Really?!?! I'm so glad MS are all over offensive names in the twilight of the 360. I'd prefer they spend their resources more productively, like reducing the costs of digitally downloaded material. It's pathetic that I can get physical disks for $10 to $20 cheaper than most/all digital products.
Cliffy does anything to stay current in the Gamespot Threads. Speaking of threads Gamestop, how about giving us NEW user blogs...I don't care about these old hashed to death and sometimes blatantly wrong in hindsight blogs.
It's accounting BS. Sony lost money this past quarter, but it was probably in the TV Division. Sony's shoddy quality HD TVs and the intense competition from Korean manufacturers, would make the CEO look bad. So they performed some creative accounting and assigned blame in such a way as to keep that CEO from looking incompetent. After all, a financial loss from console design looks like a business investment and not poor leadership.
It's all in the Kinect. MS will be monitoring your body movements and they penalize you for flipping out and/or using cuss/racist words. MS is listening and watching, just like ole' Saint Nick.
The Wii U is essentially an Xbox360 or a PS3 with nothing special. Nintendo hoped the mini-screen controller would be the motion controller of this generation. However, it went over like a lead balloon and it's preventing the Wii U from being accepted in the market place. Further, it's preventing Nintendo from reaching it's ideal pricing point (roughly half of the MS/Sony offerings). If Nintendo can offer the Wii U for $200 or less, it's sales will pick up.
I really don't think marketing has anything to do with the Wii U's failure. The Xbone doesn't look that much different from the 360 and has as bad a naming convention as the Wii U. Yet, I'd bet the Xbone preorder sales probably double Nintendo's actual Wii U sales at this point. All consoles have a lack of games to start a new generation, as will be the case with the PS4/Xbone, so I don't think that is a major factor either.
The Wii differentiated itself from MS/Sony with it's motion controls. They were new/different and really appealled to a casual crowd. Furthermore, the Wii was cheaper than the Sony/MS consoles by almost half. The Wii really appealled to families and pre-teens. By the end of the cycle MS and to a lesser degree Sony had caught up. For motion controls the Kinect is vastly superior (whether you like the Kinect/motion controlled games is another matter entirely).
The Wii U needs to be priced at $200 or less. Budget conscious families with pre-teens will gobble that system up and push it to the 9M mark or higher at that price. The controller is damocles sword of the system, preventing the necessary pricing to shift units. You can't cut that controller out of the base package if your major 1st party titles require it. Returns will skyrocket if someone buys a mario game and finds out they have to pay $100+ to get the special controller to play a game. Physical retailers are not going to continue stocking something with those abysmal sales and I don't think the Wii U will survive if it had to rely on internet retailers (though I beleive both Sony/MS can forgo physical retailers).
Nintendo's touchscreen controller should have been designed to play 3DS games and/or allowed the 3DS to be used instead of it. Then Nintendo could've had a package w/out the special controller.
MS and Sony continue to overcharge for their game controllers. I would say that 90% of all console purchasers require a second controller. Look at the off-brand controllers, they regularly sell for $20-$30. I would bet these controllers cost MS/Sony at most $10/packaged. MS's headsets were pretty junky in my opinion, never used Sony's. For $60 a charger and battery should at least be included, IMHO.
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