[ETC] Nintendo butt rape

[Gaijin Punch]

Hey, let's combine two of the hottest topics around: Video Games and the shit economy.

Source

[CIT Seven Force]

That's not due to the general state of the economy though, but mainly because of the stiff competition from Smartphones for the DS, as well the lack of good games for Wii.

[Gaijin Punch]

That's not due to the general state of the economy though, but mainly because of the stiff competition from Smartphones for the DS, as well the lack of good games for Wii.

Part of it is the strong yen, which is directly b/c of the economy.

[Gaijin Punch]

Annual profits down 66%

[Shou]

I don't see how they're going to turn their fortunes around in fiscal 2011 and support 2 new platforms in 2012.

The 3DS is a flop compared to the DS' performance and has little on the release horizon that's exciting. Wii has 0 big releases this year outside of Zelda which will probably be moved to the new platform like Twilight Princess was.

[Gaijin Punch]

History will probably show that the Wii was a fluke, and they're now getting back to their normal selves.

[dcharlie]

one of the most frustrating things with Nintendo since the DS has been "but we can't just have the same gaming experiences! Gamers won't buy it! We need to do something different!"

Which, well, i don't 100% agree with but hey - i see that offereing a new experience IS at least worth a look but then you look at the line ups for the last few consoles handhelds...

same old shit, over and over and over again.

[Gaijin Punch]

Back to the N64/GC days it seems

[Ganelon]

It's odd how Nintendo still hasn't learned its lesson to amass 3rd party support before releasing a new platform. Also, if it needed to be said, never raise prices out of "fan interest."

It's hard to sympathize much with Nintendo when they dug their own hole by diluting the current gen market and focusing immediately on casual gamer when they found a catch. And I'm still not sure why the 3DS is region-locked when no handheld system before needed to be and apparently, neither will the Vita. I admire their idealist views but that courtship during the Wii era has lost them serious support from more serious gamers. Nintendo focusing on The Next Big Thing seems like an awfully risky strategy though, one that may push investors up into arms if the U fails.

That said, the price cut and Ambassador program was probably the best thing Nintendo could have done at this point. Some of the negativity shown towards it seems unwarranted. Granted, the price drop this time is one of the earliest for any console but game companies aren't obligated to hold prices for any time, and there's no doubt the 3DS was guaranteed to fall to $180 at some point down the line. It's also unheard of for a company to offer a later bonus for early adopters.

[Gaijin Punch]

Only time I can think of was one of the iPhone cuts -- I think the 3G when it came out to the states (or maybe the 3GS). The whole thing reeks of total fuck up though.

[EOJ]

Yep, Nintendo is doomed. I think they will end up like Sega within the next decade, after the inevitable failure of the Wii U. And I think that will be a good thing as I'll actually get to play games they've developed on good hardware, without all the crappy, forced gimmicks.

[nem]

I bet they'll pull some magical golden laying goose right at the last possible minute that'll make them filthy rich once again. It's happened before with Pokémon, the DS and the Wii.

[ave]

Granted, the price drop this time is one of the earliest for any console [...]. It's also unheard of for a company to offer a later bonus for early adopters.

I don't wanna be the smartass here, but all this has happened before with the original Xbox in Europe. It launched for 479 Euro on March 14, 2002. They cut the price at the GameCube's launchday (May 3rd 2002) almost in half, all the way down to 299 Euro (!).
Back then, early adopters were granted the possibility to bring their receipt to the stores and claim a total of three Games for free. That was at a time when the MSRP for Xbox games was 69 Euros (and many if not all stores sticked to that for a long time), so it wasn't that much of a bad deal.

Xbox did rather good in Europe, despite the bad start. Better than the GameCube anyway. It's not all over, maybe Christmas sale with some new Nintendo quality titles is gonna save it.

By the way, I haven't heard anything about the Wii U since E3. Anything new? Or are they still waiting for the laughs at their shuriken & golf tablet to die off?