Enough with 'Nintendo is doomed'

[Casual Shinji]

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!

They probably shouldn't have been so stupid to get rid of Polygram Films.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

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

S'all good. Just click the quote button next time. It's located on the right side of the gray bar next to the name of whomever you wish to quote.

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.

Apologies, I mean Syndicate from 1993. Both were developed by Bullfrog so I tend to mix them up. But yes, EA was a major player in gaming before they started making games for Sega. If anything it'd be more accurate to say that Bullfrog Studios made EA as big as it was at the time thanks to them publishing Peter Molyneux's games back before they gave him a mircophone to over promise everything. But Sega making EA big? No. Definitely the other way around.

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.

EA was making games for the NES and SNES as well. And very popular one too. The Bard's Tale anyone? EA had no exclusive love for Sega. EA made some pretty big games for both Nintendo and Sega.

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.

Developer were definately pissed with Sega for the Saturn's launch. How could they not be pissed when they were making games for a September release, only to be watching E3 at the time and have Sega randomly announce that the console was on sale that day. Sure they made games for the Sega Saturn afterwards, but it wasn't very many games. Them not supporting the Saturn very was one of the major reason the Dreamcast came out only 3 years later. By that point they had left.

Most third party companies in the west also stuck with the Dreamcast, Ubisoft, Eidos all gave it strong support

Going to have to disagree heavily. Look at any "Best Dreamcast game" list. It's always all Japanese games. The most support that the Dreamcast got from North American devs were ports to the Dreamcast or publishing Japanese titles in North America.

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.

Not if you count the PC platform. That's was and to an extent still is mostly Western game releases.

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.

Here's the thing. That success was good for Nintendo, not for 3rd party developer. Japanese or otherwise. Most 3rd party games from big devs on the Wii flopped if they were not geared for casual gamers. Even near the end of the Wii's run Nintendo was reporting losses, so that goes to show how much "success" it gave Nintendo.

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.

Apples and Oranges argument. Games Workshop has actually increased in success over the years. Nintendo was riding off of nostalgia for a while and not its worn thin. They're mirroring Sega due to their not knowing how to market a console and them ruining almost all of their 3rd party relationships.

 

[Nadia Castle]

'S'all good. Just click the quote button next time. It's located on the right side of the gray bar next to the name of whomever you wish to quote.'

It all seems so obvious now....

''Going to have to disagree heavily. Look at any "Best Dreamcast game" list. It's always all Japanese games. The most support that the Dreamcast got from North American devs were ports to the Dreamcast or publishing Japanese titles in North America.'

Look at the best of PS1 list, with the exception of 'Tomb Raider'(which came to the Dreamcast), 'Oddworld' and 'Crash' it's a perfect list of Japanese games. 'Metal Gear', 'Final Fantasy', 'Parappa the Rapper', 'Resident Evil', 'Silent Hill', 'Castlevania', 'Gran Turismo', all as Japanese as they come. The N64 would probably be entirely Japanese games were it not for Rare. It wasn't until the PS2 made the western markets big enough to support western oriented games that console developers got a proper look in. (not that there weren't exceptions, Crash made it big)

We should probably wind this down though before we hijack this nice thread about Nintendo and turn it into a scholarly debate on the fate of the Dreamcast...

On a side note I really must give Syndicate another play through. Oh for the days when we got sequels like 'Syndicate Wars' instead of tat like that (shudder) reboot....

 

[Something Amyss]

The 3DS is still the best selling gaming device right now, and they had more collective games on GOTY lists than every other publisher. Say what you will about the Wii U and its fuck ups, as a developer and publisher they're still one of the best in the industry. Last year they somehow managed to put out a critically acclaimed 3DS game on a near-monthly basis, whereas EA have struggled to get acclaimed games out at any rate more than twice a year, if that. Even their Wii U games were acknowledged as being great, ability to shift hardware not withstanding.

