Enough with 'Nintendo is doomed'

[Nadia Castle]

Nintendos had prophecies of doom ever since it became a gaming company. First it was too old fashioned, then too gimmicky, then too childish. It's the same way every single time there is a financial or political problem people rush to declare that the United States is about to fall apart. Nintendo will do what it always has...

"Endure. Take it. They'll hate you for it, but that's the point of Nintendo, they can be the outcast. They can make the choice that no one else can make, the right choice."

 

[josemlopes]

What I dont get is why everything Nintendo has to be either their end or their supreme control. Cant they just be there?

But hey, I guess it balances out, Nintendo fans are the first to make big scenes out of small good news and everybody else are the first to make big scenes out of small bad news. If I remember correctly didnt you even made a thread about gloating with video game related stuff where you were only gloating about the fact that Nintendo had a rise in their shares value?

Yep, that was me. And when did I last say that Nintendo was going to have supreme control? As of right now, that's pretty obviously not going to happen.

Im not saying that you said that, but overall Nintendo threads usually mean taking small things and blowing them out of proportion.

 

[Andy Shandy]

I've been waiting for this to happen. A lot more people saying "Stop saying Nintendo is doomed" than people actually saying Nintendo is doomed. And nobody is saying Nintendo deserves to die either. But even if they were Nintendo Land would definitely not be the game I would choose to try and sway someone otherwise.

And finally, people that take Michael Pachter even somewhat seriously should probably be sectioned. =P

 

[Something Amyss]

I've been waiting for this to happen. A lot more people saying "Stop saying Nintendo is doomed" than people actually saying Nintendo is doomed.

Because Nintendo fanatics need to defend Nintendo more than anyone else really needs to condemn them.

 

[SNCommand]

We're looking at the next SEGA

 

[EbonBehelit]

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.

 

[Roxas1359]

I've been waiting for this to happen. A lot more people saying "Stop saying Nintendo is doomed" than people actually saying Nintendo is doomed.

Because Nintendo fanatics need to defend Nintendo more than anyone else really needs to condemn them.

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.

 

[William Ossiss]

Spoiler

Because this type of thing never happened before. Oh, no. Nintendo has never made a game system that sold poorly ever in their lives. *sarcasm*

Spoiler

This type of thing never happens! They never have wonky peripherals that they sell and then lose money over.

OT: I just think they should cut their losses and release the gamecube 2... With Super Mario Sunshine 2, Wind Waker 2, continue the Pokemon Colosseum games, a good sequel to Luigi's Mansion that doesn't use a 3DS, and I hear that Twilight Princess is already getting a sequel. Though that's just rumors.

Or they can just release those games XD

I'd buy a Wii U for Super Mario Sunshine 2.

 

[Arqus_Zed]

P.S. For those of you saying Nintendo 'deserves to die,' I challenge you: Find a friend who has Nintendo Land and play it with them. Then, tell me the company that made that game deserves to go bankrupt.

Really? Nintendo Land? A bland mixture of mini games parading around the usual suspects? That's the title you're gonna use to win the sympathy of the masses of the internet?

Good luck with that.

Anyway, I don't think Nintendo is doomed nor do I think Nintendo deserves to go bankrupt. Allow me to explain:

1) As long as they have their franchises, there will still be enough money coming in from fanboys and manchildren to keep the motor running. If all else fails, they can always release a Pokémon MMO. Even if the console was made of fossilized horseshit, Nintendo would still outsell Sony and Microsoft combined if it had a Pokémon MMO.

2) I've got some grievances with Nintendo and their fans, but that doesn't mean I want to see them crash and burn. The more competition, the better!

 

[EvilRoy]

I've been waiting for this to happen. A lot more people saying "Stop saying Nintendo is doomed" than people actually saying Nintendo is doomed. And nobody is saying Nintendo deserves to die either. But even if they were Nintendo Land would definitely not be the game I would choose to try and sway someone otherwise.

And finally, people that take Michael Pachter even somewhat seriously should probably be sectioned. =P

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.

