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

[VO.SUPER]

Well, on the plus side, Nintendo are gods at game space. SM3DW is just under 2 GB for gods sakes.

And Nintendo allows you to use external hard drives as well.

[Kaabiitorori]

Wait. Digital bundled games? What douchebaggery is this in the first place?

 

God knows how many 3DS XL limited editions I had to discard because of this bullcrap... ._.

 

I'm surprised Nintendo went with the digital approach with all these bundles to begin with considering the Wii U's extremely limited space for downloadable games.

 

Most of Nintendo's games actually tend to be pretty optimized in terms of size: for example, Super Mario 3D World is 1.63Gb, The Wind Waker HD is 1.73Gb, and Pikmin 3 is 3.85Gb, the latter being the biggest first-party Wii U game storage-wise AFAIK. The issue comes from third-party games though: games like Batman Arkham Origins (13Gb), Splinter Cell Blacklist (16Gb) or Lego City Undercover (22Gb) are some good examples. The available storage sizes (8Gb Basic and 32Gb Premium) are quite disappointing, although the good news is you can use external USB HDDs, which is actually not a bad deal considering you can find 1Tb HDDs for as cheap as £30 if you look far enough. =)

[Candescence]

Yeah, get yourself a 1TB HD and you're pretty much set for pretty much anything digital, and you'll likely won't run out unless you've got a LOT of digital games.

 

But, yeah, companies with much more experience with online services still fail regularly to get those services to work on day one. You can never be prepared enough for server overload.

[Kuzu]

Most of those other companies don't fail around Christmas.

[Candescence]

Most of those other companies don't fail around Christmas.

Which is completely irrelevant. I repeat, you can never be prepared enough for server overload, regardless of date or circumstances.

[Kuzu]

Makes you wonder if this is gonna happen again in the future.

[Conando]

If they release some other Pokemon thing? Definitely.

 

(Seriously why did they release Pokemon Bank on Christmas.)

[Jet Prower]

Wouldn't you need to find a balance between how many servers you currently have and how much it costs to run them. The cost of buying more servers in case you need to expand what you already have. Then finally, how many people currently use your system and how many you expect may be going to jump into it in addition to what is already there.

 

It's a bit of a complex business thing. You can over prepare yourself and buy way too many servers that you don't need right away, but you can kick online if you ever do need them, or do you wait until you need them and save money until you need those extra ones due to an increase of traffic.

[Candescence]

Usually, notable server overload tends to be a one-time occurrence, usually companies sort that out and any future problems are more minor and fixed much more quickly, from what I can tell.

 

But, yeah, Jet is pretty much correct, servers do cost money to buy, install and maintain. Finding out how much those servers can take is more often than not a case of trial and error, and more often than not any company will severely undershoot than overshoot the number of servers they need. More servers can be bought to handle additional users over time, of course, but maintaining those servers do cost money.

[Frogging101]

Usually, notable server overload tends to be a one-time occurrence, usually companies sort that out and any future problems are more minor and fixed much more quickly, from what I can tell.

Yes, and this is why companies don't go and buy an ass-ton of servers in anticipation of a sudden influx of users; after the initial rush where everyone tries to access it at the same time, all those extra servers just sit and waste electricity. So most online service providers choose instead to bear the overload and fix it quickly by optimizing etc. (this is where Nintendo failed from what I'm reading).

[Sami]

Being several years behind everyone else isn't much of an excuse for being severely ill-prepared.

I agree with Superlink - what message does this send to new customers?

[Autosaver]

Being several years behind everyone else isn't much of an excuse for being severely ill-prepared.

I agree with Superlink - what message does this send to new customers?

 

Giving #WiiU as a gift? Pro-tip: Perform system updates before wrapping so it’s good to go as soon as it’s opened!

 

http://mynintendonews.com/2012/12/21/gifting-a-wii-u-for-xmas-nintendo-says-open-it-now-download-system-update-and-wrap-it/

 

LElELLELELEELLEEL

 

#mastertroll

[Blue Blood]

Regardless of the current issues, that's never a bad idea when giving consoles as a gift considering they tend to take some setting up these days. It's especially a good idea if it's parents giving a console to their child, so they're able to quietly set up parental controls and all that.

 

But yeah, get your shit together Nintendo. You should be embarrassed.

[Conando]

WAT. The eshop is back up in the East Coast right now. Don't tell the Japanese people that want Pokemon Bank (they'll still look even though it's been removed).

 

Edit: Also, missed the whole digital download vouchers in bundles thing. Yeah...who the hell though that was a good idea? I don't think they were going to lose anything by including the Zelda disc. They did it with the Mario bundle, in fact it was even a newly manufactured disc with Luigi U on it too.

[Remy]

Yes, and this is why companies don't go and buy an ass-ton of servers in anticipation of a sudden influx of users; after the initial rush where everyone tries to access it at the same time, all those extra servers just sit and waste electricity. So most online service providers choose instead to bear the overload and fix it quickly by optimizing etc. (this is where Nintendo failed from what I'm reading).

