Enough with 'Nintendo is doomed'

[kingthrall]

Nintendo Issue- bring a decent strategy game that does not involve stupid kiddy characters or some adult games, Just like MacDonalds its no longer the family entertainment system, just full of junkies and quick to satisfy consumers.

Conquers was the only decent game nintendo brought out on 64 that was fun for me ( I dont own nintendo ever) Goldeneye was supposed to be great as well.

I hate to be abrasive, but you can't really claim to know what Nintendo are/aren't doing when you 'don't own nintendo ever'.

... and Nintendo already has several excellent strategy series'. Surely you've heard of Fire Emblem, yes?
How about Advance Wars? Hell, the most recent Advance Wars game was a grim post-apocalyptic reboot about war and greed.

Be abrasive all you like. Honestly fail or succeed they can do what they like cause I do not earn a cent from them. That said the games you mentioned are all animae style garbage I utterly detest with a passion. If I wanted to spend money on a child's crayon dawning I would of gone to my local preschool. You say its gothic but its completely Japanese, you should really look up Gothic architecture before you say that no offense.

In other words , they do not cater for me. Nor have they ever catered for western taste and I dont blame them (being Japanese company its natural). However its a niche they have never really tapped into instead releasing Mario re-runs.

 

[Epicspoon]

I agree that they need new IP's but they can't just "Cut their losses" on the WiiU. First of all they would lose more money by abandoning it than they are with its poor sales. Secondly just because they need new IPs does not mean at all that it would be a good idea to stop relying on Mario and Zelda. The reason they keep using them is because they're their bestselling series. It would be idiotic to suddenly halt production on them when it's still making them money.

Nintendo completely lost momentum with the WiiU so at this point in time its highly doubtful that rebranding the console, initiating a new marketing offensive and additional development costs will weigh up against the very unlikely chance it will get the WiiU out of its slump. And even then, when they still had the chance to release a system seller of a game they didn't. Instead they just watched the sales figures of the WiiU detoriate further and further, to the point that even third parties walked away. I don't see Nintendo doing now what they failed to do when they had every opportunity to do so.

That's why I'm saying they should use already existing gamecube titles as downloadable titles. It wouldn't cost them much as the games already exist and most of the ones that would be worth it belong to them anyways so there wouldn't be much legal crap involved. Even if it wouldn't necessarily save the system there's absolutely no way that it could make things worse even if it didn't work at all. Several of the games also tend to be rare so it would be a good draw for people who haven't yet had a chance to play these games. Also I did not say at any point that they shouldn't make new IPs. I just said that they shouldn't abandon existing ones that are still making them money. I absolutely believe they need new IPs.

 

[NoeL]

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I guess I didn't explain myself well enough. By "market for what they're offering" I was talking about the very things you described - more polished, in-depth games, less shovelware, etc. But to claim Nintendo will never be dethroned is just wishful thinking. Once someone/something comes along that can do handheld gaming better than Nintendo, Nintendo will lose consumers. That's all I was saying.

 

[NoeL]

The problem is, there's absolutely no sign that "someone" or "something" will be coming.

So? When the NES came out there was no sign of the Genesis. Nintendo was king of the world until Sega managed to, however briefly, kick a few legs out from underneath them - enough to develop a decent rivalry at least. Sony tried with a more high end market and got their teeth kicked in because that market just wasn't strong enough, but you can't point to Sony's failure and declare that therefore every challenger will fail, until the end of time. That's just silly.

 

[NoeL]

It's equally silly to propose that "someone" will float down from on high and steal Nintendo's multi-decade monopoly from them in an instant.

I agree, which is why I never proposed such a thing.

Which is exactly what you're doing by implying that Nintendo's handheld market is in the same market situation as the NES was.

I never implied that either - I was simply drawing a comparison with another time Nintendo dominated the market only to have it taken from them. A similar thing happened when the PSX was released. I never claimed the market situation was the same, only pointing out that "Nintendo is the market leader now, therefore Nintendo will be the market leader forever" is a stupid claim.

Yes, EVENTUALLY someone may come along and take it from them.

I rest my case.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

Nintendo Land doesn't make up for Iwata, Fils-Aime and the rest of Nintendo's executive branch effectively destroying nearly all of the 3rd party relations.

