Iwata: Wii successor needs 'something new' beyond HD

They do have good games here and there, but by and large it's the same old, same old even when the game IS good. You know things are sad when people point to New SMB Wii as a "new thing," when it's an updated rehash of one of Nintendo's oldest games.

that would be "something new"

The Wii has good games.

The problem is if you wanted great,3rd party games with a new control
scheme and not just more Nintendo franchises (like me),you have about
4 games to choose from.

So Nintendo doesn't make good games?

@Twee

Wii Music is laughing at you.

Not in his opinion. By comparison to the other two consoles Wii has had the least amount of good games. Hard to say it's got the best games by comparison. I'd like to see them take some chances like they are with the new metroid instead of remakes. Some more new IPs would also be great. Maybe they could do a different art style and go for a realistic type of feel. I want nintendo to do something like Alan wake or heavy rain instead of third parties. Where is the nintendo version of killzone or halo?

@TwEE...Nintendo is DOOOMED!!

He's probably in the same boat as me dude. It's not that the WIi doesnt have good games,it's that the Wii has no games if you're not a fan of only Nintendo franchises. I'm tired of more Super Mario Brothers,Mario Kart,Smash Brothers,etc. I've been playing them forever now. Sure you get more Metal Gear Solid with the PS3 and more Halo on the XBox,but you also get NEW stuff like inFamous/Heavy Rain and Gears of War/Crackdown. Resident Evil 4 and Okami are both ports. Mad World was pretty sweet. Manhunt was terrible. What's left outside of the Nintendo name? A sub par shooter like the Conduit? A terrible port of Call of Duty 3 with no online multiplayer and terrible controls?

I'm not shitting on the Wii,but I sold mine because i'm not a huge Nintendo fan and there was nothing for me there. I was hoping for huge,epic games in the vein of previous gens like Shadow of the Colossus or God of War with this innovative control scheme. All I ended up getting was a machine to play when i had 4 friends over (which I play solo,so even then it's rarely used).

[banned]

@Tigre: Realistic art styles are going to be a lot more feasible after they release an HD-capable console, that's for sure. Right now, there are few games with a realistic art style that look really good (Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles for instance) and none of them are by Nintendo - who do have some fantastic-looking unrealistic games.

To be honest, though I don't mind them trying it, I think something like Zelda: Twilight Princess is probably about as 'realistic' as Nintendo need to get in the art style category. They're not known for gritty realism, and no reason they should be. What they need is some way to encourage third parties to make those games - if not now, then at least for their next-generation system. Given that it'll probably still be much less powerful than the (then) competitors, that might be a tough challenge.

If Nintendo want to sell the system to people other than the people who always buy Nintendo consoles then they have a choice of aiming for 'people who buy other consoles but not Nintendo ones' (i.e. by making sure it has top-of-the-line graphics and online support, so that shooters run well on it) or 'everyone else'. Given how well the first approach worked out for GC (third place) and how well the second one worked out for Wii (first by a zillion miles), my guess is they'll continue aiming for a wider market. Given that, Iwata's probably right that they need some kind of new and genuinely fun gimmick or twist on the Wii experience to attract more customers. It might be a relatively minor 'revolution' compared to what they did for Wii, though.

EA has been selling Madden every 12 months for almost 20 years and I don't see anyone complaining.

Really? Aren't people complaining about Madden annually? I mean, not the people that *buy* Madden (and they buy 1 game a year so that's technically 3x more games than most grammaws that bought a Wii/Sports would have bought so far in this cycle,) but pretty much everybody else.

I don't expect them to do a 180 and make nothing but gritty and realistic games but it would be great for them to do things a little different. Maybe a new mature line of branded titles to compliment the existing catalogue. A new fps ip made by nintendo could be awesome. I love that they broke the mold on metroid and it's a great start to developing some new concepts and ideas whether it's for existing properties or not. They can do that and still keep their existing stuff classic nintendo.

@Ridgecity

That was the most ridiculous statement I've ever heard on this site - and that is saying A LOT.

People are always "criticizing" annualized series including Madden.

Nintendo's version of Killzone is The Conduit, of course! Two mediocre, overhyped, and incessantly overrated first person shooters in one far out pod.

Conduit wasn't Nintendo's version of Killzone because it wasn't first party. Also, Killzone 2 was a pretty awesome game (I thought so anyway) and lumping it with the Conduit is ... just wrong. The whole premise of my post was to hope that Ninty would do some of this stuff themselves instead of depending on 3rd parties for all the mature games.

Wait? So you're saying madden isn't a bad game?
There is nothing more horrible in the gaming world than shitty, exploited, non-motivated annual games. If 'raping' on CoD, or playing green day on another rockband isn't up to par with anything on the wii, i don't know what is.
For every annual game bought, a true innovative game could have been bought.

It'll play DVD's.

That is way to early in the past, Brad. It will be able to play VHS tapes!

Can we still have hd? Pretty Please.

Nintendo Sony already thought of 4D, you gotta think of something else...

Nintendo 3-dii

After the poor reception of the friend code, I think they may have got that message.

Should have. Except no, they won't.

But...but think of the children! You can't expect a parent to enable a parental setting on the console to block their kids from getting online!

It's stranger danger! Every man and woman out there wants to do harm to YOUR child!

/s

Rob S definitely sees the glass as half full

What can I say, I'm an optimist.

They'll probably make it so you can connect a single friend code to your club nintendo account and then use that in any Wii2 game. That way parental settings can limit you to friend codes, but otherwise you can use your account name.

