TheUnknownForce
Member
Gamecube had downfalls Microsoft and Sony had no control over.
So saying they would be eaten alive doesn't make sense when it was Nintendo who caused it to fail. Just like how they're causing Wii U to fail harder.
Yes, there are things Nintendo did that made the GameCube the way it was, no doubt, but when you have a system with comparable specs and get shoddy ports at best from developers in the West and only a touch of support in Japan, it makes you want to shy away from direct competition next time around.
This is why they went with the Blue Ocean strategy in the first place. They wanted out of the traditional market because they felt they could not compete directly against the larger corporations (Sony with the pedigree, Microsoft with the cash). Unfortunately they are finding out what happens when you try to innovate with a console and end up with shrugs from the market.
And Nintendo jumping head-first into its own territory resulted in the Wii U.
How long is the fact that the Gamecube existed at one time under completely different market pressures going to be a compelling argument for why they should stick to idiosyncrasies that the market isn't responding to?
In honesty, probably until Nintendo try another GameCube and succeed. With the Wii U I think Nintendo wanted to do something different enough to set itself apart from the current gen systems as well as the upcoming systems, but they miscalculated how poorly third parties and the casual market could respond to it.
The reason they are probably risk-averse to making a GameCube of the next-gen is the extreme costs associated with it and getting minimal return. They could spend hundreds of millions of dollars on R&D to get even close to Microsoft and Sony's technical strengths and still end up being seen as "kiddy" or "casual" or whatever new label has been assigned to them by the core. If they don't differentiate themselves from the others, they'll be seen as a third choice, not THE choice, and that's why they turned to innovate, one way or another.
Whether that is a smart thought-process or not, I think that was partly the reason the Wii U got the way it did.
Look, I own a Wii U.
Nintendo's my favorite developer by a longshot.
But they need to do better than this. They've carved out their own little niche which worked for a time, but the niche is turning into a ghetto.
They do, yes. I think they didn't expect things to get so...apathetic with the system for everyone so quickly. They put everything on 3DS-saving mode, and now that the fruit of that is really coming out (2013's lineup looks intense for it), they have to shift everything to Wii U-saving mode, because apparently NSMBU was their way or saving the Wii U launch. Then when it didn't, they delayed everything to try relaunching it again, only to find third parties not even planning ports of their games to the system.
It's not a pleasant time for Nintendo. I give the Wii U until this time next year to bounce back. Otherwise, hello new console by 2015 holiday and goodbye Iwata.