Does Reggie really have any pull beyond being head sales man of Nintendo America though?

From what I can tell the head branch over in Japan barks and he follows. I doubt he has much power to destroy anything.

He's the President and COO of Nintendo of America. He's in charged of more than just following orders from Japan. Japan doesn't know how to market to Americans so its his job to run things States side. Cammie Dunaway is the Head of Marketing for NOA. If anything Reggie should fire her and whoever thought it was a great idea to hire someone from Yahoo!'s marketing team to be the head of anything more than forgotten dreams.

Even if it were just Nintendo of Japan telling Reggie what to do, that would only strengthen my point that Nintendo needs to purge all of its executives because it seems that none of them know how to do their jobs.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

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I never said you were referring to me, but when you make a post specifically to attack the anti Nintendo crazies that want to see a company die, you should expect to also have to debate those with solid criticisms. Until you can argue those critics your just another person who champions the House of Mario screaming hot air at anti Nintendo crazies doing the same. It makes you look just as bad as them.

?Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.?
― George Carlin

You going after the crazies only makes the situation worse as you're making their points relevant. And to be honest, the Nintendo is doomed threads have gone down in the last couple months. Its really the Wii U is doomed threads that have popped up due to the gaming websites writing articles on the subject ever since Super Mario 3D Land failed to move Wii-Units.

If you want to argue that "Wii-U is doomed" threads should stop, then you better bring more ammo than, "Nintendo Land is really fun." Because as it stands now, my Steam account has plenty more fun in it. When the PS4's first year is closed it'll probably have more fun attached to it as well. Same with the Xbox One.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Even if it were just Nintendo of Japan telling Reggie what to do, that would only strengthen my point that Nintendo needs to purge all of its executives because it seems that none of them know how to do their jobs.

I think the real problem with Nintendo is similar to the one Sony is going through. They're following old fashioned business practices, and are getting left behind by a younger and faster generation.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

'The point is, Nintendo is very, very closely mirroring Sega's Saturn to Dreamcast era of the 1990s. Turning their backs on 3rd party support and not having games on launch worth playing on their consoles. If a major 3rd party publisher publically says they'll never make a game for Nintendo again like EA did to SEGA) it could do irreversible damage to Nintendo.'

Quoting myself.

Really? I'd say Microsoft is the one doing the inevitable 'lets get arrogant' for the third console. Nintendo had theirs with the N64 and Sony with the PS3. The EA-Sega fallout was also more to do with EA's nasty ways than Sega alienating them, demanding they have exclusive rights to make sports games despite Sega having just set up a studio for that exact reason (even more of a kick in the teeth when you remember the genesis/megadrive is what made EA big). Nintendo seems to be stuck in a sort of limbo where their previous console soared so high they don't really have anywhere else to go.

Either way I think this generation is just going to be a bit of a disappointment for everybody. All three consoles have sold well at launch but really there isn't anything at a glance that is radically different from the previous generation. Even the console interfaces have barely changed.

I believe you meant to quote me on this?

I'd have to majorly, majorly disagree with the Sega Genesis "making EA big". EA was big long before the Sega Genesis due to games like Dungeon Keeper and others. If anything it was EA that made the Sega Genesis big by making its best 3rd party titles from a North American publisher/developer.

That being said EA's "nasty ways" were not the what lead to the EA-Sega fallout. It was Sega alienating all the third party publishers when they made a surprise E3 announcement that they were releasing the Sega Saturn 6 months before the original release date.

Without telling any third party publisher.

Which meant the console came out with no games and 6 months of no releases. That's when EA told Sega to go fuck themselves. And very soon after a bunch of other 3rd party companies followed suit. Sega caused dozens of companies to lose money en mass and at once. That's why the Dreamcast had almost exclusively Japanese developed games.

That being said, I think Nintendo's problem is that they have never had to competitively market their console with any seriousness before.

Think about it.

Ever since the NES each Nintendo console barring the Wii has sold less units overall with each generational release.
The NES was birthed from the 1980s video game collapse. Nintendo had a nigh monopoly with the NES vs Sega's Master System.

