Wii U - Is Nintendo "Pulling a Dreamcast"?

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a HUGE Nintendo fanboy.  Not to the point that I irrationally and automatically hate any non-Nintendo system, but I have an incredibly strong and unyielding preference for Nintendo's products.  That's why the Gamecube's lackluster performance depressed me so much, and why I'm getting a little nervous about the Wii U.

Now, I'm not too worried just yet about the Wii U's physical power.  Sure, a lot of people are saying "Herp derp, it's just a 360 with motion control and tablet controller," but let's be real for a minute.  I'd like to point out a couple of facts that show that the aforementioned statement simply can't be made yet.

1. Nintendo has not released the system's full specs, and Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America, has said on multiple occasions that the current plan for the system IS subject to change.  They've publicly announced that they're entertaining the idea of changing the name, so hardware specs are fair game, too.

2. Nintendo isn't stupid.  The Wii, while brutally dominating the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 in global unit sales, has failed to capture most "hardcore" gamers.  Nintendo knows this.  Nintendo admits this.  Nintendo learns from its mistakes.

Look at a few failures from its past from which it learned.

When the PowerGlove for the NES was released, it was a great idea.  Motion control in games?  Holy crap, it's amazing!  But it didn't work.  So what did they do?  Pocketed the idea for 15 or 20 years and brought it back in the form of the most successful product in the company's history.

Look at the Virtual Boy.  3D gaming?  Sweet!  But it sucked.  So they trashed that and, again, held on to the idea for 15 years.  That idea later became the 3DS, which had the strongest launch and first year sales of any of their handhelds to date.  They failed to capture the hardcore gamers and the graphics-whores with the Wii.  I think they've learned from their mistakes.  You don't need the strongest graphics to win over the gaming masses; except for the Dreamcast, the Playstation 2 had by far the weakest graphics of the 6th gen systems, but it's the best selling gaming system in history.  You do need to be able to compete, though.

Now let's look at some of their less significant mistakes.  For instance, the Nintendo 64's use of cartridges rather than CDs.

I, personally, am glad that Nintendo held true to cartridges for as long as they could.  Sure, it held less data and cost a little more, but they're much more durable than CDs, they don't have loading times (which were HORRIBLE in the 90s), and they look nicer on shelves.  I was in a minority, however.  CDs were the way to go, and although I applaud Nintendo for making a stand, that stand was gaming's Alamo.  It was CDs that let Sony's Playstation secure exclusive third party support, and that was what gave Sony the edge it needed to dethrone the gaming king for the first time in over a decade.  That fatal flaw continued to haunt Nintendo; Sony's relationship with third party developers carried over into the 6th generation, allowing the Playstation 2 to embarrass brutally the much more powerful Gamecube and Xbox.  Nintendo saw from the Nintendo 64 that cartridges had gone the way of the dodo, and finally moved to DVDs, but they used Mini DVDs for the Gamecube - another mistake.  Like the N64's cartridges, they couldn't hold as much data as the competition's game media.  They finally got the software medium right by using full sized DVDs with the Wii.

Let's come back my original point, the title of my post; is Nintendo pulling a Dreamcast with the Wii U?  I'll explain what I mean for those who don't get the reference.  The Dreamcast, Sega's last console, was a truly incredible machine.  When it was released in 1998 (1999 for everywhere other than Japan), it was far and away the most powerful, most advanced gaming system that the world had ever seen.  It was the first system to include a modem for online play and web browsing (sorry, Microsoft fanboys; the Xbox doesn't get to claim that).  However, it was released too soon.  When the Gamecube, Playstation 2, and Xbox were released a few years later, they ate the Dreamcast alive.  Because its competition had stayed in development for those extra few years, Sega's Dreamcast ended up being stuck in an awkward "inter-generational" place.  It was absurdly more powerful than the Playstation, the Nintendo 64, the Sega Saturn, and the Atari Jaguar; but, by the same token, it was significantly weaker than the Gamecube, the Playstation 2, and Xbox.  In addition to the hardware disparity, the Dreamcast used modified CDs whereas its competition used DVDs; Dreamcast disks just couldn't hold the data that its competitors' disks could.  All of these things mixed to result in the untimely demise of what truly was an incredible system and its company's complete exit from the hardware arena.

So, what about the Wii U?  Is Nintendo making Sega's mistake?

I certainly don't think Nintendo's existence as a player in the hardware market is at stake, but I think that, depending on how these next six or seven months play out, they might suffer a similar commercial debacle.  The Wii U was announced long before its competition.  Hell, it's set to launch at the end of the year, and, if I'm not mistaken, Sony and Microsoft said that they aren't planning to announce a new system at E3 this year.  It's looking like the Wii U will hit shelves before the PS4 and Xbox 720 (as they're being called online for the time being) are even officially announced.  The way I see it, this could play out one of two ways.  Either Nintendo's Wii U will suffer the same fate as the Dreamcast and be just physically unable to compete with Sony's and Microsoft's offerings, or it will play out the way the 3DS seems to have and build up enough of a customer base early on to make up for any hardware inferiority.

This picture captures what I've been saying pretty well.

Because Nintendo never truly finalizes anything until practically the day before launch (hyperbole, of course), it's too early to tell, no matter what Kotaku or IGN tell you.  Nintendo has already announced that they are developing their own integrated online service, so the Wii U (and later on, the 3DS) won't suffer from the online play drawbacks with which the current Nintendo Wifi Connection has plagued the Wii and DS, and that's certainly a step in the right direction.  I haven't even touched on the issue of price, which will be another big factor in its success or failure.  For now, there really are too many unknown variables to make any concrete predictions.  I'll give my guess as the overall situation in which the Wii U will end up, but like I said, no one except Nintendo's executives really know what's going to be in that console, and they might not even know for sure.

So here's my guess.  The Wii U will launch at $350, and it will enjoy a fairly successful launch.  The price will drop to $250 once the next Sony and Microsoft consoles hit the market.  By the time the competition launches, Nintendo will have fully implemented and fixed the major bugs in their new online network.  The Wii U will have weaker hardware than its competition, but not as great a disparity as the Wii has with the PS3 and 360.  Depending on how 3rd party support plays out (there seems to be overwhelming support for the Wii U's new controller at this point), I think, the major determining factor in who falls where in the sales ratings.  I think the Wii U will have no problem competing, but I don't think Nintendo can expect another blow-out win like the Wii gave them.

Again, that's all just my personal speculation, undoubtedly with some wishful thinking.  Only time will tell what hardware the Wii U will boast and how the public will react to it.  I'm nervous, I won't lie, but I'm holding on to anxious hope that Nintendo has learned its lesson about foregoing graphics.  There are just too many noobs in the world for that type of strategy to work.