How are you feeling about the Wii U future

[Tanooki]

I'm curious what peoples take on this either as owners or not. Clearly they lack third party releases, in particular on discs. The stories were if they could move millions of systems opinions and development would change. Mario Kart is moving a heap of systems and games in buzz words 'over night' pretty much. How do you all feel about the future of the system with this and also Smash Bros a little later on? Not much was shown at E3 which causes some concern, but there were a couple solid second party things on the plate like Bayonetta. I own the system and I wish I had more options from outside of Nintendo. I have stuff like COD Ghosts, DuckTales, Rayman and Resident Evil but they're all also on other systems too, nothing unique which is a shame. Bayonetta will be, and it's the only system of that horsepower that will see late year the Cars project, and there's the Xenoblade title too, but I feel there just should be more to keep the system a focal point of use and not just a casual box to use every now and again.

[Tupin]

I think with Miyamoto's latest comments about the "Nintendo genre" and how they "don't want to be 'cool'" kind of shows Nintendo's attitude towards it. They've basically given up on third parties, at least traditional ones. They're going for indies.

Even if Nintendo had produced a system on par technologically with the PS4/XB1, third parties would still snub their noses at it because they don't want to compete with Nintendo. Nevermind that stuff like Halo and Infamous always sell better on their respective systems than third party games. It's just this bias that Western developers have had for decades and it's not going away.

That being said, I'd expect a new system to come out probably Winter 2016, early reveal at next E3 and more information at E3 2016. That's about as early as I think they could push another system out. And they'd definitely have a 3DS successor ready by then, could work with their new ideas of integration of handhelds and consoles. Even with mobile competition, Nintendo can still hold its own. The Vita is basically dead.

As an owner who bought it on launch day, 2013 was not fun. 2014 is looking better even if it is mostly Nintendo titles and I kind of have to paraphrase the movie Frozen despite my dislike for it: "I never needed third parties anyway."

[Az]

The wife picked me one up as a birthday gift a few months ago, prior to that I was kicking around the idea of picking a used one up if the price was right so I could play NSMBU.

At this point I'm totally satisfied with the system. Just like the 3DS, there's going to be game types unique to the system and there's going to be types you'll never see. Right now I own a handful of games for it,all are a ton of fun and even if they pulled the plug this year I'd still be content with what I have. Full on hardware and software backwards compatibility also helps tremendously to enjoy the handful of Wii exclusive releases I really like.

My only complaint is that I wish they would just integrate the regular Wii shop into the Wii U shop. I'm sure having it separated into the dedicated Wii mode only hinders potential buyers and you can bet that a lot of people don't even know it's there. Throw all that VC content from there onto the Wii U shop and be done with it!

[Leo_A]

I think it's a great system, I just wish it had GameCube compatibility (Including a USB adapter to interface a Game Boy Player to it) and that Wii U specific controllers could substitute as Wii Classic Controllers in Wii mode. And it's not a Wii U issue, but an account based DRM scheme for DLC is also long overdue and the lack of such a thing is damaging to both the Wii U and the 3DS.

If the Wii U ended today though, I'd still be pretty happy with it. But I think its days are numbered and anticipate that it could be replaced as early as Fall 2015 and no later than Fall 2016 (The latter of which is what I'm betting on). I'd be very surprised if there's a major exclusive next year other than Zelda as they change gears to developing next generation software and I suspect that 2015 will be its last year for halfway decent support.

Frankly, I think their 3DS and Wii U lineups right now already indicate that such a process is well underway. Zelda will again be the Nintendo console swan song for the third generation in a row (Twilight Princess closed out the GameCube and Skyward Sword closed out the Wii for major 1st party releases).

[PizzaKat]

I'm quite surprised that a couple of posts here think a new system is coming in a couple of years. I believe they will ride it out. It will make a profit but will probably finish behind the XBox One. The third parties other than a few titles here and there are pretty much gone from this generation. They have no one to blame but themselves and I hope they learn from this. I enjoy mine as the PS4 has nothing interesting. Super Mario 3D World is one of the best games that Ive played in awhile. its just too bad it didn't sell consoles.

For their next console I hope they can get third parties, I don't want have to buy another console to get third party offerings. If they can be like the SNES they'd do a lot of sales. People saying "I don't care for third parties etc." can't realize that many other people such as myself do. More powerful system, Nintendos first party plus third party support whether it be boring FPS, fighters, and the like will most likely equal much more sales and more games for people to buy while they wait for Nintendo's own games.

[WCP]

I'm quite surprised that a couple of posts here think a new system is coming in a couple of years. I believe they will ride it out.

Here's the thing...


You'd think that if Nintendo really felt like they should do their damnedest to make a legit go of it with the Wii U, that they would have lowered the price by now (significantly), and then maybe they could legitimately get back into the mix.

The fact that the price is still ridiculously high, tells me that Nintendo is going to "let this one die on the vines". In other words, I see them sticking it out with the Wii U for the next couple of years, but not actually trying to really bend over backwards to try to make the Wii U a market share contender. If they really wanted to try to get the Wii U back into the mix, they need a bundle for $199 that includes Mario 3D World. Or even a $199 bundle that includes Mario Kart 8.

I know some people would say... "Are you F'ing crazy ? Mario Kart 8 in a bundle for $199 ? The Mario Kart 8 bundle is $329.99, how are they going to drop the price $130 ? "


Well, I don't know how they are going to do it, I just know that if they were serious about actually having the Wii U legitimately compete, that is exactly what they would need to do, along with a new marketing campaign promoting it. For me, the fact that it hasn't happened yet is very telling.

[Leo_A]

I'm quite surprised that a couple of posts here think a new system is coming in a couple of years. I believe they will ride it out. It will make a profit but will probably finish behind the XBox One.

There is absolutely no reasonable chance that this system will ever be profitable and the Xbox One will most certainly sell several consoles for every Wii U system that is sold.

Nintendo has no incentive to push this generation any longer than need be since it's a lost cause with their only goal being to minimize the losses and hopefully change their momentum somehow so they can regain profitability with their next generation hardware. They're not even anywhere close to GameCube style sales performance here as they close in on the Wii U's two year anniversary (A system that was never sold at a loss, I might add).

They will let it stay around just long enough to provide some semblance of a reasonable lifespan to placate their dedicated fans. Fall 2016 which I'm betting on will mark the 4 year anniversary which is reasonably close to the 5 year or so average folks expect from Nintendo systems. Once that happens, they will quickly phase it out once their next generation hardware is ready to go just like Microsoft did with the Xbox.

And with all this hybrid handheld/console talk, the age of the 3DS, and the downward momentum of the system and its greatly diminished software calendar, it might happen even earlier with a Fall 2015 or spring 2016 date at the latest since the 3DS will be ripe by then. If a hybrid platform of some sort is indeed the course they're taking, it's going to be the timing for the need of a 3DS replacement that they're going to key off for deciding when to launch their next generation platform rather than keeping the failed Wii U going a while longer just to keep up appearances.