Nintendo’s reported a staggering loss of $456 million for the past financial year. The blame is being laid squarely at its relatively young console, the Wii U. Sales have slowed significantly: Nintendo sold 2.72 million Wii Us in the last twelve months. (Running totals for the Xbox One and PS4: five and seven million, respectively). In the last quarter, only 310,000 units were sold. Meanwhile, Nintendo’s handhelds continue to sell more favorably: 12 million 3DSes were sold in the last financial year, meaning there’s now just shy of 43 million sold globally. It remains third consecutive year of losses for Nintendo, but CEO Iwata claims that this incoming financial year will see a return to operating profit ($394 million, he reckons) and millions more consoles sold. Then again, he said similar things last year.
It’s not looking good.
I rarely comment here, but have to on this.
I owned a WiiU and sold it recently because not only is the game collection tiny and mostly terrible, but the OS itself on it is awful to use and terribly slow.
Hell, it didn’t even come with an ethernet port, you have to buy an adapter…COME ON. The wireless on it is also terrible.
They are trying to push their e-shop, yet the units come with bugger all memory, so you almost always have to buy extra memory for it.
The WiiU game-pad is awful at FPS games, I tried both ZombiU and Dues Ex and the aiming was god damned awful. The sticks on it felt so un-precise it was not a fun experience.
I felt like it was aimed at people who don’t usually use any form of technology.
The power of it is a joke as stated by more and more developers, the fact that they think Mario rehashes are going to save it is even more of a joke.
How long will it take for Nintendo to realise Mario just doesn’t sell any more? Pokemon, now that sells. Bring out a WiiU exclusive Pokemon game similar to the ones on 3DS (not some stadium or pokemon snap bull) and watch the WiiU EXPLODE WITH SALES. How they are not doing this is beyond me.
Edited 2014-05-07 22:32 UTC
Everyone has their own crazy thing they like, but pokemon? Even when it was popular, it was still pokemon.
Now if they made a pokemon FPS, where your job is to kill them all. That might be fun.
Nintendo decided to strike out for the casual gaming market rather than chase Microsoft & Sony into the Next Generation war. Sadly, they chose to do it right at the cusp where casual gaming has migrated to mobile and Facebook. Their market has disappeared. Whoops.
Still, they can join Sega and Atari in the Great Gaming Valhalla.
Yeah, and it’s really not powerful enough to appease the pixel-counting whores who won’t have anything to do with a system unless it has multi-colored, volumetric fog and sub-surface scattering. It’s really a console with an identity crisis. It’s too complicated for that the ‘it’s just like bowling!’ Wii crowd, and not powerful enough for the pixel counters. And since there’s very little 3rd party support, Nintendo has basically put their games behind a $250 paywall.
On the other hand, it currently has better games and more exclusives than either the Xbox One or PS4. (Esp if you skipped out on the Wii; there’s some great Wii games out there that are currently selling for next to nothing.) You will get fantastic 1st party titles on it that you will never get on the other two consoles. Plus, the off-screen play is great for those who have a wife and/or kids that like to monopolize the TV. For this reason, I’d say the best combination this gen would be a PC (for those who want the absolute best graphics available) and a Wii U, because Nintendo is still one of the best in the biz at making games.
Edited 2014-05-07 22:56 UTC
Or you could just play Wii games on a PC using Dolphin. You can make those games really shine on a PC…
Late to focus on their Online store business;
The ATARI syndrome (how many remakes of Animal Crossing are they gonna churn out?);
Very poor Online network strategy;
Regional lock on games/consoles;
No 3rd party support;
Games are mostly targeted at kids;
Little simultaneous release on WiiU/3DS (I hate handhelds);
Other than the new Bayonetta, Nintendo has nothing exciting to offer.
Dedicated gaming consoles are a dying breed. All the big players are re-dedicating themselves into media centres.
Time to change the staff at Nintendo.
Since the rise of the smart phone/tablet gaming platform, from aroun 2009/2010… I never understood why Nintendo didn’t turn themselves into a software house and leverage their software assets on the iOS/Android machines?
I guess they could probably survive if they did that now, but the momentum is gone… No one really cares about Nintendo or their old games. There is no future in Nintendo hardware (at the risk of sounding like Michael Dell predicting the death of Apple).
Probably because the 3DS continues to print money.
