Nintendo Wii U games not in production already?

[Vexer6]

I don't see Microsoft or Sony doing that for a long time, I doubt they'll risk pissing off consumers like that.

[Rev]

Microsoft already did something similar to this before when they announced the Xbox One. They received a ton of backlash for their policies which hurt them a lot when the console came out.

The thing about discontinuing the physical games is that it is a really sneaky/behind the scenes method of still showing that your company supports physical distribution but ultimately pushing for digital distribution. Why offer a player's choice discounted physical copy when you can offer the same sale (for the same price) on your online store, cut out the middle man, and make more penny's to the dollar for your games. The Wii U has a year on the other consoles and their sales have been pathetic, so it makes sense Nintendo would be the first to do this, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Sony and Microsoft doing this once the generation matures.

[David]

I feel like Nintendo has history of doing stuff like this that predates the eShop. For example, their Fire Emblem games have always been in short supply. I don't think this is a conspiracy at all. The Wii U isn't selling, retailers are giving it very little shelf space, so I'm sure their reasoning is why continue to make all these games when they won't sell well and there's no space for them in retail? Why would they push digital so heavily when their premium console has only 32GB of space? To force their small, loyal fanbase to buy HDDs in order to purchase digitally? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

[NX17]

Microsoft already did something similar to this before when they announced the Xbox One. They received a ton of backlash for their policies which hurt them a lot when the console came out.

The thing about discontinuing the physical games is that it is a really sneaky/behind the scenes method of still showing that your company supports physical distribution but ultimately pushing for digital distribution. Why offer a player's choice discounted physical copy when you can offer the same sale (for the same price) on your online store, cut out the middle man, and make more penny's to the dollar for your games. The Wii U has a year on the other consoles and their sales have been pathetic, so it makes sense Nintendo would be the first to do this, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Sony and Microsoft doing this once the generation matures.

Microsoft and Sony typically utilize their Xbox Live Gold and Playstation Plus services, respectively, to give access to their older games for "free."

Again just to be clear, I'm not some anti-digital physical only forever type of person - but you HAVE to offer at least some sort of value to buying digital. Be it freebies like Microsoft and Sony, or major sales like Valve, you gotta bring more to the table than 'here's a game you can download, buy it.'

[Vexer6]

That's precisely my point, after the backlash Microsoft received last time, there's no chance they're going to risk doing something like that again(at least not until the next console generation).