Nintendo Needs to Focus on Creating Customers, Not on Bending to the Industry

GenGAME writes: "Nintendo may have gained a lot of fans with Wii, but it didn’t gain a lot of fans within the Industry. It’s pretty much 100% true. We’re seeing a lot of companies hesitate to bring games to Wii U with the belief that only the first-party games will sell anyway, or that no matter how they use the hardware they’re better off just sticking with PlayStation and Xbox.

"According to the Industry's wisdom, the 'different approach' was a weakness for Wii – but I’d like to propose another view. Doing differently than what the Industry wanted was actually Wii’s greatest strength."

[legendoflex]

Every time Nintendo tries to do things the Industry Way, Nintendo suffers badly for it. Clearly the Industry Way is at odds with the actual values at the center of Nintendo's biggest games, so Nintendo should continue to ignore Industry values and focus exclusively on Nintendo values, like they did with Wii.

Trying to juggle both, like they're doing with Wii U, doesn't work because it just comes off as two-timing and disingenuous. You'll get the super-dedicated fans, like GameCube did, but that's about it.

[Minato-Namikaze]

Problem then becomes that the casuals go where the fad is (which is where they think gaming is headed, lol) and you also lose some of your core fans because you catered towards the casuals which have now left.

[legendoflex]

Wii's "GameCube-style" games still did just as well if not better than the actual GameCube games.

If you take 15-20 million Wii owners out of the equation as people who just bought Wii Sports and/or Wii Fit (since many people seem to believe that there are a large number of Wii owners who bought one game and then never played it again), that leaves about 80 million Wii owners and 829 million game sales.

That actually results in an attach rate for Nintendo's more "core" audience - the audience that buys several games with their system - so it's the highest for any Nintendo platform ever: more than 10 games for each of these players versus a little over 9 for GameCube owners.

The idea that Wii alienated a large number of "core gamers" is a total myth. There were at least 2-3 times as many dedicated gamers on Wii than N64/GameCube, and they bought way more games than the dedicated gamers on previous Nintendo platforms.

[Jek_Porkins]

If they leave, they were never really "fans" in my opinion. This whole core and casual debate gets stranger and stranger, I really hate the term and think people use it strictly when they feel it suits them.

Don't like something? Let's call it casual so we can attack it!

[Dj7FairyTail]

@legendoflex

You're data is wrong.
Wii Sold 99.84m to date with over 869m software.

[Jadedz]

Legend of; ''well said.''

[andrewer]

Man WTF, industry way is like graphics, processor power (both things that a console will never achieve over pc), sony stuff that aren't innovative but people think they are...that's the industry way...

[Gr81]

Completely.

[I_LOVE_MYSELF]

People need to assume they know what is best for Nintendo. I imagine it's a lot harder than people make it out to be.