Thank goodness someone in the thread gets it.
I have a Wii. For the last 2 years of its life before the WiiU launched, the number of good games coming out was dismal. Take a look at a fan’s list of the top 25 Wii games of 2011, and cross off the ones that aren’t exclusives (because any cross-platform game will be better on one of the other consoles), and you’ll see that pretty much the only reason to have a Wii in 2011 was Skyward Sword.
Meanwhile, the PS3 had LittleBigPlanet 2, Saint’s Row the Third, Deus Ex Human Revolution, Uncharted 3, Skyrim, CoD, Mass Effect 2, Arkham City, Portal 2, LA Noire… 2012 was even worse, I’m not sure I even turned my Wii on.
So after that awful experience, I decided I wouldn’t buy a WiiU until it had a good half-dozen system exclusive games I wanted to play. I’m still waiting. I’m not buying a $400 console to play just Pikmin and Mario sequels.
The 3DS has succeeded because Nintendo managed to deliver software for it. When Animal Crossing: New Leaf came out, 3DS sales literally doubled. They also shipped Kid Icarus, a Professor Layton game, Shin Megami Tensei IV, Monster Hunter, Pokemon, Super Mario 3D Land, and so on. People will buy console hardware, if you deliver enough compelling software.
Now, Nintendo’s game design is second to none. Their hardware design is excellent too, in many ways they’re the Apple of consoles. But their software development is where they are failing. It’s been bad for years – GameCube shipped late because the software wasn’t ready, Zelda for GameCube almost didn’t ship at all, and developers will tell you how terrible Nintendo’s dev tools are compared to the competition. Read A Dolphin’s Tale (very long) for all the background.
Also note in that writeup that while other manufacturers view third party developers as key, but Nintendo has historically treated 3rd party as an afterthought. “Well, I guess it’d be nice if we also attracted some 3rd party development, but we’re focused on Nintendo’s own needs”.
So to reiterate, Nintendo can’t sell the WiiU because they’ve been unable to deliver enough compelling software for it. Given that it’s much lower power than the other consoles, “compelling” pretty much has to mean “system exclusive”, which in turn means “developed by Nintendo themselves”. Which is even more true once you consider that their tools suck and their relationship with 3rd party developers is poor. And Nintendo simply can’t develop and deliver enough HD-resolution games quickly enough.
So that’s their WiiU problem, they can’t develop enough software. And given that that’s the case, the idea that they could turn things around by failing to deliver software for the PlayStation 4 or Xbone instead, is pretty obviously silly.
(It’s also interesting to look at what the homebrew scene has uncovered about the Wii firmware. Basically, when Nintendo shipped an OS update for the Wii, it kept every previous version around in a big chain, so that games could carry on running using the exact version they were built against. This, to me, says scary things about their internal software development practices.)
What is the fix? I don’t know. For the WiiU, there may be no fix that can be applied in time. But for their next console, they absolutely need to follow Sony and Microsoft’s lead and make ease of development a priority, even if only for their own sakes. And they probably need to look at their internal software development practices and overhaul them.
But I’m certain that the fix for a company that is having major problems developing software, is not to try developing software for someone else’s hardware using a whole new unfamiliar toolchain. Particularly not when you can guarantee you’ll be selling the software at a lower price point even if you succeed in shipping any.