First, there’s no 456m loss, that’s bullshit. Net loss is only $228m (456m is the operative loss).
And, one more important thing, If you look at that 228m loss more than 100m was spent in R+D!! I mean the company is busy creating new products, invested tons of money on that even when they had red numbers. That’s incredible and proves that Iwata is a long view CEO and not an opportunistic piece of shit like We are used to suffer in big american companies (stupid short term decisions followed by massive lay-offs, y’all know what I mean).
Media is very harsh and superficial with Nintendo, I don’t know why but It’s really unfair and drives me nuts. It’s true WiiU was a really bad move BUT the economic situation of the company isn’t bad at all!! Just look at the numbers, they are better than last exercise and the company is very liquid, it has tons of money.
Indeed, the next exercise will be positive thanks to big releases like Smash and Mario Kart.
Here’s the financial results for people interested in real INFORMATION instead of FUD:
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2014/140507e.pdf
I’ve got a wii u – I’ve bought games for it, a couple still in shrink wrap I got the console over a year ago and have only played it for maybe 10 hours, most of it playing a game I bought in the store (destroying a virus on cells flying a ship with pickups I cant remember the name)
Massive power brick to power the console another power brick to charge the controller I cant be bothered with it. It sits under my ps4 with no plugs connected – because the power brick is just massive. Waiting for Mario Kart hopefully its decent, the wii version was terrible.
I was thoroughly disappointed with Nintendo last gen and this gen they have done everything wrong. I really hope they don’t go under as it would be a real shame, but if they carry down this path of stupidly under powered consoles trying to maintain backwards compatibility then they wont last long The wii u is apparently less powerful than the ps3 and xbox 360 near 10 year old consoles its just embarrassing. Nintendo had a massive war chest for this gen – I don’t know what they were thinking the name is ridiculous no proper distinction between it and the wii, I’ve shown people the wii u and most didn’t even know it existed others thought it was just a new controller for the wii – terrible name, terrible marketing practically zero third party support due to its woeful performance.
Going back to the numbers, PS4 has sold to Customers 7 Million, xbox1 has sold to retailers 5 Million from the sounds of it around 1 million xbox 1’s are sitting on shelves (only around 4 million to customers). I really don’t know what the Nintendo numbers are but I fear it might be sold to retailers as well. Its great PS4 is selling so well, but Sony is in real financial woes.
Im hoping the Steam OS sorts its pricing out and we get a genuine new competitor to the console space, but if steam becomes a real contender I don’t know what will become of Nintendo.
Edited 2014-05-08 00:38 UTC
Mario Kart for the Wii sold more copies than the best selling games for any of the Xbox and Playstation systems. Nintendo sold about the same number of copies of Mario Kart for the Wii as Halo 1, 2, and 3 combined.
I’m sure Nintendo hopes the next version of Mario Kart is just as terrible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best_selling_video_games
Im not talking sales, I loved Mario Kart 64 (n64), Mario Kart wii was just meh, but whatever.
Total install base for the wii-u is less than 7 million WW – I really hope for Nintendo’s sake mario kart 8 sells great.
It’s easy to sell games when everyone already owned the console. Now, these rehashed games need to be good enough to get people to buy the system in the first place since the tablet gimmick isn’t working out nearly as well as the motion-sensing gimmick. I imagine the new Mario Kart will still sell pretty well, but I don’t think it will come close to the number of sales for the Wii version.
Nintendo was an amazing company when I was a child and teen; I have them to thank for introducing me to some of the best RPG and action franchises, some of which are still around today.
But the problem with Nintendo is that while their audience has grown up, they refuse to. They won’t get serious about the current state of gaming in general (I’m including both console and PC gaming), and they are suffering for it. I’ve moved on to GoG.com and Steam for great platformer and RPG games on the PC, and have given up on console gaming for good. Most of my peers are sticking with Xbox and Playstation, and some are just playing games on their phones and tablets, since even those devices outshine anything Nintendo has out today.
It makes me sad to say it, but Nintendo is a walking corpse at this point.
Nintendo is over 100 years old. They’ve learned a lot and have kept at the core business (gaming) all those years, and even helped define what you now see in PC and Console gaming.
Their audience grew up, but they also remain true to the nature – being family friendly. The games on Nintendo’s consoles have never been the graphics and blood whoring that have been the staple of the Playstation and Xbox consoles.