Thats just my guess.

I don't think they have received that message, myself. Try and think of a Nintendo game that could have sold better if they had had better online. The only game i can think of is Animal Crossing, really.

When a game like Mario Kart Wii, which is probably the most online effort Nintendo's put out so far, sells similarly to NSMBWii, with no online to speak of, Nintendo isn't seeing the reasoning to include online, or fix their own. The only reason would be to help third parties, and they generally aren't very concerned about that

You know, after seeing all the ragequit and threatening messages sent over XBL/PSN... I can't help but think if Nintendo was actually SMART in making a lesser online experience.

I'm not AGREEING with Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection... but it sure helps reduce the number of outlets angry, violent idiots have to annoy others with.

Actually having a better online experience would help them. Not just the multiplayer, but the store. Wii sports is perfectly suited for online updates, tournaments, stat tracking, etc. Wii fit plus and sports resort could have been downloaded updates. More courses for Wii golf would be nice too.

There's a million ways they could make it better. But they have never "gotten" online. Its only reluctantly halfassed in the Wii.

Nintendo doesn't get messages like you'd expect 'em to. The message the Gamecube sent them was "the core doesn't like our games anymore, so let's find a new market", not "let's make more core games". The message they -should- get with their online service is "how 'bout we do it like Microsoft and Sony do it?", but I see them as more likely to either kill online support or cripple it even harder.

I bet they'll follow a lot of the same logic they used with the original Wii... use more of the last gen technology so it's cheaper to manufacture and more gains on the hardware. They rolled in the dough... so they must want to do something like that again.

In fact, I hope the other two players don't throw in everything into the next console - make it cheap enough at the start (nothing above 300) - I don't need the latest bleeding edge tech - just good quality games. I'd be happy with PS3 graphics for a while... but I might be a minority.

Soul, I'd imagine any next-gen console would use Blu-ray, which would keep hardware costs down since it's not 'new' anymore. But I'd also imagine they're shooting for a 400 dollar price point.

Funny thing is that the next Xbox and Playstation may end up a lot like the Wii, not a big hardware upgrade.

Microsoft may be stupid enough to do that, but Sony won't be. They could have taken the easy route with all their consoles and didn't.

Of course Sony will. A big part of the reason they invested in Cell was so they could easily scale it up in the future at a low cost. We already know they turned down the Larabee. PS4 will, in all probability, be the PS3.5.

Sorry, Sam, but if they go with a full Cell implementation like originally planned, with four PPE's with eight SPU's each, that would be FAR from a PS3.5. More like a PS5.

Let's see how long these current consoles last. We know they aren't going away anytime soon, but that does mean we have to wait years until successors come out or that these will be supported for years even when the successors are released, like the PS2?

Hope we don't have to wait too long.

The problem is that Sony and MS are playing very bad game, both loosing money for several years after they push out the new console, and covering them through other non-gaming businesses.

Why would Nintendo want to enter that race? Those two are bigger and can sustain bigger loses. Nintendo can't win that one. (Given the loses of Sony and MS gaming departments, one could also wonder if this is something those two would want to keep doing too)

Instead Nintendo choose to do very wise thing:
-Create the console so cheap to produce that it will both a)make them money and b)be substantially cheaper to sell even from their competitors subsidized machines.
-Add something which those more expansive solutions won't have (IR pointer, motion, virtual console)
-Use their famous gaming characters (which more expensive solutions don't have)

I don't think anything will change economy-wise related to this in future. So I don't expect Nintendo to try to catch with next Sony and MS console either. They will again try to do something cheaper, and try to draw people using something original and games featuring their mascots.

You make a good point broody. It seems to me that from the outside, PC gaming looks like it is dying whereas with closer examination, its not doing as badly as many may think.

Vice versa goes for consoles, people think the 360/PS3 are so successful, but the guys at corporate are running ragged with rushing things out to market, making promises and trying to meet them, fixing defective systems, etc.

Broody, the strategy of 'spend your way into a profit' has worked for a long time. Hell, Nintendo did it with the NES and SNES, and those are their two best consoles. With Microsoft and Sony, it's relatively low-risk, as they've got other divisions to eat those losses.

Nintendo may not be a diversified company like the others, but they make a royal ton of money from their handheld division. Taking some small losses at launch is acceptable.

"Hell, Nintendo did it with the NES and SNES, and those are their two best consoles."

Wrong. Nintendo has NEVER lost money on ANY console.

The first console to do that was, if I'm not mistaken, the PS2. The Xbox took it to the next level and after that people seemed to think it was SOP to sell consoles at a loss.

Wrong again, Samfish. There is concrete proof that the Saturn and PSX were sold at losses from launch. And Nintendo was doing everything they could to beat Sega, including cutting the price before the cost of manufacture reached those points.

@samfish

Ever heard of Virtual Boy?

Yeah. I'm sure Nintendo made a ton of cash on that one...

"And Nintendo was doing everything they could to beat Sega, including cutting the price before the cost of manufacture reached those points"

Again, this did not happen. Nintendo themselves had made a point to say that in interviews and such during the Wii launch run up.

Furthermore,
http://www.lonympics.co.uk/segasaturn.htm
"With Sega having the market all to itself, it saw no reason to sell the system at a loss when demand was high in the marketplace."

I admit PS1 may've been sold at a loss, but since it was basically Sony just recycling/salvagin the SNES CD project, I was under the impression that the costs were not that high.