The Wii U failure, a Miyamoto problem?

I’m mixed about NX’s direction. Getting Miyamoto away from it seems acknowledgement that Miyamoto does not have the Midas touch. However, Miyamoto blaming ‘tablets’ for everyone ‘not getting’ Wii U seems ridiculous. Is this a Nintendo problem or a Miyamoto problem? I’m thinking it is a Miyamoto problem. Nintendo acknowledges the disaster called Virtual Boy even if Miyamoto still thinks the Virtual Boy is awesome.

Above: Hidden video of what goes on at night at the Treehouse

We really have to see what the NX is. We had the Wii-mote controller revealed before the Wii. We have nothing to go on for the NX except the account system plan with DeMa (or whatever its name is).

Do you think that Miyamoto is the problem why the Wii U didn't sell?

The problem was the popularity of the wii and idiotic consumers buying into dlc and subscription based releases.

If you mean Miyamoto meddling with the hardware ideas? Maybe. But I think that his plan of easy access for all gamers usually means that there is more of a simplistic approach to controllers. I don't know who to blame the gamepad on, but whoever thought of it needed to be fired. It goes against everything Nintendo does, which is access for all (only one gamepad works per system), couch multiplayer (gamepad actually separates the gamepad player from the rest of the gamers) low cost, (Gamepad costs upwards of $100) and simplicity. (damn thing has almost every gadget in the world on it)

I wish someone would have asked at the investors meeting who thought of the gamepad. Then we would know who to blame.

I blame everyone involved with Nintendo. Try giving consumers what they want, instead of what you think we want. They refuse to listen, and change their ways.

I'd say its a management problem...the management got a big head after Wii success & decided that the Wii name alone would sell the console ..it didn't..also they clung to tight to their flawed thinking of "casuals from Wii would become core gamers & move to Wii U"...now they realise casuals will just continue to be casuals. The controller was a problem in that it was too costly & Nintendo had no idea really how to use it . :P

There were people that responded negatively to the snes having six buttons. There was a HUGE hesitation from people regarding the N64 analog stick--so much so that the dpad was there for a backup. Nobody really saw a need for force feedback in the home--Nintendo releases the rumble pack. Consumer adopted all of this.

I like that they take chances. The biggest lost potential move was probably the N64 with its options for hardware expansion. It wasn't just the Ram pack. Couple that with expandable carts and the 64DD and who knows where consoles would be if its design concepts took off.

But Miyamoto is part of the management team, Nintendo is no longer the house of Mario. It's now the house of Miyamoto

Nintendo thought those same people who bought the Wii, would turn around and buy Wii2.

lol maybe they would have, if they had the common sense to name the thing Wii 2.

Maybe, who knows. But there are far too many issues at Nintendo that can't just all come down to Miyamoto. More of the blame should land at Iwata, and one should question why isn't his involvement being dialed back. The happy meal toys are a band-aid at best.

@skelly34 said:

lulz! That made me spilled my drink

@FireEmblem_Man: Don't think he's solely responsible though...unless their management are just full of "yes men". I'd say Iwata is more to blame...he is the CEO. :P

I do believe that the Iwata board is full of Yes Man, there has to be a reason why a lot of NOA employees that helped kept the N64 and GC alive are gone

I mean, when Yamauchi was in charge, NoA, NoE, and NoJ where running on their own, when Iwata came on board, all decisions were made only in NoJ.

Yes, he has part of the blame. The drones can attack me all they want.

No, the Wii U failed because of Nintendo's history of no third party which has eroded away at consumer confidence.

I'm a Nintendo fan, but I do agree he's part of the blame as he has influence on the hardware design of the Wii U

It can't always be the same deadbeat reason all the time. There's more to the failure, also before Iwata took over, NoA had Howard Lincoln and he knew how to convince 3rd party publishers to develop for the N64 and GC. When Iwata took over, he had NoJ to call the shots globally.

This is a good thread to read to see how Iwata packed the company with men favorable to him.

He also has influence in management, game development as a whole, and PR for the Press.

Good find! I would like to share this with my Master, the Great Sean Malstrom

Also @MirkoS77 take a look at this

Holy crap, must be why the Board wants him to stay as CEO despite the fact that Iwata brought the longest period of consecutive losses, a 4 years period of losses.

