Talking to Nintendo's Charlie Scibetta, Nintendo of America's senior director of corporate communications, it's clear that the company realizes that it has to start from scratch and do what it last did in 2006 -- convince the world that its controller innovation is important.
"It can appeal to people all ranges in terms of their gaming ability," he tells Gamasutra, in an interview conducted at E3, but admits that it's "hard to understand the system until you get your hands on it."
"A big part of our strategy has been and will continue to be trial, getting it in as many people's hands as possible," Scibetta says.
The company seems particularly excited by the concept of "asymmetric multiplayer", in which players with the screen-bearing gamepad have different information and a different role than the players with standard Wii Remotes. This came into play in its multiplayer Nintendo Land demos at E3.
While he was unwilling to talk about the company's specific marketing plans or budget, he does suggest that Nintendo will be trying to get the system recognized by consumers much as it did with the original Wii -- which included spots on mainstream TV shows such as Good Morning America as well as aiming for the traditional hardcore Nintendo gamer. For whatever Wii U "feature we want to push", he says, Nintendo will be selective of the specific audience it's targeting.
He also says that the company will continue its recent strategy of going direct to consumers with announcements, as it did with its E3 conferences, which it streamed on nintendo.com. "What people are most interested in, they can tune in to," he says.
Was he satisfied with the company's E3 showing? "We are happy with the way people are responding to it, but it does take some cycles on our part... to make sure everybody understands it."
"We tried to do as many things as possible during our presentation and videos to explain it to people," he says.
What the company strangely did not do was focus on all of its first-party titles in its E3 conference; for example, the Platinum Games-developed Project P-100 was absent from its E3 press conference, despite being one of only a handful of titles the company had ready to show.
"We're really excited about" P-100, he says, "but we had to make some hard decisions."
Working with Developers
Some of those hard decisions clearly came because the company felt compelled to showcase the lineups of third party partners -- particularly Warner Bros. and Ubisoft. Does this mean the company getting better at communicating with third parties?
"A combination of first and third party games... will make this system have a good launch," Scibetta says. "All these developers and publishers are making games that really take advantage of" the system's unusual new gamepad.
"When a publisher creates a game experience that is custom... that's when you really see the magic happen," he says.
Scibetta is also happy to see ports of games such as Batman: Arkham City and Mass Effect 3 -- "The most important thing is if it takes care of what the system is doing" by using the gamepad, asymmetric multiplayer, and the Miiverse online functionality.
However, Scibetta admits, "the best games are custom-built," so "we give a lot of support" to developers and publishers.
"We want to see their ideas come to life on the system," he says. "And they're excited, because if you're a game developer, you want your game to come to life on the best system possible." The Wii U "gives them options they've never had before," he suggests.
But just as with consumers, it's a bit of an uphill battle to get developers on board, he admits. "It's our job to try and get them to understand why it's cool, it's exciting, and it's new," he says, regarding its Miiverse social online functionality. "And it is new."
What Nintendo Does Have
If there is an advantage for Nintendo, it's that it is Nintendo. More than either of the other platform holders, the company is by developers and for developers (its president, Satoru Iwata, is a former game developer.) The company really believes in its mission to bring innovative fun.
"What the competition does does not influence what we do," says Scibetta. "We really have our own North Star about what we want to create, which is, 'Is it fun, and does it focus on games?'"
When you work at Nintendo, he says, "you know you're a gaming company, you know you're about bringing fun to people, and everything around that is peripheral to it. As long as we stay focused on that core principle, we know we're on track, because that's what the company is all about."
I think it's a bit strange that they don't put more emphasis on the versatility of the system when they're marketing it. The fact is it can do everything the 360 and PS3 can, having the same input options, but also more, using the touch screen and motion sensors. Everything in one package. I guess they want to make people understand the new aspects of it first, but they're failing to remind people of the "standard" capabilities in doing so.
Maybe they don't want to frame the discussion as it being a competitor to the 360 and PS3 right before their successors come out.
Sega brought out the Dreamcast very early and set it up as a competitor to the PSX and '64, and when the other systems came out it was basically forgotten by most.
True, but since it's only an optional feature on PS3/360, no games are designed to require it, thus the Wii U will in practice have equal capabilities.
"There is no trophy system"
I didn't know this (is it confirmed?), but I'd almost argue gaming is healthier without a forced trophy system, anyway.
"Older gen games are not upscaled"
Can this be expected? Do PS2 games run on PS3 look better than on PS2??
"You can't use the wiiu gamepad to connect over the internet like RemotePlay"
I don't even know what this means. Care to explain?
"Dont start the trolling trolly"
I'm not trolling. I stated the fact that, from an input & horsepower perspective, Wii U can out-of-the-box do everything PS3/360 can and more, and questioned Nintendo's failing to mention that.
