Nintendo drops Wii U $50 due to poor sales (1 Viewer)

[Morgan Jolley]

So it runs them at a higher resolution but effectively not at a higher resolution.

 

[LeoA]

It upscales them which essentially means that the original output of the game is converted to whatever your selected HD resolution is.

It has to happen somewhere down the line since the modern HDTV can only display a picture in its native resolution. Since the Wii U does a better job of it than many HDTV scaling chips will do, it's beneficial. Toss it seamlessly adjusting the aspect ratio as appropriate and it's a rather nice bonus compared to the original Wii hardware.

But yes, upscaling can't create detail where there is none. But nice quality upscaling helps preserve the detail that is present during the process. That's why upscaling DVD players took off a few years ago for another example.

 

[LeoA]

Grezzo, the Japanese developer of Ocarina of Time 3D on the 3DS, has a job listing for a programmer and another position in gold text about an opportunity to create a legend. Perhaps another hint that Majora's Mask 3D is planned?

If it happens like many are hoping for and believe will, I hope they toss in their Four Swords port as a bonus. Would be a shame to see that kept a download exclusive, especially with it unavailable to new 3DS owners.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

I'd imagine more likely they're making a new Zelda than MM. Majora's Mask is either already in development or not happening.

 

[LeoA]

My money is on Majora's Mask 3D next year.

 

[LeoA]

Sounds like Splatoon will have some form of local multiplayer.

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2014/06/dont_worry_splatoon_will_have_a_local_multiplayer_mode_too

 

[DavidJ]

Well, our family now owns a Wii U. I bought be Mario Kart bundle. It was a chore to find one, but I finally did. Any game recommendations? Primarily for family fun/young kids.

 

[LeoA]

New Super Mario Bros. U is an excellent choice. There's challenge there for an adult if you were to play through it and seek all the star coins from each level, but also great fun for young kids thanks to the excellent local multiplayer setup.

I believe that your Mario Kart 8 free game promotion that you'll want to take advantage of would let you download this for free (You also might want to consider Wii Party U, another of the choices, which I assume is another solid choice for younger kids and multiplayer).

I'd steer away from New Super Luigi U though which is essentially a expansion pack since the difficulty level is much higher. Unless you want more after NSMBU for yourself, it isn't very well suited for the younger crowd.

I'm not sure if Super Mario 3D World is quite as well suited (It brought the multiplayer angle from the NSMB line to a 3D Mario platformer). Depends on how old your kids are. I doubt 5 or 6 year olds would get as much fun out of it as they would MK8 and NSMBU, but if they're more like 10 or so, that one is another excellent choice.

And if their previous game is any indication, you'll want to watch for Yoshi's Woolly World next year. Kirby's Epic Yarn on the Wii was perfect for younger kids while still having enough appeal with the graphics and level design to keep an adult having fun at the same time despite the lack of difficulty. This looks set to be more of the same.

In fact, if you don't own a Wii, I highly recommend Kirby's Epic Yarn which you can play on your Wii U via Wii mode. Very pretty game despite being 480p and perfect for kids as I already said. It's also very cheap which is fairly unusual for a 1st party Nintendo release or a Kirby platformer.

 

[Edwin-S]

Trying to decide between Windwaker HD or PikMin3 for the download. I'm kind of leaning toward the Zelda game, but PikMin3 looks like it might not be too bad either.

 

[DavidJ]

Thanks for the detailed replay, Leo. The kids are 8 and almost 4. We do have a Wii and a handful of games. They enjoy Super Mario Brothers so I was think of Super Mario Brothers U as the free one and that's good to know about Super Luigi U. I need to check out Kirby's Epic Yarn. I haven't heard of that one before. I do admit I'm intrigued PikMin 3 for all of the praise it seems to get in reviews.

 

[Bryan^H]

For $15 on the E-Shop, 'Shovel Knight' may be the greatest video game purchase I make this year. Gameplay is a dream, and the fun factor is off the charts. If you are into retro 8-or 16 bit gaming, look no further than this loving tribute to a bygone era.

 

[DaveF]

My 16 yo niece is visiting this week, and she's got a Wii at home. I browsed BestBuy this week, but they didn't have any WiiU on the shelves. Probably for the best. SAF for an unexpected videogame purchase would have been low,especially just for the niece's visit

 

[LeoA]

Nintendo's quarterly results are now public.

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2014/07/nintendo_reports_losses_for_q1_of_financial_year_with_variable_hardware_results

On the bright side despite their overall company performance still being disappointing, the Wii U sold approximately 3 times the hardware this quarter that it did a year ago and over four times the software. Nice to see signs of growth and consumers responding to things like Mario Kart 8 even if the overall numbers remain disappointing.