@ladyblue: Do we really know what we want though?

I'm not getting philosophical or anything but sometimes its just the right place at the right time for things. I do admit that they are a little too off the wall with their ideas (Nintendo-like solutions or something to that ilk) to the point that it annoys some people, but sometimes generic wins out, sometimes it doesn't.

As for WiiU failure... I don't think its just Miyamoto. This is all a collaborative effort, and what probably happened is that they went and prototyped this thing for years, noticed a boom in the middle of development, but then decided that they spent too many resources and green lighted it anyway even after finding out that it was inefficient. They still might have expected lightning in a bottle, but it wasn't completely due to the tech but partly the legacy of the Wii.

Generic in what way? I'm not asking for Nintendo to make a PC-like console, as I know their gaming roots came from the Arcades. All I'm asking for is games and only games. The type of games that everybody will enjoy, and the type of games they were received from feedback, I never asked for a Metroid Prime spin-off on the 3DS nor asked for Link to fly on a bird and add Japanese High School drama story elements

A question I even ask myself.

Miyamoto and Iwata both find themselves approaching a similar situation as Kutaragi

@FireEmblem_Man: If I'm going to be blunt and many might not like it, the Xbox 360 and PS4 fit this description nicely. Of course this is my interpretation of it: it has "power", but little else. No new gimmicks, but solid marketing, which in the PS4's case hits the right time and place piece.

As for the games part... what I think is going on is that Nintendo is trying to juggle costs with sustainability, as in keeping games flowing on both systems without losing a huge amount of momentum. Its not easy for one developer to do (no third party support does that to you), and MPFF is one such game where it didn't pay off response wise. They tried to cash in on the name to make fans happy but at the same time wanted to keep costs low, which lead to problems with hungry fans wanting a true MP game.

The Zelda bit.... that's like your opinion man. I found it to be good and it doesn't have the restrictive issues of said other game. :P

Yes, costs is what matters to Nintendo, the Wii and DS era was completely unpredictable as everyone was claiming Nintendo dead on arrival from the PSP and PS3. I can agree that the Wii came out of the right time because the world economy was in trouble in a business standpoint and Console gaming became too expensive. Wii's were easy to made and cost less to buy. But the question is, how did they pickup the influence to cater a huge audience that is now lost?

They model the Wii like an Apple product and went for simplicity to cater towards the "Casual" (I like to call them the Big Blue). The only problem was that Nintendo didn't give them a reason to keep playing their Wii's other than Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Mario Kart Wii, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Just Dance over the sea of shovelware produced by 3rd parties that had no clue what that Big blue likes to play. If you look back at those "Wii would like to play" commercials, you can tell that it had an Apple feel to it.

But unlike Krazy Ken, Iwata holds the whole deck. He packed the board with yes men who obey him. Iwata can easily crush any opposition at this point, now that Nintendo bought back Yamauchi's shares. This means that there is no real threat to Iwata's reign. For better or worse, we are on this train.

Miyamoto is one of the greatest game developers of all time.

It's a damn shame too, because there ways of running the ancient old company is not helping them. They need to give Reggie the power to run NoA the way he sees fit, same for NoE, and all the other branches of nintendo. If you can't look at the different taste gamers has across the world and only fulfill the taste of Japan, you have failed

@FireEmblem_Man: Pick up influence? If its what I think you mean then I already answered that albeit a little under dressed and vaguely since no one really knows the true reason for why people are infatuated with the things they are infatuated with to a tee. I mentioned this earlier with the idea that no one knows what they want until they see it, and its definitely true here.

To go further though... if I were to hazard a guess as to why they thought the Wii was a good idea and it turned out to be, its largely luck if we are being minimalistic. They knew how to market it, it came out at the right time, nobody had anything like it that was any good. They tried to replicate it again, but this time others did do something about it. Sucks but that's how the tech business goes. Of course there are indicators for trends which their are literal teams of people that dedicate their work to, but overall its a risky guessing game.

Their are a ton of other reasons that you could literally make a book (I'm sure people have actually) but that's the crappy answer to it. One that I must mention otherwise is history, which tends to be a much bigger reason than most initially think, and I'm not talking software only. Honestly I got a ton of ideas swimming around but its mostly blog worthy. :P

@skelly34 said:

Man, i insist, the puppets were damn amazing.

