The 3DS is doing pretty well! The Wii U, however, is not. You know it, I know it, and you bet Nintendo knows it, because the company just announced a raft of changes and improvements they’re bringing to the system (and the way it’s marketed).
Recognising that the console needs to be marketed better, president Satoru Iwata said today that Nintendo will be making a bigger deal out of the Wii U’s unique gamepad and its raft of capabilities. You can also expect better use of its NFC tools and an improved boot-up speed when playing games straight off the gamepad.
Live: Nintendo’s Strategy Briefing to Address Future Direction [WSJ]
David Gibson [Twitter]
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34 responses to “Nintendo Knows The Wii U Is Struggling, Promises Improvements”
Shouldn’t have that been the idea from the very beginning?
Realising that they had a great system that was being completely stupidly presented to the public worked for Sony and the PS3.
Maybe it’ll work?
Call it something else and watch people pay attention.
Change the name to Wii2
Add Home Network video streaming
Make the virtual console into a PS+ type service
Drop the price to $A250
charge less than $10.50AU for games that were released 15 years ago
Yep definitely reduce their prices on virtual console games and get more Indie devs involved. I would play soo many of those smartphone games if it had an actual controller. At the very least this will keep people entertained until higher budget titles comes out.
I would by so many virtual console games if they were say…. 5 bucks max.
New strategy: Try to win.
You really have to wonder if they’re even trying, sometimes. Like some idiot kid who’s too stupid to beat an adventure game but too proud to look up a guide for a hint.
Hey Nintendo. Stop fucking around. Look up a guide.
Hopefully they’re smart enough to have a significant price drop as well. When you can get a PS4 for only $120 more than a premium Wii U for a lot of people it’s not a tough decision, even if they have to wait a month or so to get one.
In my eyes they need to bring the price of the premium Wii U down to around $250 – $300 even if they have to take a loss on every console and work their arses off to release a new console in the next 24 months that is comparable or even greater in power than the XBone and PS4 for around the same price, so they can get the third party support they so desperately need.
Yep, not sure why they haven’t slashed the Australian prices yet, $399-$430 for the Premium is way too expensive.
They have had a few serious discounts. $199 at DSE, $249 at Target.
I can see these selling at $199 if they have more than stupid 8gb memory, and if they have some compelling games. Mario Kart is interesting, just not interesting enough. Needs to be a lot better than that.
The Wii U will never be a success but if Nintendo are humble and get on with it they can at least offer their customers a solid experience, albeit not as solid as PS4/Xbone.
But drop the price to $199 today. Let the 8gb model die. Bump up a proper amount of storage space. At least 100gb. Launch a quality bundle – give whatever good games you have.
Nintendo need to lose money on this. If they try to win they’ll embarass themselves. They need to say oh we screwed up, but have a low cost gaming console on us.
I’m holding off until DKC Tropical Freeze comes out in Feb. I’m hoping they might release some kind of well priced bundle, and if they do I’ll probably snap it up.
They purposefully made the option to attach an external hardrive into the WiiU that would coincide with the internal memory. My WiiU has 600gb of storage where I keep game saves, game data, download games and DLC. Its very easy to manage data and to transfer data to and from internal to external. The only thing that’s kept on internal memory is system updates. They did this as Nintendo believe it is cheaper for the consumer to purchase a hard drive as they become relatively cheaper quite fast. Also because SSDs tend to last longer as there is less moving parts. But it could have been Nintendo trying to save themselves a few dollars. Although SSD are more expensive than HDDs.
Well that’s very good. Sounds like it’s working as it should. I’d still feel more comfortable with more internal memory, for whatever reason, but I’m sure most of us have an external hard drive or two hanging around. They hardly cost anything nowadays.
I think the external hard drive thing is something they ought to get right in their marketing.
Modern / functional online account service might be a good area to address as well.
they integrated it all with 3DS recently. Hopefully a sign of things to come.
Ditch the Wii name altogether, call it the Revolution, like the original Wii was meant to be called.
Cut the price so I can convince myself to get one…
I’ll keep saying it until it happens, Pokemon yellow remade for the wii u.
RED >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Ash
Red / Blue please, I don’t need terrible anime references in my already fantastic jrpg.
Fix the digital accounts! I want to upgrade to a premium Wii U but will lose all my digital 3DS purchases if I delete and sell my basic Wii U. Unacceptable!
I have the basic WiiU and I dont think you need to upgrade the other real extras are getting a sensor bar (which I already have from my wii), an online deal where you receive 10% credit ti put towards new downloads and a stand for the gamepad. The money you are going to spend on the difference for a premium WiiU you will never get back from the 10% offer and you could spend that money on a stand or sensor bar. Also you can add an external hard drive to your WiiU giving it hundreds of gb of data instead of the small internal memory.
NFC what now? I have a wii U and was not aware of any NFC capabilities
yeah same. What or are we talking about NFC for the gamepad and tv gameplay without the telly ala remote play?
That little square symbol thing on the lower-left part of the gamepad, below the d-pad. That’s the NFC antenna.
Far as I know nothing uses it yet.
“Recognising the console needs to be marketed better…”
Uhhh, how about… some of the things that used to be synonymous with Nintendo: Zelda, Pilotwings, F-Zero, Metroid….
Feels like Nintendo has transparently turned into a ‘hardware-with-novelty for marketing’ company and just put their strongest point of difference feature on the low priority list.
Fresh, compelling, games that no one can ignore, would be a pretty good way to sell their hardware!!!!!!
Just as an aside… The Wondefrul 101 is amazing.
Metroid is dead for the time being because of what Other M did to the franchise. They’ll resurrect it in 5 or 6 years.
New Zelda is coming. F-Zero would be rad.
They need to market it like they did with the Wii. Show people enjoying the fuck out of playing it with their friends and family.
They need to push through all the old Virtual Console titles and get them working on the Wii U.. 1 – 2 SNES/NES games a fortnight (and no N64 or Sega) is seriously the only thing that shits me about this console. Other than that I’m loving it.
How about remove region locking so we can buy some decent games.
Why, what games have been released overseas that we don’t have here?
Not that I disagree with getting rid of the region lock (very much the opposite), I just can’t think of anything that we’re missing out on yet.
Off the top if my head I can’t actually name any. Its more been a DS issue with jrpg’s. But region locking does Reno e the ability to by cheap imported games and its something I don’t like in principle because its there for financiable benefit only.
Like original first party games, ability to use multiple gamepads at once, make games for loyal oldschool nintendo gamers instead of children? na, that’s probably not what they’re going for..
remove region lock and have all the back catalogue N64 and GCN games you possibly can for CHEAP and not $15 SNES games which is just BS.