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Nintendo Wii U


Cecilff2
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zombiU didn't really have much compelling to it. like unless you really like the whole zombie craze, there's nothing there to keep you to it. the combat is meh, the story is also meh, there's no significant multiplayer to get good at the game for, and there is no emotional attachment to your character seeing as they can just die and you start as someone else. there are cool elements, sure. but creating a meh shooter on a historically not-that-shooter-friendly console isn't going to sell millions of copies.

can a shooter work on nintendo systems? sure! goldeneye was great on n64. timesplitters 2 was great on gamecube. literally every friend i had who owned a gamecube had it. red steel 2 was a very good wii game.

there have been winners historically, but when most companies are like 'here's a downgraded port of a multiplatform' or just makes a pretty good-to-middling shooter on a nintendo system, which isn't known for shooters, people are not going to go out of their way to buy it.

companies don't spend money developing games for nintendo systems because nintendo games sell better. the irony is nintendo games sell better because they're better AND nobody spends any money making games for nintendo systems, which means they make average games.

rayman legends was going to be a system selling game, and the shining beacon for 3rd party developers on nintendo systems. instead it gets delayed an extra 4 months 2 weeks before release and made multiplatform FOR LITERALLY NO REASON AT ALL, causing mass outrage and (likely) hurting the wii u sales of the game significantly. shooting yourself in the foot has never occurred on such a massive scale.

that's not on anyone but ubisoft.

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"Niche series" or not, it is the first full length game that Nintendo has spent a large amount of time on and fully utilizes the Wii U's potential. It is also a follow up to a series many fans have been waiting for years and years to play. In fact, it was the only game announced at launch that made me want a Wii U

Nintendoland while a blast is a party game/tech demo, and New Super Mario Bros U is their quick-buck NSMB series. Many may have bought it, but its because there was really nothing else, not that people WANTED a Wii U for it. Their only other title on Wii U so far is Game & Wario, another party game which is literally tech demos, and not even very high quality.

So yeah, I'd consider Pikmin 3 their first high quality game that could actually move systems (at least to those like me that wanted it). More is on the way after that to boot

Edited by Crowbar Man
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Pikmin 3 a system seller? Really? I checked wikipedia and afaik the first Pikmin didn't even sell 1m lifetime. I doubt Pikmin 2 did much better. It's a niche game series.

I believe Zircon is correct on this one, concerning it selling very low, but the numbers seem to be closer to......

Worldwide total sales for Pikmin: 1.63 million

Worldwide total sales for Pikmin 2: 1.20 million

I have no interest in Pikmin, it's not a system seller. It sold less copies to date than people who watch an episode of Breaking Bad, which gets some 1 million viewers per episode. The show is loved by those who watch it and they're all over the internet but not so much where it matters. :-)

Edited by Brandon Strader
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Brandon, it doesn't seem many (if any) Nintendo titles interest you so that isn't surprising. Pikmin is a wonderful series.

Also, 1.6 million is considered bad numbers? On the GCN?

Metroid Prime, arguably one of the best titles on the machine only sold around 2 million. RE4, the best entry into the series, sold 1.6 million on the GCN. By your same logic, these are also niche games.

1+ million is not only an excellent number in general, but an especially excellent number on the GCN.

Edited by Crowbar Man
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I

I have no interest in Pikmin, it's not a system seller. It sold less copies to date than people who watch an episode of Breaking Bad, which gets some 1 million viewers per episode. The show is loved by those who watch it and they're all over the internet but not so much where it matters. :-)

I think this is an invalid comparison. TV shows and games are different things, have different costs, take different amounts of sales to profit. A lot of people watch breaking bad but only a fraction will buy the DVD. How much profit do they make from ads? I don't know. 1.2 million X 60 dollars adds up quick though. If you're just trying to solidify your argument that the Wii U will fail, there's no point in carrying it on. Nobody knows whether or not the Wii U will be successful. The odds are stacked against it yet Nintendo is known for pulling a megaton bomb out when it needs to. Time will tell and for now all we can do is speculate.

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Most companies want at least a 10% profit margin to pad the cost of production, and over %30 is considered a "success".

