Nintendo Playing Catchup Essay

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Wii U. Case Study

The Wii U. is a perfect example of Nintendo making the same general mistakes and encountering the same successes as they have in the past. While Nintendo has always been in the mix when it comes to the game station rivalries, they are rarely the ones that are leading the pack. Indeed, the Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation are probably the winners in terms of all-time gaming systems after Nintendo did quite well with the original 8-bit NES and the 16-bit SNES. This case study will look at what Nintendo is doing wrong and what they could be doing right instead.

Nintendo was very much on the forefront of gaming in their early days. Even today, they do make a lot of money with relatively few people as compared to the total revenue. However, there are two answers and replies to those facts. First of all, Nintendo has been playing catchup and coming up short since then. Second of all, Sony and Microsoft have many proverbial irons in the fire besides gaming systems. For example, Sony is heavily involved in anything from making movies to video games and other consumer electronics like Blu-Ray players and so forth. Similarly, Microsoft has its dominant Windows operating system and they also make productivity software like Microsoft Office and so forth. As such, the boasts about revenue are not all that glowing when considering that. As far as playing catch, Nintendo has put out some glowing game-playing units but they always show up late to the dance or they do not go far enough. While some may think the Wii should not be included when making that statement, the author of this report would indeed go that far (N4G, 2015).

The Wii was a great and revolutionary gaming unit. It sold a lot of units and had a lot of good games. However, one thing that was glaring about the Wii is that it was not a "high definition" device and having to use a controller in one's hand for any motion game can be a good thing or a bad thing.

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It makes sense when playing tennis or wielding a sword. However, it would make less sense when wanting to do a dancing game where a controller is an unnecessary appendage. Indeed, Microsoft covered both of those inadequacies through the graphics on the Xbox 360 and the fact that the Kinect remote allowed one to simply use one's body as a controller. For example, a dancing game on the Kinect was a lot easier and less unwieldy than it would be for the Wii or the Sony wand, although Sony had its own success with using the Eye which was much like the Kinect sensor (U.S. Gamer, 2014).

One might say that the Wii U. was a "correction" to what was not done completely (if at all) when the original Wii came out. The problem is that not a lot of people were clamoring for a new Nintendo product given that it seemed to be an incremental and "corrective" update to what the Wii was rather than it being a brand new unit. It boggles the mind as to what could have been had Nintendo released the Wii U. instead of the original Wii. True, it may have delayed the release a little bit but it is also clear that the Sony and Microsoft offerings were far superior in terms of graphics and they both handled the controller-in-the-hand issue that Wii also did not address (U.S. Gamer, 2014).

Nintendo has also made miscues when it comes to the discs or cartridges that are used for their devices. In the olden days of video game lore, it was commonplace to have a cartridge rather than a CD or DVD disc. However, when CD's and DVD's become extensively cheap to manufacture and distribute, they became the norm when it came for Sony and Microsoft devices. Further, Sony had the advantage of bundling its Blu-Ray disc-playing device with the PlayStation. Even when Nintendo came around and starting doing discs, they still did not have a player that could play Blu-Rays. However, actually delivering on that would be an issue since Sony is the….....

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