Nintendo offered a radically different experience at the dawn of the last generation with motion controllers. Sony and MS caught up, with the Kinect being vastly superior to Nintendo's motion controller vision. In terms of spec's and performance the Wii U is on par with the 360 and PS3 and those devices are cheaper. The tablet controller costs too much and is too gimicky. Limited 1st party titles aren't helping and how many times can you expect people to keep buying Mario/Zelda games? Some of the Mario/Zelda games are also too difficult for their pre-teen audiences.
Nintendo needs to move Wii U units before it's all but permanently removed from store shelves. Is the tablet controller required to play games or does it just offer an enhanced experience? Replacing that tablet with a standard controller could be one way to move base units. The Wii U needs to be half the cost of the PS4/Xbone, and it can't higher in price than comparible 360/PS3 offerings. That tablet controller should be around the cost of a standard controller (i.e. $60) to move independently of the base system.
There's a small percentage of people who will benefit from this feature. They are the people who like to create help guides on the internet and/or boast of their accomplishments. Personally I prefer written help guides to video help guides. I'm guessing this technology is really cheap to implement, otherwise the manufacturers would be adding an unnecessary expense that 99% of their base won't use.
Big Publishers seem to view AAA as the way to make games. There is some middle ground between AAA and Indie games. Games can be made without all the cinematic fluff (which costs the most). Make a game that's fun to play. If it sells well, then maybe move it up the ladder toward AAA on the inevitable sequels. Big publishers really need to start thinking small again and grow their products. Mobile games tend to be simplistic and they are what every publisher is envying right now. Games $20 and less will sell better in markets saturated with $60 + DLC games.
Undoubtably, the future of video games could be all digital. You can cut out 45% of overhead costs with an all digital product. But like all the corporations that moved manufacturing to China for cheaper labor rates, MS/Sony don't want to pass the savings onto the customer. Therefore greed will prevent that future.
No the future is all digital. On Christmas, we'll all log onto MS or Sony's farmville and click on our digital gifts. No more wasted wrapping paper or anti-green plastic toys. Yeah, can't wait!!!
I remember the "future" in the 80's too. The computer will make paper obsolete they said. Today, some 30 years later, we chop down four times as many trees, Our paper hunger has been fueled by the very computer that was to make paper obsolete.
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