My question as a shareholder, ''You had 6 years, large amounts of retained earnings each period outside of fiscal 2011. You, as a company, custom designed the system. How on earth are you unprepared in anyway? Pikmin should have been on shelves 5 months before release, these my dividend payout will be less that, and, given the situation, we need all of the operating income we can get.''
As a fan, I wonder how they watched the 3ds hit the ground, face first, and then repeat the same deal with Wii U. Just mind boggling.
This is getting old. Look, they have never made HD games before. Just because they made the hardware doesn't mean they know what was needed to make HD games. I made a PC but I can't make games.
Towards the 3DS argument, yes they should have given themselves more time from the 3DS launch to the Wii U launch. After the 3DS was launched, they couldn't delay the Wii U. Third party developers all ready moved budgets to release games by end of 2012. If they waited then the work they did for E3 2011 and the games they announced would have had to be canned. It could also mean less support for the console when it does launch.
So, yes, essentially they made the same mistake. But the mistake they made is not giving them enough time to change course, like they did with the DS and Wii. And they tried to correct it by having a Mario game at launch.
Isn't it also true though that working with less powerful hardware can take far more development resources. It really depends on the ambition and scope of the game and whether the software is a good fit for the hardware.
When wolfenstein was developed for the ps2 and original xbox it took something like 9 months to get it working on ps2 but about 2 weeks on original xbox because the hardware of the original xbox was more powerful.
The wii was not a powerful console and actually took huge effort to get some of the more ambitious 360 and PS3 games to run on it often with major features stripped out and graphicss downscaled.
Ultimately I think this is just about Nintendo trying to apologise for the lack of great wii u games at the beginning of its life. I think the wii u hardware will bring both advantages and disadvantages with regard development time. Its likely Nintendo didn't realise how much they needed AAA titles at launch and were hoping it would sell well on the wii name alone.
They were hoping third party games would sell their system. Like ZombiU. But that was a bad choice on their part.
