Oh boy, what an amazingly high-quality discussion and analysis of Nintendo and the Wii U in this episode. Good call in avoiding discussing any of Nintendo's lineup of exclusive games for this holiday season and early 2015. Other topics were way more important, like Nintendo's still-in-development sleep sensor, "horse armor" Amiibos, and Nintendo's apparently terrible decision to remake a game and plunge their company into ruin and despair.
The Cagcast's distaste in Amiibos baffles me, considering they love paying for one-game-use figurines from Skylanders and Disney Infinity so much. Is it such a crime that Nintendo's Amiibos offer additional benefits, aka "horse armor", when being used in more than one game? It seems to give it additional value, in my opinion.
I also don't see how Nintendo's decision to remake a 14-year-old game immediately places them as "having no idea what they're doing" and is supposedly now their only business strategy (again let's remember we don't discuss the fact they have a lineup of new games this year and next).
Seeing the backlash from the Cagcast for Nintendo's decision to remake one game, it's a good thing Sony and Microsoft haven't released any remakes and ports for their systems, like The Last of Us, Halo 1-4, Grand Theft Auto V, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Sleeping Dogs, Escape Plan, Fez, Final Fantasy Type-0 HD, Flow, Flower, The Unfinished Swan, Injustice, Journey, Metro Redux, Minecraft, Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty, PixelJunk Shooter Ultimate, Sound Shapes, Spelunky, Tearaway, The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, Diablo III, Divekick, Guacamelee, and Metro: Last Light Redux. If so, it would just appear that they're trying to pad out their business calendar before their actual new first-party games can finally be released in 2015.
In the first year of release, the PS4 and XB1 had the benefit of third-parties to help fill out their release schedule as well, unlike the Wii U. Third parties always seem hesitant to support Nintendo's consoles, as their games rarely sell very well in competition to Nintendo's own games. It also doesn't help that in many cases third-party games on Nintendo platforms are stripped-down/inferior versions of the PlayStation/Xbox versions too, caused by a lack of motivation/resources from the third parties to properly develop for a market that is projected to result in poor sales anyway. Personally I see Nintendo's own high-quality games as being both a benefit for Nintendo hardware sales, and also a detriment against third-parties who fear poor sales of their own games against Nintendo's games.
I still don't agree with Cheapy's view that Nintendo needs to drop the price on the Wii U to "save" the system. The existing bundles offer value for those who are interested in Nintendo's lineup of games this holiday, and the current library of exclusive games it now has is pretty compelling for those who want more than just annual recycles of multi-platform game franchises.