[QUOTE="Madmangamer364"]
For me, it's really all about one thing. Nintendo has to release a game (or two) with profound impact on the Wii U and establish the system's identity out of the gate. If Pikmin 3 is all the Wii U has going for it at launch, it's looking like a bad omen. We're talking about a system with an approach similar to consoles released 6-7 years ago; what's really going to set the Wii U apart in an already established market will be unique games that are able showcase the system's strengths to a wide audience. Neither Pikmin nor any Lego game will be enough to pull off the kind of appeal needed for the Wii U to take off.
Like Super Mario Bros. with the NES, Tetris with the Game Boy, and Wii Sports with the Wii, the Big N has to have a game with a similar kind of impact early if the Wii U is truly going to be system Nintendo's claiming it can be. Third party games that will be available elsewhere won't be saying much to the "Wii" or the "U" people, but especially the "Wii" crowd.
Sepewrath
And whose to say Pikmin 3 isn't it? Take the Wii for example, Wii Sports wasn't the first sports game to ever come out, the sports game was a tried and true formula as old as the industry itself. All Nintendo did was take that old concept and wrap it around the interface of the new system to show what it was capable of and it became a hit. Pikmin being a product of the "standard era" doesn't exclude it from doing the same. And a Lego Game could actually be great for this systems capabilities, only problem there is its a 3rd party game and Nintendo has to do it themselves. You mentioned Tetris, that game didn't prove the capabilities of the Game Boy, Super Mario Land did that. What Tetris was, was an addictive game with a wide appeal, basically its the original Angry Birds.
However Nintendo doesn't have to rely on a Tetris or a Wii Sports to pull of a launch, they could put all their eggs in one basket, but those kind of things are lightning in a bottle; their the exceptions not the rule. Nintendo's best approach would be to spread it around, have a number of games/functions that cater to a number of taste. I don't like their chances of hitting that micro sized bulleyes aiming for it. They can put everything on that 50pt shot or they could have five 10pt shots, either way you end up with 50; but the latter offers a greater margin of error.
Wait, are you comparing Pikmin to Wii Sports? If so, I'd expect much better coming from you. The sales of the previous two Pikmin games would easily suggest that it's not even close to being a series that's going to attract that kind of attention, and outside of building the series' identity from the ground-up, there's no way it's ever going to reach that point. It has neither the outward appeal nor accessible gameplay to be that big of a hit. Sure, you could point out sales differences between the GCN and Wii, but Pikmin wasn't that far off from being a GCN launch title (the game was released in less than a month of the system's release), and while it generated a cult following, it didn't move consoles. It's really kind of difficult to make a point here, as I'm just shellshocked by the fact that there's even a hint of a suggestion the Pikmin 3 could hope to come close to Wii Sports impact. :? For starters, it's not going to a game Nintendo simply packages with the system to be experienced immediately, but further more, we know what Pikmin is, with or without a tablet.
I still don't understand why people find Nintendo's strengths to be so hard to figure out these days. The history of Nintendo's successes and failures can be linked almost directly to the games the company has used to launch a system and whether or not those games continued to show up. It's with games like Super Mario Bros. Tetris, and Wii Sports, games that were easy-to-play and had universal appeal, that have been the launch pads to Nintendo's strongest brands. This IS Nintendo's best approach, and the Wii U's success at launch will greatly hinge on whether or not it has a launch game that compares to these games. Everything else Nintendo launched has been at least a step behind these systems (and the DS' breakthrough success came when similar games were released later on), so it's hard to call them exceptions based on this. When it comes to giving a Nintendo system the best chance to be successful, the approach I speak of has been THE formula.
Furthermore, the notion of getting 50 from 5 shots combined being easier to getting it with just one is a questionable approach. I think a supremely skilled player with equally supreme confidence would just take their chances on winning or losing with that one shot, as opposed to having to rely on five different shots to get the same score. Seeing Nintendo is the best at pulling off the Super Mario's and Wii Sports' of the world, I think it suits them better to go that way than to believe that five different games aimed at different audiences are all going to be successful at launch. That's the real lightning in a bottle here, especially when you consider the variety of unknown elements that come with the Wii U at this point. Whatever comes with the technical/technological side of the Wii U is gravy, but if the system doesn't generate that mainstream/average consumer buzz with a game comparable to the games I've been speaking of, it's really not going to mean a whole lot what tricks the Wii U is showing off.
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