They again created a new market – bringing many people into the casual gaming; perhaps they even ignited the flames for the mobile gaming as developers realized a bigger audience.
The may be down with the Wii-U, but I wouldn’t say they are suffering because they don’t want to compete with Playstation and Xbox – both consoles lost money unlike the Wii and even the Wii-U which are hardware profitable.
So you’re not their target market.
I have a Wii; but presently no TV to connect it to.
Most of my gaming is on my Android devices (NexusOne and ASUS Transformer Infinity); the games are good but hardly as good as what I have on the Wii – namely because the Wii will dedicate all the resources to the game, where as Android will randomly download stuff in the middle the of game and therefore cause performance issues.
People said that about the GameCube and several other previous generations of consoles. People probably said that right before they moved into developing console systems. My point being that they may get off their game for a year or two, but they’ll come back and blow the industry away as they have done numerous times in the past.
I’d be very happy to see that come true. I hope you’re right, not that it matters to me personally anymore.
Let the clueless talk..
It’s not that Nintendo makes too many rehashes, it’s the opposite. It’s the lack of them what is hurting the Wii U.
Nintendo rehashes are the best in the industry, no other company puts so much effort and money into reinventing their franchises.
I won’t argue that they need to produce new IPs too, they really do, but that’s not their problem. I also think their new controller is bullshit.
Still, Wait until Mario Kart and Smash Bros come out, those are the real system sellers, then we’ll see what happens. If it can’t pick up, Nintendo will definitely be doomed and Iwata will resign.
I have to say, sone of the comments are hilarious. One of you said you bought some games and didnt remove them from the shrinkwrap….well then you cannot really comment on those games.
One of you complains about the size of the power brick…also completely irrelevant.
Nintendo did miss the market, bad strategy with the naming, bad strategy with pricing. the timing if going first was not advantageous to Nintendo.
still what we should be talking about, is what they can do now.m. Will Mario Kart 8 be a system seller…..will dropping Wii online move some Wii users to the Wii U.
The system really is quite fun and is beginning to have some a list titles, with Mario 3d land, Mario Kart 8, and Nintendo Land…
Sales will pick up in June, can the momentum be sustained? I think the new goal of 3 million units is ver realistic, and if thats what they are banking in to return profitability, then they will.
True, what’s the problem with the power brick being so big? Sounds like someone is just looking to hate on the console. The power brick might be big, but the console is tiny compared to the other current consoles. Personally I think it’s great, I had a loan of one for a while to try out. The controller is actually alright to use and surprisingly light considering its capabilities, and the new, more “traditional” wireless controller should be good if the Wii Classic Controller Pro is anything to go by.
Also, their backwards compatibility is damn near 100% with the Wii, including downloaded content. How many other consoles do that?
However, I don’t think I’ll be buying one just yet as one of the things I use my Wii for is playing Gamecube games, and being 2 generations old, Nintendo have dropped support for it. And Wii multiplayer games like Goldeneye and Mario Kart can use Gamecube controllers so if I move to a Wii U I’ll need to replace those controllers too. Maybe when some other exclusives come about (a new Zelda and a new F-Zero might do the trick), I’ll shell out for one, but for now the Wii will do me fine, and the PC does everything I need regarding the generic games that most people seem to love the other consoles for.
I don’t know, I get the feeling that the Wii U is this generation’s Dreamcast. I was a proud owner of a Dreamcast since launch day (and I would still have it if my ex-wife hadn’t taken it with her). It was a great system, far ahead of its time, but the games just weren’t there. Apart from the few excellent Sega Arcade ports, and new concepts like the open world of Shenmue and the MMORPG Phantasy Star Online, the games were just rehashes of what people could already get for their Playstation.
The Wii U is facing a similar fate; it’s an innovative concept, especially with the controller, but Nintendo was so focused on the unique features that they forgot to release any really good games for it.
I really hope they can pull off a move like Sega and transition to being a software company, as they have an unbeatable library of excellent game franchises that would make them a killing on other platforms.
Why did you let her take your Dreamcast?!
She had two young kids from previous relationships, and they always loved playing it. I didn’t want to make our divorce even harder on them by keeping their favorite console and games.
There’s a privately owned classic gaming shop near me with several Dreamcast consoles and games in stock really cheap; I’ll get down there and pick one up one of these days. It won’t be the one I bought on launch day, but it will be good enough.