The Wii U as far as I know has no internal HDD? Ever try 1080 through an external USB 2.0? It shts the bed. Don't forget the low adoption rates of a $100 HDD right after the $300-$350 console launches. What are next gen digital developers supposed to do? 8gb limit is a joke! My 2002 HDD has more space! Pirates are going to annihilate this console. Look up modded Wii's using external HDDs on youtube.
This is your last chance Nintendo. Put in a HDD. It won't hurt you year 1-2. But year 3-4 you will cry. MS and Sony are aiming to crush you in 2014.
There's no need for a HDD. Flash memory is faster, uses less energy, makes no noise, and is cheaper to purchase and manufacture. 8 gigs +an expansion slot are more than enough for a disc based console. HDD is slowly becoming an outdated technology as SSD's take over.
Pirates won't annihilate this console any more than they do to every other console on the market.
The 720's specs are only (according to ign) 20% more powerful than the Wii U (aka very little noticeable difference), and SONY is stuck recovering from their PS3 losses and are still on their "10 year PS3 plan". This generation won't be a graphics war, it will be a library and gameplay war, and as we've seen in the past (with the exception of the PS2) Nintendo has always been topping the sales charts. The Wii was a grossly underpowered system yet it outsold the 360 and PS3 by an embarrassing amount.
Point is, Nintendo's not going anywhere, and aren't going to get "crushed" by anyone in the near foreseeable future.
"Wii U uses an internal flash memory. It also supports SD memory cards and external USB storage."
Now, the external USB storage part is kind of a mystery, but from what I've read the rumors say this means anything from USB memory sticks to any old external hard drive. That's pretty damn good for storage space. The XBOX 360 doesn't have a hard drive as part of every configuration and yet somehow Microsoft is doing pretty well. If there's one thing everyone should know, it's to not underestimate what Nintendo is capable of.
"Ever try 1080 through an external USB 2.0? It shts the bed."
Why you connect the screen resolution with the transfer rate of the USB port? The video data of the game isn't streamed through the USB port.
Maybe you are talking about videos, but it's no problem playing1080p videos from an USB 2.0 drive.
But the most important question is, why do you think "Pirates are going to annihilate this console. Look up modded Wii's using external HDDs on youtube.", when the Wii is clearly the most successfull console in this generation?
You are underestimating the amount of data 1080p anything pushes through USB 2.0. From someone who uses external HDDs they just aren't reliable for anything other than storage. The adoption rates are going to be low.
You could download Ninja Gaiden day one from the store, hack it to an external HDD to save $50-$60. I predict 10% of all HDD owners will be severely tempted to save thousands of dollars downloading games for free. I agree with other posters. They Dreamcasted themselves.
First of all, I know it is possible to play 1080 p videos from an USB 2.0 drive, because I do it regulary, second I dont get your argument about pirated games, on an external drive, because this is exactly, what is possible on the Wii for years, nonetheless, this console sold 850 million games, much more then the PS3 or 360.
The speed thing is patently illogical. Regardless of how slow or fragmentary a user HDD may be, there's no way it would be slower than a bluray disk under just about any circumstance.
"8 gigs is no where near enough.
There are downloadable 360/PS3 games that take more than that
Hell that's 2 Vita games.
Plus flash has limited write cycles, and games use it heavily. "
And HDDs have limited life time before they crash, so who cares, hard stressing tests of solid state drives have proven, that the limited write cycles are a theoretical thing, practically, you will never reach the point, where your flash memory fails.
From were do the 8 GB come from? I haven't heard anything from Nintendo regarding the size of the Wii-Us flash memory.
Nintendo talks a good game, but when it comes down to it they don't deliver.
multiplat devs aren't going to support a console unless it offers a similar feature set to the other two. Currently, the wiiu does this (disc based game streaming is still the norm, hdd not necessary); but serious development is ending on those two systems, and the wiiu cannot keep up with the next sony/ms consoles. That is why Nintendo's big 3rd party announcements were a couple of old games, a gameplay free zombie shooter trailer, and a 2d sidescroller.
Which makes me scratch my head when people defend Ninty as being special or better than other corporations. They pull the same shit. Whether you call it marketing or lying, telling people one thing and doing the opposite is nothing but a cynical business practice. ('we're going after the hardcore gaming, we're going to do what it takes to get 3rd party support").
If E3 is any indication of how they are going to approach things, audience reaction to a Good Morning America/Oprah demo of the WiiU is going to be abysmal.
" but serious development is ending on those two systems, and the wiiu cannot keep up with the next sony/ms consoles."
What new consoles? They haven't announced anything. Everything is speculation right now. Even the current ps3 and xbox owners do not want a new console. They already invested a bunch load into what they have right now.