Average AAA game budget: $40 million

"Successful" game income: 2-3 million copies (about 30% / $12 million profit margin)

Average high-end cable show budget: $3 million per episode

"Successful" TV show run: 5-6 million viewers per episode (about 30% / $900 thousand profit margin)

So no, 3 million games is nothing to sneeze at for video game sales. It is the fault of the budget, not the sales, if a 3 million copies cannot recoup the cost of producing the game. And 1 million viewers is an abysmal number for how expensive Breaking Bad is to produce (about $3 million per episode), though I'm sure AMC is jacking up advertising costs during that hour of programming. NCIS on CBS averages about 10 million viewers, so Breaking Bad is probably a very good comparison to Pikmin. It's doing well enough, but it is not stellar by any means.

Not to mention 1.2 million copies for 24.7 million Gamecubes means that Pikmin was bought by almost 21% of Gamecube owners. The percentage of households that own TV's that are watching Breaking Bad is less than 1% (110 million households with cable TV, 1 million viewer average for Breaking Bad).

Edited by Cerrax
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Most companies want at least a 10% profit margin to pad the cost of production, and over %30 is considered a "success".

Average AAA game budget: $40 million

"Successful" game income: 2-3 million copies (about 30% / $12 million profit margin)

Average high-end cable show budget: $3 million per episode

"Successful" TV show run: 5-6 million viewers per episode (about 30% / $900 thousand profit margin)

So no, 3 million games is nothing to sneeze at for video game sales. It is the fault of the budget, not the sales, if a 3 million copies cannot recoup the cost of producing the game. And 1 million viewers is an abysmal number for how expensive Breaking Bad is to produce (about $3 million per episode), though I'm sure AMC is jacking up advertising costs during that hour of programming. NCIS on CBS averages about 10 million viewers, so Breaking Bad is probably a very good comparison to Pikmin. It's doing well enough, but it is not stellar by any means.

Not to mention 1.2 million copies for 24.7 million Gamecubes means that Pikmin was bought by almost 21% of Gamecube owners. The percentage of households that own TV's that are watching Breaking Bad is less than 1% (110 million households with cable TV, 1 million viewer average for Breaking Bad).

1.2 million copies out of 24.7 million gamecubes isn't 21% of gamecube owners playing Pikmin, it's about 5% ???

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The point I was making was that Pikmin isn't a system seller. And comparing it to Breaking Bad isn't accurate because you are right, Breaking Bad IS considered to be a successful show, whereas selling even 3 million games is seen as a failure.

Mmmmmmm..... okay, I got you there. Anyway, aside/regardless of tv and other media, from what I read on Nintendo, they gauge game success by profitability. Most publishers, at least from what I've seen, gauge success on profit after cost of development, advertising, etc.. Nintendo recently stated that they would have to sell 700,000 copies of a Wii U fire emblem in order for it to be successful and to at least break even with dev costs. If they can't do it, they're not going to make it. But I guess everyone has different views of success.

3 million would be successful for a game like Pikmin, but it wouldn't be like "Woah big bang" like The Last of Us is doing right now. So, I guess it varies on what one personally defines as 'success' in that case. For comparison, the Fire Emblem on 3ds has sold much less than 3 million but it sold well for what they invested and moved quite a few 3ds units.

All this aside, when Nintendo finally has some games they need to ADVERTISE their goods. And they need to do it in STYLE. They act way too humble imo.

Edited by megadave
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C

Also how can you even justify paying extra money just for the "privilege" of playing a Nintendo game?

Enjoying the game is enough justification for purchase. If someone feels satisfied for what they've put into acquiring the game, then that's all the justification one needs. When we're all having a blast playing Mario Kart 8, Smash U, and the like next year, I think we'll see that the purchase of the console is justified. And who knows what else. The president just stated they have titles they kept in secret to avoid people ripping it off before release. You may find yourself to be the one missing out soon enough.

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i'll be getting a wii u when mario kart and smash bros are on it, and i'll consider it money well spent even if i just played those games.

Of course, i'm an epic baller and money means nothing to me, but not everyone else can be as awesome. :P

True dat, brother. *hives fives* *speeds away in Ferrari to my private jet*

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And they experiment

Do you watch Disney movies?