I didn’t comment on the games though? I didn’t say the games were bad. Main reason I bought them was to help Nintendo out as they make a good chunk of profit from each game bought. I just cannot be bothered to play them.. Nintendoland – I cant even be bothered to take it out of its shrink wrap :/ Batman Arkham City – I bought it fully intending to play it and ended up not playing.
When you have 3 consoles a tv a computer a laptop monitors an amp , speakers etc the power bricks do become an issue the console maybe small but the power brick is half the size of the console now imagine having a glass table and trying to cable everything neatly with nothing visible – there is no way to cover up that massive brick – ruins my rooms aesthetics man
If mario kart is good, i’ll plug it all back up and play it gladly. I dont hate Nintendo dont get me wrong I wouldnt have bothered to buy the wiiu if I did i bought it because I want them to survive to be around – only way I know to support them is to buy stuff from them – I guess its the only way I see them surviving, but they need to seriously rethink strategy.
Indeed, the franchise Nintendo games (and formerly Nintendo-exclusive franchises like Final Fantasy) are some of the best you can get.
But why would I spend $150-300 on a new console, whether it’s the Wii U or the newest DS, when I can get most of those third-party games on my phone or tablet, and often cheaper than the cartridge or disc version? I can’t get the Nintendo console exclusives, but that’s their own fault.
If Nintendo wants to stay in the console arena, fine. But I think they’re missing the boat on mobile gaming for the masses. Load up the Play store or Apple App Store, and search for “Nintendo”. All you see are emulators for illegal ROMs, or bad imitations of old 8-bit NES/Famicom games. If they would license something as simple as MarioKart for Android and iOS, for even $4.99, they would make a killing and have a huge hit on their hands.
Yes, the Wii U isn’t doing so hot – there is simply no credible argument to the contrary. However, keep in mind Nintendo has over 15 billion US in cash reserves and zero debt (absolutely none)…
At their current burn rate they could float the Wii U for another 30 years
I’m not saying everything is rosy – its not. But Nintendo long ago put themselves in a position to weather storms like this. They can easily survive until its time to release another generation of hardware if they want to.
It’s a real shame – if they were a little more precariously positioned, maybe they would leave the damned console business.
Imagine being able to buy Zelda, Metroid or SSB on steam. It’d be freaking sweet.
They could still innovate on hardware – just, with specific controllers or w/e instead of a whole console.
How long Nintendo could survive with current losses is a popular talking point for Nintendo fans, but losses have a way of spiralling if you don’t turn turn them around reasonably quickly. If people lose interest in Nintendo, then even fewer might buy next time around and there will be fewer third-party games meaning less revenue from game sales. It’s not very likely that they will continue at the same cash-burn rate. Things need to get better or they will get worse.
Hopefully without sounding like a snob, i own and WiiU and Xbox1, i don’t think that the WiiU can stand on it’s own as a console, however brought with another console it’s great. I know this sounds like the weirdest logic but with the Xbox you get all the major titles and i see this machine as more a solo or internet playing machine. The WiiU however has the mario/zelda franchise element but is also a good friends and family machine, it’s one of the only consoles i know which is fun when everyone you want to play against is physically in the same room.
The party games and mario etc are a lot of fun when you play with your friends and family and they are designed around groups in front of a TV.
I know this isn’t a ringing endorsement and i don’t think i could handle only having a WiiU (sorry again that sounded very snobish), perhaps another price cut would open this up to a wider audience and they could see the fun that you can have with this device.
As for the fall, the problem with nintendo is that they just cannot seem to attract 3rd party dev’s Pretty much every studio and publisher has just written itoff as a 1st party only console. This is the core problem, it killed the Gamecube and didn’t help the Wii (personally i think the wii got through on accessibility, not for the quality of the games). The 3DS is making more of a killing because it’s attracting a lot of 3rd parties now, when it was first released it pretty much died for a year, a price drop and a steady stream of games has changed that.
As for fixing it i don’t know if it’s possible. The WiiU can produce some fantastic visuals, Donkey Kong and Mario 3D world are amazing to look at and are easily match the Xbox1 in visuals, i look at plants vs Zombies on the Xb1 and can imagine without too much of a stretch that it would look and run the same on the WiiU. However the perception from 3rd parties is that it’s not as powerful, the userbase is low and mario games are gonna be the primary purchase, that and shovelware.