"Which makes me scratch my head when people defend Ninty as being special or better than other corporations. They pull the same shit. Whether you call it marketing or lying, telling people one thing and doing the opposite is nothing but a cynical business practice. ('we're going after the hardcore gaming, we're going to do what it takes to get 3rd party support"). "
I think you missed the quote. They said they're going to make the console more core friendly. That still doesn't mean they cater to little kids cursing across the internet and encourage negative feelings that reigns through most violent games.
"If E3 is any indication of how they are going to approach things, audience reaction to a Good Morning America/Oprah demo of the WiiU is going to be abysmal."
E3 is full of mostly the male demographic between the ages of 21 and 40. They don't represent most of the audience that Nintendo is going after.
Nintendo doesn't put bloody screens of death and women moaning on their game promos. They feel that players other than young males need a system they can share with their friends and family without the embarrassment of something like CoD or Uncharted. When kids (the actual core audience), go to pick up a system, Nintendo will be the best bet for parents that are mostly concerned about what their kids watch and use. Contrary to popular belief, a lot of parents still care about their children.
-what new consoles?
dev kits are out
-e3 reaction:
the audience I was writing about was the one at the the Nitendo reveal; you know vip's, journos, and Nintendo fans.
-children.
so your advice to Nintendo is to make and market a device for children, which is what they have done. I have no problem with that. My problem is when they use deceptive marketing to target other demos. But that is de rigueur amongst public corporations today: if you can't provide true value to your customers, bump up the marketing budget and use more aggressive PR.
"False. You get the SDKs are out years in advance right? "
First of all, they aren't given out "years" in advance, usually it's more like 12 months and second, I get from you words, you know people with dev kits for the 720 or PS4? I never heard of anybody saying something like that, you must be lucky to have such friends.
"I believe there are more than a few quotes from devs saying they have the dev kits. "
Wow I would like to read them, can you link them? But please no "Kotaku heard from somebody ususally good informed, that the brother of his sister in law saw somebody working on somthing, that looked a little bit like a dev kit of the next XBox"
"I never said I had friends who said that. You made that up."
If my tone offended you, my apologies but you should read more carefully and you will see, that I didn't adress you, when saying "you must be lucky to have such friends", because I wrote it in reply to what Techni Myoko said.
"I said that I have seen several quotes in articles from devs who have admitted they have the dev kits for the next gen systems."
If you have seen "several quotes in articles from devs who have admitted they have the dev kits for the next gen systems" it should be able to bring up at least one.
"And considering games like Star Wars 1313, which they went out of their way to say they were not for the PS3 and 360...do the math."
Can you give me a link, were an LucasArts rep says Star Wars 1313 is NOT for the PS3 or 360?
From all I've read, it was the same as with Watchdogs, lots of people were sure, the game will be for the next generation and in the end it was an 360/PS3/PC title.
LucasArts simply didn't give any information about the platforms the game will be released. Some people love to make out of it, it's an PS4/720 game, but then that's what they did with Watchdogs.
In the end, both demos Watchdogs and Star Wars 1313 ran on PC hardware, which can possibly mean, that they will look better on the PC, then on the 360 or PS3, I don't find it hard to do the math, publishers show the best looking version on the e3 and if it's the PC version, they will show the PC version.
To summarise your contribution to this discussion:
You said, you read from "several" developers, that they admitted to have dev kits of the PS4 and/or 720, I asked you to name even one, you failed to do so.
You said LucasArts said Star Wars 1313 was not coming for 360/PS3, I asked you to show me the statement, you failed to do so.
"You edited your original post. You quoted me, but you now claim you said that to Techni."
If false false accusations are all you can bring up, every time you run out of arguments, it simply makes no sense discussing with you.
There are reasons I quote you whenever I talk to you, one of the reasons is you change your posts later on, like I said in another thread, the first one to call others a troll is always the troll himself.
It's always the same with you Anthony, you are aggressive and insulting in your posts and when you realise, you run out of arguments, you leave the discussion pretending others offended you.
"I try to be nice and reasonable, but your arrogant, disdainful tone, where you seem to know everything and if you haven't heard about it, then someone must be making it up, makes it quite difficult to carry on a conversation with you."
Aggressive and insulting. Reasonable and thoughtfull would have been to name developers that admitted to have a dev kit.
"But you changed your post from what i replied to, which is just shady and disingenious enough to make me end this debate as a gentleman."
Aggressive and insulting. Reasonable and thoughtfull would have been to show me were an LucasArts rep said Star Wars 1313 was not coming for PS3/360, which was your argument before.
