had to paste an awesome slashdot comment about Nintendo

[demoman_chaos]

Nintendo, suriving off nostalgia and grandmas.
Their last big in-house IP to hit consoles is Super Smash Bros. on the N64. Mario, LoZ, Metroid, and Mario Kart are their only other major core franchises and they have been around since the SNES or eariler. Those games really haven't evolved hardly. Mario Galaxy really isn't much different than Mario 64 except exact layout and a few powerups. Ocarina of Time is very much like Twilight Princess.

I'm not saying they are the only company to always rehash the same shit under teh same label. Halo Reach is basically Halo 1 again with a few different guns and the Brutes who weren't in 1 because they weren't thought of until 2. The God of War games have changed visually, but gameplay wise it is still throw your chains around and finish the big guys with the same QTE's that you did in GoW1.

But at least the GoW games aren't the same exact everytime (outside level design usually). In LoZ, Gannon steals Zelda and triforce, Link goes to dungeons, gets bow, boomerang, hookshot, hammer, bottles to put stuff in, some spells, finish dungeon and fight boss that both now revovle around use of most recently aquired item, get Master Sword, go fight Gannon, beat him and save the world and the Princess.
Peach gets kidnapped by Bowsser so Mario must go through levels themed around different things to collect enough stars to fight Bowser who fights in the same manner every time they meet save for 1 new attack and then he saves Peach and gets his "cake."

 

[Cheesus333]

I used to play Nintendo exclusively, but now that I spend a lot of time on my Xbox 360, I rarely touch my Nintendo consoles.

But in spite of that, I admire and respect Nintendo a hell of a lot more than I do Microsoft.
The latter are in gaming for the money, not really to particularly change anything or mix it up. Nintendo are a gaming company to the core - they've been in it from the start and they'll be in it at the end.

 

[Baneat]

Nintendo was great until they decided to stick their heads in the sand and ignore third party developers. The N64 was the start with Nintendo stubbornly opting for a cartridge-based system. Since then they've seemingly done everything they can to make developing games for their systems difficult.

That and the 'innovations' they've pioneered since the days of the Virtual Boy have all been entirely based on pointless gimmicks. Somewhere along the line they decided that games are just silly toys, and so they designed and marketed them as such.

What innovations were pointless gimmicks?

ROB ROB ROB ROB ROB ROB

 

[kokirisoldier]

They seem to have the "bottle rocket" style of wowing people down to a science. Sure a big fire works show looks amazing, and everyone says "ahhhh...ohhhhhhh...wow!". But then you realize that they're just embers now falling from the sky. After that craziness that was the Wii initial launching they havent kept the steam going or pushed forward.

They are amazing at innovation, quiet possibly the best. I mean remember when the N64 came out and it had 4 controller ports! Then the game cube with its blazing fast load times from the mini disks. They have successfully put everything that worked from their old systems and put them into their new, which is doing exactly what buyers want.

 

[AcacianLeaves]

Nintendo was great until they decided to stick their heads in the sand and ignore third party developers. The N64 was the start with Nintendo stubbornly opting for a cartridge-based system. Since then they've seemingly done everything they can to make developing games for their systems difficult.

That and the 'innovations' they've pioneered since the days of the Virtual Boy have all been entirely based on pointless gimmicks. Somewhere along the line they decided that games are just silly toys, and so they designed and marketed them as such.

What innovations were pointless gimmicks?

Maybe 'pointless' is too strong of a word, but certainly gimmicks. The Powerglove? Touch screen? Motion controls? The Super Scope? Bongo Drums? The Gameboy Micro? 3D? Rob the Robot? The Virtual Boy?

Even the entire concept of the Gamecube was a gimmick - let's make the system small, cutesy, and boxy to make it marketable.

I'm not saying they were all bad, but they were certainly very gimmicky.

