Nintendo Switch

Nintendo does have a very low employee count for their success and size, though some of that is mitigated by how many third party developers (hah hah) work with them. Pokemon and Smash are two of their biggest franchises, and Nintendo develops neither.

They're obviously expanding and diversifying via mobile and licensing. Which they should've done during the Wii days, but better late than never. They're investing in stuff, though who knows if they're good investments or not. As always it's impossible to determine what they're doing with hardware until we have any idea of what the NX is.

edited 3rd Jun '16 2:50:26 PM by Sterok

The only Wii U games on the latest sales list from Japan were Splatoon and Mario Maker and none of them were in the top spots. The Wii U latest console sales are more than 4 times worse than New 3DS, PS 4 and PS Vita of all things. It's a failure because this was the console that would beat all other 8th generation consoles and it can only best XB 1 on home turf.

edited 3rd Jun '16 2:55:40 PM by LordofLore

I'm not saying that the wii u was the best selling console- i'm saying it wasn't a failure.

you can't just look at japan either, consoles as a whole are selling less and less there. you have to look at global reception and sales.

Japan is Nintendo's home and where they look at sales first(and where going by the latest numbers a fourth of their customers are). It's not better over the sea either. 12 million are the latest total numbers we got which means it managed to sell around 2 million in one year across the world. Have you seen how many the others are selling each quarter?

edited 3rd Jun '16 3:09:06 PM by LordofLore

Wii U is an absolute failure. You don't go from a 100 million to under 15 million consoles sold without being called a failure, especially since the competition shows there is a market for home consoles. And software sales are arguably even worse for them since even though a few titles like Mario Kart and Splatoon can still sell, they're not collecting many licensing fees from third parties, aka probably the biggest reason to be make hardware.

Though Japan did end up being one of its better regions anyway (smaller % drop from the Wii compared to other territories) thanks to their strength there and the squid kids.

Japan's console market is declining. This is not the case for West.

Plus, as the 3DS and Wii U have proven, if a system has a lackluster launch, it can still pick up steam. The 3DS started picking up steam when we got Ocarina 3D, Star Fox 3D, Mario Kart, 3D Land, and Kid Icarus. Wii U started picking up when Mario Kart and Smash came out. And the Wii U has games now.

Nintendo is in a financially safe position because of the success of previous gens.

Here we go again with the same circular argument...

On the topic of that fanmade NX logo being removed, if they are still developing it for the NX at all, I think they likely removed it due to it being fan made or something.

But financially safe does not necessarily equal success in the eyes of a company, especially when comparing the Wii U to its predecessor. It's like Sterok said, the Wii U, despite picking up steam at the end of its life cycle cannot be considered a success in the industry. Should the NX achieve similiar results, Nintendo would surely reconsider its investment in the home console market.

edited 3rd Jun '16 3:06:54 PM by LewisLiddel

Yeah both sides will just start up arguing let's focus on E3. Why do people from Nintendo fadom call E3 irrelevant or unimportant?

Because Nintendo aren't bringing new announcements to it. They are getting their first look at a game that they were assured would release in 2015, a trailer and probably a short demo of the next Pokemon game that'll probably have a new game in one or two years again, some trailers for games Nintendo doesn't seem to have that much confidence in and controversial games like the next Paper Mario and Federation Force are apparently missing despite their release dates pretty much being confirmed for this year.

E3 has been less important to Nintendo since they started doing Directs, but it's still a big event that they attend. This year is just much smaller than we're used to since it's just Zelda U, Pokemon, and some info about games that haven't released in the states yet(but have in other countries).

I do think E3 as a whole this year isn't going to be as exciting as the past year or two, barring another out of left field reveal by one of the companies.

I see no reason to bring up the fact that Pokemon is going to get another game in a year or two as a negative.

edited 3rd Jun '16 3:15:00 PM by strawberryflavored

I bring it up because it's not special. Getting a new Pokemon game is as sure as the sun rising every day. It's great to see it and marvel over new Pokemon but it isn't something that's a surprise.

Right. I suppose I'm just really getting negative, but I just want NX to do well. And I want Third Parties to develop for it so all those great games that tend to be multi-platform don't completely skip out on NX because developers think it's not worth touching, which is what I think will happen if Nintendo doesn't start actually talking.

It's like they want to push Third Parties away.

Here's my throw in the pile: E3 is just a stepping stone for Nx. Chances are Nintendo will have a decently sized E3 presentation next year assuming that they don't take the time now to reestablish Spaceworld, making an entirely new event for themselves. It's just that this year, they can't release Nx information, likely because there were some things that, either recently or close-to-recently, got changed with the console itself.

And no, technically Nintendo could go on for a long time not doing so hot and still survive. But that's not really doing well, it's just persisting. And Nintendo realizes this, else they wouldn't have stopped making games for a year to prematurely announce a successor to their under preforming primary home console.

And if Nintendo does well, that will fund more games, better games, and it'll make owning a Nintendo console a better prospect, so that you don't have to buy two consoles, one to play Nintendo games and another to play everything else. It's a net gain, it's just a question of whether Nintendo will take it.

Let's hope some information gets released. Remember the Wii, or the "Revolution" as it was back then? Lots of prototype demonstrations, and plenty of hype. It was a success, but not in the way gamers would have expected. Let's hope it becomes successful with some good demonstrations.

Ah, I still remember some of them when I was young. I especially loved the Nintendo ON hoax. That was the best one.

Has the Wii U been a net profit for Nintendo?

as of end of 2015, yes.

I do have to wonder if Nintendo is indeed still stuck with a very 90s mindset when it comes to their approaches, and that's part of why they aren't doing as well.

Globalization could also be part of the problem. It's why Sony moved their console division to North America earlier this year and focus so much on them unlike with the PS 1 and PS 2 where they also focused on Europe and Japan a lot besides Japan losing their console gaming dominance and the US taking over in Gen 7. Nintendo, on the other hand, still focuses mostly on Japan.

It took three years to get to that point(unlike other current consoles like the PS 4) but yes.

edited 4th Jun '16 1:12:30 AM by LordofLore

The PS 4 sold at a loss when it first released though

Everything does(mostly because to be profitable everyone needs to buy at least 1 game in most cases). A few months later it was already selling at a profit.

edited 4th Jun '16 1:24:31 AM by LordofLore

And technically, the Wii U was profitable for Nintendo in it's beginning.

They did say they profited from every Wii U game sold back then

Nothing new, same shit? OK, that's all I need to know. Carry on.

edited 4th Jun '16 4:30:08 AM by edvedd