General Nintendo sales/business discussion topic (previously: The Wii U Thread)

[Chaos Warp]

EA strikes again, I have no idea why their beef with Nintendo is such a big deal.

WAAAAAAA WE CAN`T USE OUR ONLINE PASSES ON NINTENDO SYSTEMS WAAAAAAAAAAA

[Gabz Girl]

Wow, EA are assholes. =/ It's like they have no faith in the Wii U whatsoever.

Edited May 2, 2013 by Gabz Girl

[Carbo]

Really? I thought it was selling more since HMV did that sale on the premium edition. Pretty sure I read that a few pages back. o_O

150% increase when the sales are as low as they are means nothing.

EA Dreamcasting the Wii U is bad news but they're so fucked right now that cutting its losses is necessary. Wii U is one of them. People need to stop bringing up the "EA is mad at Nintendo for not wanting Origin" straw man bullshit. Most Wanted and Mass Effect 3 use Origin accounts perfectly fine for it. EA are just shitting the bed in management right now and a platform that's currently chugging slow as shit is not going to help their cause.

In other news Game & Wario is launching June 28 in Europe.

[Mando-Whirl-Wind]

Super strikers trumps fifa anyways, its more interesting

[SuperLink]

I'm honestly not seeing how it can be anything other than a vendetta against Nintendo.

 

EA is crazy to not support the 3DS, but I'm pretty sure they're even supporting the Vita. Any system but Nintendo ones; isn't that suspect to anyone?

[Toby]

Oh no. How tragic. What ever will Wii U owners do without a boring football simulator.

[Nix]

Oh no. How tragic. What ever will Wii U owners do without a boring football simulator.

 

As shitty as I find EA's large selection of sports games, people do tend to eat it up regardless.  The Wii U's going to need a healthy selection of 3rd party titles along with its exclusives if they're going to sell the thing, and EA jumping ship sure as shit isn't going to help that.

[Tornado]

Oh no. How tragic. What ever will Wii U owners do without a boring football simulator.

 

Probably stop (or continue to keep from) being Wii U owners, quite frankly. Unless you can explain why losing major 3rd Party releases is a good thing.

 

 

Hopefully this passes when EA gets their shit sorted out.

[KrazyBean]

Oh no. How tragic. What ever will Wii U owners do without a boring football simulator.

 

It may be boring, but it sells...and that's the main point.

[Patticus]

Put simply, any game that the Wii U doesn't have which is released on other consoles is a damaging blow. If not in terms of sales, then for the console's profile, which is horrifically fragile at the moment. If it was performing well, it wouldn't be so newsworthy.

Plus it's a blow to we gamers; the Wii U has the potential to have the best versions of some third party titles out there, thanks to the gamepad.

[PSI Wind]

Well, on the bright side this means EA shouldn't have the rights to the NFL series after this considering that their contract states that it needs to be on all, or most, platforms.

Electronic Arts has extended its licensing deal with the National Football League and NFL Players to create and distribute American football games until 2013, GamesIndustry.biz reports.

[SuperLink]

Most platforms

 

I imagine they're getting around that loophole somehow by releasing on everything but Nintendo.

[PSI Wind]

Most platforms

 

I imagine they're getting around that loophole somehow by releasing on everything but Nintendo.

What I mean by most is like handhelds. I believe consoles are a requirement in the contract.

[SIXTH-RATE SOMA]

To those guys saying this is a blow to the Wii-U: Well yeah, sorta. But EA is just such a giant screw-up at this point that it's hard to treat them anywhere near seriously. It just reads like one more stupid/petty decision after about fifty others.

[SuperLink]

If EA are in some kind of financial trouble, screwing up their contract is probably the last thing they would do, I don't think they're breaching any contracts here.. there's nothing more precious to them than their sports games.

 

 

To those guys saying this is a blow to the Wii-U: Well yeah, sorta. But EA is just such a giant screw-up at this point that it's hard to treat them anywhere near seriously. It just reads like one more stupid/petty decision after about fifty others.

Maybe as a consumer or player, but on the business side you have no choice but to treat them seriously. They generate a huge amount of third party income for every system they support, whether we like it or not a system that doesn't have support from EA's biggest sellers is one that is going to lose attention and further support through association.

 

It's ridiculous that EA, currently a joke of a company, holds this much influence. But influence is something they have in abundance.

[SIXTH-RATE SOMA]

Maybe as a consumer or player, but on the business side you have no choice but to treat them seriously. They generate a huge amount of third party income for every system they support, whether we like it or not a system that doesn't have support from EA's biggest sellers is one that is going to lose attention and further support through association.