Oh, also:

Firstly is stock price. To investors, stock prices are the most important part of a company. Stock prices go up, people make money, more people invest, etc. And right now, Nintendo's stock is valued higher than Sony's. This is partly due to China's recent announcement about removing the ban on consoles, but partly due to Sony's incredible failures in every branch but their consoles (in fact, Sony recently had their credit rating downgraded to 'junk'). Now, a high stock price does not guarantee high sales, but you can't go bankrupt when your company is worth more than your main competitor.

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.

 

[Atmos Duality]

... 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.

They're both by Intelligent Systems.

I'm slowly playing through the backlog of FE titles, and it's becoming evident that IntSys made one game that they've repeated verbatim about a half dozen times since they started porting it to the states.

(I really have a mouthful to say about Fire Emblem mechanically, and in its defense, the only real problems I have with the game stem from its mechanics. The rest of the production tends to be very good all round.)

Advance Wars however, was pretty awesome for the most part. Especially AW2 and Days of Ruin.
It isn't anywhere near perfect, but they've made small improvements to the game with iteration, and not just small changes.

So...yeah. I'm also kinda in the camp that would like some better tactics/strategy games on Nintendo's systems.
Especially on the 3DS.

 

[Hero of Lime]

You are preaching to the choir with me. They aren't going anywhere for a looooong time. I believe the only one in danger of leaving the console market is Microsoft, and I doubt that will even happen for a long time too.

To be fair though, the Escapist forums aren't full of people saying Nintendo is doomed, sometimes you may see someone suggest they go third party, or that they suck, but that's the exception. It seems like on this forum, you either really love Nintendo, or you just don't care about it.

 

['Record Stops.']

Next, handhelds. Nintendo always has, and always will, dominate the handheld market.

Seriously? "Always has", sure I guess, but "always will"? That's just blatant fanboism (well, the whole OP was that, but this part in particular was the worst). Yes, the 3DS is selling well, and yes past Nintendo handhelds have also sold very well. But you can't extrapolate that into the future - especially in a market as dynamic as technology. The future of dedicated handheld gaming devices isn't as clear at it was a decade ago. There's a been a lot of speculation about phones and tablets knocking handhelds out of the market, and while I don't think it has/will be as big of a whitewash as predicted (there's clearly still a market for what they're offering) I do think we'll eventually see that shift.

Anyway, no of course Nintendo won't die, yes they're still very financially solid despite reporting losses the last few years, and if/when Nintendo pulls their finger out and starts using that solid financial base to move the Wii U I think it will eventually be a decently selling system. They just need to, first and foremost, MARKET the damn thing! Secondly, and almost as importantly, they need to "encourage" third parties to develop for it. Forget about trying to court Western publishers like EA or Activision - the Wii U doesn't have the horsepower to match their focus, they're not interested and won't be until the system gets a wider install base (and then they'll still only put out garbage like they did on the Wii, so fuck them). They've got a ton of (mostly Eastern) affiliates publishing for the 3DS - that's where they need to throw their money. Nail down some exclusive JRPGs, shooters (vertical/horizontal shooters, not first person shooters) and dating sims to at least make it attractive in Japan, then bring those games to the West. It'll be a niche system but it'll at least be SOMETHING. At the moment it's a stagnant NOTHING. The Sega Saturn is fondly remembered for having great shooters that never made it to the West, the SNES was praised for its JRPGs, and while those niches might not have been the money makers for those systems in the West the Wii U is going nowhere if they try to appeal to Western audiences with sports and military shooters and everything else that drives Western sales. The Xbone and PS4 have that market cornered and Nintendo is wasting their time there. Focus on something niche, something the big boys aren't offering and you'll find a market - even if it's a smaller market.