Then it was the SNES's 49 million units sold against the Genesis' 40 million. Both stupidly high sales for consoles in 1990. Both made a lot of money, but Nintendo had more software sales due to its franchises.

The N64 came along, got blown out of the water in hardware sales by the PSOne, but again, franchises and interesting IPs made them lots of cake.

The Gamecube came along, got beaten by both the Xbox and for sure by the PS2 in hardware sales. While Nintendo's 1st party franchises still sold well, the 3rd party was staring to take some major hits.

Enter the Wii. Sold very well in hardware sales, sold very well with first party titles, but most 3rd party games from major companies flopped due to not falling under the casual market that Nintendo so rigorously marketed to. Plus the motion control gimmick helped the Wii.

The Wii-U is the result of Nintendo going around 30 years without having to market to gamers who game as a hobby, and as such, they don't know how. Meanwhile the Nintendo die hards have been shrinking in number while the vocal minority on the internet has gotten louder in defense.

Look at these forums here for example. It's literally the same half dozen people stalwartly defending Nintendo against everyone else. And a good chunk of them are getting banned due to not being able to be civil.

With all that being said, I'd have to say, yes, Nintendo is mirroring mid 90s Sega at this point. The tipping point is probably going to be a major North American company saying "screw Nintendo" and we'll have another Dreamast situation on our hands. A great console with great Japanese developed games that are unfortunately too damn niche for North American/Europeans to get hooked into.

I honestly think it'll be Ubisoft that leaves that boot print on the back of the Wii-U's ass. They made a crap load of money off of all those exercise games, mini games, etc on the Wii. But they couldn't even sell Rayman well on it. Those exercise games were the Wii's bread and butter financially and they aren't coming back in strong form on the Wii U.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

Even if it were just Nintendo of Japan telling Reggie what to do, that would only strengthen my point that Nintendo needs to purge all of its executives because it seems that none of them know how to do their jobs.

I think the real problem with Nintendo is similar to the one Sony is going through. They're following old fashioned business practices, and are getting left behind by a younger and faster generation.

Agreed to an extent. Sony's video game division seems to be doing better on the console side, but their handheld side is a joke. Sony also needs to start competitively pricing their electronics across the board (barring the PS4) if they want to get any traction.

To be honest Sony could sell a couple of their 8+ movie companies and be just fine. Hell, they could sell the movie rights to Spider-Man to Disney and make a fortune at this point...

 

[JayRPG]

Even if it were just Nintendo of Japan telling Reggie what to do, that would only strengthen my point that Nintendo needs to purge all of its executives because it seems that none of them know how to do their jobs.

I think the real problem with Nintendo is similar to the one Sony is going through. They're following old fashioned business practices, and are getting left behind by a younger and faster generation.

Agreed to an extent. Sony's video game division seems to be doing better on the console side, but their handheld side is a joke. Sony also needs to start competitively pricing their electronics across the board (barring the PS4) if they want to get any traction.

To be honest Sony could sell a couple of their 8+ movie companies and be just fine. Hell, they could sell the movie rights to Spider-Man to Disney and make a fortune at this point...

Sony's problems are many, most of them have nothing to do with price though (barring the Vita).

Their T.Vs and phones are some of the cheapest on the market for high end gear, the problem is that, in comparison to the competition, they are rubbish (note: I said in comparison, their products are actually quite good); Most people will spend the extra few hundred for that Samsung LED T.V because it has better motion, more features, a far superior smart TV system and looks a hell of a lot better.

Sony definitely is living a little in the past, their T.Vs still have some of the best colour palettes on the market but people don't care about that because most people purchasing expensive TVs are men and most men will want the TV for either sports or gaming - the colour palette means shit if it's blurry as fuck.
Sony got by for years on their superior image quality but now Samsung and LG have better motion and Sharp and Panasonic have better Colour reproduction.

It's hard to tell what they are even thinking, pushing their flagship 4K TVs out the door with a Bezel so large it makes CRTs cry, all so they can fill it with big, ugly, under-performing speakers.

At least Nintendo have some semblance of what they are doing.

