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Nintendo has been the punching bag of the home console world for the past couple of years, with people poking fun at the slow uptake of the Wii U and the fact that many of the major third party developers haven't deigned to port their games to the system. While hardly nice, it was fair criticism as the Wii U really did struggle out of the gate, despite its year long lead in ahead of the other major console makers. But now it's all starting to turn around and Nintendo is projected to triple its profits by the end of the year.
Much of Nintendo's resurgence in the past six months can be put down to Mario Kart 8's strong outing, garnering positive press for its console and reminding people that the Wii U's library of games is somewhat unique to its system. Compared with The Xbox One and PS4, which have the odd exclusive, Nintendo's games, while less hyped, are quite different.
Super Smash Bros sales have helped continue the wave of growth for the Wii U, as well as – to a lesser extent – Hyrule Warriors, with both titles reviewing well among critics and the public.
Amiibo are projected to give Nintendo a big financial boost over the next six months
Thanks to these popular titles, Nintendo is expected to sell more than 3.6 million Wii U systems by the end of the year, which, combined with predictions of strong sales of Nintendo's new Amiibo line of NFC enabled figurines, is projected by Bloomberg, to give it a 300 per cent increase in profit, reaching some 37 billion yen (£200 million).
If this turns out to be true, it will be excellent news for Nintendo, since it validates its strategy to remain somewhat removed from the console bickering between Microsoft and Sony, which has ultimately seen Sony come out on top with its PS4 console. Instead of attempting to compete with those two, Nintendo has positioned itself as a secondary system, making it quite likely that a lot of console gamers will pick it up as well as one of the others.
Of course these predictions could turn out to be wrong, but considering Smash Bros sold over half a million units in the first few days of release in the US and Mario Kart 8 is still selling well, that seems unlikely. Amiibos are also becoming hard to come by, as retailers sell out and the Gamecube adaptor for the Wii U is almost impossible to find for under $100 right now.
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KitGuru Says: Quite an impressive turnaround for Nintendo, but it will need to keep it up if it wants to maintain that momentum. What's next? Zelda and Starfox next year.
I haven’t owned a Nintendo console since the Gamecube (which I still have). The Wii was a barely updated Gamecube with the controller gimmick that I did not enjoy. The Wii U is a pretty updated Wii, but still fails to compare to the PS4 or XBO. Nintendo’s arrogance may have been part of a long game, but for me it put me off. With no decent third party titles on the system, there’s nothing worth spending the money on it (Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil (the remake), Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, Windwaker, Twilight Princess and Ocarina of Time were all Gamecube sellers for me. 3/6 of the games I owned were third party titles). Playing LoZ would be nice, but I’m not about to dump some cash on it for that.
Wow, your ignorance is incredibly strong. So strong that it smells; you should go take a shower.
Hmm, ok come in with your arms swinging but don’t expain yourself.
….
Call me ignorant but not explain why our open any dialogue for improvement.
Nintendo got arrogant and chased off third party developers. They made successively underwhelming consoles. Now they’re stuck. Only die hard fans are buying their consoles.
Life is short. Why stay exclusive? Enjoy life while you can. You never know what will hit you tomorrow…
I’m not exclusive. I just have no desire for a Wii U, because of the reasons mentioned.
I wouldn’t say they chased of 3rd party devs, the lack of sales of 3rd party software on their past two systems did that. That was due to low sales of Wii U, a low software adoption rate on the Wii and a general popularity of the excellent Nintendo titles over those of other developers on both systems.
Because they are almost a whole generation behind in power porting games becomes very hard to do well. You could say they are responsible as they did not match the power of the other machines to encourage devs, but as a business they are tiny compared to MS and Sony, as such they clearly didn’t feel comfortable with large loss leading systems again (like the last roughly matching system the Gamecube was).
Personally I view the Wii U console as an unfortunate premium to get to play some of the best games for the next 3-4 years (and the 2 I have already had it). Sadly you skip it and you miss out on a lot, though I wouldn’t have it as my only current gen console.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/04/19/how-nintendo-opted-out-of-partnerships-with-ea-and.aspx
This article talks a bit about it. Nintendo didn’t do anything to help here.
The Gamecube was a great console and the last really good one they did. The Wii U has an expensive premium, as you said, for a few good games. Me? I don’t like Smash Bros. I only really like LoZ for Nintendo, so interesting third party games are a deal breaker… there are none so I’m left without any interest.
actually it wasnt. while the Wii wasnt my favorite console, and i preferred the GC over it, the Wii U is an absolute turn around for the company, regardless of hardware sales. nearly ever game that was released from Nintendo, both on 3DS and on Wii U was critically hailed and loved, just in 2014 alone. this proves that Nintendo doesnt need 3rd party support – and good for them that they dont. Sony and Microsoft depend on 3rd party so badly, its quite sad. if another video game crash happened like in 1983, Sony and Microsoft would be the first to disappear – because they dont have the assets to keep gaming alive, Nintendo does. therefore, Nintendo DOESNT need 3rd party support, as i’ve stated above. if you dont like the choices that Nintendo offers, fine, whatever, obviously your choice. but this is to say, Wii U has some of the finest 1st party games ever its just its two years of existence, and next year’s open world Zelda could shatter the mold how Nintendo could carry out on making its future games.
The article is a bit weak. The crux of it is that they lost Activision due to not partnering on Skylanders, then lost EA due to poor sales of Wii U titles. I disagree on the first view as Activision would still make games for any machine they can make a profit selling them on. Losing EA due to poor sales of some re-hashes of older titles and a couple of the annuals on a brand new console, again it was a bit harsh on Nintendo. The poor sales of the Wii U they would accept fault for, but you need to give consoles a chance. The only other way they could help was to have worse 1st party titles to force people to buy 3rd party (the situation with my PS4 at the moment). This however would have prevented them from the growth they are currently seeing.
Still think you need to play some modern Nintendo games before writing it of as only Zelda for you. Mario 3D World is something else, I wasn’t the biggest Mario fan till 3D Land on the 3DS and now this on the Wii U. Likewise Bayonetta and the Wonderful 101 are exclusives for the Wii U that are not 1st party but are excellent (and very different to most other games released recently).