You can't fix server load ""quickly by optimizing"

[NiGHTS]

Yeah, get yourself a 1TB HD and you're pretty much set for pretty much anything digital, and you'll likely won't run out unless you've got a LOT of digital games.

 

But, yeah, companies with much more experience with online services still fail regularly to get those services to work on day one. You can never be prepared enough for server overload.

Agreed on both. Anything 500 gigs and up for a Wii U will pretty much last you the entire life cycle for the system. 

For the servers... im not surprised. Any popular game, heck even PC games. I seen servers crash on day one, or for a week when its overloaded. It happens, and its expected. Anyone remember GTA5 and how long those servers crashed for? 

Give it time, and it will all be fixed. 

[Remy]

Being several years behind everyone else isn't much of an excuse for being severely ill-prepared.

I agree with Superlink - what message does this send to new customers?

 

PSN was fucking up at launch as well as at christmas.

 

http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2013/11/psn_errors_prompted_by_north_american_ps4_launch

 

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2013/12/24/psn-suffers-from-connection-issues-downtime-just-before-christmas-error-code-80710092/

 

Nintendo are Ill prepared? Maybe, considering the downtime was longer than most.

 

Nintendo being "Several years behind" remotely the reason for the downtime? Fucking typical, ignorant bullshit.

 

This kind of thing

 

http://www.slashgear.com/grand-theft-auto-online-downtime-drags-as-rockstar-firefights-01299967/

 

happens with almost every launch of anything online related in the history of forever. It's an unfortunate fact that unless you are stupidly over equipped, the ridiculous influx of users that launching a service brings in will probably cause it to crash and burn.

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/10/01/gta-online-and-obamacares-health-care-exchange-both-entirely-borked-by-traffic-on-first-day/

 

Now, this wasn't a launch, but it was the first christmas buying a Wii U was actually an attractive option so it might as well have been. Could Nintendo have possibly sold more Wii Us worldwide than anyone, including themselves were expecting? Probably. Christmas is also pretty much a built in online service ruiner- you have the entire world trying to connect on the same day, more or less rolling around the globe as more and more people wake up and try to update.

 

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2013/12/25/online-services-struggle-to-keep-up-with-christmas-consoles.aspx

 

I just think it's a little harsh throwing a tantrum over this sort of thing when it happens to literally everyone.  Even Steam was fucked yesterday by free Left 4 Dead 2- are you going to make Valve out to be cavemen that don't understand, nor prepare for internet traffic due to that? despite running 3 of the most popular online games on the internet, and the most popular DD store? 

 

I wish I was here earlier because a lot of people here seem to be suffering from a severe misunderstanding of networking and why servers go down to begin with.

 

re: Superlink:

 

 

 

 

Even though Nintendo's competitors had issues yesterday on Christmas day they have more systems in the wild than Wii Us and 3DS' sales combined. PS3 and 360 both have sold at least 80million units, meaning Microsoft and Sony are dealing with far far far huger problems than Nintendo.

Do you really think 160million 360s and PS3s were turned on and trying to buy/create online accounts concurrently on christmas day? I have 2 360s- neither of them were on. The problem isn't how many systems are in existance, or online -total-. It's how many are accessing the network function /at the same time/. All those 360s and PS3s don't amount to shit if people are not using them/just playing games on them/watching netflix. They're only contributing problems if they're actively doing shit that requires the server to ping back to them. 

 

Don't underestimate the ridiculous number of 3DS in the wild, either. 

 

I think they probably could have made this less worse by

1. Not releasing Pokemon Bank so close to christmas
2. Not merging 3DS/Wii U store and Miiverse functions until after christmas
3. Obv. having more servers
4. Less digital bundled games, so less people bothered to go online to begin with

 

But to be honest, if they sold a halfway decent amount of units some downtime was inevitable. Watch how when it goes back up it stays up, and pretty much everyone forgets this ever happened.

 

Unbelievable the extents people will go to spin things against the WIi U, though.

 

PS4 has been consistently fucked PSN wise, since launch. Where are the torches and pitchforks for that? Oh, that's right, they're nowhere, because no one is actually playing their PS4 and it's shitty launch titles, they're too busy doing something more entertaining than Killzone will ever be-  shitting on Nintendo on the internet. 

[Detective Shadzter]

I'm on both the Wii U and 3DS eShop now!

[Chronozoah]

PS4 has been consistently fucked PSN wise, since launch. Where are the torches and pitchforks for that? Oh, that's right, they're nowhere, because no one is actually playing their PS4 and it's shitty launch titles, they're too busy doing something more entertaining that Killzone will ever be-  shitting on Nintendo on the internet. 

Ouch.

