Nintendo Admits They Screwed The Pooch

[Malacite]

Re: Nintendo Admits They Screwed The Pooch

Could say the same about a lot of things really with regards to that example

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Nintendo Admits They Screwed The Pooch

Profit means a company may continue to be an ongoing concern. Maybe, even have an opportunity to influence the industr(ies) it's in now or in the future.

No profit means a company on track to become a historical footnote, if that much.

That seems like a pretty big difference to me.

[Icemage]

Re: Nintendo Admits They Screwed The Pooch

Profit means a company may continue to be an ongoing concern. Maybe, even have an opportunity to influence the industr(ies) it's in now or in the future.

No profit means a company on track to become a historical footnote, if that much.

That seems like a pretty big difference to me.

Yup. Nintendo looks more and more like Blackberry with each passing day.

Blackberry has subsisted off of their dedicated core user base for a long time, and they still have enormous cash reserves, but they have no vision, little mindshare, and the stuff they offer isn't interoperable with anything else on the market. Quite similar to what's going on with the Wii U (and could potentially happen to the 3DS as the mobile market continues its encroachment into the handheld console market).


Icemage

[cidbahamut]

Re: Nintendo Admits They Screwed The Pooch

Blackberry survives solely on the fact that it's allowed on some secure government facilities where modern cell phones are not. It's not a core user base so much as it is a captive one.

[Malacite]

Re: Nintendo Admits They Screwed The Pooch

Yeah one of cousin's hubby works for them and he's been edgy for a while now, it really sucks.


I saw this coming shortly after the Wii launched. Nintendo is swinging for the fences and missing, badly.

[Icemage]

Re: Nintendo Admits They Screwed The Pooch

Watch Dogs delayed on Wii U - Watch Dogs for Wii U News

The Wii U version of Watch Dogs has been delayed, Ubisoft has confirmed.

The title is still on track to launch on Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3 and PC between April and June 2014, with the Wii U version following at a later date.

In a statement provided to VideoGamer.com following the announcement, a Ubisoft spokesperson said:

"We made the difficult decision to further delay the release of Watch Dogs on Wii U to focus the team's resources where they could have the broadest possible benefit for both our customers and Ubisoft".

The delay follows rumours that the Wii U version had been cancelled after pre-orders for the game were cancelled by GameStop Italy and its absence from Nintendo's release schedule.

Source: Ubisoft Q3 FY14 Conference Call

A title being delayed on Wii U after releasing on every other platform is likely to be quietly cancelled is my guess. There is simply no business case for this move if they aren't planning to cancel. In theory the Wii U shouldn't be any harder to work on than the PS3 (though that slow DDR3 memory pool might be a small issue for an open world game like Watch_Dogs), so there shouldn't be a technical reason for a release delay. The impact on the Wii U sales ratio will be severe, to say the least.

This is especially puzzling when you consider the Wii U is the most appropriate platform for Watch_Dogs. It has a tablet screen, in a game where you play a character who hacks things with a smartphone. Xbox users will have to use SmartGlass, and PS3/4 users can probably use some sort of app or the PS Vita in Second Screen mode, but it's still the best fit on the Wii U.


Icemage

[Malacite]

Re: Nintendo Admits They Screwed The Pooch

Yeah that's a bit weird. Must be a last minute upper management/investor decision?

I mean the game *has* to be done by this point, we're getting too close to the launch window. Or if not finished then like 90% complete. I don't see how cancelling it now helps them as it essentially just means wasted money and time, unless they're cutting their losses and not going to add to it with another SKU?

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Nintendo Admits They Screwed The Pooch

I mean the game *has* to be done by this point, we're getting too close to the launch window. Or if not finished then like 90% complete. I don't see how cancelling it now helps them as it essentially just means wasted money and time, unless they're cutting their losses and not going to add to it with another skew?

Last 1% of a project usually takes at least 10% of the effort; "90% done" is a long ways off from completion.

If the Wii U version of the code is all messed up, it may be smarter to just forget this small potential revenue stream and save the dev power now and support cost later.

Also, I think you mean "SKU", as in "Stock Keeping Unit".