The 3DS started slow as hell, people called it the death of Nintendo and now it's incredibly successful - It's rare for history to repeat itself but I think the Wii U still has life, I was a big fan of the Gamecube which was mostly first party titles.. they just need to start cranking them out (and maybe give namco bandai, tri-crescendo and Monolith Soft a hefty advance for some new titles [and a new Baten Kaitos])

 

[Casual Shinji]

Agreed to an extent. Sony's video game division seems to be doing better on the console side, but their handheld side is a joke. Sony also needs to start competitively pricing their electronics across the board (barring the PS4) if they want to get any traction.

To be honest Sony could sell a couple of their 8+ movie companies and be just fine. Hell, they could sell the movie rights to Spider-Man to Disney and make a fortune at this point...

Their games (apart from handhelds obviously) and movie divisions are doing fine. It's the rest that's quickly becoming an anchor around their waste. Maybe it's due to the very competitive nature of games and film that has forced them to stay current on the matter. But their electronics have been left in the dust. Phillips is in the same boat.

 

[Something Amyss]

No no no, don't you remember, anything that's not overwhelming praise and frothing fanaticism for a company means you hate their guts. Being apathetic about the company, despite there being many legitimate criticisms, means that you want them to fail. Finally, and use of facts to support said apathy means you hate other people's childhoods because obviously everyone grew up with Nintendo and never grew up in gaming with PC, Sony, Sega, or Microsoft. That'd be silly.

It's funny the timing on this because the day you wrote it I had been watching some old videos that touched on the GTA review "controversy" where people were demanding some reviewer get fired for giving GTA V a 9/10 or some similarly ridiculous score to ***** about.

It's crazy how there can only be absolute praise or absolute hate.

It used to be better before jeffers was banned. He tended to bring some truth and reasoned arguments whenever he was talking about stuff, which was why I enjoyed talking to him on here, outside of Nintendo topics, where he became a bit less reasoned, and more angry.

I dislike talking about peopl who cannot defend themselves, but JEFFERS was merely more passionate. His statemewnts were often dishonest (false or incomplete) and his defenses of Nintendo often relied on unfair comparison, half-truths, and ignoring any evidence pointed out to him contrary to his beliefs.

That's the opposite of truth and reasoned arguments.

Is it just me, or did Escapists NDF used to be better? I mean like, I could have sworn they used to be able to present reasoned, serious arguments and did so only when the situation called for it. These days it seems like the mere act of reporting news is considered an affront to the NDF should the news be negative in any light.

Maybe I'm just being internet old, and everything in the past wasn't really better.

Nintendo had half a decade on top. It was easy to defend. Right now, what is there to say? Nintendo's "innovation" strategy hasn't been working, they've revised their forecasts downward, they're losing money on their next gen console and nobody wants to support it. Even their tried-and-true strategy of moving consoles by releasing a Mario title hasn't worked.

It's got to be hard to come up with grounds to defend Nintendo right now.

Oh snap! Nintendo's stock is worth more than Sony's? I guess that means the fact that they lost me money doesn't count somehow. Also, it apparently means they can't go bankrupt despite being two vastly different companies in terms of size and diversification, although no that isn't how that really works at all.

In fairness, Nintendo is sitting on enough assets to make bankruptcy well out of the league of reason. Of course, that's independent of their stock price or Sony's. Nintendo's relying on a lot of things from their past, including money and reputation. That has little to do with their current operations: people have confidence in Nintendo because they've traditionally been a performer.

Their defense seems to be based on the same. It can only carry them so far, though.

 

[Nadia Castle]

'I'd have to majorly, majorly disagree with the Sega Genesis "making EA big". EA was big long before the Sega Genesis due to games like Dungeon Keeper and others. If anything it was EA that made the Sega Genesis big by making its best 3rd party titles from a North American publisher/developer.

That being said EA's "nasty ways" were not the what lead to the EA-Sega fallout. It was Sega alienating all the third party publishers when they made a surprise E3 announcement that they were releasing the Sega Saturn 6 months before the original release date.

Without telling any third party publisher.

Which meant the console came out with no games and 6 months of no releases. That's when EA told Sega to go fuck themselves. And very soon after a bunch of other 3rd party companies followed suit. Sega caused dozens of companies to lose money en mass and at once. That's why the Dreamcast had almost exclusively Japanese developed games.'

