Is The Wii U Overhated/Underrated?

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Unless you are one of the big 3rd parties, you aren't doing well.
The big six are Ubisoft, Activision, WBi, EA, Capcom, and Square-Enix.
They take the lion's share of the total software sales in the industry.
Everyone else including Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are struggling to compete against the big six and their AAA Blockbuster games and shooters.



Nintendo sells more first party software than Microsoft and Sony, but it still dwarfed by the big six in sales volume.

Most in the Western markets won't touch anything that isn't an AAA blockbuster game, shooters and sports.

Essentially it's turned into "GO BIG or GO HOME!"

Though smaller titles such as Star Fox and Shovel Knight can still be successful.

On the mobile side, Android users refuse to buy practically everything and iOS users refuse to pay more than $2 for games.
Yet they have no trouble doing IAP/Micro transactions.

Ugh, yeah, I can say I really hate the western market for being like that. It irritates me to no end. All of my friends do exactly that, it's either big and filled with a million cutscenes or they dont give a fart. Leads to me not exactly interacting with any of them much these days since we have so few shared interests. Doesnt exactly help with the autism-related socializing issues, I can say that much...


As for that "Big Six"... yeah, seems pretty much the list I would expect. All of the most irritating companies, sigh. But what is "WBi"? Chances are I know of them but am just not recognizing the abbreviation here. Or I'm just being dense, it's hard to tell.

And the mobile bit really is just baffling. As you say people wont BUY things much, and will absolutely flip the hell out if a game costs more than $1, even if it's something they end up getting a great many hours out of, yet they'll happily fling money over and over at games with microtransactions.

There is no logic in this place.

WBi stands for Warner Bros. Interactive to distinguish them from the WB film studios.


Android users literally pirate everything and anything, with all revenue on Android being made via ads.

iOS users refuse to pay more than $2 for games.

Yet both are more than willing to pay for IAPs and Microtransactions.
The rest of the mobile OSes are dead app wise.

iOS has a 5:1 lead over Android in money spent on apps.

Videogames have been dying for a while now. Publishers are jumping ship, thinking that mobile is "the next big thing", and even that is quickly fading.

The only way to stay ahead in this game is to make the next Facebook, or just accept the fact that videogames can't be a mainstream cash cow forever.

PS. Woo! 5001 posts!

Oh, that. Unconcerned about that.

An industry crash is much overdue.

So you knew already, but you didn't know? I'm confused.

I knew of the idea/possibility of a crash, but I havent been bothering to follow how close or far off it might be. I figure, it'll happen when it happens. Though at this point I'd kinda prefer sooner rather than later.

Gaming isn't dying, it is being effected by set of negative forces driven by the arms race.

Consumers are used to being wooed by "state of the art" graphics, that they won't touch anything that is less.
Consumers also ignore most stuff in favor of AAA Blockbusters type games and Sports games.
Many consumers in the West are put off by E and T ratings which also normally come with bright colors in favor of M-rated games with gore, guns and girls.

This has led to huge ongoing arms race on the console side causing AAA blockbuster games and sports games to cost $50 Million USD to $150 Million USD +.
This led to a huge contraction last gen as many mid tier publishers went out of business because sales either dried up for mid tier games and/or they tried their hands at AAA Blockbuster gaming and failed.

If Sony and Microsoft start producing colorful family friendly games in any real amount again it, it will damage their brands and sales as "hardcore" gamers jump ship to avoid the family friendly consumers (which everyone else).

Nintendo has the inverse problem to a degree, if they release an M-rated game it causes a massive media and consumer backlash for exposing children and families.

So to get your hardware to sell you need new features (the Nintendo way) or need to showcase top tier graphics (Sony and Microsoft way).

Though PS4 has turned many consumers off because it is perceived as weak hardware as Sony and Microsoft focused on profitable hardware this time around.

Mobile and Facebook gaming are very hard to monetize, let alone get noticed.
Mobile and Facebook gamers don't like spending money on games.

Steam is also quite hard to make a decent profit on, since Steam users buy nearly all of their games at steep discounts during the big sales.
Even then it's quite hard to move 1M copies on Steam.

PC gaming is very similar and beset by huge amounts of piracy as is Android side of mobile.

Gaming is by no means dead, it's just stuck at the moment.

Xenocity, do you have any facts to prove any of that? It honestly feels like you are guessing with a majority of it.

Mobile gaming has been profitable- games like Candy Crush Saga and Fallout Shelter have done quite well (in the past). I don't know if they are still doing well. People that play games on their phones are the impatient gamers of the world. They spend excessive amounts of money on in-app purchases because they need that extra turn (or item or whatever) in their favorite game. Seeing as how many of those games are free with "paywalls" in the first place, the people don't mind spending a little bit. But then it gets to be more and more. I've read several news stories of people spending $1000 or more on free-to-play games. Not all were just kids that had their parents credit card info either.

Also several Steam games do well and arent on sales. One recent example- Stardew Valley.

I could go on with more but I'm tired.

NPD, EEDAR, and Nielsens track gaming sales for North America and work with major 3rd parties to provide the analysts of console, handled gaming, and PC gaming.

Steamspy and the publishers/developers have access to Steam Analysis from Valve.

Apple has the iOS and Mac sales data
Google has the Google Play data
Appannie does sales tracking and analysis for developers on mobile.