If it didn't look like they were abandoning motion controls i might actually believe Scibetta, but the controller is actually a step backwards in so many ways that it just leaves me with bitter feelings towards Nintendo. I feel like the last two years i've been holding out in anticipation for new consoles, only to be let down repeatedly by every single console maker because of their reluctance to evolve their consoles or peripherals. If game arcades were still around releasing hi-tech games we wouldn't be in this bullshit situation.
No arcade manufacturer would be able to develop hard- and software like in the 80s and 90s, no one wants to develop dedicated 3D hardware that can be used in five games before the hardware is outdated.
There were reasons, arcade games vanished, the rise of powerfull consoles was one.
The rise of powerful consoles is the myth that has been perpetuated since the Dreamcast days, but that wasn't the reason arcades died. It was a decisive industry shift pioneered by Sony in order to enable some of the arcade companies to expand their studios through the less risk averse console industry. Sega tried to keep both industries alive, but Sony's ultimate goal was to kill arcade gaming, and they've basically gotten their wish. I see students in universities developing great peripheral mods for 3D games using off the counter parts (like The Zerkin Glove or Kinect hacks). The established industry has by and by ignored innovation though, and i can only imagine what guys like Platinum games would do given better gaming hardware to work with. Its like, we don't even have motion controlled fighting games yet, don't you think that its kind of weird that the one genre that evolved gaming like almost no other has had so little evolution in interface and mechanics since the mid 90s?
"The rise of powerful consoles is the myth that has been perpetuated since the Dreamcast days, but that wasn't the reason arcades died. It was a decisive industry shift pioneered by Sony in order to enable some of the arcade companies to expand their studios through the less risk averse console industry."
At the time Sony entered the console market, the arcades were already dead, the arcade industry never reached the revenues of the early 1980s and was in constant decline since then. By the time, the Genesis and the SuperNES became available, their days were numbered.
It wasn't dead, thats what i'm trying to say Sega was trying to keep it alive, and to a lesser extent Namco and Konami. I'm not saying it was going to continue to thrive in the same way as the early 80s', that would be impossible nowadays with mobile phones and consoles providing such cheap entertainment. To not have an arcade industry at all though is affecting AAA game output in ways that people dont even realize and thats the tragic part.
Reading some of the anti Nintendo comments is laughable. People most have witness a entirely different last 2 generations. Even though Sony's PS2 out sold the Gamecube by almost 7 times world wide. Nintendo still made more money in the generation than Sony. Their decision this generation once again made Nintendo the company with the most market share, and money made. Look at the best selling games this generation all by Nintendo, and some of the most successful new IP were on the Wii. Even if the so called core at E3 once again want to shone Nintendo. Nintendo knows that their audience will still get what they are doing.
Last time I checked 3rd party companies are going bankrupt left and right. More games are flopping year after year. If developers really feel that they can survive with out bring their games to the Wii U. Then I hope they have already applied for food stamps. Nintendo is the only company that could survive in the market by depending on themselves. Ask Microsoft and Sony how great their market share would be with Call of Duty, and other 3rd party games. Just like the DS, and 3DS once you get the games out that show what your trying to do. I believe Nintendo's Wii U will find it's place in people's home as a great gaming console. Something that the others haven't wanted to design at all.
Companies can survive without bringing their titles to the Wii U, just like companies survived without bringing their games to the Wii. The idea that a developers wont survive without a specific console is ignorant at best.
"Look at the best selling games this generation all by Nintendo, and some of the most successful new IP were on the Wii."
"Ask Microsoft and Sony how great their market share would be with[out] Call of Duty, and other 3rd party games."
You touch on a point I like to share with people sometimes. Nintendo has a lot of self-owned IP, much of which is highly successful and can sell sequels easily even when they don't live up to their predecessors. What IP does SOny and Microsoft own? Do they own their own equivalent of Mario that can do action/puzzle games and then race a car (most kart knock offs aren't good) then play golf or go to the Olympics and still spawn multiple sub-franchises (Yoshi/DK/Warioware). They don't have that and it's intuitive that they should try to have such rich IP. They need their equivalent to Mr.Miyamoto but they don't have one yet.
And the DS, for that matter. When I first heard about the DS I thought it was a terrible idea; why would I want to play games with a stylus instead of buttons? But it turns out that the DS was a fantastic handheld with a terrific library of games. So yeah, I've also learned not to underestimate what Nintendo can do with new hardware.
I really hope third-parties just put their best content on a Nintendo console only for financial reasons. The Wii wasn't just a challenge to traditional console games, it was an avenue for developers to make their games without having astronomical budgets-a challenge many third-parties never wanted meet.
How many talented studios were shut down to rising costs? How many would've stayed opened if they decided to focus on porting up from the Wii. Look at what succeeded financially: super big triple-A titles, free-to-play and browser based games, and Nintendo. The Wii had some extremely entertaining niche titles, showing there's still a market for studios for don't need a million copies sold to break even and stay afloat. I just hope the industry doesn't lose more studios due to a need to take from the same expensive pie.
