario would like to see them change.

Bayonetta 2 and X are not getting the marketing push that Sony or MS would have already had for such exclusive games. As much as we want Nintendo to do the normal things we expect from companies in this industry they are always this odd company up in the clouds

I don't think NCL should shed their family friendly image, to be honest. If anything they should be working harder at it, but should also be mixing in the 18-35yr demographic as well. That's why I've always said that they need to be bold, get the ball rolling themselves, set an example and get the Western branches to fill in for most of what they expect from third party publishers. Get devs started up at NoA & NoE.

Considering that former third-party publishers who used to support Nintendo platforms-- Acclaim, Midway, and THQ-- are now nothing but history, WiiU third-party support is scary kinds of desolate, with dim support at best on the horizon.

It really is as close to a Nintendo-only platform as we've seen since Virtual Boy.

Nintendo have been shite with their third party publisher shenanigans but God do I miss AA/Mid tier development. ;_;

 

[wsippel]

This came out in March 2013. EA stopped support in May.

EA pretty much pulled support more than half a year before the Wii U even launched. It's not really surprising Nintendo didn't have any fucks left to give in early 2013. I don't know who's to blame for the first step here, but I can't really blame Nintendo for not pushing NFS considering the circumstances.

Not to mention Nintendo rarely pushes 3rd party games unless they co-publish, like Monster Hunter. And looking at Razor's Edge, even that is no guarantee.

 

[Tripon]

This isn't a reasonable method for evaluating a company's profitability. You don't just add up numbers from the beginning of time and say "oh, in this entire field of business they're profitable or not." That'd be like counting sports team records from the time they were founded -- it has the result of making current operations increasingly unimportant to the totals, and it doesn't reflect the actual reality of the operating business.

You have to compare distinct periods of time, either a yearly basis (what shareholders use as a reasonable strategic chunk) or per-project basis (with something like a console, you amortize it so that costs are upfront and lead to profit later -- so it's reasonable to analyze a single cycle as a whole.) By either of these methodologies, both Sony and Microsoft have had periods of profitability.

I agree, and I would like to see if the 360 was ultimately profitable. Is there any data out on that? The only thing I have seen recently that it wasn't, and that the XBox division(or the division XBox was in before the current reorg) was running $2b losses annually.

 

[hodayathink]

What part of "EA didn't even print the game on discs to Europe" did you not get? Does no one fucking read these threads anymore? Nintendo clearly fucked up in marketing this but what more could they do when EA didn't even put in the effort to actually release the game in the region it was created?

The WiiU sold so badly in Europe that Nintendo themselves shipped negative units to the region over the course of a quarter. That's the region we're talking about here. It would have been a bad business decision to press tens to hundreds of thousands of copies of a game, when maybe a couple thousand of them would have sold.

 

[Chindogg]

The WiiU sold so badly in Europe that Nintendo themselves shipped negative units to the region over the course of a quarter. That's the region we're talking about here. It would have been a bad business decision to press tens to hundreds of thousands of copies of a game, when maybe a couple thousand of them would have sold.

Wasn't that in the 2nd quarter though? After a massive drought of nothingness? I'm pretty sure March was the end of the first quarter for them if not the very beginning of the second quarter.

 

[L Thammy]

This is a very real phenomenon, and it's absolutely worthwhile for indies to pay attention to this as a possible factor in their platform decisions, but it doesn't really scale up. You could do this with retail games in 2003, but nowadays even really big games don't sell well at retail (and the Wii U itself doesn't sell well enough to provide the needed install base.)

Not sure if you were using it to establish a point for others, but that post was simply on the subject of indies. Also, though it doesn't affect the point you've made, you referred to the Android sales trajectory in the present tense, so I should probably add this quote:

That's all explained back in the first post (short story: featured by google). The graphs are launch aligned so that google spike happened years ago, and the sales on android has basically flatlines ages ago.
The graphs are all in # units sold.

