[Feature] 3DS Parallels – Nintendo’s extraordinary rescue of 3DS, and whether they can do the same for Wii U

Though the price cut was a big factor in the turnaround of 3DS, good games are required to get people interested in any gaming device. Coming off of the August pricedrop, 3DS had a holiday lineup almost entirely placed on the back of Nintendo’s first party releases. Games like Cave Story 3D from Nicalis and Ace Combat 3D from Namco Bandai were among the most notable 3rd party offerings, and publishers like Ubisoft and EA neglected to support the system with anything worthwhile at all.

Left to pick up the self-inflicted slack, Nintendo came out with Mario Kart 7, Super Mario 3D Land, and the Level-5 developed Professor Layton and the Last Specter. Those three games (plus a price drop) managed to push 3DS sales over 4 million in the U.S., and helped Japan sell over 500,000 units in the week leading up to Christmas. It was at this point that the 3DS had gotten itself off of life support and back into the market where it belonged.

So what about Wii U? Well, this is perhaps the most interesting of the three main factors for many reasons. Wii U’s third party holiday lineup absolutely trumps what the 3DS had in 2011, with big multiplatform titles like Watch_Dogs, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Rayman: Legends, and Batman: Arkham Origins hitting the system on the same day as they will PS3 and Xbox 360. Unfortunately there’s one big difference: Although 3DS had terrible third party support overall, all of its decent third party offerings were system exclusives at the time. With Wii U, all of them are multiplatform titles.

Shifting over to look at first-party support, it’s clear which of the two years comes out on top: 3DS had two (three, counting Layton) good first party games in holiday 2011. Wii U has six: Super Mario 3D World, The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, The Wonderful 101, Wii Party U, and Wii Fit U. If you include Pikmin 3 in that list, you can make the total count seven, a certifiably stomping of the 3DS lineup, and a crop of games that would be impressive any year, much less the second year a system is on the market.

Nintendo says: Back at E3, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said “We’re here at this E3 with a lot of confidence and a lot of belief that this holiday season is going to be extremely strong for Wii U.”

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata remarked that “there are more unannounced Wii U titles coming by 2014.”

Austin says: The lineup itself looks fantastic, but I’m struggling to see which of these games will end up being truly great enough to be a system seller for Wii U. Pikmin 3, just based on game quality, could be that game, but unfortunately mainstream gamers don’t give Pikmin the clout it perhaps deserves given its acclaim, which pushes it out of contention as a true, mass-market system seller.

To succeed, it would appear that a console needs either a pricedrop and a few good games, or no price drop and one or two stellar titles. Whether Wii U can get by without cutting into its price may rest upon whether a game like Super Mario 3D World turns out to be truly fantastic, or merely adequate.