 

It's ridiculous that EA, currently a joke of a company, holds this much influence. But influence is something they have in abundance.

 

Oh, most certainly. I'm just saying that, as much as I know this will be a detriment to the Wii-U, I still can't make myself take EA seriously. My respect for them is wedged somewhere beneath the basement floorboards, so it's hard for me to really get worked up about them at this point. That said, with EA in such a position as they've put themselves there is a potential to lose a whole host of franchises (good and bad), so it remains to be seen just how deep the cut goes.

[SuperLink]

In that case I agree, I personally don't care, the only way this affects me is that I do have concern for the WiiU's future.

 

Personally I dislike EA so much lately that I would like for them to go out of business, they, unlike THQ, actually deserve it with how they treat their consumer base.

And heck, THQ weren't exactly fantastic, for me to say they didn't deserve to go down like that only speaks volumes about how shit EA is.

[Conando]

I know it's bad news, but I just can't be assed about EA anymore.

[Autosaver]

 

"EA is mad at Nintendo for not wanting Origin" straw man bullshit. Most Wanted and Mass Effect 3 use Origin accounts perfectly fine for it.

 

 

Um.. no. I'm pretty sure you're completely missing what EA asked for.

 

They wanted full control over Nintendo's shop. As in, instead of the eShop we would be using Origin instead. It had nothing to do with connecting to Origin for online servers.

 

It's funny because EA said many months before the Wii U release on how they're going to put every major title and support it. ...lol

[Carbo]

Um.. no. I'm pretty sure you're completely missing what EA asked for.

 

They wanted full control over Nintendo's shop. As in, instead of the eShop we would be using Origin instead. It had nothing to do with connecting to Origin for online servers.

 

It's funny because EA said many months before the Wii U release on how they're going to put every major title and support it. ...lol

Where exactly is your proof of this? Where is the proof that EA scrubbed off the Wii U because they didn't want to use Origin's store even though it's practically a guarantee that no console distributor worth their salt would let any publisher hold a monopoly on their business? That claim is asinine. Wii U's eShop lets publishers hold completely free reign with pricing and sales, and titles like Fifa 13 which on the Wii U is basically Fifa 12.5 is STILL priced for an absolutely ridiculous $59 while its other console counterparts launched the actual new game on other platforms for less. That is the kind of freedom any other console publisher out there would hang their heads over if they had a pair. Nintendo are the ones sitting here with no visible future outlook, a console that is having an absolutely abysmal software sales rate and an identity that's getting steamrolled by them being pushovers.

Wii U isn't a PC. There is no open infrastructure for publishers to create their own run stores, neither is there any for the 360, PS3, PS4 and it will sure as hell not be on Xbox 3 either. Doesn't look like EA is skimping support on any of those though.

[Conando]

This might not be seen as relevant, but the 3DS had no "visible future" in 2011. Today it's sold over 30 million worldwide and has crushed its competition into a fine powder. Without EA. Nintendo needs 3rd parties, yes, but not to the extent Microsoft and Sony do.

[SuperLink]

Without EA. Nintendo needs 3rd parties, yes, but not to the extent Microsoft and Sony do.

That's true, yes.

 

But Nintendo's handhelds have like an inherent success, they're a totally different story to home consoles I think. It's not surprising the 3DS is ending up as a big success, I don't think the WiIU has the kind of appeal that Nintendo's handhelds have, even the Wii and DS typically sold for very different reasons.

[Conando]

The 3DS suffered from the exact same situation the Wii U is in right now. Eerily so.

[SuperLink]

I know it did, but the 3DS is still a Nintendo handheld, it doesn't even have the same kinds of system sellers that home consoles typically rely on. It's a totally different demographic.

 

I think its success was inevitable, slow but inevitable.

[Carbo]

This rather bears mentioning but handhelds =/= consoles. The Wii U is not the 3DS, is not competing within the same market and has nowhere near the same amount of pressure being piled onto it not only by future consoles but existing consoles. The 3DS may have been doing bad, but it never did nearly as bad as the Wii U, which at this point is historically bad. It's shipped similar units to other consoles within this timeframe but it's launch aligned numbers are atrocious and its barely doing 60k a month in US while only doing 8k a week in Japan. I do believe Wii U will recover in due time, but most likely it will not go that far beyond Gamecube numbers.

Even when that's brought into the equation though the 3DS is currently under a lot of pressure in the west where it's faltering in sales quite a bit with it's YoY hitting lows that are worse from last year.