I think the writing is already on the wall. Third parties will just use the " game has to be unique" excuss for not supporting the Wii U. You can already see that with the Wii U not getting the new Tomb Raider.
@Kenneth Wesley
I think you missed my point. I was answering to Leon Terry that it's not because a system is unique that developers are not going to support it.
@Leon,
I don't think the New Tomb Raider is ready for prime time yet. Also, there is still nothing to say that at some later date it won't be on the Wii U.
I'm going by what is said and shown now. From the recent news it seems third parties have more titles to announce. I'm still not expecting strong support. I hope to be wrong.
Not a single person commenting on the potential of the "asymmetric" multiplayer gameplay that Nintendo was lauding at E3. I'm personally very excited about this, one of my favorite games for the GameCube and Gameboy Advance was Zelda 4 Swords, which allowed each player to play together, but not sacrifice any TV screen real-estate. Each player had a full experience, and could see where everyone else was at all times. I'm hoping at some point players with a 3DS can all play together with players using the WiiU gamepad. Local multiplayer is where Nintendo has always been superior to their competitors, and I'm hoping they push that advantage as far as they can and provide gamers and their friends with games everyone can enjoy together.
I'm completely tired of the toxic community of immature and egotistical young kids that have flooded the Xbox LIVE in the past few years. Microsoft and Sony aren't interested in making great Local multiplayer experiences, they just want to get as many people as possible to sign up for their premium online subscriptions: Xbox LIVE and PSN Plus. Microsoft in particular is all about the online these days.
I loved the idea of connecting with random strangers that share my love for games back when Halo 2 came out. Now everyone seems interested in fragging all the noobs and filling up their ego by making others have a terrible experience. Nintendo has a chance to reclaim my allegiance and my business if they put out great games with great multiplayer experiences.
What stops Xbox, Playstation, Windows, or iOS from offering "asymmetric" multiplayer? Or even the existing Wii?
Now you can argue that a second screen helps with "asymmetric" multiplayer, but that's only true for a subset of "asymmetric" multiplayer games: ones that want to provide one player with information that the other players don't have access to.
I was really looking forward to having an amazing local-multiplayer experience, but unfortunately the device only supports 2 tablets, and they are 'dumb' tablets at that, just screens that you stream data too. This isn't the multiplayer experience I was looking for.
I think the barrier of entrance is still to high for true "asymmetric" local multiplayer and the console surely isn't powerful enough to handle 4 or so people at a time with that architecture design.
I wish they would have passed the computation to the device and let us use the 3DS as another controller. The reason it hasn't taken off in the past (which they have tried to do with the GC GBA connection) is it didn't come standard with the console, so it was hard to justify developing for.
"What stops Xbox, Playstation, Windows, or iOS from offering "asymmetric" multiplayer? Or even the existing Wii?"
What stopped the 360 and PS3 from using motion controls? They did, what stopped them from using motion controls successfully was both had no games for it. And if I look at the SmartGlass presentation, I get the impression MS didn't have ideas for games this time too, with Sony it's much easier, every attempt on asymetric multiplayer would rely on the Vita and this handheld is dead.
That controller bothers me, the console is only shipping with one, as far as I can tell. That means from a childs perspective, you or your friend, are going to be using the "crap controller". Secondly, with that lcd screen it would appear to be expensive and easy to step on.
I can't help feeling, if you have to teach your consumers and developers why your product is exciting after 2 E3 shows and little enthusiasm. That would be a concern for it's future. The Wii was popular with kids and adults who did exercise or drunken games in groups. Most of those consoles are now packed away somewhere gathering dust. This would seem to be more aimed at traditional gamers, however traditional gamers seemed to distance themselves from the Wii so getting them back might not be that easy.
Here is some purely anecdotal data for you: Last night my 2 kids were playing a video game with my son controlling the mouse and my daughter controlling the keyboard. They were having a blast. In fact this wasn't even an "asynchronous" game but they made it so. Seems to me like you may be jumping the gun on this.
It's incredible how a supposed specialized media can't understand what wii U is. People have been living together with DS for years and can't understand the concept of gaming with 2 screens (one touch sensitive) and the possibilities it creates? It's even worse, there has been having 2 screen games since game and watch!
This is the first generation launch I'm following more closely and it's ridiculous the amount of payed articles that have been circulating around mistreating wii U and the comparisons microsoft and sony have been making with its smart glass and ps3 + ps vita bundle to wii U or even comparing wii U controller with tablets, which is something completely different.
I feel like Nintendo has a lot of good ideas, but is defiantly lacking execution. The WiiU defiantly seems to be suffering from feature creep at this point in time.