Shame as the most interesting of games and the ones most fun to play can be found on nintendo devices.
It isn’t perception , The WiiU simply isn’t as powerful, and supposedly the dev environment is much harder to use than that of the PS4 and XB1. Third parties look at the porting effort and the compromises (in their vision) required to support the hardware (for a small base of an already small base) and find it not to be worth their time.
Notably, the WiiU seems to even lack a large quantity of shovelware…
Edited 2014-05-08 15:10 UTC
WiiU is basically the Wii with faster processor and more GPU capability and then the tablet thingy. The dev environment (to my understanding) didn’t really change from the Wii’s. So there would be little reason for devs not to be able to draw on existing experience to make games for the WiiU.
I think Nintendo should follow the Microsoft route of making Nintendo the centre of the living room.
Think Xbox One, but make it a complete replacement to your cable/tivo box (or freeviewHD+). Microsoft have followed this path but with a “US first” logic. If Nintendo can hit Europe and the east Quickly, there is a market there for the taking.
Nintendo are already well positioned for family gaming and fitness so combining it with your normal TV viewing could help to engage the audience. Sprinkle in a little Nintendo magic and I think they can save themselves as a console maker.
I don’t care to use my WiiU. It’s simply missing features that are standard everywhere else and plays like a Gameboy more than a console.
1. No Bluray?
This is trivial for them to support.
2. Too much branding of accessories
I have a wireless kb & mouse in the living room. I’ve got standard devices that share the wireless space. I don’t need the clutter in more ways than one. I don’t f***ing care for dongles. You shouldn’t need Nintendo dongles for stuff that is built into everything else. They took the concept to the extreme and it turned me off.
3. Dizzy free controls
I don’t want to zero in my aim just to use a menu. Everything is built as a target and it sucks. I want the equivalent of menus focused on tab and shift-tab. WiiU is a mix of this and target aiming. I have grown fatigued to the Wii controller. I want a plain controller for the bulk of my games and I’d rather use a mouse and keyboard type over the giant WiiU pad. The pad is better than the old controller, but still relies too much on tilting. I’d rather use a flight stick.
4. Slow menus
They still haven’t improved response times.
5. No real internal storage.
It should be trivial to include 8GB of flash
Edited 2014-05-08 10:58 UTC
1) Including Blu-ray would increase the cost of the console, and I guess maybe it’s not as popular as some people might think. Added to the fact that not everyone wants to have to turn on their games console just to play a Blu-ray and maybe it’s really not the necessary feature you need. I know people who have both a Blu-Ray player and a PS3 for example.
2) Show me the console make that doesn’t brand their accessories. And while I haven’t tried it on the WiiU, I know for a fact that a standard wireless keyboard worked perfectly well on the Wii. As for a mouse, I never came across anything that supported or needed one, but I don’t see why it any generic one wouldn’t work. Memory cards and external storage, the same – use whatever you want. What other dongles are you talking about? Ethernet? Who doesn’t have a Wifi router these days?
Sounds like you just want a PC and nothing else will do. Nothing wrong with that, but beats me why you want a console to be the same.
3) Guess it’s a matter of preference and the individual software, but most software I’ve tried (including the OS itself) doesn’t need any aiming or use of the Wiimote (which it seems has been demoted to secondary for the WiiU). All the menus I’ve seen can be navigated wither by touchscreen or by using the joysticks / D-pad.
4) Yes, they do seem a little slow alright, but not that far off any other console. Guess it’s just one of those things. Doesn’t bother me in the slightest on any console, I’m not in so much of a hurry that a couple of seconds to navigate the menus makes any difference.
5) Storage for what? Your own data? Stick an SD card in it if you want, or an external hard drive for more storage, or else stream things over a network from a PC, which is likely to be the main use case for this. 8GB doesn’t store much these days after all, so what are you gonna do with it?
BluRay-support is something I often see nerds clamoring for, but of all the people I know personally I can only think of one who actually owns BluRay-discs. The rest just seem to basically ask why would they spend more money on these “blue-movies” when DVDs are cheaper? And even then, they always have a separate device for playing them even if they happened to own a console that is just as capable. It might just be easier to think of them with the “one tool for one job” – mentality, I dunno.
I really doubt the lack of BluRay-support on the Wii U has hampered its adoption at all.
