It’s been a year since I wrote about the Wii U reveal at E32012. The Wii U launched to lukewarm
public reception and Nintendo’s position heading into E3 2013 is precarious, with Sony’s PS4
and Microsoft’s Xbox One nipping at their heels.
In this industry, the narrative can change on a dime. After tearing through several E3s with record
sales and the next Wii titled casual experience, Nintendo's last two E3s has been
a lucklustre mess of disappointment and confusion. It is probably not a surprise them that
despite having one of the largest booth if not the largest at the conference
itself, the company has opted to scale back its pre E3 conference to a business
partner meeting and eschewed the
overproduced extravaganza that are notorious source for internet memes to a
pre-recorded 1 hour show to be aired at 7am PDT on June 11th.
Given whatever they wanted to say and reveal was likely
decided months and weeks ago, I have no
expectation of this blog posting influencing them in anyway. But if someone at Nintendo is reading, it’s
worth noting that the consumer unrest around Xbox One’s restrictive consumer
policies has handed them a golden opportunity to re-introduce the Wii U as
gaming console as people understood it, not where Microsoft wants to take them.
Do the Unexpected:
We know what to expect.
Smash, Mario, Zelda & Luigi.
They’re all fine. We’ll undoubtedly
see Smash Brothers and previews to the next big Mario game. What Nintendo really needs however is a
surprise or several of them. A
collaboration project, a new franchise, a third party exclusive that will fire
people up. At this point, most people
who own a Wii U or is considering it knows it will be their Nintendo Box, that
expectation is priced in. Showing
Nintendo’s traditional franchises will help clarify what is coming, but it may
not convince any new people. Nintendo
really needs to work on the part of the expectations this is currently non-existent. That is the ‘extras’ that will get new people
to turn their head and look and push fence sitters to committing.
There are 3 angles to approaching this:
The perfect example is a marquee title like GTA V. People
aren’t expecting GTA V to land on Wii U.
But if it were to be announced, with exclusive content, or even better a
timed exclusivity, that could rain on Microsoft’s parade.
In terms of smaller scale titles, buying exclusives for well
loved games that has strong hardcore following but has largely been abandoned
by their publishers (see Bayonetta) is also a good 2nd angle to get
attention and hype. An oft rumoured
title is Beyond Good and Evil 2. Beyond
that could be revival of Darksiders from the now bankrupt THQ under Nintendo’s
publishing banner. There is a graveyard of games from this past
generation with only a single entry that were dropped by their publishers due to high HD development costs and low
returns. Picking diamonds in the rough
like Nintendo had with Bayonetta is a great strategy to immediately get
mindshare among consumers with a known quantity.
Finally, angle digital content. Minecraft seems tailor made for a Nintendo
platform, yet Microsoft has it on the 360.
Getting a game like Minecraft, even if it never makes Nintendo a dime,
would immediately boost interest in the Wii U, especially if there’s off TV
play involved. Consider it a
loss-leader.
Nintendo’s long-time software partner Square-Enix has been
on a tear with premium releases of RPGs on iOS and Android Play Store. Priced between $5 and $15 those titles seem
ideal for the eShop. Yet, they have not
released a single digital game on the eShop.
If Nintendo needs evidence for people’s desire for the kind of digital
content Square-Enix is putting out, they need to look no further than the
success Level 5 has been enjoying with their Guild01 imports – Liberation Maiden
and Crimson Shroud. There’s a hunger for
high quality premium digital titles done by Japanese developers in under-served
genres like Adventure games and RPGs.
Satisfy the Disgruntled Consumer
Nintendo’s biggest problem is it’s archaic digital
policies. Digital purchases tied to the machine instead of accounts, the slow pace and trickle of Virtual Console releases and
non-transferable Virtual Console content between platforms has infuriated and
disappointed many of their long time fans.
Unified Account System - This is imperative if Nintendo is to exploit the consumer
furor over Microsoft’s current DRM and used game policy. Announce a unified account for all Wii U, and
3DS purchases that lets consumers access their content on more than one machine
as long as they are signed into their accounts.
In this way, the games we buy are attached to the account, not the
machine that it was originally downloaded.
Things break, people move, or buy a 2nd console. They want to be able to seamlessly move
content around, not wait 4-6 weeks via
mail for Nintendo to manually move content over.
The Apple Approach – Nintendo may already be heading in this
direction with their addition of 3DS software information on the Wii U eshop
but it would be really nice to to allow certain digital content (Virtual
Console, some eshop games) to work on the Wii U and 3DS. 1 purchase would allow access on two
platforms. This will be seen a
positively consumer friendly and excite people.
Extras:
3DS Miiverse - This
is long overdue. A Miiverse app
integrated into the 3DS operating system would be great. What would even be better is for it to
function exactly as it does now on the Wii U.
Suspend a game, and make a post
with a screenshot of the game at the suspended state.
New hardware - Nothing is more exciting than a new hardware
reveal. This may seem counter-intuitive
but a new piece of hardware that
complements the Wii U and 3DS could be an interesting 3rd pillar
for Nintendo. What could this hardware
be? Maybe a box with a screen that allows
the Wii U to stream content to it as if
it is a second game pad , but a game pad with an internal processor, SD card slot and memory
that supports the 3DS eshop. Price it
right, and with the right content, this in-between portable could be a hit and leverage the aforementioned unified accounts system while serving as a Wii U as a game pad substitute and a portable digital only 3DS device.
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