Atari Founder Warns Nintendo May be on The Way Out

[MrHide-Patten]

Wii U Pokemon MMO. That is all.

That's all? Let them just stop development on everything else and make an MMO from a single player franchise. Tell me, how often does it work out when publishers turn a single player franchise into an MMO?

Companies with better online infrastructures no les. Nintendos on the Wii was an absolute joke compared to their competition.

Don't know how they've improved it since then, but then I don't have high expectations. Nintendo are like my grandparents trying to set up Wi-fi, it doesn't end well.

 

[AldUK]

I could see Nintendo focusing more on handhelds and 3rd party publishing in future. But they won't be vanishing anytime soon. Just look at Sega. Yes, they still exist.

 

[Simalacrum]

Wii U is one failed console, its hardly a sign of times to come. Not to mention its extremely early in the next-gen console era; there is still time for things to turn around for Ninty, and the current issues with the Wii U (primarily a lack of games) is not something that can't be fixed.

Furthermore, Nintendo is still making profits from the 3DS.

 

[Andy Shandy]

Well, if anyone knows about fading into irrelevance, it's certainly someone from Atari!

He might have a point though, at least when it comes to a gamer viewpoint. While I don't think they'll ever fade into complete irrelevance, just by virtue of the various core IP they have (Mario, Zelda, Pokemon etc), you can see that fewer and fewer "hardcore" gamers seem to care about Nintendo, at least when it comes to home consoles.

 

[Dragonbums]

We get it Bushnell.

Your still pissed that Nintendo booted you off the gaming crown all those years ago.

It's not like your predicted this two generations ago and were proven wrong.

Time to move on dude.
No sense wasting your time on bad blood.

 

[Mr.Mattress]

Wii U Pokemon MMO. That is all.

No No No. WiiU Pokemon WRPG With MMO Elements (Trading Servers and Online Battles).

OT: Mr. Bushnell isn't exactly the most knowledgeable person when it comes to running a Company. Not only did Atari end up floundering under this guys rule, he also lead another company to Bankruptcy, that was then bought by it's main competitor, and they would form "Chuck E. Cheese" without Bushnell. So I wouldn't trust what he has to say with regards to running a Corporation. And Nintendo certainly won't fade into Obscurity anytime soon.

 

[Evonisia]

Nintendo will be fine. The 3DS is selling well, and when a Zelda, Mario (proper one like 64, Sunshine, Galaxy etc.) or Metroid game is out the Wii U will definetly rise in sales. The Wii U might also look good when the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 have their inevitable faults, glitches and what not upon release combined with it's much lower price.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

It seems that the more bile people throw at Nintendo, the stronger they become. People bashed the DS and it became the best-selling system of all time. They bashed the Wii and it STEAMROLLED the PS3 and 360 whose company suffered huge losses in that gen. People were certain that the 3DS was going to be the flop that brought Nintendo down and now it's the best-selling system around. You'd think after three times of humiliating these idiots that said idiots would keep their mouths shut, but they still stamp their feet and claim Nintendo is somehow becoming irrelevant despite evidence showing otherwise. At this rate the only way Nintendo is going to be free from these silly claims is if Sony or MS gets out of the gaming business. And considering how both of them have been bleeding money as of late, that's definitely a lot more likely than Nintendo folding.

 

[Sizzle Montyjing]

I'm not sure Nintendo can last, unless they're making a ton of new fans regularly. Because a fan base can only stick around so-long before falling to such things as 'time' and 'death', so unless they're making themselves relevant to the new generations they'll kick the bucket.

 

[shrekfan246]

No offence, but I'm not gonna trust the word of a guy who's company's last big contribution to gaming was ET.

Atari published The Witcher games.

I mean, I get the point you were trying to go for, but, you know.

Nintendo won't die unless they stage a mass IP suicide with all their first-party titles.

To be fair, the Wii U has been on the market for almost a year and still hasn't seen a really strong first-party backing from Nintendo yet, which is probably one of the biggest contributing factors to its low sales numbers.

I'm sure they're going to be getting that backing out there soon, but they've essentially squandered the head-start they had on Sony and Microsoft, so it's not all too far-fetched to believe that they may, in fact, become "irrelevant" (which is not the same thing as going out of business). Hell, a lot of gamers would already claim Nintendo as irrelevant since at least the days of the Gamecube.

 

[Ishal]

As long as there are people that come out of E3 saying things like, "Wii Fit trainer in new Smash Bros. was the best thing I saw!1!11!" Nintendo will be around for the foreseeable future... I'm no Nintendo fanatic, far from it... but even I'm getting a bit tired of the doomsaying. It's ceased to be entertaining to me. Nintendo doesn't do well outside its own IP's... this is starting to be the trend. As long as they 1)focus on their IP's and don't pull an Other M on the rest of their titles and 2)continue to make what amount to Mario and Zelda machines, they'll be fine.

 

[Hero of Lime]

Nah, just nah. Considering the 3DS alone is at the moment the most successful game system at the moment, and has pretty much already won dedicated gaming handheld market. The Wii U has a huge uphill battle, that is true. However, even if the Wii U fails Nintendo would not be any where close to failing.