Pikmin fans may be passionate, but probably not passionate enough to make Pikmin 3 sell more than a million copies.

Still, a Nintendo game that isn't WiiSports selling over a million is still fairly decent - Corruption sold roughly 1.7 million, if I recall. And that's one of the best-selling Metroid games of all time! The trick, as always, is to keep costs down. However, with the advent of HD visuals, that's going to be harder and harder to do.

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If we're judging only numbers higher than 3 million to be a "success" and not "niche"/"failure", than outside of SSBM, Mario Kart, Sunshine, and Wind Waker, the GCN didn't have any other games BUT "niche" and "failure". Everything else sold less than 3 million, (including Prime, Luigi's Mansion, REmake, RE4, FZero GX, Eternal Darkness, Animal Crossing, etc) so I guess they were all failures, niche games, and not system sellers :/

Don't use your modern day mega-publisher numbers to judge how successful a GameCube game was. Also just because other modern day studios are seriously over budgeting their games to the point where less than 3 million will cause the game to be a commercial failure doesn't mean the same for Nintendo.

Soo basically just like a DVD player that plays nearly exclusively Disney movies.

Well, if Disney didn't produce movies on any other type of DVD player, I guess? But what else are you supposed to do if you want to watch Disney's movies?

Also how can you even justify paying extra money just for the "privilege" of playing a Nintendo game?
I like Nintendo games

^ This. If you like Nintendo games, you have to get a Wii U. If you don't like Nintendo games... don't buy a Wii U? Kinda simple.

Its no different than owning any other console though. I got a 360 because it had exclusives PS3 didn't (well, at first at least), I got a Wii because it had games 360/PS3 didn't, then I got a PS3 because it eventually got exclusives 360 didn't. Same for GCN/XB/PS2/DC... N64/SAT/PS1.. SNES/Gen, etc

Buying a console because it has the games you want on it isn't really a new concept.

I'll own a Wii U for Nintendo games and games that wont be on PS3/360/PS4/XBO.

I'll own a PS4 for 3rd party console-only games and the one off Sony exclusive that might show up (not counting on it though)

I'll own a Xbox One for uh...um.. hmm... well...probably not.

Edited by Crowbar Man
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Well, if Disney didn't produce movies on any other type of DVD player, I guess? What else are you supposed to do if you want to watch Disney's movies?

Disney movies, everything owned by Disney (which WOULD now include all future releases of Marvel movies (including re-releases of ANY previous movies) and Star Wars Movies, everything Disney had any part funding....

If the content isn't on DVD and can't be streamed legally...

You know, actually, Disney 'might' just be able to do it. And if they convinced a few other big studios like MGM, Universal et all. to port their movies over to the Disney Propriety Disc Format (DPD for short) it could actually take off :razz:

...

To be honest though, I bought a Wii U because:

1) I get through on average 1 new video game every 2 months. The release rate of 'great' games on the Wii was just enough to keep me interested. I know it wasn't for everyone but it did for me, and I was under the false assumption the Wii U would manage a similar release schedule (yeah, they fooled me there :-P ) But weren't people originally saying how great a Wii HD would be?

2) Although I get along with first person shooters there are other types of games I prefer. 360 and PS3 seem to be go to consoles for FPS games but I've always admired the quirkier, adventure titles

3) Yeah, I do trust Nintendo, in a weird way. I fully demand more than JUST Nintendo, but a selection of 'similar' scope to GC would satisfy me.

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Ah, I guess because you designate it a flop it must be true.

Also because it was a flop, there were no good games on it and nobody enjoyed any of the 22 million GCN units sold. No system sellers for those 22 million units either. It is impossible for anybody to enjoy a console or its games if it isn't on top. I guess Nintendo didn't make any money on it during that process either. (Hint they probably made the biggest profit out of the 4)

Also it being a "flop" somehow COMPLETELY CHANGED ANY OF THE INFO I POSTED about Pikmin selling almost as well as any other GameCube hit

It being a "flop" only proves that Pikmin was a pretty hot item to have sold as much on such a low installed base.

Edited by Crowbar Man
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