@darji: If they were a joke, then why is the industry at large treating the 3DS so well? Darji, you're narrow-minded and intent on stirring up console war bullshit.

Nintendo have been outlying the console war and making a much higher profit since the Wii. So why would they waste resources to get in on a dickwaving contest that doesn't even provide a return. To win over snobby gamers? Well thank god snobby gamers arent tastemakers anymore, you guys, we, dont decide what wins and loses for Nintendo. They dont need us, they've got your mom, dad and sister.

I'm not taking blame for shit.

Nintendo's fucked. The Xbox One and PS4 are x86, it's going to be so much effort for developers to port games to Wii U once they start making games natively for the new platforms.

I remember the disappointment after watching that press conference. All they had to do was give the console a proper name and launch with an HD Zelda title that was reminiscent of Ocarina. They blew it.

@flappy: Good job! Well played!

I don't know what Nintendo's future will be, but I bought 3D World today. That game's alright.

It might be a highly rated Mario game but it's still a Mario game. Again. I think it's a case of Nintendo getting more than a little stale. And then releasing a console with a fairly underpowered CPU that's most definitely the odd man out as far as ease of porting and 3rd party performance. With EXTRA WORK you can get a 360 / PS3 title running on it, but at lower performance, all to sell maybe a few extra 100k units. No one is going to bother with more than a half-hearted attempt at best.

I'd like to see Nintendo do something cool and new. But for their sake I think they should ditch consoles and stick with their handheld gameplan. They're just out of their depth. The world moved on.

Are you sure? I was on reddit on the 22nd and all I saw where "while you idiots get an xshit I got me a real video game, A link between worlds". This includes picture of a the game box on the seat of their mom's minivan.

I saw a lot of those.....

Oh man.... That sucks.

The FF13 series is so bad too... The ending for Lightning Returns already popped up on the internet and IT. IS. STUPID.

It's hard to stay successful when Nintendo has been milking their franchises for about thirty years. How many Marios, Zeldas, Mario Karts, Metroid, Star Foxes games can we enjoy to the full extent? It isn't a question of quality, but of routine. How many games based on similar ideas can we play gleefully? And what other games are there, beyond the first party support?

If a person isn't in love with their first party games, he/she shouldn't buy the console, as the best titles are normally Nintendo properties, with a few honorable exceptions.

To me it is a marvel it lasted so long, especially with the weak N64 and lukewarm Gamecube phases.

Just saying, why would it be a bad thing if Nintendo became a software developer only? We'd get the same games, probably more of them, and running on higher end hardware. I'm not so attached to Nintendo as a company that I have to have one of their boxes under my television. So long as Mario, Zelda, Metroid, and Pikmin continue to exist, what are we actually worried about?

@vinny_says: Don't knock my Mum's minivan, totally playing the real game for real gamers in it plus loads of space to stretch out did the first dungeon on the way home cuz I'm oldschool! LOL-NES.

Super Mario 3D World totally pushed me into getting a Wii-U bundle for £200 so I guess they have my sale...

And on the 360 there was Dead Rising and Oblivion. There were plenty of great games within the first year of those consoles. Maybe just not at launch.

I'm alright with WiiU so far. Maybe Nintendo will make the system better somehow with more better games.

Nintendo's business is based on hardware and software sales, and developing games for their own hardware. Remove hardware from the equation, and they not only lose the support of developing for their own hardware, but also the profits associated with hardware sales, which in turn affects their budgets for software development and financing, as well as the ability to retain talent. Look what happened to Sega in the years immediately following their exit from the hardware business.

Nah.

I guess I'll never understand this, because for me, Nintendo's always the breath of fresh air after playing so many other games that are all trying to cater to the same "hardcore" audience. So many of those experiences are slowly merging into the same mass, while Nintendo's just over there doing their own thing -- this uncynical swash of cheery imagination you just can't get anywhere else.

They do? Or does it only Japan? If not please show me these big western 3rd parties. And Again this has nothing to do with console wars. But I guess this is your excuse for everything when someone is saying something that you do not like. Again I am not selling the 3DS is selling badly but it is not selling well outside of Japan and again and again. Nintendo does say this.

Although there was also a problem with Sega, not common to Nintendo, that still persists today: they failed to properly translate Sonic from 2D into 3D. Being Sonic arguably their greatest franchise that is a huge problem for them.

