Glass Rebel
Member
In the light of the 2DS announcement and the Wii U price drop I wanted to take the opportunity to look back at both both devices post-launch, trying to analyze what went wrong and finally propose not a solution but an option to what path the company could take with their next hardware iterations. I will largely focus on hardware and software development more than software content and third party games since I feel that these have numerous threads dedicated to them. Feel free to discuss them though.
Lesson 1: Value is important, so is price
To start with, this is something Nintendo got right last generation but wrong with both the 3DS and the Wii U. Launching a handheld at $249 and a console at $349 (or $299 for the model that might as well not exist) were both terrible decisions. That's not to say that one can't sell hardware at that price. It's just that Nintendo can't. If you compare them to their direct competitors the only thing Nintendo the others don't is Nintendo games. When it comes to third party games, hardware, online and community features, multimedia functions and entertainment services, Nintendo is lacking in every single area. Microsoft and Sony on the other hand, offer all these things and their own set of exclusives. 3DS fares similarly compared to tablets. Initial sales and the quick pricedrops on both systems showed that Nintendo could not provide the games to make up for the difference and neither of the "gimmicks" (3D and Wii U Pad) were able to catch the markets attention. Where does this leave Nintendo?
It's hard to imagine them catching up, basically skipping an entire generation, considering how much trouble they had to adopt to this one with frequent delays or droughts plaguing both their platforms. And it isn't a given that a similarly powered console would fare much better, given how the GameCube performed. So why not look at their handheld business pre-3DS and go the budget route? Obviously budget does not mean the antiquated solutions they have currently employed either and as far as OS, UI and online functionality goes, they need to drastically improve.
Lesson 2: Two platforms is one too many...
As I mentioned earlier, for the last few years Nintendo has consistently failed to provide a full software release schedule for at least one of their systems, the worst offender being the Wii during its last ~2 years. Not only have they underestimated difficulties in software development but also unreasonably expected third parties to pick up the slack in their place. Unlike Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo is in the unique position that first party software dominates their platforms and is directly linked to their success in the market. With rising development costs, third party relations in the gutter and Nintendo's conservative approach to expansion it will only get worse.
For a while I was thinking a hybrid of some sort would be their best course of action. I saw myself confirmed when they showed the Wii U and when they announced that they had combined both the console and handheld hardware department. Thinking about it though, outright removing a potential second stream of income is
Lesson 3: ...Two screens maybe too
The dual screen setup of the NDS might have run its course. It was a novel concept giving birth to many great games and it's still convenient to have a map or a menu on the lower screen but on both the 3DS and Wii U it's mostly, well, maps or menus. And off-screen play, I guess. With the added real estate of a larger screen with higher resolution the need for a second screen would largely disappear and regardless of how I feel about it, the second screen simply isn't crucial to many people. With Nintendo failing to justify it, it might be for the best to drop this concept again. It reduces manufacturing costs and brings them back to the standard established by the rest of the industry.
Lesson 4: Indies are your best friend
Praise where praise is due: Nintendo's advances in the indie scene led by Dan Adelman have been an immense improvement over the wild west situation on Wii and great in their own regard. While they cannot count on third parties to port their games, indies have shown to be very interested in porting their titles to the Wii U. The real lesson to take from this is however what a difference it makes to make development cheap and easy and to accommodate developers. Unity on Wii U and the Web Framework are great advances in this direction.
Conclusion
How to apply this knowledge to create a product? I'm not a hardware engineer nor am I the CEO of a multibillion dollar company but here is an idea:
Taking a small slice of Apple's approach to hardware with the iPhone and iPad, how about a unified Nintendo platform that is compatible between handheld and console? Imagine a single touchscreen handheld for $149-169 and an obviously more powerful console for $199-249 sharing the same basic inputs and underlying architecture targeting indie games, mid-sized titles, Nintendo productions any anyone who wants to hop on. Any game developed on the handheld could theoretically work on the console and vice-versa with the console version rendering at a higher resolution, more effects etc. and each with their own featuresets if necessary (touch controls, splitscreen...).