Yes, Nintendo Handheld's always will dominate. Until the day IPhone games reach the level of complexity, innovation, design perfection, and free choice as say a game from 1998-9 released for the GBC, namely Wario Land 2, then they will forever be little more than gimmicks and ripoffs of far better titles. I recently beat Soul of Darkness, a game ported from the IPhone market onto the 3DS. Wonder what it was? A shallow Metrovania ripoff by a hack Western studio. Innovation and creativity are stifled in the stagnant IPhone market, any good games they have were for better systems and better consoles see Megaman 2. One, you're wrong that any developer will actively select IPhones and Tablets to make full-scale games for any reason, our Lovely God Given Jim was wrong on that front, and in doing so you selectively alienate companies who would very much like to make a good game for a deserving console. Didn't we vilify Capcom for flipping the bird to its fans and going for the notoriously vapid and turbulent IPhone market? And two, there will never be an IPhone that has better games than the PSP, you can't make good platformers or control them with the touch screen, shooters won't get the graphical firepower necessary from a tablet, RPG's...PFHAHAHAHAHAHA! Action Adventure, well that's a bland genre to begin with so maybe there could be a few decent ripoffs of Metroid levels released in installments that all cost 5$ to play. Point is, Handheld's will dominate IPhones as gaming platform's, because good games that aren't ripoffs of better ones will never flourish in that hateful warzone people falsely consider a games market.

 

[Andy Shandy]

I've been waiting for this to happen. A lot more people saying "Stop saying Nintendo is doomed" than people actually saying Nintendo is doomed.

Because Nintendo fanatics need to defend Nintendo more than anyone else really needs to condemn them.

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.

"In this, the year of Luigi, we pray to our God Mario, his son, Baby Mario, and the holy ghost, King Boo, that Nintendo may continue on through these darker times. So dark, it has created dark worlds such as Lorule for us to Link between. But with every dark world, there is light. So I ask that you keep faith, both in our games and in our representatives here on Earth, Pope Iwata, and his Cardinals Shigeru Miyamoto, "My Body Is" Reggie Films-Aime and Satoru Shibata. And of course, please understand"

[sub]Okay, that kind of got away from me there, I'll admit. XD[/sub]

I've been waiting for this to happen. A lot more people saying "Stop saying Nintendo is doomed" than people actually saying Nintendo is doomed. And nobody is saying Nintendo deserves to die either. But even if they were Nintendo Land would definitely not be the game I would choose to try and sway someone otherwise.

And finally, people that take Michael Pachter even somewhat seriously should probably be sectioned. =P

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.

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.

 

[EbonBehelit]

... 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.

They're both by Intelligent Systems.

-snip-

Advance Wars however, was pretty awesome for the most part. Especially AW2 and Days of Ruin.
It isn't anywhere near perfect, but they've made small improvements to the game with iteration, and not just small changes.

I know they're both made by Intelligent Systems. I was just kinda making a point about there being at least one good strategy game on a Nintendo console. Though I do agree that there's not enough compared to the other platforms. The Wii U's tablet controller would be pretty damn nifty for the strategy genre, if only sales would actually pick up.

My favourite Advance Wars game is actually Dual Strike, despite how utterly borked the mechanics were. The music in Days of Ruin is awesome though, and really drives home the fact that it's done by the same people who worked on the music of the newer Fire Emblem games.

 

[Devin Norris]

At the first sign of bad news everyone starts spelling doom for Nintendo. Remember the first year of the DS? It didn't go so well. PSP was actually keeping pace with the DS, and even after launch a lot of people didn't know it existed or didn't understand the new-fangled dual screens. It went on like this for a year until Nintendo finally got their great first party games out and courted more 3rd party content. Then, as we all know, the DS went on to become one of the most owned pieces of gaming hardware on the planet. The exact same thing happened with the 3DS. The same thing will happen with the Wii U. Here soon we'll get Mario Kark 8, then E3 will happen, Zelda and whatnot get revealed, Smash Brothers comes out, and this time next year people will be singing a very different tune for the system. A price drop before the 2014 Holiday wouldn't surprise me either. Launch year is usually a tough year for any system, and Wii U just got done it's launch year. It will take a lot more than that to sink Nintendo. Plus there's the fact that Nintendo could literally lose a million every year and not be bankrupt for at least a decade...

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

P.S. For those of you saying Nintendo 'deserves to die,' I challenge you: Find a friend who has Nintendo Land and play it with them. Then, tell me the company that made that game deserves to go bankrupt.

Listen, no one who can be taken seriously is saying that Nintendo deserves to die. You're attacking the crazies and lumping them in with people who have well made criticisms of Nintendo. Its the same as attacking only extremist Muslims quotes and blaming the entire religion for Al-Qaeda or claiming that all Christians think exactly like Pat Roberson and Bill O'Reilly.