Nintendo is not saying that the 3DS is selling badly. The 3DS is doing quite well, actually. It's one thing to say that the Wii U isn't selling well, but the 3DS? You're being hyperbolic and foolish.

This thread

Hey, I don't live in Japan. You can't blame me.

You are right for the most part. But personally I'm tired of Mario, jumping, toads, stars, mushrooms, firing fireballs and Bowser. It's not that the games are bad or they haven't successfully reinvented their games, but it's the same universe. I'm tired of the Mushroom Kingdom, the same ideas that pass through the whole franchise and I got so much of them in the prior games, as well the similar gameplay, that hasn't changed that much.

You can say that a lot of games are merging into the same mass, but Nintendo is doing the same thing with their franchises that span their eleven consoles.

How are E-shop sales for the game going?

They're still settling into their new console

Well, Mario is Mario. There was a time when I was tired of Mario games, as well. I didn't touch Sunshine, barely played either Galaxy game, only dabbled in the New Super Mario Bros. games a little and barely touched 3D Land. But 3D World I am enjoying immensely. If they tried doing something drastically different, like some ridiculous Sonic 2006-level reboot, changing things for the sake of change with little regard to what people enjoy about the games, people would flog it with the ridicule it would deserve.

Again....

I am not selling it sells badly,,, And I never said that.... Not selling well does not mean bad. just not "not good". "Under expectations" does not equal bad.

Well this is just total bullshit. The 3DS is selling very well in the U.S. and you know it. You're so full of shit it's comical.

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2013/11/3ds_and_2ds_double_monthly_us_hardware_sales_to_452000_units_for_october

Took me ten goddamn seconds to find that.

*sigh*

Y'all never did no market 'nalysis now didja? Gots ta wait til xmas ta really kno who got dat Maaario

Yeah, but they could let their famous and already much explored franchises rest for a little while, and try new possibilities. A good idea would be to make cheaper downloadable games, and see how is their reception.

Hell yeah 13-3 outsold Mario! Fly high, 13-3, for the fucking sky!

I don't see how that is at all a bad thing for Nintendo though. Of course a game where you can play dress up with your leading lady would sell more in Japan.

That's not a slight against anything, I actually think that sounds rad as fuck. Gonna dress up Lightning in all the outfits.

@jeust: Though EAD is focused mostly on Mario and Zelda, Nintendo's other studios (Retro, Intelligent Systems, etc.) do work on other franchises, and they've even worked with third parties to bring old franchises like Punch-Out back to life. It is true that they could focus more on smaller downloadable titles, but those aren't the sorts of games that EAD was built to focus on.

You continuously ignore the success of their franchises (most recently, the latest Pokémon game has been tremendously successful, as ever), and how well the 3DS is performing worldwide.

I won't go into what I think the company should do internally because I, same as you, am ignorant of their internal finances, and of how most of their managerial structure plays out. A lot of your bantering is based on your belief that "the Wii U has the possibility to wipe them of from the market right now", while you have no numbers or consistent analysis to back this up. The 3DS is a very successful console, full of successful titles from beloved franchises, some of which even debuted on that console. How do you know how that counterpoises the financial impact of the Wii U?

And I also don't think they are outdated. They continue to inventively and innovatively iterate on decades-old franchises that people love. They continue to produce good hardware, great consoles. The Wii U has a lot of potential and provides a new type of asynchronous multiplayer offline experience that video-game consoles have never really purveyed before, and that can be heaps of fun. You can perhaps criticize them for not introducing enough new franchises, but that doesn't seem to be what you're going for here at all.

They need more games on the Wii U. Quality games. What it takes, internally, for them to achieve that at a faster pace, I cannot objectively say, only speculate. I am not inside the company, and neither are you.

@donchipotle: Did you miss all the "Final Fantasy is still dead" articles? Lightning Returns is selling like hot garbage on a successful platform.

Well, that's only 1 country. I couldn't order my copy on Amazon because they were out of stock. Plus it made Amazon's top selling games chart. So to say they're doomed after seeing only one country's sales number (for only the first week, mind you) seems incredibly short-sighted.

Jesus, what happened to positivity in this community? The internet is ruining us.

Yeah, but something needs to change, doesn't it?

