Wii U Failings - Nintendo Failed to Resource Properly
And other reasons for the Wii U not doing so well
Nintendo of Japan president Saturo Iwata has been trying to calm the nerves of investors in the light of terrible (relative to Wii) sales of the Wii U.
One of the reasons for under-performance for a games is console is lack of games. But surely a company with the experience of Nintendo wouldn't have fallen down the 'bad logistics' hole? Yadda thunk that... yadda bin wrong.
Says Iwata in an honest statement the the investors, "The reason for the delayed release of our first-party titles was the fact that completing the games released at the same time as the launch of Wii U required more development resources than expected, so some staff members from development teams working on other titles had to help complete them.
"In short, the development teams of Pikmin 3 and other future games were understaffed during that period."
What the? While the honest is appreciated, the fact that one of the most successful companies in gaming history can screw some of its most important planning is a shock. So, what happened?
Says the boss man, "We do not simply have one easily identifiable bottleneck in software development. These days it is becoming increasingly challenging to determine the minimum development resources required for customer satisfaction.
"The point I am trying to get across is that currently it is more challenging to sell packaged software for around $50-$60. On the other hand, we can offer digital games in other formats. It is true that it is becoming increasingly challenging to meet the expectations of consumers who are willing to pay $50-$60 for a game, and it is difficult to break even unless a huge number of units is sold all over the world, so it cannot be denied that software development is becoming more challenging.
"Among such packaged software, however, the sales of popular games are much larger than in the past. Therefore, if we create more hit games, the software development business can still be very profitable. All games break even if they sell millions of copies worldwide, so we will continue to do our best to develop games which have high sales potential."
Another reason that Mr Iwata stretches for over and above money and planning is more pleasant on the ear, "We originally planned to release a few first-party titles for Wii U during the first half of this year, but no big titles are scheduled for release before Pikmin 3 in July because we decided to take time to add the final touches to ensure that consumers fully feel that they are valuable titles.
The brand of a franchise would be completely degraded without customer satisfaction. This is why we delayed the release schedule of such games."
So, delay due to making things lovelier not just bolloxing up the management of resources? Let's hope so. Because, "We have recently reaffirmed the fact that a delicately crafted game will never fail to appeal to consumers. A good example is "Animal Crossing: New Leaf" we released at the end of last year. Tomodachi Collection has also made a good start in its first week, probably because many people have felt that it contains new types of fun and excitement even if the basic structure of the game is similar to its prequel for Nintendo DS."
Nintendo also uses the "crafted" and perfected reasoning to deal with the competition coming at it hard and fast from mobile. "In this way, what is happening cannot be accounted for by the idea that casual users playing games with smartphones will not buy games targeted at them for dedicated gaming systems.
"The reason why Fire Emblem Awakening and Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon have been well received by consumers in the U.S. and European markets is that they still respect the value of games that have been carefully developed to take advantage of dedicated gaming machines. It is true that the overseas video game market has been in a downturn for the last two years, but we believe that there is a way to buck the trend."
Source: Ninty
One of the reasons for under-performance for a games is console is lack of games. But surely a company with the experience of Nintendo wouldn't have fallen down the 'bad logistics' hole? Yadda thunk that... yadda bin wrong.
Says Iwata in an honest statement the the investors, "The reason for the delayed release of our first-party titles was the fact that completing the games released at the same time as the launch of Wii U required more development resources than expected, so some staff members from development teams working on other titles had to help complete them.
"In short, the development teams of Pikmin 3 and other future games were understaffed during that period."
What the? While the honest is appreciated, the fact that one of the most successful companies in gaming history can screw some of its most important planning is a shock. So, what happened?
Says the boss man, "We do not simply have one easily identifiable bottleneck in software development. These days it is becoming increasingly challenging to determine the minimum development resources required for customer satisfaction.
"The point I am trying to get across is that currently it is more challenging to sell packaged software for around $50-$60. On the other hand, we can offer digital games in other formats. It is true that it is becoming increasingly challenging to meet the expectations of consumers who are willing to pay $50-$60 for a game, and it is difficult to break even unless a huge number of units is sold all over the world, so it cannot be denied that software development is becoming more challenging.
"Among such packaged software, however, the sales of popular games are much larger than in the past. Therefore, if we create more hit games, the software development business can still be very profitable. All games break even if they sell millions of copies worldwide, so we will continue to do our best to develop games which have high sales potential."
Another reason that Mr Iwata stretches for over and above money and planning is more pleasant on the ear, "We originally planned to release a few first-party titles for Wii U during the first half of this year, but no big titles are scheduled for release before Pikmin 3 in July because we decided to take time to add the final touches to ensure that consumers fully feel that they are valuable titles.
The brand of a franchise would be completely degraded without customer satisfaction. This is why we delayed the release schedule of such games."
So, delay due to making things lovelier not just bolloxing up the management of resources? Let's hope so. Because, "We have recently reaffirmed the fact that a delicately crafted game will never fail to appeal to consumers. A good example is "Animal Crossing: New Leaf" we released at the end of last year. Tomodachi Collection has also made a good start in its first week, probably because many people have felt that it contains new types of fun and excitement even if the basic structure of the game is similar to its prequel for Nintendo DS."
Nintendo also uses the "crafted" and perfected reasoning to deal with the competition coming at it hard and fast from mobile. "In this way, what is happening cannot be accounted for by the idea that casual users playing games with smartphones will not buy games targeted at them for dedicated gaming systems.
"The reason why Fire Emblem Awakening and Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon have been well received by consumers in the U.S. and European markets is that they still respect the value of games that have been carefully developed to take advantage of dedicated gaming machines. It is true that the overseas video game market has been in a downturn for the last two years, but we believe that there is a way to buck the trend."
Source: Ninty
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