Nintendo is hoping to woo core gamers back to its updated Wii U console because of the high definition graphics and conventional controller.
During a Q&A session at a shareholder meeting at Nintendo’s Kyoto HQ yesterday, CEO Satoru Iwata had this to say about the the upcoming gaming platform (translation as reported by Andriasang, original here):
Q: Will core gamers accept Wii U?
A: Wii was not accepted by core gamers because they did not want to abandon their preferred control approach. Additionally, Wii did not use HD because HD cost performance at the time was low. Wii U makes it easier to use conventional controls. Also, the Wii U controller is not as big or heavy as it looks.
Good point, but it’s worth putting this into some context. First, Nintendo was the one that turned its back on core gamers with the Wii, not the other way around. The whole purpose of the Wii was to have a games console that appealed to the sorts of people who wouldn’t have thought of buying a games console. It’s a strategy that appears to have worked in the short term, but it wasn’t so successful in the long term, especially when it came to game sales.
Another thing about the Wii was that it was designed specifically to cater for a lower graphics demand that other consoles around at the time. Nintendo once again chose to shun the core gaming market (a market that has proven itself to have quite deep pockets) and head off into uncharted territory.
And finally, the controller. The Wii Remote was again Nintendo’s plan to ‘thinking different.’ Yet again, the decision to break away from the traditional game console model was one that Nintendo undertook willingly in order to try to side-step Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation and carve for itself a new niche. It didn’t work, and it’s a bit late for Nintendo to start rewriting history and pretend that it didn’t deliberately dump core gamers with the Wii in favor or an untested strategy that ultimately didn’t work out.