[Malacite]

Re: Nintendo Admits They Screwed The Pooch

Yeah I did.

[Icemage]

Re: Nintendo Admits They Screwed The Pooch

Yeah that's a bit weird. Must be a last minute upper management/investor decision?

I mean the game *has* to be done by this point, we're getting too close to the launch window. Or if not finished then like 90% complete. I don't see how cancelling it now helps them as it essentially just means wasted money and time, unless they're cutting their losses and not going to add to it with another SKU?

Above and beyond any development costs for ironing out bugs (which are likely with any open world game, especially one as ambitious as Watch_Dogs), there's also the marketing and distribution costs. Printing discs, sending them to retailers, etc.

Considering the track record of Wii U titles in the past six months running less than 2% of the total sales, it would make sense for Ubisoft to cancel that version, as there might not even be enough sales to justify printing the discs and paying for certification with Nintendo even if they launch the Wii U version alongside the PS3/360/PC/PS4/XB1 versions. If the Wii U version really does arrive later than the other versions, I am certain it will sell less than 1% of the total sales.


Icemage

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Nintendo Admits They Screwed The Pooch

Also keep in mind some costs are difficult to express in dollars; being made to work on a produce you know won't sell all that well on an likely understaffed team can take a psychological toll.

Being released from that Wii U port and put on project which actually matters can make people happier and more productive.

[Malacite]

Re: Nintendo Admits They Screwed The Pooch

Above and beyond any development costs for ironing out bugs (which are likely with any open world game, especially one as ambitious as Watch_Dogs), there's also the marketing and distribution costs. Printing discs, sending them to retailers, etc.

Considering the track record of Wii U titles in the past six months running less than 2% of the total sales, it would make sense for Ubisoft to cancel that version, as there might not even be enough sales to justify printing the discs and paying for certification with Nintendo even if they launch the Wii U version alongside the PS3/360/PC/PS4/XB1 versions. If the Wii U version really does arrive later than the other versions, I am certain it will sell less than 1% of the total sales.


Icemage

Well that's what I was wondering, is it better to cut their losses and avoid those expenses or ship it anyway if it's nearly done. Seems with each passing week things are looking worse & worse for Big N.

[Icemage]

Re: Nintendo Admits They Screwed The Pooch

Well that's what I was wondering, is it better to cut their losses and avoid those expenses or ship it anyway if it's nearly done. Seems with each passing week things are looking worse & worse for Big N.

That's the big question, isn't it? The Wii U version of Assassin's Creed IV sold somewhere around 6300 units in North America in its opening month, give or take. Let's be kind and say it was 10K, and assume that Watch_Dogs sells an equal number (it won't, being new IP), AND that it sees similar total sales in Europe (it won't because Wii U is even more dead in EU than it is in NA).

That's 20K hypothetical sales, not counting Japan. Each copy of the game results in about $27 of net revenue back to the publisher after printing and licensing costs, so we're looking at - best case - $520K of revenue generated by Wii U sales. Applied against this are certification costs (10K+ if it makes it through cert on first attempt, which it likely won't because it's open world and likely bug-ridden with little effort thrown at it), marketing (unknown amount), porting costs (likely at least a small team making $60K-100K++ per year, per person). The Wii U version of Watch_Dogs has been under development since at least E3 of 2012, so we're looking at a minimum of 300K+++ in porting costs, if not much more.

$27 derived from this overview at Kotaku:
What Your $60 Really Buys

So what all this ugly money math means is that, even if Watch_Dogs on Wii U outperforms expectations and sells 20K copie on Wii U, they would clear - at most $200K in profit. If it bombs and sells half of that optimistic figure, Ubisoft is instead left with a small loss. Granted, if they didn't stop production of the Wii U version in time, they're probably already a few hundred K in red ink, but at some point you have to figure that consolidating sales is a good idea. Particularly in a game like Watch_Dogs which has very active synchronous multiplayer that supposedly gets better with a larger player base.


Icemage

[Malacite]

Re: Nintendo Admits They Screwed The Pooch

So it comes down to crappy choice A vs crappy choice B.