Tag Archives: Wii

Nintendo Amazingly Gets Worse At Marketing Just In Time For Plummeting Wii U Sales

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wiiuvswii

Perhaps poor marketing is holding back Wii U sales for Nintendo. As Spike TV’s GTTV host Geoff Keighley noted on Twitter, a new campaign from Nintendo is using flyers to show just how awesome the Wii U is.

Except, instead of going after console rivals Nintendo decided to aim its attack at its own, older-generation console the Wii. To be fair, the Wii is probably the strongest competitor to the Wii U, yet the consoles treat gaming very differently. The Wii is a family, group console, bringing people together, while the Wii U essentially lets you take your single-player game where ever you want, even if a family member wants to watch a movie with you.

To display the Wii U’s strengths against the many shortcomings of the Wii, Nintendo’s flyer shows a side-by-side comparison. Though the two consoles do share a few features, the Wii’s dots are clearly less awesome than the Wii U’s check marks. As we all learned in elementary school, dots < check marks. Obvi.

Luckily, Nintendo has made it so you can rip one of these flyers right off the wall and take it home with you. Maybe you can post it up in your bedroom, just over your Wii, to remind yourself that you should probably (not*) upgrade. Perhaps you can just store it away in your desk for later reference when someone asks, “What the fuck is a Wii U?”

Because, to be honest, not many people know about the dual-screened Wii U console, despite the fact that it was announced at E3 last year. Again, Nintendo marketing hasn’t really been killing it.

For instance, let’s take a look at this Wii U commercial.

To start, I’ve never actually seen this commercial air on TV. Secondly, a good deal of this ad is dedicated to non-gaming activities, such as drawing, watching TV, weighing yourself, browsing the web, and video chatting. Because, you know, that’s why people buy gaming consoles. It has nothing to do with Netflix, Hulu+ and a complete gaming experience.

But let’s not forget, Nintendo’s awful marketing isn’t a new thing. Remember the Nintendo 3DS commercials, with that girl from Glee and Selena Gomez, I think? If you haven’t seen it, it’s essentially a famous blonde girl sitting in a diner like a hipster trying to draw a piece of pie. Again, Nintendo clearly knows its market: girls who draw pie.

Again, if you find yourself forgetting that the Wii U is better than the Wii, or if you find yourself forgetting that the Wii U exists, march on over to your nearest airport or mall and grab yourself a flyer.

*Here’s our review of the Wii U.

[via Kotaku]

Wii U has historically bad January, sells about 50,000 units in US

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We’ve known since late January that Nintendo had scaled back expectations for the early 2013 performance of its recently launched Wii U. But now, US sales numbers for the system in first month of the year are beginning to leak out and it’s clear that Nintendo’s latest system is suffering from a monumental post-holiday slump.

While NPD no longer releases US hardware sales data every month, a representative for the tracking firm told Gamasutra that US sales in the system’s first three months were down 38 percent compared to the same period for the Wii. That would mean the Wii U has sold approximately 940,000 units through January in the US.

Combine that with the 890,000 Wii U units Nintendo has said were sold in November and December of 2012, and you get a US sales figure of about 50,000 in January alone. That gels with reports from others sources with access to NPD’s internal data, who claim the Wii U sold “well under” 100,000 units for the month.

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Fourth time’s the charm: Nintendo eases Wii U transfer issue with store credit

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Regular Ars readers will remember how Nintendo’s bafflingly obtuse DRM system forced me to pay $60 to move $400 worth of previously purchased Wii Virtual Console games to my new Wii U. Apparently I should have held out longer, because at least one user is reporting Nintendo eventually accommodated him more when fixing a similar issue.

Last month, Ryan, one host of the Nintendo Fun Club Podcast, chronicled his experience with Error Code 200101, a recurring issue preventing him from transferring $570 worth of Virtual Console purchases from the Wii to the Wii U. Three calls to Nintendo customer support throughout the course of a week seemed to be getting him no closer to having his problem fixed. The whole scenario had Ryan running up against the same $85 Wii “repair” wall I encountered.

Then something surprising happened. As Ryan notes in a follow-up post, his fourth call to Nintendo support left him with a $620 account credit in the Wii Shop Channel—including a $50 bonus for “the inconvenience.” Nintendo could apparently also remotely delete the licenses for the games purchased on his Wii system, allowing him to easily repurchase the games he lost. This was especially interesting to me, because the Nintendo customer service rep I talked to told me in no uncertain terms such license deletion was impossible.

