Nintendo wants core games back for Wii U after neglecting them on Wii

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has told company investors that by neglecting core gamers early on in the Wii’s lifecycle, it cost them sales later on. While going after casual gamers and expanding the gaming market worked in the short term it turns out that casual gamers don’t buy many games, it’s the core gamers that do.

That’s all going to change though with the Wii U (apparently). Nintendo has learnt its lesson with the Wii and DS and is going to do things different. “Wii was able to reach a large number of new consumers who had never played games before by bringing hands-on experiences with its Wii Sports and Wii Fit. However, we could not adequately create the situation that such new consumers played games frequently or for long, consistent periods. As a result, we could not sustain a good level of profit.”

So when the casual gamers stopped buying games, who was there to back it up? No one, Nintendo had alienated core gamers. “Moreover, regrettably, what we prioritized in order to reach out to the new audience was a bit too far from what we prioritized for those who play games as their hobby. Consequently, we presume some people felt that the Wii was not a game system for them or they were not willing to play with the Wii even though some compelling games had been released… Once consumers have a notion that ‘this system is not for us,’ we have learned that it is extremely difficult to change their perceptions later.”

While the Wii has been a great system with great games, because of the image it had received as a casual system, core gamers wouldn’t give it a second chance. Once that happened third party developers gave up on it as well. Nintendo will now follow the same plan it has with the Nintendo 3DS. It plans to both to have both ‘depth’ and ‘width’ in its game line up. Nintendo will work on the depth first, get some great core games and then reel in the casuals. They are also still going to go after the people who have never played games before and expand that gaming population.

“Our approach for the Wii U is basically the same. By doing so continuously, we are expecting that the number of game users per household will increase and as the gaming population increases, we believe we can create a sustainable video game market. We would like to materialize what I have said for both the Nintendo 3DS and the Wii U in the future.”

So now all we have to do is wait and see, core gamers (that’s you and me) are fickle, we have to be impressed by Nintendo. We’re preaching to the choir here on Vooks, most of you are ‘core’ Nintendo fans. But maybe some of you have fallen away, what will it take to get you back?