Wii U too late to capture the Hardcore crowd?

[Xanthious]

Ok here is the real question people looking to play the top of the mountain AAA titles will and should be asking. Why would they want to lay down the price of a Wii-U (Likely 350-400) to play the same games they could be playing on a Xbox 360 or PS3 for far less?

Secondly, the controller for the Wii-U simply doesn't loan it's self well to playing AAA titles. Seriously, look at the thing, it's a monstrosity. Could you imagine trying to navigate a FPS shooter with that thing?

Finally, when they say they will have third party support what kind of third party support do they mean? Is it the same third party support that the PS3 and 360 enjoy or is it the bastardized third party support the Wii currently has. By this I don't mean all the shovelware garbage but the would be AAA titles that are some kind of abomination that have been changed from what they were originally meant to be to make proper use of the Wii. Madden for the Wii and Call of Duty 3 on Wii are prime examples of this.

Sadly for Nintendo I think it will be too much for the casual crowd to latch onto on top of being not enough for hardcore crowd to notice. Nintendo's new target audience that were reeled in with the Wii already have their Wii and all two games they bought to go with it. And likely that Wii and their two games are just fine for the one or two times a month their average customer decides to actually play it.

These are the people that bought the Wii because it was cheap when compared to the other choices, it was much simpler than the other choices, and for some reason I can't explain they got some enjoyment from it. Sadly the Wii-U fails in two of those three things. It's not going to be cheap you can bet on that, it isn't at all simple from the looks of it and even if it is fun for them it will be too expensive and complicated to justify purchasing.

Sadly I think that by trying to bring on board as many people as possible with the Wii-U Nintendo will ultimately be too much for the casuals and too little too late for the hardcore crowd. Outside of the die hard Nintendo fanbase I just don't see who this is supposed to be aimed towards.

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

The hardcore crowd has already chosen their platform of choice. Nintendo's new console would have to be a major leap forward in technology or do something very unique to warrant people purchasing another console. From what I've seen and heard, it does neither of those things. The touch screen is a gimmick.

Saying "we can do the same things as those other guys now!" isn't really a compelling argument when those other consoles have been out for 5-6 years.

 

[Nomanslander]

If it ever had a chance, that name pretty much killed it...-_-

 

[I forgot]

Ok here is the real question people looking to play the top of the mountain AAA titles will and should be asking. Why would they want to lay down the price of a Wii-U (Likely 350-400) to play the same games they could be playing on a Xbox 360 or PS3 for far less?

Secondly, the controller for the Wii-U simply doesn't loan it's self well to playing AAA titles. Seriously, look at the thing, it's a monstrosity. Could you imagine trying to navigate a FPS shooter with that thing?

Finally, when they say they will have third party support what kind of third party support do they mean? Is it the same third party support that the PS3 and 360 enjoy or is it the bastardized third party support the Wii currently has. By this I don't mean all the shovelware garbage but the would be AAA titles that are some kind of abomination that have been changed from what they were originally meant to be to make proper use of the Wii. Madden for the Wii and Call of Duty 3 on Wii are prime examples of this.

Sadly for Nintendo I think it will be too much for the casual crowd to latch onto on top of being not enough for hardcore crowd to notice. Nintendo's new target audience that were reeled in with the Wii already have their Wii and all two games they bought to go with it. And likely that Wii and their two games are just fine for the one or two times a month their average customer decides to actually play it.

These are the people that bought the Wii because it was cheap when compared to the other choices, it was much simpler than the other choices, and for some reason I can't explain they got some enjoyment from it. Sadly the Wii-U fails in two of those three things. It's not going to be cheap you can bet on that, it isn't at all simple from the looks of it and even if it is fun for them it will be too expensive and complicated to justify purchasing.

Sadly I think that by trying to bring on board as many people as possible with the Wii-U Nintendo will ultimately be too much for the casuals and too little too late for the hardcore crowd. Outside of the die hard Nintendo fanbase I just don't see who this is supposed to be aimed towards.

It's said in an interview that the price is going to be the same as the 360 so you won't be playing the same game for less on either of those consoles.
Nobody said you had to navigate an FPS with that controller. They'd probably use the wii-mote's IR pointer for that. I don't see how it's hard to hold an ipad at a screen anyway. People on floor have said that it's light and comfortable to carry because of it's curvature.
The 3rd point is where I'm worried the most. 3rd parties have showed how incompetent they were with how they treated the Wii.

