New Super Mario Bros. U (Wii U)

[Yoshi]

Let's say I have a PC to get most of the 3rd party games on PS4/720. What system should I get next? 720 is out of the question, the exclusive lineup is just Halo and Forza. So it's PS4 or Wii U...

Wii U makes a good case honestly.

I follow the logic until the very end. I'm sure there will be a handful of really strong multiplatform games that don't hit the PC for some dumbass reason. Those in addition to Sony's games will be better than the Wii U lineup, just like they slaughtered the Wii's lineup.

[Low]

I’m eager to see when and how the next console war shapes up. At this point it seems more a arms race with bankruptcy at the end instead of nuclear fallout. Well, depending on what they end up making the consoles out of anyway…

[Yoshi]

I’m eager to see when and how the next console war shapes up. At this point it seems more a arms race with bankruptcy at the end instead of nuclear fallout. Well, depending on what they end up making the consoles out of anyway…

How so? They're using off the shelf PC parts instead of proprietary stuff this time. It seems like much less risk than the current generation, at least if you ignore the very real possibility that Apple and Google napalm the entire industry as we know it in the next ~6 years.

[Low]

It seems like much less risk than the current generation, at least if you ignore the very real possibility that Apple and Google napalm the entire industry as we know it in the next ~6 years.

This. Anyone who bought Guitar Hero, Wii Sports, a Kinect Bar has finally exited the system via ios and it's kin. And as much of a virtue as that is, constraining the user base instead of expanding is usually met as doom. Check the Vita. It is on track with the PS3's warm-up cycle yet because a dedicated base is buying Persona 4 instead of the flavor of the month analysts are calling for it's head.

[Thief Silver]

I mentioned to Finch how awesome it'd be, if instead of the Wii U. We got the Wii U/Wii controllers usable with any PC.

[Yoshi]

They're Bluetooth, aren't they?

[Hero]

I've made this argument before though - the gaming industry has an inverted sense of cost versus audience compared to other entertainment mediums. If something in movies has a niche audience, it tends to have a smaller budget. When this formula fails, it leads to disaster - see the Scott Pilgrim movie. Great movie, a dedicated, niche fanbase, but cost about the same amount as a summer blockbuster would. That's a tough sale, and the results show it.

Yet in gaming, the niche DEMANDS 20+ million spent on their game about spaceships, dwarves, super-human-fetish-chicks-that-are-8-feet-tall-with-hair-suits, etc. while the majority of people who touch games are perfectly fine with a shoestring budget as long as overall design is centered on providing the kinds of gameplay experiences they are looking for. While you may argue that something like CoD follows the Hollywood rule (big budget for big sales), the series wasn't always so well-received. So its not like the budget went up as the audience did - they were just able to get an audience that caught up with the spending.

[FirstBlood]

the gaming industry has an inverted sense of cost versus audience compared to other entertainment mediums.

No it doesn't.

[Hero]

sure it does - New SMB sells better than "core" series Galaxy, but which gets the higher budget?

CoD may have tens of millions of sales, but Angry Birds has over 2 billion downloads. Don't try to tell me it's more expensive to develop Angry Birds than Call of Duty.

[GohanX]

I really don't think Nintendo expected NSMB and NSMB Wii to sell nearly the amount that they did. The Wii U game, at least, seems to have a bit more effort (and likely money) spend on it after the success of the other ones.