As far as success in next gen Nintendo is in a good place. The current generation has been long and consumers are showing signs of wanting new consoles despite the economy. Typically in this situation the first out the gate has the best chance of being the dominant console. There are a few areas though where Nintendo could stumble and it would be devastating. First off is the price point. If Nintendo prices the WiiU too high it could scare off gamers, and basically put them behind Sony and MS when they release their consoles in 2013 (assuming). The other thing is Nintendo has to predict what consumers want next gen better than their competitors. For example MS bet big on online for the 360 and it payed off. While Nintendo has the ability to create something novel they don't really have the ability to assess it's value to western gamers so it tends to be a crapshoot more than anything else.
The original Wii still has a lot of fans. The Wii U can do everything the Wii does and more, and better. All new TV console games using Nintendo's own IP will be for Wii U. Touch screens add lots of potential to games. If you don't compare to XBOX or PS then it sounds pretty good and the Wii proved you don;t have to compete with competitor's specs to win market share. The Wii U is awesome and I was really happy to see that Pikmin 3 demo, YAY!!! :D
Sega brought out the Dreamcast very early and set it up as a competitor to the PSX and '64, and when the other systems came out it was basically forgotten by most.
You take that back. The Dreamcast is alive and well :)
"Except games cant stream from the harddrive"
True, but since it's only an optional feature on PS3/360, no games are designed to require it, thus the Wii U will in practice have equal capabilities.
"There is no trophy system"
I didn't know this (is it confirmed?), but I'd almost argue gaming is healthier without a forced trophy system, anyway.
"Older gen games are not upscaled"
Can this be expected? Do PS2 games run on PS3 look better than on PS2??
"You can't use the wiiu gamepad to connect over the internet like RemotePlay"
I don't even know what this means. Care to explain?
"Dont start the trolling trolly"
I'm not trolling. I stated the fact that, from an input & horsepower perspective, Wii U can out-of-the-box do everything PS3/360 can and more, and questioned Nintendo's failing to mention that.
This is your last chance Nintendo. Put in a HDD. It won't hurt you year 1-2. But year 3-4 you will cry. MS and Sony are aiming to crush you in 2014.
Pirates won't annihilate this console any more than they do to every other console on the market.
The 720's specs are only (according to ign) 20% more powerful than the Wii U (aka very little noticeable difference), and SONY is stuck recovering from their PS3 losses and are still on their "10 year PS3 plan". This generation won't be a graphics war, it will be a library and gameplay war, and as we've seen in the past (with the exception of the PS2) Nintendo has always been topping the sales charts. The Wii was a grossly underpowered system yet it outsold the 360 and PS3 by an embarrassing amount.
Point is, Nintendo's not going anywhere, and aren't going to get "crushed" by anyone in the near foreseeable future.
Now, the external USB storage part is kind of a mystery, but from what I've read the rumors say this means anything from USB memory sticks to any old external hard drive. That's pretty damn good for storage space. The XBOX 360 doesn't have a hard drive as part of every configuration and yet somehow Microsoft is doing pretty well. If there's one thing everyone should know, it's to not underestimate what Nintendo is capable of.
Why you connect the screen resolution with the transfer rate of the USB port? The video data of the game isn't streamed through the USB port.
Maybe you are talking about videos, but it's no problem playing1080p videos from an USB 2.0 drive.
But the most important question is, why do you think "Pirates are going to annihilate this console. Look up modded Wii's using external HDDs on youtube.", when the Wii is clearly the most successfull console in this generation?
You could download Ninja Gaiden day one from the store, hack it to an external HDD to save $50-$60. I predict 10% of all HDD owners will be severely tempted to save thousands of dollars downloading games for free. I agree with other posters. They Dreamcasted themselves.
There are downloadable 360/PS3 games that take more than that
Hell that's 2 Vita games.
Plus flash has limited write cycles, and games use it heavily. "
And HDDs have limited life time before they crash, so who cares, hard stressing tests of solid state drives have proven, that the limited write cycles are a theoretical thing, practically, you will never reach the point, where your flash memory fails.
From were do the 8 GB come from? I haven't heard anything from Nintendo regarding the size of the Wii-Us flash memory.
multiplat devs aren't going to support a console unless it offers a similar feature set to the other two. Currently, the wiiu does this (disc based game streaming is still the norm, hdd not necessary); but serious development is ending on those two systems, and the wiiu cannot keep up with the next sony/ms consoles. That is why Nintendo's big 3rd party announcements were a couple of old games, a gameplay free zombie shooter trailer, and a 2d sidescroller.
Which makes me scratch my head when people defend Ninty as being special or better than other corporations. They pull the same shit. Whether you call it marketing or lying, telling people one thing and doing the opposite is nothing but a cynical business practice. ('we're going after the hardcore gaming, we're going to do what it takes to get 3rd party support").