They may be stumbling, but they're hardly the industry bad guys.

I don't care about GOTY's personally. I don't care when the games I like win or lose, and I don't get the tantrums surrounding either. However, when Nintendo wasn't getting GOTY's left and right, Nintendo fans were crying sour grapes: other companies paid off reviewers and everyone was hating on Nintendo and was TEH BIAS, so why should it matter now? Obviously, those reviewers are all TEH BIAS for Nintendo this time.

Or something.

It's nice that they have a solid selling piece of hardware in an uncontested field, but that's not much. It's nice if they really are releasing a critically acclaimed game each month, too. Critical acclaim and GOTY don't sell units or increase stock prices and they don't help Nintendo's situation. And bleeding money off Wii U's is an issue even with the success of the 3DS. These don't put them in a good boat, and the primary thrust as to their "quality" is highly debatable.

 

[VG_Addict]

Are we seriously STILL denying that there's an anti-Nintendo sentiment in journalism? Especially after I said that Nintendo's stock made a recovery, and yet not many sites reported on it?

Now granted, that's more of a problem with journalism as a whole: Reporting clickbait articles rather than giving honest, objective reports to inform the public.

Like I said in another thread, Nintendo is in the same position as Sony was last gen.

 

[EternallyBored]

Are we seriously STILL denying that there's an anti-Nintendo sentiment in journalism? Especially after I said that Nintendo's stock made a recovery, and yet not many sites reported on it?

Now granted, that's more of a problem with journalism as a whole: Reporting clickbait articles rather than giving honest, objective reports to inform the public.

Like I said in another thread, Nintendo is in the same position as Sony was last gen.

What? Nintendo's position has very little in common with Sony last gen. The problems the PS3 and the WiiU have are entirely different. PS3's problem was its insane price point compared to the 360, it's lack of games, and the year headstart that the 360 had. The PS3 was also in direct competition with the 360 as far as cutting edge console graphics and features went. The WiiU has none of those problems, and it isn't in direct competition with the PS4 or the Xbox one as far as graphics and multimedia features go (whether thats a good thing or not is entirely up to opinion).

The WiiU has already released its big games to mass critical acclaim, and still failed to move units, the PS3 started moving a high number of units after games like Uncharted and Infamous came out for it. It also never had the price point problem the PS3 had, and is currently the cheapest of the current gen systems. The WiiU also had a year headstart over the PS4 and the Xbone, which didn't help, and wasn't an issue the PS3 had.

The WiiU's problems are entirely different from the PS3, namely marketing and 3rd party support. The WiiU has almost zero marketing, and what little is out there seems to be more concerned with recapturing the fickle Wii's audience than returning old Nintendo fans back to its system. The WiiU also has nearly zero 3rd party support, unlike the PS3, which managed to grab quite a few third party developers, and got most of the 3rd party games for 360 ported to its own system in time. WiiU doesn't have that luxury, once the current gen kicks off, 3rd party developers likely aren't even going to bother trying to port their games from the PS4 and Xbone, to the WiiU, Nintendo needs to sell third party developers on making entirely new games for the WiiU, or building current gen games to work on the WiiU. This is yet another problem that the PS3 did not have as it was pretty much on par with the technology of the 360, not a lot had to be done to port them to either console, this is even more true this generation, with the PS4 and Xbone being even easier to port games between the two, the WiiU does not have this advantage.

Both systems had their issues, but the actual issues themselves and the reasons behind those problems are very different indeed.

 

[EbonBehelit]

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.

I get it, you don't like anime. That's fine - many people can't reconcile themselves with typical anime art-styles/tropes - but please don't deride so vehemently something that doesn't appeal to you subjectively. That being said though, I also think a lot of anime is pretty terrible, but not all of it - you've just gotta sort the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.

I also didn't use the word Gothic anywhere in my post. I used grim, and post-apocalyptic: Days of Ruin is both of these things, but it certainly doesn't have an abundance of medieval architecture.