@jeust: I'd be all for Nintendo trying their hand at new franchises, or taking their existing characters to drastically new situations. But until that happens, I can't really complain when they're still being more creative than most of the other big publishers. I suppose that has more to do with my preferences towards lighthearted adventure than anything, but hey. They're scratching an itch that no one else does.

Mario's really the only one that's treaded the same ground too often, though. Their "3D" series is still exploring a lot of great ideas, but they definitely made one or two "New Super" games too many, I'd say. But as far as any other one of their franchises go... they're way too few and far between to be at the point of oversaturation. At least for me. Maybe I'm an easy lay.

It sells well right now because of Pokemon and it will of course sell well for Christmas like all consoles. But again under expectations for Nintendo right now. NOTE: This does not mean bad just not good. It is in between.

@jsnyder82 Yes because of Pokemon. They are still a behind their predictions of 18 million for this fiscal year. They were at 9.XX in their last financial report.

Its almost exclusively Nintendo's own fault.

Confusing marketing and branding and they never attempted to clear it up. Continued lack of third party support again. Low sales numbers of the WiiU (picking up now though, but still quite low). As well as just general lack of interest from the public and lack of games to get people interested.

I own a WiiU and I haven't touched it in months. Just not that many things worth picking up for it, and I've played so many Mario games lately that I'm fatigued. It just feels like there is always a Mario game coming out every couple of months on one of their consoles.

Also, they're releasing the game around the launches of the PS4 and XBone, so good luck getting more money out of consumers for a game that is basically a known quantity and will probably get bought at christmas or in the new year.

Then show us all an article saying it's selling "not well", as you like to put it? I dunno, maybe try to back up the things you say. Crazy concept, I know.

Something could and probably should change, but I don't think that asking EAD specifically to change is the proper course.

I like how you're backtracking from "NINTENDO WILL BE DEAD IN FIVE YEARS" to stating that "under expectations" doesn't mean "bad."

I've been feeling this more and more lately.

The release of 3D World really got me thinking about buying a Wii U. I started listing great titles in my head and thought "Wait, this is a no-brainer". That's when I realized I was making a list of both WiiU and 3DS games. I hit the internet, started parsing the list (because I couldn't remember exactly what was for what which was weird in and of itself), scratched off Animal Crossing, the new Zelda, Pokemon, that's when I realized it was no longer a no-brainer and decided to go do something else.

If Final Fantasy is dead, Lightning Returns isn't what did it.

@hailinel: .....

3ds Will not go on for 5 more years. Right? what comes after that? Mobile and tablets are a very serious competitor in this sector if you want it or not. Who knows if we will even see a new handheld generation. We certainly won't from Sony. And than whats left beside the console market? With the Wii U gone in 2-3 years more like 2 what does Nintendo has left without the handheld market?

The 3DS will not save Nintendo. It is their last base they have. But ok I give up. Lets talk again in March when Iwata resigns because of these bad results. I am out and let you guys dream with ignoring their financial reports at all.

I think people just confuse Final Fantasy XIII being a less popular entry in the franchise with the popularity of the franchise as a whole. A Realm Reborn's current success and the interest in XV at E3 would seem to suggest otherwise. I know I'm getting Lightning Returns this February.

So they'll release successor hardware. Do you seriously not think that Nintendo isn't doing R&D on their next hardware platforms right now? And feel free to leave this conversation; you've contributed nothing but hyperbole and baseless speculation.

See you in March I guess. One last thing: The wii U was a successor hardware. Just think about it.

Going so soon? Whatever will we do? Maybe we'll all actually get to have a meaningful discussion in here. Instead of listening to some random guy spew nonsense and not have to back any of it up.

Your whole schtick on this site is dry-humping Sony and giving the finger to Nintendo. So pretending you're not a fanboy, you're "just telling it like it is", is adorable.

Of course not; it's an accumulation of shitty games over a very long period of time.

And the Wii was the successor to the GameCube. You're point is nothing.

An earlier poster said that 3DS is the Wii U's biggest problem, and although the Wii U has many other problems, I can see where he is coming from.

I know that Mario will sell well at Christmas and has long legs and all that, but at the same time I can't help but get the feeling that the fourth Mario game in a short period of time on four taped-together Gamecubes doesn't cut it anymore. And Lightning doesn't have anything to do with that.