 

[boiled goose]

I would dare and say noa doesnt have any rights to make these decisions...its all japan who does and thqts probably the problem.

doubtful. I'm sure NOA chose to market batman and cod over the exclusives. I'm sure NOA is responsible for funneling all of their marketing budget for the big Wii and Mario games while completely ignoring compelling and exclusive content. I'm sure NOA made the horrible ads for the WiiU.

Credit where it is due, NOA did pretty good things last gen. Not this gen.

What part of "EA didn't even print the game on discs to Europe" did you not get? Does no one fucking read these threads anymore? Nintendo clearly fucked up in marketing this but what more could they do when EA didn't even put in the effort to actually release the game in the region it was created?

yup nintendo is just the victim. the wiiu failing and the toxic development ecosystem and miserable software sales are the result of nintendo doing everything they can but people just not wanting them to succeed.

Spoiler

haha

 

[-Eddman-]

Nintendo is the problem.

NOA is completely out of touch with the market today. they are absolutely clueless.

Of course Nintendo as a whole has tons of issues mostly related to being completely behind on services and adapting to changing consumer expectations about digital goods.

I fully agree with that.

For better or worse, wether we like it or not, America is slowly becoming a subscription based society in terms of entertainment. Sony is betting on that and that's why I think PSNow will be a huge hit.

Nintendo needs to do something about it soon. I really like their games and it would be really sad if closed minds in their management leads them to even bigger losses.

 

[TheLostBigBoss]

I don't mean to go off on a tangent, but do we know if Xbox has ever been profitable for sure? I thought investors were worried recently because Microsoft lump Xbox revenue into their EAD division, along with some extremely profitable android patents which may cover up any losses.

I think they have had profitable periods, but I'm pretty sure it's a net loss for the Xbox division as of current.

 

[plagiarize]

Slightly better but still pretty shitty software sales? People keep bringing this up but the software sales just aren't matching the theory.

I was talking about the development of the console there. Devs helped shaped the PS4 and it is a console they like developing for. Devs were ignored in the development of the Wii U and as result working on it is a giant pain in the ass for them, when all it would have taken to prevent things being as bad as they are is a higher clocked CPU and a slightly bigger box housing the hardware.

Nintendo didn't listen and made the machine they thought was best. Third party devs hate working on it. That's entirely their fault. Sony didn't listen to devs making the PS3 and learnt their lesson not to do that again. A big part of why the Xbox 360 was favoured by developers was because it was the nicer system to code for. We know MS made key hardware changes at the request of developers.

It's something Nintendo should absolutely have done.

 

[donny2112]

Ironically, Nintendo was matching publisher advertising dollars for games (some? most?) at launch, so if NFS:MW had come out with the other versions at Wii U's launch instead of months later, they'd have had EA's general advertising for the game helping as probably well as Nintendo's matching funds for whatever portion of the EA ads were for the Wii U version. By all accounts, Criterion did a great job on the port, but they were just squeezed in a bad place between EA and Nintendo. Hope he finds success on his next game enough to have the luxury of testing the waters on Wii U again.

 

[shinra-bansho]

I think one of the key problems is in how Nintendo fundamentally views and approaches its role as a platform holder. It kind of shines through in some people's reactions to this discussion: "Why should Nintendo promote a third party game?"

Sony and Microsoft create platforms with the express intention of selling third party titles to recoup any loss-lead. They could scuttle their first party development tomorrow and it wouldn't ultimately change their underlying role. Should they ever exit the hardware business they'd probably divest any studios they owned. They have a strong interest in creating a market for third party software sales and invest significantly in doing so through things like co-marketing. Essentially Sony and Microsoft view third party success as synonymous to their own. It's symbiotic.

Nintendo on the other hand essentially make platforms for the purpose of selling Nintendo games, first and foremost. That's what feeds into their design decisions, etc. Scuttling their first party would essentially remove the entire purpose of their hardware operation, and should they ever exit hardware they'd likely continue on as a game maker. Third parties are peripheral to this.
The problem they're seeing now is that, although in the past this may have been sufficient to sustain a platform, and it even drove them to stratospheric success with the Wii, it's not remotely the case now.