Nintendo is in full baby mode. Why aren’t they trying to be a more prominent feature at E3 this year? Gavin explains.
Ah Nintendo, just saying the name brings to mind the kind of joy one can only achieve by dominating your friends in Super Smash Bros. with nothing but a Pikachu, or running through a castle collecting P-Wings with a raccoon tail that curiously makes you fly.
At one point in time (a big point if I’m honest) Nintendo was king of the mountain, no other brand could topple them, Atari, Sega, even Sony couldn’t match Nintendo in it’s glory days. In 1985 Nintendo launched the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) in North America after a huge breakthrough success with Donkey Kong, they unleashed Super Mario Bros. and propelled themselves into a frenzy of successful hardware and game creations, including Zelda, the entire Super Mario series, Contra, Duck Hunt – Nintendo stuck it’s finger into almost every classic game we hold dear. Now 30 years after they gave birth to the video game revolution, pioneered mobile gaming with the GameBoy, and invented the D-Pad we still use today – they could be on the way down the sewer pipe for good.
If you’ve been paying attention recently, you’ve probably purchased an Xbox 360 or PS3 or maybe your holding out for the holiday release of the Xbox 720 or PS4, what you most certainly are not doing is waiting to buy a Wii-U. In fact, Nintendo is sell more of it’s standard Wii consoles than the new Wii-U systems, and that’s not good at all.
Here’s some math, follow along it’s a short lesson:
Wii (launched in 2007) Sold 4 million units since November of 2012.
Wii-U (launched November 2012) – Has sold 3.7m units in the same time frame.
That is the most epic failure of a console that I can think of in recent memory. A 6-year-old console is outselling a brand new “updated” version of itself. The biggest problem with the Wii-U is that Nintendo is flat out not supporting it on the level they should be, and it has no real blockbuster titles that will make people want to throw $300 at it, when they can take that same $300 and get an Xbox 360 or PS3 currently and it will be bundled with a couple of relevant games to start with.
See for yourself:
Wii (2007): $129.99 @ Best Buy
Wii-U: $299.99 @ Best Buy
PS3: $299.99 @ Best Buy
Xbox 360: $299.99 w/ 2 games and Kinect
Now it makes sense that just this morning Nintendo announced they wouldn’t have a major expo at E3 this year, the first time in what seems like forever that they will be taking the small road, and conserving their energy. No more big shows and grand speeches by CEOs or Presidents of the company, it will now be smaller marketing people and nameless product holders smiling as people walk by their booth on the way to the Microsoft stage for a glimpse of the future.
For a company with the collective brainpower it has, we expect more from them. If the Wii-U is all Nintendo can put out at a $300 price point, then they should pull the plug early and stick to making merchandise and cartoons. What was once a titan of the gaming industry, and a pillar of innovation is now just an old man sitting on his porch, watching the whippersnappers fly by.
Fun Fact: Nintendo owns the Seattle Mariners, who are fairing just as well as a Nintendo earnings report.
HefferBrew 
4 responses to “Where’d You Go? Nintendo – Gavin Muirhead”
I have had the not such of an pleasure to “play” with the dev version when it was first released to developers and producers, and to say the least your old Wii has more processing power then the U. First things first if your like me and a stickler for good smooth graphics, you wont find em here, the U’s graphic processor is so weak it can’t display movement of uniforms/clothing as the user moves around in game. although the Nintendo had a brilliant idea in the game-pad e.g., making it a universal remote control for all other devices via a I.R. lens on the game pad and giving you bonus functionality, they only supply you with one game pad per console. Which means either you have to save up half of what you paid for the console to get a second G-Pad, or be stuck using your old Wii chucks….
Now onto the console, Nintendo obviously knew they didn’t provide enough storage so they decided to collaborate with SD manufactures and gave the system 4 USB slots(2 in front and 2 in back) and also a SD slot to which you have to use to save games.
Now what can we hope to display with 2GB of RAM… not to much unless your talking about an android/IOS game, considering most Android devices are being released with 2GB of RAM.
New disk for the Wii U? YES!
The peeps at Nintendo felt they would take another step back and make their games on a CD that’s based on blue ray tech, however is double to triple the cost per disk and that’s on wholesale.
Now what can we expect with all those 8GB of internal flash memory…
Not much considering most games now days with patches take up 5-15 Gigs.
So what do we know?
don’t get one unless you like being let down
Everything about this comment is so sickeningly uninformed and biased, it’s insulting. I’m not even going to glorify this with a real response, as frankly, you just don’t deserve one.
In fact, you know what? I’m going to take it a step further and say that this whole article is pointless and stupid, filled with bias and inconsistencies based on an observation of an action a company made without any further research made aside from a few links to retailers. Perhaps it didn’t occur to you that maybe there’s more to it and that there’s an overarching plan. Maybe you didn’t read the other interviews, that it’s been stated that they’re trying for a more intimate setting with the gamer and focusing less on the idea of a full blown extravaganza of a press conference. They’re not introducing new hardware, only software. Perhaps when you become more informed, you can write a proper article. This is a piss poor excuse of journalism and I assure you I can do far, far better than this supposed reporter.
It seems that this comment is a little bias too, maybe. As co-founder of this site I stand by the article we put up by Mr. Muirhead. It was an opinion piece first and foremost. On top of that, I myself find Nintendo to be committing a huge disservice to fans by not trying to have a bigger presence at something like this. Especially with how lackluster the Wii U is. As well as the Wii was. They’re cute systems, they really are. But we’re dealing with the major league here. You’re welcome to enjoy the minors all you want. As someone who recently went to WonderCon, where there was no Marvel presence whatsoever, it’s a disservice to fans and people who use media outlets and conventions to find out what’s going on with their favorite companies. To not use these outlets the way they should be is just a piss poor effort on their part. No matter their future plans. Thanks for checking out the site. We appreciate your visiting.