3DS, although I still think of it as brand new, is continuing to show signs of starting to slow down as it nears the midpoint of its 3rd year on the market. Hardware sales have went from 1.4 million to 820,000 and software sales from just over 11 million to 8.5 million from this quarter a year ago.

Seems a shame since I don't think it's consumers tiring of it or starting to look towards a future replacement, but just not enough quality software flowing out regularly enough like it had back around 2012. Probably just a sign of Nintendo starting to prepare for new hardware in the next couple of years, but it's still a shame to see 1st party offerings slowing down a bit (Which the 3DS is dependent upon more than any past Nintendo handheld) when the hardware still has so much life in it.

 

[LeoA]

If anyone's interested (I know we had a flurry of sales performance talk in this thread a while back), I just saw Nintendo's 2014 projections.for the Wii U. Looks like Nintendo is keeping it modest this year after being over optimistic the past couple of years.

Would be nice if somehow the Wii U surprises everyone and handily beats it this year, but at least we shouldn't be talking about it only selling 1/3 of what Nintendo projected and such when next spring rolls around and the current fiscal year concludes.
Wii U
Hardware Sales (Q1) — 510,000 unitsHardware Sales Projection (2014 to 2015) — 3.6 million unitsSales Required (Q2 - Q4) — 3.09 million unitsTarget Reached To Date — 14.16%
Software Sales (Q1) — 4.39 million unitsSoftware Sales Projection (2014 to 2015) — 20 million unitsTarget Reached To Date — 21.95%

 

[Morgan Jolley]

I think Smash Bros. will help Nintendo out immensely. People could easily get a Wii U, Smash Bros., and like 4 or 5 of the best games for under $500 this November. Would be a great Christmas present and it will definitely help their sales.Will they reach the number they were originally aiming for? Probably not, but they'll get a lot closer.

 

[DaveF]

Since SSB is fundamentally a multi-player game, do you suppose Nintendo will sell a game/controller combo, or a Wii/game/two-controller combo?

 

[laser]

Since SSB is fundamentally a multi-player game, do you suppose Nintendo will sell a game/controller combo, or a Wii/game/two-controller combo?

There will be a game/GameCube controller adapter/Smash logo GameCube controller bundle for the hardcore fans.

 

[LeoA]

Will they reach the number they were originally aiming for? Probably not, but they'll get a lot closer.

I believe that they'll be able to match their projection for the year this time.

Their projection of 3.6 million Wii U's sold, of which they're already over half a million there at the 25% mark of the current fiscal year, sounds very realistic. They did 2.72 million last year with only one really major release during the entire fiscal year (Super Mario 3D World). And this quarter last year, they only moved 160,000 systems so that's a huge jump.

This year, they have Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Brothers 4, possibly another price drop in the Fall, and a solid portfolio of exclusives on store shelves. Plus, they generated a fair bit of E3 excitement and I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more about Zelda U before the fiscal year concludes. The first really positive momentum the Wii U has had since spring of 2013 when the doom & gloom started to overshadow everything.

I suspect they will comfortably beat the projection. Not sure how much that will be appreciated by investors that actually want the most accurate data possible, but it beats what has happened in the past where Nintendo wasn't even in the ballpark.

They predicted 9 million Wii U's would be sold last year alone yet today as the Wii U is approaching its 2nd birthday, it's still shy of the 7 million mark for lifetime sales.

 

[LeoA]

Since this thread basically doubles as our general 3DS thread as well, I thought I'd mention that the arcade version of Thunder Blade has been announced as the next Sega 3D Classics release on the 3DS eShop.

While not quite as awful in its Genesis form as Galaxy Force II was (3DS got the arcade version last year), similarly to Galaxy Force II, gamer's that just remember the rough 16 bit conversion are in for a treat with this one since it was excellent (Sega really should've based the Genesis game on the top down portions rather than attempting the 3D sprite scaling bits).



Hopefully Sega actually releases wave 2 of their 3D Classics series here. They've been nice games all around so far with this round and no bland Genesis ports like Altered Beast have cluttered it up. It has been 100% arcade focused so far (Both Fantasy Zone's, Afterburner II, Outrun, and now this) with hopefully more surprises to come like Turbo Outrun later this year (I'd import a 3DS if they ported that one over).

But rumblings are that Sega won't bring this group West like they did the first wave of releases late last year. So that's why I'm spreading the word in a small way by posting about this latest game announcement for Japan.

 

[DaveF]

http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/27/6073421/why-you-should-buy-a-nintendo-wii-u