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Nintendo: No Wii U price cut in the works

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Since Nintendo announced yesterday that it is cutting back Wii U sales projections, some consumers began to wonder if the system, which currently starts at $300, would see a price cut sooner rather than later. Nintendo President Satoru Iwata threw cold water on those hopes today, telling investors that such a price cut would not be forthcoming.

“With Wii U, we have taken a rather resolute stance in pricing it below its manufacturing cost, so we are not planning to perform a markdown,” Iwata said in translated remarks. “I would like to make this point absolutely clear. We are putting our lessons from Nintendo 3DS to good use, as I have already publicly stated. However, given that it has now become clear that we have not yet fully communicated the value of our product, we will try to do so before the software lineup is enhanced and at the same time work to enrich the software lineup which could make consumers understand the appeal of Wii U.” (Links added for context.)

Translated from corporate speak, the message is clear: “The Wii U isn’t too expensive, we just haven’t done a good job convincing enough people why it’s worth the price.”

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Nintendo cuts Wii U sales projections

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While the Wii U won’t be an instant flop like the Virtual Boy, sales projections released by Nintendo today show it probably won’t match the runaway sales success of the original Wii, either.

Nintendo sold 3.06 million Wii U units worldwide from its November launch through the end of 2012. That’s nearly as much as the 3.19 million units of the original Wii Nintendo sold back in the 2006 holiday season.

But Nintendo doesn’t think it can keep that momentum up. Back in October, the company said it expected to sell 5.5 million Wii U units through the end of March. That number has now been cut down to 4 million, meaning Nintendo expects to sell fewer than a million systems worldwide in the first three months of 2013.

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Canada gets pared-down Wii Mini for $100 on Dec. 7

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Nintendo’s main focus right now may be on the newly launched Wii U, but that doesn’t mean the company is ignoring the console’s predecessor. Today, Nintendo announced the Wii Mini, a $100 black-and-red redesign of the Wii that will be sold exclusively in Canada, of all places, on December 7.

While the Wii Mini supports every Wii controller and all of the roughly 1,300 Wii games, it does not support legacy GameCube games and accessories (that support was also missing from a much-less-drastic 2011 redesign of the Wii hardware). A blog post at Best Buy Canada also suggests the system is missing the ability to play games online or download Virtual Console and WiiWare releases. The box includes one red Wii Remote Plus and Nunchuk, but no pack-in game.

It’s a striking visual redesign for the aging hardware, with a red border and black top made of a textured plastic that couldn’t be more different from the glossy black or white finish of the previous Wii hardware. A triangular power button with a small LED light sits in one corner of the top, and an Open button activates a manual, top-loading optical drive, which replaces the slot loader on the original Wii. The overall impression is that of a toy rather than a game console.

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Wii U review update: Nintendo finally has a decent online experience

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My Wii U is full of people! And I can talk to them!

When we reviewed the Wii U earlier this week, we were forced to give it an “Incomplete” verdict, as we were waiting on a day-one system update that would unlock a large number of the system’s promised features. We spent a little over an hour downloading that update and a few more days tinkering with the new features it unlocked, so we can now report on how the Wii U handles some important functions aside from playing games.

The Nintendo Network experience

The Wii U represents Nintendo’s biggest push into the online space yet, and part of that push is replacing the inconvenient, frustrating, and game-specific Wii Friend Codes with a unified online infrastructure called the Nintendo Network ID. Signing up for an ID takes a few minutes and requires some very basic personal information (like an e-mail address). You can protect your ID with a password that’s required each time you use it, or set it up to log you in automatically every time you turn on the system.

Once you’re connected to the Nintendo Network, your Wii U home screen will fill up with Miis from around the world, gathering around large icons representing games and apps they’ve played. At first, this screen (known officially as WaraWara Plaza) was filled with preloaded robots from Nintendo talking excitedly about features like “System Settings.” By the next day, though, my plaza filled up with real people gathering around icons for games I owned and a few I didn’t. I can’t help but feel that Nintendo is using its plaza not just for expanded social networking, but also as a form of ad space for retail games.

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How Nintendo DRM trapped $400 of downloaded games on my failing Wii (updated)

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Well… crap.
Kyle Orland

(This story has been updated with further information at the bottom of this post)

Downloading Nintendo’s massive, day-one Wii U firmware update took over an hour, but the length of time didn’t bother me. I would finally be able to transfer the Virtual Console games I bought for the Wii over to my new Wii U. Then I could finally remove the old console itself from my entertainment center.

Unfortunately, my plan failed. Nintendo’s over-zealous DRM scheme, combined with a malfunction in my launch-era Wii hardware, instead trapped my purchases on the Wii. Unless I’m willing to pay Nintendo to help me out, $400 of downloaded games will remain in limbo.

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