If E3 is any indication of how they are going to approach things, audience reaction to a Good Morning America/Oprah demo of the WiiU is going to be abysmal.
What new consoles? They haven't announced anything. Everything is speculation right now. Even the current ps3 and xbox owners do not want a new console. They already invested a bunch load into what they have right now.
"Which makes me scratch my head when people defend Ninty as being special or better than other corporations. They pull the same shit. Whether you call it marketing or lying, telling people one thing and doing the opposite is nothing but a cynical business practice. ('we're going after the hardcore gaming, we're going to do what it takes to get 3rd party support"). "
I think you missed the quote. They said they're going to make the console more core friendly. That still doesn't mean they cater to little kids cursing across the internet and encourage negative feelings that reigns through most violent games.
"If E3 is any indication of how they are going to approach things, audience reaction to a Good Morning America/Oprah demo of the WiiU is going to be abysmal."
E3 is full of mostly the male demographic between the ages of 21 and 40. They don't represent most of the audience that Nintendo is going after.
Nintendo doesn't put bloody screens of death and women moaning on their game promos. They feel that players other than young males need a system they can share with their friends and family without the embarrassment of something like CoD or Uncharted. When kids (the actual core audience), go to pick up a system, Nintendo will be the best bet for parents that are mostly concerned about what their kids watch and use. Contrary to popular belief, a lot of parents still care about their children.
dev kits are out
-e3 reaction:
the audience I was writing about was the one at the the Nitendo reveal; you know vip's, journos, and Nintendo fans.
-children.
so your advice to Nintendo is to make and market a device for children, which is what they have done. I have no problem with that. My problem is when they use deceptive marketing to target other demos. But that is de rigueur amongst public corporations today: if you can't provide true value to your customers, bump up the marketing budget and use more aggressive PR.
dev kits are out"
Internet myths
First of all, they aren't given out "years" in advance, usually it's more like 12 months and second, I get from you words, you know people with dev kits for the 720 or PS4? I never heard of anybody saying something like that, you must be lucky to have such friends.
"I believe there are more than a few quotes from devs saying they have the dev kits. "
Wow I would like to read them, can you link them? But please no "Kotaku heard from somebody ususally good informed, that the brother of his sister in law saw somebody working on somthing, that looked a little bit like a dev kit of the next XBox"
If my tone offended you, my apologies but you should read more carefully and you will see, that I didn't adress you, when saying "you must be lucky to have such friends", because I wrote it in reply to what Techni Myoko said.
"I said that I have seen several quotes in articles from devs who have admitted they have the dev kits for the next gen systems."
If you have seen "several quotes in articles from devs who have admitted they have the dev kits for the next gen systems" it should be able to bring up at least one.
"And considering games like Star Wars 1313, which they went out of their way to say they were not for the PS3 and 360...do the math."
Can you give me a link, were an LucasArts rep says Star Wars 1313 is NOT for the PS3 or 360?
From all I've read, it was the same as with Watchdogs, lots of people were sure, the game will be for the next generation and in the end it was an 360/PS3/PC title.
LucasArts simply didn't give any information about the platforms the game will be released. Some people love to make out of it, it's an PS4/720 game, but then that's what they did with Watchdogs.
In the end, both demos Watchdogs and Star Wars 1313 ran on PC hardware, which can possibly mean, that they will look better on the PC, then on the 360 or PS3, I don't find it hard to do the math, publishers show the best looking version on the e3 and if it's the PC version, they will show the PC version.
You said, you read from "several" developers, that they admitted to have dev kits of the PS4 and/or 720, I asked you to name even one, you failed to do so.
You said LucasArts said Star Wars 1313 was not coming for 360/PS3, I asked you to show me the statement, you failed to do so.
"You edited your original post. You quoted me, but you now claim you said that to Techni."
If false false accusations are all you can bring up, every time you run out of arguments, it simply makes no sense discussing with you.
There are reasons I quote you whenever I talk to you, one of the reasons is you change your posts later on, like I said in another thread, the first one to call others a troll is always the troll himself.
It's always the same with you Anthony, you are aggressive and insulting in your posts and when you realise, you run out of arguments, you leave the discussion pretending others offended you.
Aggressive and insulting. Reasonable and thoughtfull would have been to name developers that admitted to have a dev kit.
"But you changed your post from what i replied to, which is just shady and disingenious enough to make me end this debate as a gentleman."
Aggressive and insulting. Reasonable and thoughtfull would have been to show me were an LucasArts rep said Star Wars 1313 was not coming for PS3/360, which was your argument before.
There were reasons, arcade games vanished, the rise of powerfull consoles was one.
