AppleQueso wrote:No the Wii U is fucked, best they can hope for is to keep it afloat at maybe Gamecube levels. It's "successful" in the sense that as far as I'm aware the system is still profitable, though performing WAY below expectations. Other than that... yeah.
Something isn't profitable for Nintendo for them to lose almost half a billion dollars in the last year. Unless that's all R&D costs that sales aren't offsetting.
The 3DS is selling fairly well, just not up to expectations. The Wii U is well behind even where the Gamecube was at this point, and is/was being sold at a loss. I'd agree, they can try to salvage it as a niche system, since abandoning it now would be detrimental to the brand.
AppleQueso wrote:No the Wii U is fucked, best they can hope for is to keep it afloat at maybe Gamecube levels. It's "successful" in the sense that as far as I'm aware the system is still profitable, though performing WAY below expectations. Other than that... yeah.
Something isn't profitable for Nintendo for them to lose almost half a billion dollars in the last year. Unless that's all R&D costs that sales aren't offsetting.
The 3DS is selling fairly well, just not up to expectations. The Wii U is well behind even where the Gamecube was at this point, and is/was being sold at a loss. I'd agree, they can try to salvage it as a niche system, since abandoning it now would be detrimental to the brand.
"As far as I'm aware" at least. Wii U could be bleeding money I suppose, I do recall them selling the systems at a loss, though IIRC they recover that loss really quick.
But yeah, either way, it's screwed. I'd be surprised if we didn't see them try to roll out a new console by 2016 or whenever.
AppleQueso wrote:
"As far as I'm aware" at least. Wii U could be bleeding money I suppose, I do recall them selling the systems at a loss, though IIRC they recover that loss really quick.
But yeah, either way, it's screwed. I'd be surprised if we didn't see them try to roll out a new console by 2016 or whenever.
The timeline they've given on their quality of life device would give it a 2015-2016 release. That's why I speculated that the loss may be R&D related more than from the Wii U. Far as I recall, the losses on that were negated once a customer bought a game.
Still, a non-gaming product wouldn't really help restore brand image, which is probably the long term issue for Nintendo. Neither would pulling a Sega and pushing out new gaming hardware so fast.
The whole Nintendo figure NFC Skylanders whatever thing is interesting. Could Nintendo be pushing itself back into the "toy" fold? I could see that. Higher end, higher tech toys.
Luckily they seem to understand that putting their eggs in one basket isn't a great idea in the long term.
emwearz wrote:If they rolled one out in 2016, I would not be buying it regardless for a few years, purely for dropping support so early.
I think 2016 is where we're going to get both their next handheld and home console. They'll be built around a common scalable architecture and both run the same games with marginal differences. I don't foresee a dual screen handheld or backwards compatibility for either system.
The Nintendo figures could be interesting, or it could be terrible depending on how they do it. If the Pokken fighters game is actually a real thing I can imagine that working quite well with a F2P setup. You purchase a figure of the fighter and unlock it in game. I'd like to see that happen as long as I still have the option to purchase the full game like you would normally.
CavZee wrote:I think 2016 is where we're going to get both their next handheld and home console.
I think it's going to be a console/handheld hybrid device. Portable play, but also able to hook up to your HDTV over HDMI for the console experience. It'll support extra controllers wirelessly for local multiplayer.
CavZee wrote:I think 2016 is where we're going to get both their next handheld and home console.
I think it's going to be a console/handheld hybrid device. Portable play, but also able to hook up to your HDTV over HDMI for the console experience. It'll support extra controllers wirelessly for local multiplayer.
I see people bring this up but the idea honestly sounds lackluster to me. Let's say the next handheld has a ~540p screen like the Vita or even at the best case (unlikely) scenario has a 720p display. You take your HDMI out or station dock and get the image displayed on your TV. Ok, sure, but the idea of having the next major franchise installment in whatever series run on hardware that is more than likely weaker than what the Wii U is capable of sounds disappointing to me.
I'm sure I brought up this idea before in this thread but basically what I envision is something more akin to the way Android devices or Apple's family of hardware is set up. The OS, interface, and applications (games in this case) are all the same but the handheld runs the game at a lower resolution and graphical fidelity while the more powerful console can play the game at full 1080p and more bells and whistles. This would be great because you would theoretically double the library for each device. It also would allow them to target a low price point while still allowing them to create a capable console that will allow them to entice many of the 3rd party companies to make multiplatform games. (Also people would finally get their HD Pokemon game. )
Now this is all probably some stupid pipedream but with both of Nintendo's hardware teams being merged under the same roof I'd like to think there's a possibility.
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