 

[TheGuy(wantstobe)]

a lot depends on how much more powerful it is than the PS3 and 360.

power "gamers" like to go where the power is when it comes to cross platform titles.

this is 2008ish tech going up against 2003ish

some of the PowerPC chips that might be going into this going into this machine can run at 4-5GHz compared to the 360s 3.2Ghz and can put out almost 3 times the 96.0 GFLOPS max perfomance of the 360s Xenon chip.

note i said "some of the PowerPC chips" because we don't yet know what exactly will be in it but i'm going back to 2007 silicon with only dual cores here with those "4-5GHz" speeds and its started the Wii U will have 3 cores on a custom 45 nm chip

as far as Graphics go the 360 has an ATI R500 with a shader unit at version 3.0
the Wii U will (apparently) have an ATI R700 with a shader unit at version 4.1

there are whispers it is "significantly" more powerful than the current machines and they can afford to do that and still keep it cheap (for example an R700 is basically the HD48** series cards chip and old by PC standards)

IBM announced the CPU is a POWER7 variant and the latest AMD press release makes it look like a 5xxx variant on the GPU front meaning 2010 tech

 

[ReservoirAngel]

Secondly, the controller for the Wii-U simply doesn't loan it's self well to playing AAA titles. Seriously, look at the thing, it's a monstrosity. Could you imagine trying to navigate a FPS shooter with that thing?

It had two analog sticks, two sets of shoulder buttons, a D-pad and 4 face buttons. I don't see the problem. Sure getting used to the increased controller size could be slightly tricky for some gamers, but in general I don't think it's too much of a hassle.

People are writing this thing off way too early, its just a stupid attitude. "It's not like a 360 or PS3 controller, so how can we control games with it?"

 

[NickySquicky]

You drive home a solid point, but I've been disconnected from the Nintendo product ever since I finally got my hands on a 360. Watching Nintendo's spotlight on G4, however, piqued my interest for a lot of their upcoming titles for the Wii and 3DS, so in general, I want to be more involved in Nintendo going onward.

For me, it depends on what exclusive titles they release for the Wii U and, of course, the price of the console. I'm not in love with most the Xbox 360 exclusive titles, so if Wii U has all the multi-platform games I want in addition to exclusive games worth buying, I might consider making it my primary console. Though they'd also have to show more improvements as a multimedia device in general; I'm not sure if I could part with all the convenieces Xbox Live offers.

 

[GrimHeaper]

If it ever had a chance, that name pretty much killed it...-_-

That's what they said about the wii.
Anyway you could name a console "Shit" and it could possibly still sell well.
And OP forgets Nintendo itself is hardcore.

 

[ChromeAlchemist]

That's certainly true. However, my concern is that the Wii U will be a replay of the Wii; great first party titles, so-so third party titles because they're still trying to figure the platform out, but absolute crap attachment rates which leads to third party devs focusing on MS and Sony platforms. The final result is a crappy library where the only good games are the few from Nintendo.

I also question Nintendo's timing. Is the Wii U going to compete with the X360/PS3, or the X720/PS4? Can it compete with any of them? By 2012 the X360/PS3 has had 6+ years to build their base and the developers have figured out how to get the most out of those machines. The Wii U will be staring from scratch and staring at competition with 60+ million user base and well established franchises. The X720/PS4 will likely come out between 2013 and 2015, and both of those will be more powerful than the Wii U. The Wii U should hold its own for at least the first two years (depending on how much tech progresses), but will it be outclassed by the new machines by 2016 or so?

I think the Wii U will do fine. I think it can easily sell 30+ million units by the end of 2015 (which are not insane numbers, but respectable). However, I'm not convinced that it will have a library that can challenge those of the PS3/X360 or their replacements. I'm also not convinced that Nintendo has brought third party devs back full time with this platform.

At one point I questioned your first point, but I saw ads touting the Wii-U as "the most developer friendly console ever made!" which, if you ask me is a really good idea. If devs don't spend the next how many years struggling with the console, instead making games for it, we're gonna have something good here.

As for point two, I also wondered about who this console would be against, the PS360 or the PS4/720. Honestly? I think it'll be fine for the next four to five years. That's enough.