 

Consistently fucked? How bad are we talking here, exactly? I ask because I've only encountered the one issue (though admittedly that was annoying enough) whereby PSN suddenly forgets that I paid for and downloaded a title, and I need to manually restore my licences to get access to my game again. It's rather irritating when I'm not allowed to play the games I bought, and very ironic in hindsight.

[Scar]

PS4 has been consistently fucked PSN wise, since launch. Where are the torches and pitchforks for that? Oh, that's right, they're nowhere, because no one is actually playing their PS4 and it's shitty launch titles, they're too busy doing something more entertaining than Killzone will ever be-  shitting on Nintendo on the internet. 

 

I don't get the point of this. Are you being intentionally hyperbolic?

[Remy]

I don't get the point of this. Are you being intentionally hyperbolic?

You think so?

[Scar]

You think so?

 

Pardon my confusion, but I haven't been keeping up with all of the things taking place in this thread. 

And yes, I do think you're being intentionally hyperbolic.

Are you?

[Jet Prower]

PS4 has been consistently fucked PSN wise, since launch. Where are the torches and pitchforks for that? Oh, that's right, they're nowhere, because no one is actually playing their PS4 and it's shitty launch titles, they're too busy doing something more entertaining than Killzone will ever be-  shitting on Nintendo on the internet. 

This right here is likely why I sometimes lose my cool in the Nintendo threads ^^;

 

Complaining about Nintendo pretty much has become an online sport at this point, not just here, every gaming site I go now is pretty much the same. Even when Nintendo does something good, there is nothing but negatives being thrown out there about how they are still doomed and everything is about to be the end of them. I know Nintendo has made mistakes, I can't deny that. If I did, I would be just shouting blindly about something I know is true. However, it just seems so many people pretty much just want to pick on Nintendo because they are Nintendo at this point and I dont think it is fair usually. This is especially so for people that don't even have the current console but continue to talk bad about it when they dont even have it in the first place. It can just be frustrating at times to hear people get all up in arms about something you like, but I know not everyone likes the console =)

 

 

But as for the digital bundle of games, yeah, now that I'm calm about this, I still dont think that was a good idea. I would have bought that Zelda bundle as well before if it had been a physical game instead of a digital one. The WiiU already takes like an hour before you can even play it the first time due to the huge update that has to be done when you first turn it on. You are then going to add in another wait time of having to wait for a full blown retail digital game to download into the console as well? If you are a fully informed gamer, you will know things like this and know you will be in store for a wait time before you can get to play. You will be prepared to let it download for awhile while you do something like eat or do something else for a time.

 

The uninformed parent buying the console for the kid, won't know things like this. Many of them I'm assuming are still used to the old days where you just plug the console in and you are ready to go, unlike today where things have to do all this downloading before they can be played. The kid is going to be waiting and be very impatient that things are taking so long to get to the fun and then on top of that, your console was bundled with a digital game instead of a disk to stick into the console. You can see why the frustration level is going to go up and these people with low tolerance levels and the people that are so eager to complain about the smallest things online are going to eat this up. It's something to complain about, so lets do it.

 

But yeah, I think anyone should assume Christmas day or the first day of a game's launch are going to be bad online days. Everyone will be jumping on at the same time, so don't expect 100% right away. There are just many people that are so impatient on these things. Is some of it Nintendo's fault? Yes. Is it all their fault to where they are just a horrible company? No at all. This seems to always happen on release day or christmas day with online stuff. You can't predict how many will get on at the same time. You can predict it, but is it financially feasible to over prepare like that. Most of the time no it isn't. More often than not, just wait and things will go back to normal. =)

[Kaabiitorori]

A good part of what Remz said in regards to online services busting up is what I was trying to explain several posts ago, couldn't have said it better though: I totally agree with every single point of his message. Server overloads are bound to happen no matter how you forecast and prepare them, and when they do, acknowledge the problem and fix it. I am sorry if I sound like a broken record, but making a big deal out of this when it's a temporary issue is pointless.

 

And as I said before as well, going as far as saying the Wii U's reputation will be hindered because of a sever overload is delusional. In fact, it screams Nintendoomed attitude to me, and I wouldn't be surprised if the media makes a full story of this because hey, it's Nintendo and it has to be treated as the golden turd of the video gaming industry and the rest are goodie-two shoes and their problems have to be hidden under the carpet 'cause it's not a big deal. Doesn't matter whatever Nintendo does good or bad, it has to be backlashed to death.

 

Bullshit. *sighs* ._.

[Shade Vortex]

While all that is true, it's also true that Steam, PSN and XBL got fixed pretty quickly in most cases. Nintendo's still having problems and this is the third day. You may argue that's not much time, but as I said, the other companies fixed their shit already. So that is one legitimate complaint against Nintendo in this situation- how slow this is getting fixed.

 

But hey, I was able to do my 3DS system transfer and I bought AA5 when the service was temporarily working. It's been kind of on and off, though, but it's not quite stable yet.