22 replies to this topic

[Aevin]

I'm looking to pick up a 3DS XL in the next few weeks. Browsing at Gamestop today, there was almost no shelf space dedicated to Nintendo.  One Wii U in the window, not a single 3DS on display anywhere, no Wii U games that I could find, and only a single small stand of used 3DS games.  It seems pretty shocking to me, considering the huge walls of XBox and Playstation stuff.  They even had wall space dedicated to boring-looking gaming accessories, but nothing for Nintendo.  Is this normal, or just this store? Is there some bad blood between Nintendo and GameStop that I'm unaware of?

 

[The Satellite]

Might be just your local store, mine has plenty of Nintendo-dedicated space. Well, one of the two; there are two at an equal distance to me, about five minutes, but I only go to one of them usually.

[Aevin]

Heh ...  Maybe the local manager is a Sony fanboy.

[Ventus]

My gamestop has half of the store dedicated to Nintendo... I don't know what's your store's problem is

Maybe check another one, well if there is any others.  

[Russ]

Probably just your store. Mine has about equal amounts of the store dedicated to each company. Nintendo maybe has a little less room than the others, but it's more than made up for by the giant Nintendo cardboard cutouts that are always at the front of the store.

[Aevin]

It's seemed fairly even in the past ...  I wonder what's up with this particular store. Moving in the next few days, so I guess I'll check the stores there.

[Magi_Hero]

Supply and demand.

[Dawnlight]

Looks like GameStops are starting to overstock on 360/PS3 games used. My local GameStop's Nintendo section make up about 25% of the store. I could assure you that within a few years, the Nintendo section will continue to grow as it did with the Wii and the DS. Just the reminder that the Wii U is less than a year old and the 3DS is at its third year.

[Eddard McHorn Van-Schnuder]

There's actually a very reasonable explanation for this stuff going on, though it's not just Gamestop. It's really any big retailer. This is how things was back when I was working at Game years ago, and it still is the case today when I'm at Gamestop.

 

Shelf-space is paid for. It really is that simple. Microsoft and Sony are willing to pay more for extra space, and retailers are willing to give them that. That's not to say that all retailers will have less space reserved for Nintendo-titles, because in some cases, stuff like this is handled locally. Gamestop might look at their sales in one part of a country and see that Nintendo games sells better there compared to other areas, and they'll relay that information back to Nintendo with the hope that they'll think it's worth it to pay for more space.

 

At our store we have a very obvious focus on the Playstation 3, and it's because most of our customers are PS3-players. We sell shockingly little Nintendo-titles, and most of the people who buy them come back the next day complaining that their new Wii U game didn't work on their Wii. But because of this, we've got half of our store filled with Playstation-stuff. Microsoft gets a little more shelf space than Nintendo, but we sell very little Xbox-titles as well.

[TheLegend_njf]

Nintendo's in a really difficult position.

Recent news is that Iwata is taking blame for failing the Wii U. Though he's still convinced he can bring success to the Wii U, it says a lot when Iwata is already apologizing before this thing even got its first breath of air.

Is Nintendo doomed? I'm no hater so I won't say, but I will say this. It's a mess.

[Nicholas Steel]

It has definitely been released at the very least, 6 months ahead of when it should've been released. The updates they've applied to the console should've never been needed if they properly stress tested there hardware and actually, ya'know, optimized the O/S. I mean things like supposedly overclocking the system as well as making the O/S much more responsive. Also the incredible lack of games for it is just... omgwtfbbq, customers have to wait a year for a decent amount of decent games to come out.

 

They're still making stupid mistakes like no support for more then 2 kinds of controller in games (Wiimote and Gamepad) (I heard the Super Luigi U DLC for NSBMW:U will add Classic Controller Pro and Wii U Pro Controller support though? Maybe a later update will. Hopefully support will extend to Single Player otherwise WTF).

Edited by franpa, 21 June 2013 - 03:48 AM.

[TheLegend_njf]

It's funny, Microsoft gets a few complaints and they respond with "we heard you, and we fixed your problems", when Nintendo gets a few complaints, they are like "we heard you, now let us tell you how the problem should be fixed" or better yet, the famous line "We heard your complaints, but please understand".

Once Nintendo starts realizing that "but please understand" ain't going to make anybody understand, they may start listening to their fans.

For years Iwata has apologized to fans and than responded "but please understand". So what's the problem Iwata? Our problems for not understanding?

Anyways, back to the point, I am pleased that Iwata himself has come to realize the current devastated state of their Wii U and I am excited to see if this could lead to positive changes.

[Dawnlight]

At least Nintendo is acknowledging their mistakes. I give them props for that. It's much better than being an arrogant elitist snob of a company who does not care about the consumers.

Edited by Dawnlight, 21 June 2013 - 09:12 AM.

[Avaro]

What are Nintendo's mistakes anyways?

 

Well, in my Gamestop here in germany, where I live, there is not so much space for Nintendo either, Aevin.

[Russ]

What are Nintendo's mistakes anyways?

The mistake they made with the Wii, and that it appears they've repeated with the Wii U, is that they made their system much less powerful internally than the others. As a result, third parties don't want to develop games for the Wii. If I'm making a game for the 360, I can port it to the PS3 pretty easily, but because the Wii's so much less powerful, I have to rewrite the game from scratch pretty much to make it run on the Wii. As a result, I'll release my game for the 360 and PS3, but not the Wii. Just take a look at your Wii's game library. How many third party games are there? Glancing at my own, I see three Trauma Center games and three Sonic games. That's it. And all of those were developed specifically for the Wii, as opposed to being released on all 3 systems. So basically, if you buy a Nintendo console, you're pretty much saying "I'm content to only play first party games and miss out on all the awesome third party games Sony and Microsoft get."

 

There was also the mistake of releasing the 3DS before there were any games out for it, but they acknowledged their mistake there and dropped the price pretty quickly and released a lot more games, so they fixed that one at least.