At the time Sony entered the console market, the arcades were already dead, the arcade industry never reached the revenues of the early 1980s and was in constant decline since then. By the time, the Genesis and the SuperNES became available, their days were numbered.
Last time I checked 3rd party companies are going bankrupt left and right. More games are flopping year after year. If developers really feel that they can survive with out bring their games to the Wii U. Then I hope they have already applied for food stamps. Nintendo is the only company that could survive in the market by depending on themselves. Ask Microsoft and Sony how great their market share would be with Call of Duty, and other 3rd party games. Just like the DS, and 3DS once you get the games out that show what your trying to do. I believe Nintendo's Wii U will find it's place in people's home as a great gaming console. Something that the others haven't wanted to design at all.
"Ask Microsoft and Sony how great their market share would be with[out] Call of Duty, and other 3rd party games."
You touch on a point I like to share with people sometimes. Nintendo has a lot of self-owned IP, much of which is highly successful and can sell sequels easily even when they don't live up to their predecessors. What IP does SOny and Microsoft own? Do they own their own equivalent of Mario that can do action/puzzle games and then race a car (most kart knock offs aren't good) then play golf or go to the Olympics and still spawn multiple sub-franchises (Yoshi/DK/Warioware). They don't have that and it's intuitive that they should try to have such rich IP. They need their equivalent to Mr.Miyamoto but they don't have one yet.
How many talented studios were shut down to rising costs? How many would've stayed opened if they decided to focus on porting up from the Wii. Look at what succeeded financially: super big triple-A titles, free-to-play and browser based games, and Nintendo. The Wii had some extremely entertaining niche titles, showing there's still a market for studios for don't need a million copies sold to break even and stay afloat. I just hope the industry doesn't lose more studios due to a need to take from the same expensive pie.
I think you missed my point. I was answering to Leon Terry that it's not because a system is unique that developers are not going to support it.
I don't think the New Tomb Raider is ready for prime time yet. Also, there is still nothing to say that at some later date it won't be on the Wii U.
I'm completely tired of the toxic community of immature and egotistical young kids that have flooded the Xbox LIVE in the past few years. Microsoft and Sony aren't interested in making great Local multiplayer experiences, they just want to get as many people as possible to sign up for their premium online subscriptions: Xbox LIVE and PSN Plus. Microsoft in particular is all about the online these days.
I loved the idea of connecting with random strangers that share my love for games back when Halo 2 came out. Now everyone seems interested in fragging all the noobs and filling up their ego by making others have a terrible experience. Nintendo has a chance to reclaim my allegiance and my business if they put out great games with great multiplayer experiences.
Now you can argue that a second screen helps with "asymmetric" multiplayer, but that's only true for a subset of "asymmetric" multiplayer games: ones that want to provide one player with information that the other players don't have access to.
I think the barrier of entrance is still to high for true "asymmetric" local multiplayer and the console surely isn't powerful enough to handle 4 or so people at a time with that architecture design.
I wish they would have passed the computation to the device and let us use the 3DS as another controller. The reason it hasn't taken off in the past (which they have tried to do with the GC GBA connection) is it didn't come standard with the console, so it was hard to justify developing for.
What stopped the 360 and PS3 from using motion controls? They did, what stopped them from using motion controls successfully was both had no games for it. And if I look at the SmartGlass presentation, I get the impression MS didn't have ideas for games this time too, with Sony it's much easier, every attempt on asymetric multiplayer would rely on the Vita and this handheld is dead.
I can't help feeling, if you have to teach your consumers and developers why your product is exciting after 2 E3 shows and little enthusiasm. That would be a concern for it's future. The Wii was popular with kids and adults who did exercise or drunken games in groups. Most of those consoles are now packed away somewhere gathering dust. This would seem to be more aimed at traditional gamers, however traditional gamers seemed to distance themselves from the Wii so getting them back might not be that easy.
This is the first generation launch I'm following more closely and it's ridiculous the amount of payed articles that have been circulating around mistreating wii U and the comparisons microsoft and sony have been making with its smart glass and ps3 + ps vita bundle to wii U or even comparing wii U controller with tablets, which is something completely different.
As far as success in next gen Nintendo is in a good place. The current generation has been long and consumers are showing signs of wanting new consoles despite the economy. Typically in this situation the first out the gate has the best chance of being the dominant console. There are a few areas though where Nintendo could stumble and it would be devastating. First off is the price point. If Nintendo prices the WiiU too high it could scare off gamers, and basically put them behind Sony and MS when they release their consoles in 2013 (assuming). The other thing is Nintendo has to predict what consumers want next gen better than their competitors. For example MS bet big on online for the 360 and it payed off. While Nintendo has the ability to create something novel they don't really have the ability to assess it's value to western gamers so it tends to be a crapshoot more than anything else.