I really don't want to go too much in-depth with this but at least conceptually I think it has potential and I wouldn't be surprised if we see something along those lines from them in a few years (with the usual Nintendo caveats, obviously). What do you guys think?
Lesson 1: Value is important, so is price
To start with, this is something Nintendo got right last generation but wrong with both the 3DS and the Wii U. Launching a handheld at $249 and a console at $349 (or $299 for the model that might as well not exist) were both terrible decisions. That's not to say that one can't sell hardware at that price. It's just that Nintendo can't. If you compare them to their direct competitors the only thing Nintendo the others don't is Nintendo games. When it comes to third party games, hardware, online and community features, multimedia functions and entertainment services, Nintendo is lacking in every single area. Microsoft and Sony on the other hand, offer all these things and their own set of exclusives. 3DS fares similarly compared to tablets. Initial sales and the quick pricedrops on both systems showed that Nintendo could not provide the games to make up for the difference and neither of the "gimmicks" (3D and Wii U Pad) were able to catch the markets attention. Where does this leave Nintendo?
It's hard to imagine them catching up, basically skipping an entire generation, considering how much trouble they had to adopt to this one with frequent delays or droughts plaguing both their platforms. And it isn't a given that a similarly powered console would fare much better, given how the GameCube performed. So why not look at their handheld business pre-3DS and go the budget route? Obviously budget does not mean the antiquated solutions they have currently employed either and as far as OS, UI and online functionality goes, they need to drastically improve.
Lesson 2: Two platforms is one too many...
As I mentioned earlier, for the last few years Nintendo has consistently failed to provide a full software release schedule for at least one of their systems, the worst offender being the Wii during its last ~2 years. Not only have they underestimated difficulties in software development but also unreasonably expected third parties to pick up the slack in their place. Unlike Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo is in the unique position that first party software dominates their platforms and is directly linked to their success in the market. With rising development costs, third party relations in the gutter and Nintendo's conservative approach to expansion it will only get worse.
For a while I was thinking a hybrid of some sort would be their best course of action. I saw myself confirmed when they showed the Wii U and when they announced that they had combined both the console and handheld hardware department. Thinking about it though, outright removing a potential second stream of income is
Lesson 3: ...Two screens maybe too
The dual screen setup of the NDS might have run its course. It was a novel concept giving birth to many great games and it's still convenient to have a map or a menu on the lower screen but on both the 3DS and Wii U it's mostly, well, maps or menus. And off-screen play, I guess. With the added real estate of a larger screen with higher resolution the need for a second screen would largely disappear and regardless of how I feel about it, the second screen simply isn't crucial to many people. With Nintendo failing to justify it, it might be for the best to drop this concept again. It reduces manufacturing costs and brings them back to the standard established by the rest of the industry.
Lesson 4: Indies are your best friend
Praise where praise is due: Nintendo's advances in the indie scene led by Dan Adelman have been an immense improvement over the wild west situation on Wii and great in their own regard. While they cannot count on third parties to port their games, indies have shown to be very interested in porting their titles to the Wii U. The real lesson to take from this is however what a difference it makes to make development cheap and easy and to accommodate developers. Unity on Wii U and the Web Framework are great advances in this direction.
Conclusion
How to apply this knowledge to create a product? I'm not a hardware engineer nor am I the CEO of a multibillion dollar company but here is an idea:
Taking a small slice of Apple's approach to hardware with the iPhone and iPad, how about a unified Nintendo platform that is compatible between handheld and console? Imagine a single touchscreen handheld for $149-169 and an obviously more powerful console for $199-249 sharing the same basic inputs and underlying architecture targeting indie games, mid-sized titles, Nintendo productions any anyone who wants to hop on. Any game developed on the handheld could theoretically work on the console and vice-versa with the console version rendering at a higher resolution, more effects etc. and each with their own featuresets if necessary (touch controls, splitscreen...).
I really don't want to go too much in-depth with this but at least conceptually I think it has potential and I wouldn't be surprised if we see something along those lines from them in a few years (with the usual Nintendo caveats, obviously). What do you guys think?
