What? When did this happen?

I know there have been rumors that Iwata is on his way out (despite just recently being promoted), and the Wii U being the absolute wrong thing to have been made in the upcoming next-generaiton (despite both the PS4 and the rumored Xbox having touch controllers), but maybe it's time to face the music.

After all, for this week's Chalk Talk, we got three suggestions for topics: 

- Nintendo as of late seems to rely to much on nostalgia and well established worn out brands. Is this a good thing? Do they need to reinvent the wheel or if it's not broken should they not worry about fixing it?

- Consider Nintendo's announcement about not having a Press Conference during E3 2013 because they wish to "Utilize our direct communication tools, such as Nintendo Direct, to deliver information to our Japanese audience and we will take the same approach outside Japan for the overseas fans." Is this a smart play for them or is this writing on the wall.

- Will the Wii U become profitable? It's been shown that the Wii U has not been quite the hot ticket that Nintendo had hoped it would be (according to profits from the last fiscal year). But according to Nintendo they have plans to change that. What would you do to help improve the Wii U's image? Or do you feel that the Wii U simply has a bad due to baseless claims from "Nintendo Hater".Synthia

All three of those topics assume as part of their underlying basis that Nintendo is in huge trouble. Are they in trouble? Of course they are. Are Synthia's suggestions valid? Well....

1. Relying on Nostalgia 

This has interested me in that it is something many say Nintendo is doing; exploiting people's memories of the past so that they would buy the same stuff over and over again. It's an interesting idea....except that's not what's happening.

Let's take a look at the New Super Mario Bros. series, a series that people commonly refer to when talking about Nintendo exploiting nostalgia. It's a valid assesment; after all, the games always bring back a lot of stuff from the older games, from power-ups to themes to sound effects. 

And yet, the series is one of the most popular of the previous generation; the Wii one alone selling over 26 million copies. You don't get to numbers that high by "exploiting the nostalgia" of people that played the original Super Mario Bros. in 1985. These games aren't big because they are selling to the "old gamers" (in fact, theya re the ones that complain about them), but because they are selling to kids.

Kids! These people don't have any kind of nostalgia for 1985, 1995, or even 2005. These kids are playing these games on their childhood, the NSMB games will become nostalgia for them. The truth of the matter seems to be that Nintendo is creating nostlagia, not exploiting it.

After all, how can you rely on something that doesn't exist, especially when those that would have nostalgia for the stuff aren't going to like it?

But what about new IP's? "Nintendo certainly doesn't seem to create new IP's anymore. It's always Mairo, Zelda, Yoshi, Kirby, whatever." Well, that's a cool idea, one that shows how little they care about Nintendo's new IP's in the first place.

This game obviously doesn't exist.

Neither does this one (or it's sequel).

What the heck is this supposed to be anyway? (or it's sequel)

Is this some Sony game?

Well, those games up there don't have Mario or Donkey Kong, or Wario in them; so how can they be new Nintendo IP's (other than being Nintendo IP's, of course)? 

Some people are willing to rely on their nostalgia to make sure in their mind that Nintendo doesn't change at all from the way they saw them decades ago, I guess.  

2. Nintendo giving up at E3 2013

Certainly an interesting opinion, mostly because there is no way you would have come up with that opinion unless you already had a pre-existing idea that Nintendo can't compete with Sony or Microsoft. 

I mean seriously!

Nintendo can't compete with the PS4 or Xbox Infinity, despite Nintendo being the one making dozens of Nintendo Directs outside of E3, each containing subtantial new game announcements?

Despite still having two (2) planned private meetings with the press to show off their games at E3 2013, as well as repeatedly mentioning in past Nintendo Directs about the games they will show off on the show floor?

Despite Nintendo most likely bombarding the entire week of E3 with Nintendo Directs, which serves the exact same purpose of an E3 conference, except with Iwata being in front of a white background instead of some big LCD displays?

You had to be convinced Nintendo can't do anything right that they would cancel their E3 conference just because "they have nothing to show and are therefore giving up".

As for Nintendo's actual decision, I don't know if it's a smart play yet. It obviously didn't go well with the massive misinformaiton and pre-existing image of the company (which is comically incapable of explaining itself for anything, seriously!).

How Nintendo's plan goes ahead on E3 2013 will be an interesting experiment to see; with SpikeTV certainly giving live primetime coverage of the PS4 and Xbox shows, I doubt they will do the same for any Nintendo Direct show Nintendo does.

3. Will the Wii U become profitable?

No.

Not in it's current form, at least.

Nintendo will have to redesign the console so that it doesn't cost so much to produce and finally be able to give it a price drop (similar to what Sony did with the PS3 slim), they will also have to rebrand it completely to get rid of the confusion about it being a Wii add-on or not (in a similar way to how the PS3 was rebranded to be more appealing), and of course, Nintendo of America will have to reach across third parties to give the system some more games (in a similar way to how Nintendo of Japan got the 3DS to have such a killer Japanese library).

I don't know what Nintendo plans to do, but if it's not one of those things; then it's not going to improve. 

But does Nintendo deserve all the doom and gloom? No, the Wii U could fail and they can just try again with something different; it's not like they are Sega who had no money by the time the Dreamcast launched. It would be nice for major gaming sites to stop promoting such poor views, but hey, I understand. Nintendo is supposed to be dead, can't blame ya'll for trying to fix the narrative.