To date there are ~30 games that have broke 1 million in sales on Steam according to Steamspy.

The developers and publishers have been very open about how hard it is to get Steam users to pay full price, this they say is killing them.
They been getting a lot of negative backlash from Steam users attacking them over their game prices and content.
it's been widely reported in the media over the past few months.

WBi the maker of Batman games, Lego games, Mortal Kombat, Injustice, and few other series announced this February, they were leaving the PC market for good and they weren't going to support their PC titles.
Mortal Kombat X is their last PC game and it won't receive any more DLC and patches.

WBi claims that PC/Steam market is too hostile and too finicky to warrant supporting.


As for mobile gaming it's pretty ugly with users rapidly jumping ship and the major players have been bleeding money and users.

Rovio Entertainment the company that makes Angry Birds has laid off almost 50% of their employees and have seen their sales of all things Angry Birds collapsed two years ago and are still going down.
They are rapidly burning through money to stay afloat.

Zynga is on the verge of bankruptcy and has laid most people off.

King the creator of Candy Crush and other similar games saw their sales drop like brick last year to the point their profits have shrunk massively. They just recently sold the company to Activision in hopes that Activision could turn it around.

EA's mobile games have been struggling to breakeven, with EA only making a few million in profit in mobile.

Square-Enix mobile sales have been very modest at best, that their console and handheld sales dwarf it by far.

WBi's mobile sales have been worse than their Steam sales, to the point that WBi is pulling out of both markets.

Bethesda's Fallout Shelter and the other game didn't perform well on mobile and didn't generate much revenue to warrant the development.

Ubisoft has seen it's mobile titles all bomb to the point they aren't focusing on more mobile development.

etc...

It's very hard to do well on the mobile market, especially to pull Candy Crush numbers in it's first year (Candy Crush is down significantly year over year for the past 2 years).

Literally the best performing game on the mobile market right now is the Kim Kardashian game.
Her game literally makes over $10M+ a week for some reason.

The mobile market is stagnating by all known metrics worrying everyone involved.
Even Apple's own reporting the growth is slowing down rapidly, taking longer to hit the next billion.

Literally 2015 was the first year on record where global smartphone sales are down from the previous, meaning the market is now in contraction like the Tablet and PC markets.
PEOPLE BOUGHT LESS SMARTPHONES IN 2015 THAN IN 2014 AND 2013.

2016 is expected to be the first year where Apple sells less iPhones than the previous year.

All this has been widely published over the past two years.

I mean Nintendo just launched Miitomo in Japan last week on iOS and Android and it took 3, I repeat 3 full days to hit 1 million downloads.
This was seen as a failure by many in the industry.


To put it this way, the mobile market has turned into the PC market where the majority pirate everything with the minority spending the money.

Next week on Thursday around 6:30PM EST, NPD will release it's monthly sales data for the U.S. for consoles and handhelds.
If the tradition holds true the top 10 best sellers list will be AAA Blockbuster games, Sports games, Call of Duty, and one other title which could be anything. It's been that way for the U.S. for almost 10 years now.

Having read and absorbed all of that, and thinking about other things heard lately...

...I think I've now moved on to actively wanting the damn crash to happen. Badly.

At this point it's going to be SO freaking satisfying if it happens. I'll be looking forward to it.

There won't be a crash, but a possible rebalancing of the industry.

At the very least there will be Activision-Blizzard regretting spending over $1 Billion on King (Candy Crush people).

These days it's not likely a crash will happen however there have been several expansion/contraction cycles. Basically in an expansion phase you have more low and middle tier development companies joining market and in a contraction they get gobbled up by the big publishers. We're starting to see an expansion in the PC and console markets and a contraction in the mobile market (which has been a long time coming as mobile was becoming something of an eyesore gameswise). You have people leaving the big publishers to set up their own shops as well as the indie swell on PC. Time will tell how long it lasts though but here's hoping it goes for several more years.

I would love to see one of the big three monster publishers (EA, Ubisoft, and Activision) get taken down though. It would force the rest of the industry to reevaluate their practices.

If it is any of those three, I hope it's EA. Sure, it'll probably mean the loss of a few great franchises assuming they don't get bought up by other companies, but at the same time it could also mean the loss of the same stupid sports games being released every year where the only thing that changes is the roster (note I don't play these types of games, so I don't know how true that statement truly is). Ubisoft may be able to sustain themselves a bit with their recent creation of a film division (maybe) and Activision survived the crash from the '80s, so if another happens then they may survive another one.

Of course, doing a bit of digging, Ubisoft may actually be the most likely to go down. But who can tell.

And I seriously think that the Wii U is underrated. A game doesn't need tons of browns and grays and bloom to have great graphics and awesome gameplay. Some developers just don't know how to be creative. There are plenty of ways that the gamepad touch-screen can be used, even without TVoff being an option. Inventory/party management, for example. Or use it to display a map.

Bah, a crash would be much more fun. Feh.

While I don't play many of the yearly sports games, I'm wondering why it bugs you so much? Don't buy them- problem solved? The new game every year has worked for so long, that they likely wont ever change it unless sales decline. Also EA isnt the only one that does a new game in a series every year. Other yearly franchises exist- for a while Mario Party was one a year. Assassin's Creed has been a yearly franchise as well. I'm not a fan of this franchise overload- but if I don't like a series, I wont play it. It doesn't need to go away simply because I hate it.