I've heard this guy is has been down on Nintendo for years whenever asked about the games industry, he clearly is still sour that Atari went the way of the dinosaurs while Nintendo is still going strong.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Atari's ending isn't nearly the same thing as what Nintendo is experiencing right now. There's a lot of fallout from the earthquakes that may be working against them. Recovery is a *****, especially from an earthquake powerful enough to have shifted quite a few things geographically. But I do feel the WiiU hasn't died yet. PsX was nearly ready to tank at one point in its lifetime then with the advent of a few choice games it became a powerhouse for Sony. The first 2 years weren't too good for it.
WiiU has time, besides that Atari had painted themselves into a corner releasing crap no one wanted multiple times.
Give it a few years.

 

[SinisterGehe]

They can always make more Mario, Zelda and Metroid games for the WiiU to compensate for the losses. As long as they keep making them, the fans will keep buying them. Nintendo's efforts to sell the WiiU to a wider audience isn't going well, but the fanatical devotion some gamers have for it ensures that they'll still be here for a while.

EDIT: Ninjas everywhere.

Yeah but that fanbase can not be milked forever, they start dying of old age soon.

Who would have thought that company whose business decisions and PR work been so pristine as they have been lately would get into problems.

 

[Brotha Desmond]

Wii U Pokemon MMO. That is all.

Some people say that this would do well. I'm skeptical. I'm a decent MMO fan; I've played[footnote]At least tried them. I've only put 200+ hours into WoW, Rift, SW:ToR, GW2 and EvE[/footnote] moooost of the big ones. I also enjoy Pokemon; myself and my brother probably have ~10 pokemon games between us. I still wouldn't play a Pokemon MMO. So I dunno.

Edited the footnote

Making single player franchises into MMO's rarely works out well. I say rarely to cover my ass but I don't actually know of any that have worked out well. For example, Skyrim sold millions and millions of copies and Oblivion was no slouch either, I'll bet most of those Elder Scrolls fans couldn't care less about the MMO. How many people wanted a third KOTOR game instead of an MMO?

People love Pokemon for what it is.

the only thing is people play pokemon competitively all the damn timeeeee, especially online (meta-game to be exact)



so we know there is technically already a "market" or such that does the online multiplayer of it, just not in a integrated setting.

personally i've been dying for a 3D pokemon on console, or an action based pokemon game (a is roll/dodge depending on your speed of the pokemon, the triggers all are different moves the pokemon can do and x and y can be passive abilities/etc...i just think pokemon can work amazingly in an action setting like they do on the cartoons, that or i just am fucking dying for a 3D pokemon regardless of changes in gameplay, you can't tell me that shit wouldn't sell like hotcakes parents wallets couldn't orgasm with money coming out fast enough for kids.

Just because people play online doesn't mean they want an MMO. I do have an example.

People play Age of Empires and Age of Mythology online all the time so Microsoft used your logic and created an Age of Empires MMO, it failed.

oh i know, believe me i'm not an mmo person, complete opposite to be certain, i was just stating that pokemon is a bit different compared to skyrim or kotor, those were EXTREME single player based games in every sense of the word, while pokemon has always had the concept of trading and battling with friends via cable or online, and all you have to do is check out a few pokemon threads to see how insanely similar/crazy the meta-gamers are compared to some mmo'ers. (not to mention how many times nintendo has had to shut down pokemon mmo's that were made by fans, they'd gain insane popularity and nintendo would QQ about it hard)


also, age of empires mmo was awful, just an awful game that destroyed a great franchise..i still remember my playthroughs of II and III being glorious.

Age of Empires Online was awful because they took the franchise from being an RTS franchise to a quest based MMO. Those changes were made because it was an MMO and at first it didn't even contain Skirmish mode.

I imagine a Pokemon MMO would make the same mistakes. After all, if they kept the same gameplay with the optional online matches, then it would be no different than a standard Pokemon game.

yeah it was definitely a bad combination, and they did it in a horribly lacking way.

as i mentioned, this has been tried plenty of times before, and nintendo force chokes every dev that tries to do it, but it has been proven to work and plenty of people were interested in it/playing them when they were out for their brief time.

here is a youtube video to show one of the many off:


listen, i don't want to play a pokemon mmo, and it is quite clear that you don't want one either, but there is evidence of it working before gamefreak even touches the damn games, so quite clearly there is a market for it.

Based on the video you posted it seems that it would be a bit too clustered for my taste. Also, it was popular before they were shut down, yes. However, if an MMO is to be successful and not end up as a loss people need to stay interested in it for the product needs to continuously bring in money to pay for the servers. Since the Unofficial Pokemon MMO's always get shut down relatively quickly after they become popular there is no telling how long it would have remained popular. Also, I can say for certain that if they had to pay for access to that game that a fair amount of players would no longer play since it would no longer be free.

 

[Saucycarpdog]

I say Nintendo should make a successor to the N64 without any gimmicks. Just a nice powerful console like they used to make with the launch titles being a pokemon MMO and a next gen Metroid as an answer to Microsofts Halo and Sony's Killzone.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

If this guy is talking about Nintendo in the long run, then he's got a point. The way Nintendo has been doing things can't keep going on for another 2 console generations. The same could be said about the Xbox brand at this point as well.