Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime still remains extremely confident in the future of the Wii U and its video game business in general. Reggie says that it’s ultimately software that will shift hardware and with the content they’ve got coming they’re sure to keep the Wii U afloat. If they decide to bring their content to the iPhone then they will lose out on hardware sales and they don’t want that.
“In this games business, the axiom is that software drives hardware, and we’ve seen that over our 30+ year experience in this category,” Fils-Aime said. Put the software somewhere else, like the iPhone, and the hardware loses, the theory goes.
“And in the end it’s going to be placed on our ability to have these unique compelling experiences that stand up to time.”

The Ing lives by doing things instead of useless talking…
This is true to a degree but you can’t solely rely on software to sell your hardware. You also need great marketing for said games & hardware.
Also – Waiting for “PS4 has no games, how does it sell?” and “Wii U has games, how come it doesn’t sell?”
That’s exactly what I’m waiting for too lol
True, but for all the PS4’s brilliant marketing and amazing console sales, Sony’s PS4 profits are just above that of the Wii U. Not in proportion to the consoles sold more either. More like they’re actually comparable and much closer than the console sales would have you think. So long as they can steadily sell games and consoles, they’ll be fine and I think that’s what they mean.
“Sony’s PS4 profits are just above that of the Wii U”
Source pls
“PS4 has no games” is a big and fat lie! Doesn’t have no one of my interest, but it has a respectiful library for your owners.
The major problem of the Wii U is not the avaliable library, is the large periods of software droughts.
Well with this in mind Reggie, maybe it would make sense to release Fatal Frame 5 world wide!
Better talk to Koei Tecmo then. They’re the ones in control of that game.
It’s good they still have faith in the Wii U because I don’t have much. He’s been saying this for a while yet no one is still buying it. It has more polished and creative games than the other systems (by polished i mean good quality titles) but it’s still not selling as well as the PS4 which has about 0 polished games and if the games it has are polished, they aren’t anything special. Yes they prefer Quality over quantity but that doesn’t seem like its working well which is sad. Shows just how much the market has changed and gotten worse.
uhh ps4 does have polished games
no it doesnt you little shit
DA Inquisition says hi
yo mama says hi
LOL but yeah you’re right it does have SOME polished games of course. I didn’t say it didn’t have any at all. btw is Inquisition on PS3? id like to try it out soon once i get a job
Actually the Wii U has increased sales year over year, and is already up 20% over this time last year. So your comment that nobody is buying the Wii U is inaccurate.
And I can understand what he means by the whole phone thing but if they’re not gonna improve their damn marketing system then how are people gonna know more about their shit?
Unfortunately nowadays games do not sell hardware anymore. Marekting does. Just throw tns of bullshit to customers and they will open their wallets and buy anything. This is how our society works today. And this is sad…
That and the power of the console
Well, imo this power is completely part of the marekting. Who did really care about power 10 years ago ? Nobody – or maybe people really into computer science, but the lambda customer did not. Because people were playing GAMES, not consoles. Today, you hear more “1080p” or “60fps” than “gameplay”, “level design”, “game design”, “soundtrack”, etc. This is a nonsense. When we notice this, it’s not really surprising anymore to see always more games that should rather be called movies coming around.
And the most ridiculous thing is that people do not even really know what this represents, what it really means concretely. I am sure that you can give a 720p game to people around there, telling them that it runs in 1080p and 95% of those “gamers” will not even notice anything and believe you. But if you tell them that one version of a game is 900p and the other one is 1080p, they will spit all their poison on the lower-resolution version saying that it is a piece of shit. Because marketing made them think about games with numbers, with stupid spécifications, and not with essential gaming components anymore. Ridiculous indeed…
Oh and if people really wanted powerful hardware, they would simply go for a PC. But no, this “power” is completely part of the bullshit that marketing uses to sell hardware. The E3 conférences for PS4 and One two years ago did not even talk about games. They did mention power-related numbers and shit 80% of the time. I feel like the world of video games is going really badly (not in terms of quantity, but of quality).
I did a little test with some friends using trine 2 on Wii U and Ps4. When they knew the system the game was running on they knew the difference. When I played the Wii U version but said it was the Ps4 version it looked better, until a screen prompt came up.
No, games do still sell hardware. Why do you think people are buying the Ps4? They are buying it on the promise of upcoming games. You have Bloodbourne, FF15, Arkham Knight, The Witcher 3. These are the reason people are buying the Ps4.
I assure you that if Sony came out and said “we will not be releasing any games for the Ps4 in 2015 or 2016” , Nobody would buy the Ps4… Of course software sells hardware, why would anybody think any different..
Then why is nobody buying the Wii U smartass? There awesome games coming out this year for it too just like the PS4. But nobody is buying the Wii U like hotcakes like the everyone is with the PS4.
Marketing has ALWAYS sold consoles. Look at the SNES, they advertised the fuck out of the Super FX chip and the power it brought
They keep saying it like a broken record.
Although it’s true, Nintendo, don’t have your hopes up Wii U will skyrocket and be competitive.
I think Reggie is forgetting in order Nintendo to sell Wii U they actually need to have retail software coming out, instead they are getting a few indie and ios games and thinks that will sell Wii U really come reggie.
