Owing to mistakes the company made with the NX’s predecessor, the Wii U, the president of Nintendo America, Reggie Fils-Aime , admitted that Nintendo has learned from its mistakes and promises a smoother launch for the NX in a recent interview with AList.
Wii U was nothing less than a disaster for Nintendo
Based on the success of Pokemon GO, its iconic library of games and the soon to be released NX (Spring 2017), Nintendo is riding high but the president of Nintendo America has made it clear that the company is not resting on its laurels and won’t make a mess of the NX launch like it did with the Wii U.
“One of the things that we have to do better when we launch the NX,” Fils-Aime told AList, “[is] 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.”
“We have to do a better job from a software planning standpoint,” Fils-Aime continued.
He’s being a bit kind to the company with those remarks. The Wii U, just didn’t make a lot of sense, rightfully, to many consumers. At the heart of the Wii U was essentially tablet gaming, but given that millions already owned tablets for gaming and the dual-screen features of the Wii U didn’t have a robust enough software program to make that novelty run smoothly.
People enjoyed the Wii Sports that launched with the original Wii and it offered something quite unique unlike the Wii U. Hell, you could even get a bit of a workout with the Wii, while the Wii U only burned as many calories as you do when scratching your head and saying, “What the hell is this thing?”
Additionally,the company continued the development of its core games that its customers love, delaying their launch leaving many with the Wii U and nothing to play on them.
“[Nintendo must] 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,” said Fils-Aime. “Those are the critical lessons.”
NX to launch WITH games in Spring 2017
Nintendo surprised many when the NX wasn’t unveiled at last year’s E3 conference leaving many, including myself, to speculate on what exactly the NX is and isn’t. It’s been widely reported that with will be a portable console with detachable controls for play “on the road” but also dock when at home or a friend’s house.
Nintendo has made it clear that Zelda: Breath of the Wild will be made available the moment the NX launches and if they truly have learned their lesson, expect a handful of other games at launch to drum up interest in the NX.
If Nintendo can learn from its mistakes, there is no reason that the NX will not be a hit given the ability to play the games nearly everywhere. And, it’s those games that have always been the company’s strength. Super Mario Brothers in all its iterations will go down in video game history and certainly in Nintendo’s. The intellectual property the company possesses are some of the best known titles in the business so if it gets the console right expect Nintendo to get back in the game after the failures of the Wii U.
