“It's the question of, as a gamer, 'Is this for me and something I can get excited about?' And Wii Fit did not get that reaction. And yet 43-million copies around the world, it's a phenomenon.
"And so I would argue that the gaming community actually is unable to differentiate between a phenomenon and something that is 'ho-hum.'"

Wii Fit didn't get the reaction you expected because as you say it is not what the standard game at the time wanted or was excited about.

The reason it got so many sales was that Nintendo managed to tap into another market and not just the gaming market.

Wii-fit was a general consumer product, not a game. Mario, Pikmin, all are franchise games with characters and game mechanics we have played before in the exact same way over and over. Just because people expect you to innovate is no reason to accuse gamers of asking for more like spoiled children. If I have played 5 Mario games and you release the same or similar updated game then I'm to going to be interested in the new one because I've played it already.

Things also take a while to become popular. You cant expect people to just buy millions of copies of a new ip just because it's new. You make one and hope it will do well. If it doesn't then you shelve a sequel for a time when a fan base has had time to build up around the original and then you'll have the numbers to turn a profit on a sequel.

Their 3DS is suffering from 'who cares'. 3D can't carry a platform, games do. If you're making really interesting games that may or may not be based on existing ip, if they're interesting you're going to draw people to your platform. Not enough developers for the 3DS are willing to create something interesting, let it have time to catch on and then create something else interesting. Often a dev will make something interesting and give up on it before its given time to catch on with the public. In a world that is so driven by '1st week sales' and 'quarterly profit' margins, these are the benchmarks guys like Reggie use for 'success'.

I always find it funny how gamers attack the corporate and business side of game. I always fell like they wish everybody developed games simply because they love it. As if wanting money was a crime. JOSH, if you don't want money, that is on you. And if you work for free and is happy with it, don't bother people who live in the real world...amazing..I can not put in enough words how much the gamers sicken me sometimes. If only we could feed ourselves and live of off these gamers love for the real "games made from the heart and love specially for you there in your couch"..get a grip people.

Cut to the chase - Nintendo Western executives V.unhappy about what happened at E3 - want to blame anyone and everyone but themselves - and now they see the knives out in Japan for a complete restructuring. Cause they will blame the gamers - next it will be attacking the media!

May be this is a good thing - the cozy relationship between media and the manufacturers / publishers has been a little too incestuous, explains all the padded reviews and hyped announcements.

If a Journo is not hoping to be hired by Activision PR after he leaves his magazine may keep them a little more focused?

First of all Italo, your writing is exceptionally attacking. I was simply putting forward my understanding, but for you to write in such a condescending way really hurts me and feels like you're just belittling my opinion because you've somehow classified me as some type of person without the slightest idea of my background.

I'm not saying I wouldn't buy their games if they interested me. I bought a Wii, but the games that came out on it didn't interest me, so I sold it. If Nintendo make more money from 'non-gamers' then more power to them, I wish them every success. If they're trying to cater to the 'gamer' market however, then they need to create something that differentiates itself from what came before. They're not supplying us with a fridge or a vacuum cleaner, what they're supplying is entertainment. If their products only entertain a small portion of people then that's an issue product and money wise, it's market driven.

I don't play many games anymore because I'm too busy being productive. If I do sit down to play something, it had better have an entertaining story, entertaining characters or a great game mechanic and if it's Mario 58 you can bet that I'm not going to be interested.

Pikmin, Mario and Nintendo Land offer absolutely zero incentive to invest in a new console.

If they lack system selling exclusives, perhaps more time should have been spent promoting the Wii-U 'difference' for forthcoming third party titles. Maybe the sad reality is that there will be nothing to set them apart from 360/PS3 versions.

It's a slim window of opportunity and Wii-U needs to offer the best version of Black Ops and other big name franchises to get the ball rolling.

"He said that although the console giant had unveiled a new Pikmin, Mario game and Nintendo Land, people were still asking for more."

The right expression would be... people were asking for something different ;)

Nintendo has entirely lost the pulse of gaming community. their success has again blinded and deafened them, and once more there is proof that only through failure and pain people get humbled and back in touch with reality.

(it happened with 3DS... they got lucky that time... i dunno how many lives they've got left.. they've spent plenty! )

Pikmin was close enough to pull them off the hook, but not enough. This was their biggest E3 failure in history.

Josh, I apologise. I was taking all the comments from a much different approach, after reading a lot of articles where fans would attack the industry, without any regard to the many struggles one has to go through to survive in the industry. But your arguments are well thought and much more elaborated than I imagined. good to see there are people actually reflecting about the whole thing. Again, I apologise.

What everyone else is saying here is absolutely true. What we are being promised is more of the same, nothing innovative.

i mean yeah, I will love the new Pikmin game, and a new Mario will sell millions of copies. But we have lost the innovation and new franchises completely (ESPECIALLY from Nintendo AAA titles. Ubisoft kind of baled them out with the zombie game, but even then it's reaching...)

Then you have to consider all of the games that have been released in Japan that never even make it state side. And this is becoming even more of a trend. Games like Xenoblade having to be petitioned to come stateside, or games like Mega Man Legends 3 being canned completely (though not NOA's fault) are all huge downfalls to the gaming industry in general IMO.

I think the primary problem with the WII-U is this: we were promised next gen hardware, and received a slight upgrade to the current generation of hardware with a new controller. Do you really think Wii-U is going to be able to run Unreal 4? No way it will be able to. And even though graphical assets are only part of the game, Nintendo is still far behind in this department, and we all though Wii-U and 3DS would change it.