 

[IceForce]

'S'all good. Just click the quote button next time. It's located on the right side of the gray bar next to the name of whomever you wish to quote.'

It all seems so obvious now....

Except, you still didn't actually manage to quote the person properly.
It should have a grey box with their text in it, just like your quote does in my post here.

You didn't notice your quotes look different to everyone else's?

 

[NoeL]

Which isn't what I said

But it's what the OP (you know, the one I was replying to) said:

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

I almost agree with what you've been saying this whole time, though I do think there's a slim chance someone could "out-Nintendo" Nintendo. Phones and tablets have way too much shit on them to ever be appealing to developers OR consumers, but if someone can make a closed system that gets the final say on what games can and can't be published for the system and is able to deliver a comparable gaming experience at a cheaper price point they could potentially dethrone Nintendo.

Comparing it to WoW isn't that legitimate because WoW is a social game. Players interact heavily with each other and form communities, and have an interest in seeing how the living world progresses around them. While there is an aspect of this with Nintendo regarding people that want to play and discuss what their friends are playing, a solo gamer has no reason NOT to move on to the better platform. While someone could and arguably has made a game that's better than WoW in every conceivable way you can't transfer that community piece by piece - either everyone goes or no one does. It's why Google+ never beat out Facebook (before you bring up MySpace, Facebook set itself apart by appealing more to adults than tweens, and when MySpace users grew up they became at home on Facebook).

 

[Shaun Chang-Time]

nintendo isnt doomed lol the sales they get from the 3DS,pokemon games and other DS games is enough to keep the cash flowing in. handhelds is where they have been making most of the money since the wii u was released

 

[Cid Silverwing]

They're not doomed, but they are surely struggling now that everyone involved in the company got their salaries sliced due to the marketing disaster that is the Wii-U.

Captha: don't waste time.

 

[Strazdas]

I think that everything all those uninformed people say is a load of bull. Especially the people that said that tablets and laptops would kill the PC.(hasn't happened) That Consoles would kill the PC.(hasn't happened) That casual games would kill hardcore games.(hasn't happened) That Nintendo would die.(hasn't happened) That no-one wants spacesims, point and click adventures, and true RPG's (Kickstarter tells us otherwise)...
So I don't really bother with those empty slogans.

laptops essentially killed PC for everyone but business and gamers. unless a person is a gamer he is most likely with a laptop. ive even seen gamers claim they can do perfectly well on a laptop. laptop sales have been higher than PC sales for years now.
As far as smartphones/tablets go, they have just reached 1 billion sales per year [www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/131720-Annual-Global-Smartphone-Shipments-Exceed-One-Billion-for-the-First-Time]. every 7th person in the world has bought a smarphone in 2013.
As far as consoles killing PC games, it depends on genres. In PC centric genresl ike strategy (i like strategy!) its all about PC. but shooters/fighters/racers its mostly about bad ports now. though it looks like this generation its going to be PC that kills consoles.
Casual gaming is multiple times more profitable than hardcore gaming. and while it hasnt killed it, there certainly is a lot of "Appeal to everyone" vibe going on.
Nintendo wont die. Not untill attrition eat away its cash balances, that are larger than MS and Sonys console division assets. Nintendo has more MONEY than Xbox division and PS divisions are worth put together, buildings and all. so yeah not going to happen any time soon.
So theres a lot of truth behind those obviuosly overblown statements.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Remember during the Gamecube days? Call me crazy, but I think we had this exact same debacle. In fact, we had this same argument a year or two after the Wii launched, when everyone said its sales would drop off and we'd never hear from Nintendo again. What's more, I bet we'll have this same argument again in a few years when they announce their new console. I had assumed that everyone recognized a pattern when they saw it, and that we'd never have this problem again.

IN the gamecube days, Nintendo wasn't poised to post three years of operating losses. They also didn't have to cut sales projections on the console by nearly 80%.