To extend your comment I think Blu-Ray is already “dead” and being replaced by Netflix/LoveFilm style offerings.
Who has the space to have the full boxed sets of friends these days?!?
Games storage isnt an issue either (think 5 cd final fantasy 7) as the moment you put it in a console it downloads the lot again anyway for updates! Maybe thats another another thing Nintendo could ‘fix’…
I do watch a lot of Netflix. But when my network is downloading torrents or game updates or if my network goes down for any reason I can pull out a Bluray disc and watch a movie or TV series.
Even Sony is recognizing it.
http://www.techradar.com/news/video/blu-ray/why-the-4k-blu-ray-form…
I guess I am wierd I own 0 blueray devices
nope. I own zero (0) blu-ray devices as well. I do have a few DVD drives and a DVD player still, and lots of DVDs. Haven’t seen the point of getting anything Blu-Ray.
Wii U: Yet another product to be infected by The Unnecessary Touchscreen
To make a real next gen console that will compete against MS & Sony, because as it stands the Wii is like Fisher Price going against Transformers, and you know which one is going to fail!
While there’s still room for a bit of a comeback this round, there is little doubt that Nintendo isn’t going to be winning this console generation. There’s still hope for the next generation and here are some suggestions Nintendo should seriously consider:
1. Attempt to win back the hardcore gamers.
Numerous people have said that the WiiU is a great secondary system, but secondary players eventually get forgotten. What made the original NES so great is that you could play the amazing first-party Nintendo titles and many of the best third-party titles as well. Nintendo needs to make a system that wins back the hardcore gamers as well as the third-party developers.
2. Improve the network system
Nintendo is notorious for being behind the curve in network play. More and more people are playing games this way and Nintendo needs to make a serious effort to resolve this or they’re likely to fall further behind.
3. Make games easier to develop
In addition to the usual noise from the haters, I have heard some developers rant about how much more difficult it is to create games on Nintendo consoles. I seem to remember a lengthy post about a developer having to write custom code just to perform basic functions such as accessing the file system. Before the next console is released, Nintendo needs to be sure that the API is fully-featured and robust.
4. Navigation and performance
Many people have complained about how difficult it is to navigate the menus. Given the power of a console today, there is no excuse for slow menu navigation. There are few ways to infuriate a user more than having a laggy interface, especially on a video game console.
5. More mature content
Nintendo raised a generation of people to be addicted to video games during the days of the NES. Those gamers have grown up, but Nintendo hasn’t. In addition to all of the cutesy games that Nintendo makes, they should also cater to the older gamers that grew up on Nintendo titles. Spin off a separate development studio focused on more mature titles based on Nintendo franchises. The games wouldn’t have to be ridiculously violent or provocative – just something a bit more edgy to balance out their libraries.
Based on Nintendo’s past, I don’t expect them to heed this or any other advice from their fans. And it’s a shame since I see a lot of similarities between them and Blackberry in the way they are losing mindshare. Luckily, they have more money, and hence more time, to correct course.
The PS3 rocks having the PSN to multiplayer on. It’s free. It’s popular. It’s fast.
Nintendo’s version of a network is cold considering how much they try to be creative. There are so many networks to emulate and they come up with meh.
Really? I don’t see much that the PS3 had over the Wii, with the possible exception of the trophies/awards system. The “Friend code” system isn’t something I’ve used, but normal online play for other games (e.g. Goldeneye, Call of Duty) is pretty much the same as on an any other system – you connect, find a game, and play. The server takes care of league tables, achievements etc. What else is needed really?
Have you used it? I haven’t found this to be a problem at all, but maybe I’m just more patient than everyone else…
Yes, they could do with more of this alright. However games like the Metroid series which was out on the Wii are excellent examples of “mature” Nintendo franchise games. And I’m sure continuations of this will show up on the Wii U. I know it’s not much, but it does have games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Farcry 3 and Mass Effect 3 available. The very strage thing is if you walk into any game shop, they don’t stock them, opting to just carry the super fluffy kids’ games that some people equate with Nintendo. Whether this is cause or effect I don’t know though, but if game shops at least held a couple of mature titles in stock it might shift the perception a little. As it is however, you can only get titles like this online, and they aren’t advertised…
Yep, it would be a shame to see them fade away, but hopefully it won’t happen…