Microsoft will be the first to bring forward a new console, but Sony? With all that's happened, I don't think they'll bring a PS4 out for a while. I think they'll stretch out that 10 year life cycle because they made fuck-all on the PS3 until a year or two ago.

I just don't think they can afford it.

EDIT: I meant "I agreed with your first point".

 

[Durananrananrananran]

]

The hardcore crowd has already chosen their platform of choice. Nintendo's new console would have to be a major leap forward in technology or do something very unique to warrant people purchasing another console. From what I've seen and heard, it does neither of those things. The touch screen is a gimmick.

Saying "we can do the same things as those other guys now!" isn't really a compelling argument when those other consoles have been out for 5-6 years.

'hardcore crowd'? I thought the real hardcore gamers owned all the consoles to play the exclusives.

 

[ReservoirAngel]

One of the biggest arguments I've already heard against the Wii-U is that "developers don't know how to make games for it so all the ports and 3rd party games will be all buggy and shit".

My counter? They have a year or so to figure it out. This thing's not coming until at least this time next year. If 3rd party developers can't figure out an extra screen by then, I really do think we should just start from scratch with gaming.

 

[Pingieking]

Microsoft will be the first to bring forward a new console, but Sony? With all that's happened, I don't think they'll bring a PS4 out for a while. I think they'll stretch out that 10 year life cycle because they made fuck-all on the PS3 until a year or two ago.

I disagree. Just because the PS3 didn't start off well doesn't mean they should disrupt the timing of their next system (and effectively kill it before launch).
I think that Sony will bring out the PS4 around the same time the next Xbox arrives. If they don't, they're fucked. With a ten year life cycle we'll see PS3/X360 being supported well into 2016, but we'll definitely see a new console well before that. Most consoles live out the second half of their life cycle with its successor on the market, so it's not a stretch at all to say that both Sony and MS next gen systems will be out by 2015 (which is 10 years for X360) and perhaps as early as 2013 (which gives the PS3 7 years, compared to the 6 years given to the PS2).

 

[Delusibeta]

power "gamers" like to go where the power is when it comes to cross platform titles.

If that was true, all of the "power gamers" would have bought a gaming PC by now.

 

[BoTTeNBReKeR]

I was actually fairly dissapointed by this nintendo console. No way I'm spending money on that thing. I already have a PS3 and a PC. In fact, if I wanted to spent 300 bucks on hardware, I'd probably go for PS Vita...

 

[ChromeAlchemist]

Also, I should point out that "capturing the hardcore crowd" is nonsense in a way. Why are people acting like people who own a PS3 or a 360 is a single crowd of gamers who behave like some sort of hive-mind? It's deeper than that.

Nintendo captured third parties, and that's what mattered.

Microsoft will be the first to bring forward a new console, but Sony? With all that's happened, I don't think they'll bring a PS4 out for a while. I think they'll stretch out that 10 year life cycle because they made fuck-all on the PS3 until a year or two ago.

I disagree. Just because the PS3 didn't start off well doesn't mean they should disrupt the timing of their next system (and effectively kill it before launch).
I think that Sony will bring out the PS4 around the same time the next Xbox arrives. If they don't, they're fucked. With a ten year life cycle we'll see PS3/X360 being supported well into 2016, but we'll definitely see a new console well before that. Most consoles live out the second half of their life cycle with its successor on the market, so it's not a stretch at all to say that both Sony and MS next gen systems will be out by 2015 (which is 10 years for X360) and perhaps as early as 2013 (which gives the PS3 7 years, compared to the 6 years given to the PS2).

I say that because Sony was reportedly in the red for so, so long, and the video games division wasn't the only part of their company doing badly.

I get that the idea of a console successor is like thinking of the sun rising, there's no point because you know it's coming, but if your company is in dire straits (not to say it truly is, but PS3 just making profit, PSN, PSP didn't sell so well, PSVita needs to be catered to right now, etc.) you're not going to want to bring out a new console any time soon.

I think they're developing it, but what can they really do besides "look, it's more powerful!"? If that didn't work this time, will it work and make them profit earlier on next time? I think the DVD and CD really helped them before, but Blu-Ray not so much.

 

[jpblade666]

The definition of a "Hardcore" gamer seems to be a shooter fan who bitches about graphics and "noobs." On topic: If I have the money I'll buy the Wii U, if not I'll get it later.