Next, handhelds. Nintendo always has, and always will, dominate the handheld market. As long as their handheld sales are strong, they can piss away however much money they want and still be financially sound.

Nintenod has never had a serious competitor in that space until the smartphone. Granted, I think the 3DS is a fine machine with plenty to love and will likely do fine for several years but continued dominance is a thing of the past. I'd like to see actual data on the subject (attach rates for example) but I'd wager the smartphone is probably absolutely dominating the 3DS when it comes to gaming.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, companies don't just collapse due to a single bad console. Nintendo didn't collapse because of the Gamecube.

The Gamecube was a financial success, actually.

Sony didn't collapse in the opening years of the PS3.

Sony has a host of other products that they sell including media players, televisions, etc.

Hell, Microsoft unloaded a whole clip into their balls during the Xbox One announcement, and they still sold well.

Which doesn't prove anything about Nintendo's current situation.

So far, the only recent company that has withdrawn from the race altogether is Sega, which has spent the last twenty years proving they had no idea how to run a videogame company.

Sega dropped out of the race after releasing a console a short time before newer and drastically more powerful consoles came to market. The lead time they had was insufficient to generate a sustainable user base. It's actually more or less exactly what Nintendo did with the Wii U.

And I wish we could learn from these constant misjudgments, but I suppose we'll just keep on supposing for years to come.

Because there is no cogent argument even from Nintendo regarding how this problem gets better. Your CEO falling on the sword isn't a solution. Swapping out management isn't a solution. What Nintendo needs to do is get people to buy Wii U and they apparently have no idea how to do that since their strategy for decades now has been "Release Mario, hope for the best".

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.

A company that does not know how to make a profit deserves to go bankrupt. To suggest they be given a free ride because the made a good thing once is silly. If they want my money, they'll make something I want now; they don't get it because I really liked a Link to the Past.


Actually, they did get my money for that last one since I did buy a Link Between Worlds.

 

[Something Amyss]

Your original quote was that it must be getting hard to defend Nintendo.

And in any meaningful sense, that remains true. Since the criticisms relate to their success, not their recognisability, pointing out GOTYs is useless. Pointing out critical acclaim is useless.

If anything, it seems like a distraction argument.

 

[PopularitySays]

Sorry for answering this rather late, but contrary to the thoughts of some people, Nintendo has made new IP's. Xenoblade Chronicles and Wonderful 101 are examples within the last two years.

What would you guys rather have Nintendo make?

 

[Roxas1359]

Sorry for answering this rather late, but contrary to the thoughts of some people, Nintendo has made new IP's. Xenoblade Chronicles and Wonderful 101 are examples within the last two years.

What would you guys rather have Nintendo make?

Just so you know, Nintendo only published those IPs, they didn't make them and they are second party. The last franchise Nintendo EAD made was Wii Fit, the other new IP were made by other studios. Wonderful 101 was made entirely by Platinum Games and was pitched to Nintendo. Xenoblade Chronicles was made and developed by Monolith Soft, just like the other Xeno series games (Xenosaga, Xenogear, etc.)

Now Nintendo actually owns Monolith Soft in a similar way that Sony owns Naughty Dog, but people credit Naughty Dog for Naughty Dog games, not necessarily Sony. Oslo crediting Nintendo EAD for something Monolith Soft made isn't necessarily right, just like how crediting Sony Computer Entertainment for something Naughty Dog made isn't really right.

As fit Wonderful 101, that was made by second party, like how Ratchet and Clank was made by the second party Insomniac. Sony doesn't get credit for Ratchet and Clank, Insomniac does. As such Platinum Games should get the credit for W101.

Also, considering the fact that Nintendo didn't really have plans to localize Xenoblade Chronicles and GameStop has full distribution rights means not many people have the game without having to shell out about $90 for a "used" copy of the game, which is BS. As for W101, while it is fun, it flopped majorly in the market.