Nintendo has been a household staple name for decades. From the mid-1980s to today, practically everyone knows about Nintendo, their unique video game characters, and of course, the video game consoles. However, the company admits that when it comes to revealing consoles, they could do a better job and explaining their uniqueness.
Recently, Nintendo of America, Reggie Fils-Aime, spoke with [a]list, in which he revealed that the company might not have done the best job in the world when it came to selling the Nintendo Wii U. After asking Reggie if the company is learning any lessons after launching the Wii U, the Nintendo of America head explained that the company should have explained more in-depth the uniqueness of the Wii U, which very well could have helped sales.
“Every time we launch a new platform, every time we launch a critical new game, we always learn. We always do our breakdown of what worked, what didn’t, and certainly we’ve done that with Wii U, and we continue to believe that the innovation of the second screen was a worthwhile concept. The games that we’ve launched on the Wii U are hugely compelling: Splatoon, Super Mario Maker, Smash Bros., Bayonetta 2, the Super Mario game, The Legend of Zelda.
Arguably, if you line up all of the single platform games for Wii U and the other two platforms, we have by far the most unique games that are highly rated by consumers and highly rated by the media. So those things worked.
One of the things that we have to do better when we launch the NX—we have to do a better job communicating the positioning for the product. We have to do a better job helping people to understand its uniqueness and what that means for the game playing experience. And we have to do a better job from a software planning standpoint to have that continuous beat of great new games that are motivating more and more people to pick up the hardware and more and more people to pick up the software.
Those are the critical lessons. And as I verbalize them, they’re really traditional lessons within the industry. You have to make sure people understand the concept, you have to make sure you’ve got a great library of games, and when you do that, you tend to do well.”
There are plenty of rumors that have been circulating around the web when it comes to the release of the Nintendo NX and its certainly sparked an interest from gamers young and old. Unfortunately, those details have mostly been unconfirmed, but as Nintendo is gearing its console release for next year, we should start to see some reveals for the NX sooner than later.
With Nintendo having a less than the ideal launch of the Wii U, it will be interesting to see just how the company showcases the NX to appeal not only to the core audience of gamers but potential new gamers as well.