Nintendo have bad marketing, N64 had to buy the vibration attachment, Wii had to buy motion plus attachment, 3ds had to buy analog attachment, new3ds had to buy charging adapter, gameboy color had to buy light attachment, Wii U want longer batteries had to buy bigger batteries. Nintendo can make things strong and perfect, but they don’t because they think about extra money…just like charging YouTubeer for advertising Nintendo games so greedy.
Well first Nintendo was the first to come out with the vibration on a controller. Sony had to release a whole separate controller later on to do it, and Nintendo gave away the adapter for free with StarFox for years. Iwata said the tech behind the Wii Motion Plus was not available when the Wii first came out. As for the others adding the longer battery or an charging adapter to the new 3ds would have increased the price of the base unit. I was happy with the even $200 and not having the spend the money for an adapter I didn’t need and the adapters are only like $15, so why is anyone complaining?
C’mon. It has always been $199 for a Nintendo handheld, PLUS a charger. They’re doing this solely to increase profit margins, can’t believe you bought into their bullshit
Also, Nintendo’s logic is that everyone already has an adapter after buying the DS and 3DS. Are they actually saying that they don’t expect new customers buying their handhelds?? How stupid is that?
Nintendo paid Platinum games to develop bayonetta 1/2 which is awesome, but didn’t care about paying bungie to port Destiny and other big franchise like GTA5 and sport games. Nintendo don’t need to have all of them just a few big franchise which will make or attract people to buy a Nintendo console. It would have made Nintendo console look good with 3rd party support. Nintendo reputation is broken because of lack of games, if this continues people are not going to want to support Nintendo in the future.
I never understood why Nintendo is always the ones that get the bad rap for lack of games. True the Wii U dosen’t have a lot to offer if you are not a Nintendo the fan, but the PS4 and XBone have been out for a year and a half and there is very little to play on them. Im just saying everyone should get the bad rap for lack of games. Plus, I don’t think Destiny or GTA5 would have sold well on the Wii U no matter if Nintendo was involved or not. I’m all for more 3rd party games, but there are some that just won’t sell on Nintendo hardware no matter what the case is.
Actually, it’s “great marketing” that sells things – relying on the hardware to sell software or vice versa may lead to a Catch 22 situation where software wouldn’t sell because it’s hardware sales are poor while the hardware won’t sell because the software wouldn’t sell.
This happened with the two Mega Man remakes for the Playstation Portable (Mega Man Powered Up and Maverick Hunter X, to be specific). The only reason why sequels were canned for them is because they sold badly, and part of the reason why they sold badly is because the Playstation Portable sold less than the Nintendo DS.
The remakes themselves never had much flaws – Mega Man Powered Up fleshed out the story and introduced two new robot masters to bring it up to 8 (although one of them had the unfortunate design resembling black face), while Maverick Hunter X was an attempt to reboot and reimagine the Mega Man X games.
Well, this is true. Nobody wants to buy a console if there’s no good games. BUT…..a console needs SEVERAL good games before people feels it’s worth buying. And the Wii U got off to an incredibly bad (and slow) start. It took ages before any good games came out on Wii U. Even now, there’s not a whole lot.
Of course games are still part of the success of a console. This hasen’t change, even though it might look like that for a lot of us Nintendo Fans (looking at you PS4 ;) ). What is very important is the balance between and interesting game library (counting 1st and 3rd party titels!), a positive perception of the console itself (console xy is worth the money) and nowadays also the part to know what is the best platform to play games with all my friends online.
Especially the last point is very difficult for Nintendo, since they are still trying to get up2date with the online infrastructure, where Sony + MS already have an established structure. And here I am not talking only abouth technical aspects but again the “experience” and memory the players have with it. If all your friends are playing on one platform its very difficult to get you to another one. The PS4 showed that its not impossible, since -due to the sales- it converted some xbox users, but Nintendo first need to gain that “trust” in the younger gaming generation (talking about generation that grew up more with the playstation + xbox).
Also I agree with a lot of people talking about good marketing. Nintendo failed when it came to selling the value of the Wii U. The vision of the console/gamepad was (and maybe till this day isnt) communicated at all. Also Nintendo never adressed the “Wii U has no power” talks that were all over the place before the console was even released. Till this day I hear that a lot and even though on paper its true, I can get those people relatively quiet when I show them games like 3D World, Mario Kart, Tropical Freeze. Those games not only look very good, but also play more fluidly then some of the competitor games of the other companies. But if your costumers think this product is not worth it, even a price drop won’t change that at all. And when it comes to judging the “value” of a product, its not all about power or having latest technology. Its sometimes a very strange emotional and irrational mindset, that you have to get your costumers in (hi apple ;) )
Yes Nintendo games sell consoles, but you also need to advertise!
Commission Capcom for a Wii U exclusive MH game now before they bring the game to other consoles and ignore the 3DS or Wii U for the MH5, like they did with RERev 2.
Software selling hardware is the 101 of gaming market. It’s not something that needs to be talked by a big wig of the industry.
Or there is people out there seriously believing that PS4 is selling only because your hardware? I didn’t bought one because there is no game of my interest in that console, however, I already own 13 games on my Wii U.
Then release some good Wii U games so I feel good about owning one.
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