So the Nintendo WiiU’s sales have been quite dismal in these opening months. A promised excellent opening lineup has been reduced to pure nonsense as most of the games got delayed, pushed around, or maybe even cancelled. Pikmin 3 got cancelled, Rayman got cancelled, Lego City Stories just came out when it was promised at launch, Virtual Console and Nintendo TV got pushed back and we will not be seeing any traces of heavy-hitters until the summer with E3---an E3 that Nintendo desperately needs to win for momentum.
Rock Band unveiled its final song for downloadable content, which is the humbly overrated American Pie. This song will follow the 2,000+ songs that were available to download for the Guitar Hero-killing video game that has aged gracefully because of its arsenal of DLC and because of tis budding list of music to choose from.
Now, while these two previous paragraphs may hold no correlation, there is one indeed embedded within the sentences. There is a reason why Rock Band continued to hold an audience despite being 5 years old, and there is a reason why the Nintendo WiiU is having such an atrocious start even though it has such a great chance to succeed: downloadable content. Rock Band managed to outgross Guitar Hero in the long run even though it was nowhere near as popular with the pop culture. And this was because they managed to utilize its potential and continued to pour on the new songs bringing classics and mixing them up with newer rock songs to play.
The WiiU on the other hand, there is no excuse. The first HD Nintendo system still doesn’t have Virtual Console games and it has been out for several months. The first high-definition system, the first to emphasize downloadable content and external/internal hard drives has yet to truly branch off and offer an exclusive massive lineup that would combine the classics along with the modern-day games. We have progressed far, far too much in technology to see only one or two classic games a week being released on the console. This is inexcusable.
Newsflash: The Nintendo 3DS and PS3 were two major systems with very slow launches and first years that are now flourishing because the games were being released in a consistent pace. If you release the games, they will come, it is a very simple strategy. The original Playstation took down the (superior, don’t deny this) Nintendo 64 simply because it released an abundance of games that overwhelmed gamers and the competition. Now let’s talk about the WiiU.
Nintendo WiiU, you should have had hundreds of games ready and available at launch through the Virtual Console. All they had to do when the plans were set for this system ions ago was to figure out a way to bring all the arcade, NES, SNES, N64, and Gamecube gems into the Virtual Console and make them available as soon as humanely possible. Who can possibly deny the chance to re-play SNES games in an HD system by Christmas? Who could deny the opportunity to download games like Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker, and Smash Brothers Melee at launch? The backwards compatibility potential is strongest for Nintendo not just because it has the richest history of the current systems, but up until this past year they have the best first-party games out there. Third-party runs Xbox 360, but the first-party is what saved and allowed the Nintendo Wii to win. Not to mention, the first-party is what prevented the Gamecube from becoming another Dreamcast.
I had discussed this way before the release of the Nintendo WiiU, SNES and N64 classics getting the HD touch was a major requirement to win back the hardcore fanbase while trying to maintain the mainstream audience that had gobbled over the Wii. Just thought of Majora’s Mask HD and Yoshi’s Island HD makes me salivate. And they don’t even have to be HD, if you offered over a hundred Nintendo classics over its long history at less than $10 its hours upon hours of potential gameplay appealing to the old-schoolers and the new-schoolers that weren’t around when the games originally came out.
However, with a piss-poor online shop and now with the game lineup stretching quite thin until this winter, the WiiU is slow on sales and eating away at Nintendo’s profits. If it weren’t for the torrid resurgence of the Nintendo 3DS, who knows where Nintendo would be right now.
All of this could have been avoided if Nintendo had planned ahead, reached into the past, and found a way to have a massive and extensive lineup from the getgo. Nintendo had the chance to own Christmas. Now, they have to fight the PS4 next holiday season for any chance of winning the war.
Never underestimate the power of downloadable content. Just ask Angry Birds, Rock Band, and the IPad.
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