What fanboys of anything always fail to do is argue with the level headed points made against whatever their fandom is.

Here's this for a challenge Matthew.

I challenge you to play Nintendo Land and tell me that the company that made that game deserves to be absolved of all legitimate criticism with the way that they've been handling things on the console front for the last 3 console generations.

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.

Nor does it make up for he lack of quality titles from Nintendo themselves for a console that is just over a year old.

Or the fact that the tablet controller is now not even talked about or utilized in the majority of Wii U games, much like the second half of the Wii's console run and the lack of motion controls with the Wii Mote.

How about the fact that Nintendo does not know how to market the console at all? Does Nintendo Land make up for that? I think not.

I don't think that using a mini game compilations, one of the dozens that Nintendo already makes, in defense of an entire cavalcade of business mistakes is a good defense. I also don't think that the constant fanboy dodging of well put criticisms helps Nintendo. It actually help proves the critics right in a way.

In these very forums we saw this conversation play out. "You just just wait until Super Mario 3D Land comes out. Then the Wii U will have massive sales."

Now that SM 3D Land came out and moved diddnly squat in Wii-Units, the conversation is "You just wait until the New Smash Bros comes out. Then the Wii U will have massive sales." Its facepalm worthy statement like that.

Do I think Nintendo needs to die? No, of course not. One should never wish for a company that employs so many people to just collapse.

I do however think Nintendo needs to get rid of all of their executives. Iwata needs to go. Fils-Aime definitely needs to go. Cammie Dunaway (Head of Marketing for Nintendo of America), you bet your ass she needs to go. If anything she needs to go first.

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.

Nintendo frankly needs to step its fucking game up. Sorry for cursing but the "I'm a fan of Nintendo therefore you can't dislike it" argument is wearing thin for me and just about everyone else. Nintendo's hardcore fans have been shrinking in number for a while now. Hell, with the exception of the Wii, every Nintendo console has sold less with each release. There are people who are life long fans of Nintendo who looked at the Wii U and said "no freaking way." And they have reasons for saying so.

 

[COMaestro]

You again Matthew Jabour? Why are you always creating the defend Nintendo threads? I thought you'd figured out that they usually just annoy people more than anything else. You also seem to have switched your example game from NSMB to NintendoLand, huh?

The "Nintendo is doomed" threads seem to have disappeared over the past months, in any case. Really, I don't think anyone seriously believes Nintendo is going anywhere.

Now "the WiiU is doomed" threads I have seen, and truthfully I think they're correct. At this point, I'm not sure any games can really save the console, as those who were willing to buy a WiiU on the promise of those games have already done so. Sure, a few more units will sell when Smash Bros. hits, and a few more when Mario Kart his, and probably a bunch when a new Zelda or Metroid shows up, but I don't think it's going to be enough to make a difference. Those games needed to come out last year to make a difference.

At this point, I think many people will wait to see what the next Nintendo console will be before shelling out any money. There's always the chance it'll be backwards compatible too, so they'll be able to play any WiiU games they missed out on with the new console, as long as it appears to be worth buying. Nintendo's current-gen console is ultimately going to go down as a failure, so they need to learn from their mistakes and make sure their next console is a success.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

Shy of Sony really picking up their game, I'm gonna lean towards agreeing with the OP here. I don't see Nintendo losing its grip on the market short of a total collapse on their own part. Much like WoW, they're pretty much too big to die through anything but their own screw-ups.

I'd disagree. I won't be phones that surpass Nintendo's handheld domination. It'll be tablets. And it'll be tablets as soon as we stop seeing annual versions of them. Nintendo's handheld market right now survives on Pokemon, Monster Hunter(as niche as the game is) and games that could easily be done on phones and tablets. Ace Attorney has seen some success on the tablet market. Hell, Capcom in general has. Probably due to not overpricing like Square Enix.

If I may be frank, if Valve made a Steam phone app for mobile games, that'd put a major dent in Nintendo's handheld monopoly. That's the one thing that Nintnedo will always lose on. Game pricing. There are games on the 3DS and DS that are $40 that can't compete with $5 andriod games.