He is sitting on a gold mine of properties. He is diversifying the Nintendo brand. He is coming around to what Nintendo can be. But I think that they wouldn't be in this situation if he left NOA and NOE alone. Both of them were doing good things. And I can't blame Reggie for what NOA does anymore. Iwata is the guy behind it and is using Reggie as a meat shield. Its actually brilliant. He can rule with impunity and others bear the brunt of the damage. Even poor MIyamoto is tossed in front of the bus with this setup.

If Miyamoto named the Wii U, then he should take blame. If he didn't, then he's got nothing to do with it in my book.

But he did have influenced on shoveling 3D on the 3DS thinking it will be a selling point as well as the tablet design for the gamepad. Also he loved the Virtual Boy idea and pushed Gumpei Yokoi do the project that costed his job and later his life

If memory serves Virtual Boy was a political move to force Yokoi out.

I'm by no means a Nintendo fan, or follow them that closely, but to me this seems to have lot to do with it. They seem stuck in a certain way of doing things.

And instead of creating a console that consumers would want, they seem hell-bent on trying to give us something we didn't know we wanted. Which is extremely rare.

They have been doing this with their titles as well, most noticeably those Mario Sports spin-offs, Mario Party, Adding too many puzzles in Zelda games, and forcing maternal instincts on Samus.

Really? Who was the conspirator?

An interesting read, thanks.

I think ,Nintendo have got massive problems jumping to the next system.

I love Nintendo, but they screwed up. Yes, I'm saying NINTENDO, and that includes the lot of 'em over at the big N (even Miyamoto.) Gamers have been literally screaming at them for years. They've literally been begging and pleading for them to just release a modern day console with games from they're amazing IP's. Honestly, Nintendo has proven that they can make successful new IP's as well; Splatoon has sold at least a million units since it came out and the game is actually pretty good. It's not without flaws but it's a good game in it's own right.

It is. Ipad and the tablet craze started BEFORE the Wii-U dropped. They were the ones jumping on the bandwagon and trying to cash in on that market. They knew exactly what they were getting themselves into (or actually had no idea apparently, but they should have known) and their defeat should come as no surprise to them.

They were once again catering primarily to the casual market, saw how popular tablets were with casuals, and then designed their console around one hoping that would sucker them in again. smh. Hopefully now they've learned their lesson with trying to pursue that market, but who knows, until NX and it's features are revealed we won't know whether they have truly learned their lesson yet or not.

I don't see how they were catering to the Casuals, Nintendo was being to naive to think the casual audience wouldn't know the difference. Plus, they didn't release any interesting games for them on the Wii U other than New Super Mario Bros. U. The Wii U gamepad looks too complex compared to just a standard tablet.

Nintendo Land was a launch title. It only takes one game like that to go after that market, Wii and Wii sports proved that. And while the controller does have a lot of buttons and such on it, I don't remember the Nintendoland mini games making much use of any of them. Most of the mini games used motion controls and a single joystick or maybe a button or two from what I remember.

But the problem with NintendoLand, is that it seemed more cater towards the hardcore. Casuals didn't care for Nintendo's other IP's and it failed. Wii Sports on the other hand, people love to play sports titles and love to be active than staying on the couch, that what sold the Wii. Nintendo was trying too hard to sell the gamepad with Nintendo Land and it failed very hard.

I don't think casuals care who they're playing as, so long as the games are easy to pick up and play which is what Nintendoland is. Making the mini-games based off Nintendo franchises was simply a way for Nintendo to go after both casuals and Nintendo fans at the same time.

Plus New Super Mario Bros. U was a launch title and the Wii NSMB was a huge hit with casuals, probably the biggest hit with casuals of any core Nintendo game. If I'm not mistaken, NSMB Wii even outsold Galaxy. So they went with Nintendoland filled with mini games and their most popular core title among the casuals for the Wii-U's launch. They were definitely going after the greater Wii market they enjoyed during the previous gen.

I still believe that casuals were completely turned off by the gamepad, sure Nintendo Land showed off its capabilities but the damn controller is too complex compared to the Wii-Mote. I feel like Nintendo should have kept the Wii-Mote and then release the console with a standard controller.