Yeah I did mean to quote you, sorry about that my copy paste mustn't have worked right.

EA can't really have been big before the Megadrive thanks to Dungeon Keeper if that game came out the same year that the Megadrive discontinued. The relationship between the two was fairly symbiotic, EA and Sega both knew they could sell better in the west by marketing themselves as 'the cool alternative'. It's doubtful EA would have stormed on half as well on Nintendo systems.

The disastrous Saturn launch mostly caused fallout from retailers rather than from publishers. Retailers got angry that they were missing out on precious sales, but most developers still supported the Saturn right up until it failed to catch on. Most third party companies in the west also stuck with the Dreamcast, Ubisoft, Eidos all gave it strong support, EA was the one big exception (they were offered big licencing discounts but Sega refused to budge on the sports deals). The big shuns came from Japan where Konami gave them next to nothing and Square didn't support it (not really surprising mind Square had gone Nintendo to Sony). Of course most of it's games came from Japan, most games came from Japan full stop before the likes of GTA and Jak and Daxter showed western developers could do console games just as well if not better.

The Dreamcast failed because it came off the back of numerous failures. Even if the Dreamcast was an excellent system, who would invest after the Saturn, the Sega CD, the 32X, the Nomad and Game Gear all came out for a bomb and diapered shortly afterwards? Nintendo is coming off it's biggest success ever and its handheld stayed strong despite the stumbling blocks.

If Nintendo is suffering this generation it's not because they've become Sega, it's because they've become Games Workshop. They hit it big and don't understand why hammering the same model isn't working. They aren't going anywhere by any stretch of the imagination, but it will take some company overhaul before they're top dog again. Same with any company as cycles go. Give it 20 years and Microsoft might be king of the pile whilst Apple wonders where it all went wrong.

 

[EvilRoy]

Oh snap! Nintendo's stock is worth more than Sony's? I guess that means the fact that they lost me money doesn't count somehow. Also, it apparently means they can't go bankrupt despite being two vastly different companies in terms of size and diversification, although no that isn't how that really works at all.

In fairness, Nintendo is sitting on enough assets to make bankruptcy well out of the league of reason. Of course, that's independent of their stock price or Sony's. Nintendo's relying on a lot of things from their past, including money and reputation. That has little to do with their current operations: people have confidence in Nintendo because they've traditionally been a performer.

Their defense seems to be based on the same. It can only carry them so far, though.

I hear where you're coming from, it just kind of bugs me when people with what seems like limited experience, and likely limited stake, in shareholding make arguments like that. I get that Sony doing bad may look like a positive boon for Nintendo, but in reality the companies are so unrelated there's almost no point in drawing a comparison. I don't expect Nintendo to just run out of money tomorrow, but I am worried about them losing more of mine.

 

[stroopwafel]

The Gamecube came along, got beaten by both the Xbox and for sure by the PS2 in hardware sales. While Nintendo's 1st party franchises still sold well, the 3rd party was staring to take some major hits.

The Gamecube was an underperformer compared to its competitors but it was still a pretty good system with some of the best exclusives in console history. Nintendo had an exclusive contract with Production Studio 4 that gave it titles like the Resident Evil remake and (initially)RE4. It outsourced Metroid to some Texan studio that did a fantastic job transitioning the franchise into 3D. Nintendo restyled Zelda with cell-shaded graphics and a cartoon style. Then released another fantastic Zelda game that was the complete opposite.

I enjoyed all these games immensely and they really reminded me of Nintendo during its peak. Maybe Nintendo didn't blow MS or Sony out of the water sales wise but they weren't stuck in a rut. The Gamecube had something for everyone. Hell when I saw the trailer of the Resident Evil remake I rushed to the store to buy one. This diverse library of software is also what makes their handhelds so succesful. It's almost as if the staggering success of the Wii has made Nintendo complacent.

Maybe it's due to the very competitive nature of games and film that has forced them to stay current on the matter. But their electronics have been left in the dust. Phillips is in the same boat.

I know right, its sad b/c those Zelda games on CD-i were amazing. Eindhoven de gekste!