Well, the Power Glove wasn't made by Nintendo. Touch Screen was around before the DS (and that has worked out very well, hard to call something successful a gimmick) and I don't know much about the Super Scope except that it failed, we'll see how the 3DS does, never used ROB and the Virtual Boy failed.

So yeah, a couple of Nintendo innovations failed but what about the ones that didn't? The ones built into your current gen controllers?

A gimmick is a feature of a product that exists solely for the sake of the feature. In terms of gaming hardware that means something that doesn't add anything substantive to the actual gameplay. If you remove the piece of hardware or feature from the game and don't end up changing the gameplay, you have a gimmick. If your game is entirely dependent on the novelty of how you control it, you have a gimmick.

It has nothing to do with failure or success - there are many consumers that buy into gimmicks and some gimmicks are unique enough to gain widespread appeal (like motion controls).

Personally I haven't found a single DS game that couldn't benefit from removing their stylus/touch controls entirely.

 

[Ayjona]

Believing that any company will stay on top (or even remain intact) forever is, perhaps, just a tad naive.

Nintendo is currently lagging behind in the handheld market, not only in terms of hardware specs (something that will come as a surprise to no one, as Nintendo are rather adept at compensating for their weak concoles), but also in target audience, device flexibility, and most significantly, online connectivity. While they might not be brought down (at least not within the current dominant console paradigm), I wouldn't be surprised if they began to slowly lag behind in particular markets, and perhaps in general as well. I would be just as unsurprised if Sony' console division (their handhelds, in particular) suffered the same fate.

 

[Professor James]

Nintendo is okay with me. There a pretty good company but I 'm not in favor of any company. I'm not a Nintendo fan and buy their consoles exclusively but I'm not a Sony or Microsoft fan either. I buy consoles based on price and how many games I like on them and personally I think that how gaming is supposed to be.

Currently I play a 360 but before that I bought a GameCube and N64. I used to have a Wii but got rid of it after I realized the games weren't targeted to people like me.

 

[poiuppx]

EDIT: Sorry, actually the Sega Genesis controller was out two years earlier than the SNES controller. It had six buttons with a similar layout, so really Nintendo just removed two.

6 buttons instead of 4 is a totally different controller layout. If ya wanna play that way, we can say that the 6 button Genesis controller was the same as the NES controller, except it added 4 buttons or you could say the SNES controller was the same as the NES controller, only it added 2 buttons.

The two-button layout was the only different one among the three controllers. Two buttons, side by side. Not four or six going along with the curvature of the thumb in an ascending diagonal fashion.

The similarities are too clear to ignore, and the Genesis controller came two years prior to the SNES controller. I don't know why you would get all worked up about this. I love Nintendo too, but they don't need to have been "innovators" to have done great things.

Besides, PC controllers were miles ahead of all the console generations, so it's a moot point.

OBJECTION!

Even speaking as someone who is, these days, pretty far from a Nintendo supporter, trying to claim Nintendo has never been innovative is insane. And the use of the controller in Garak73's example, one might assume, had more to do with their introduction of the shoulder buttons that have become standard for console controllers. Furthermore, attempting to claim things such as touch screens or motion controls are not innovative or game-changing is basically the act of ignoring reality; sales numbers and the general movement of the game industry right now argues with you pretty violently on that front.

I give up. Nintendo didn't innovate anything. PC's running DOS were clearly ahead of game consoles where controllers are concerned and still are!

Unless you're playing something simple or straight-forward, playing at a distance, playing side by side with someone in close quarters using the same screen, etc., in which case a keyboard and mouse is overly large, clunky, and unneccesary. Unless Xzi thinks that, somehow, a keyboard and mouse are more appropriate for a game like Super Mario Brothers than an NES controller. And that's not even factoring in games using motion controls, since methinks a keyboard is a little harder to swing around than a WiiMote...

 

[poiuppx]

Unless you're playing something simple or straight-forward, playing at a distance, playing side by side with someone in close quarters using the same screen, etc., in which case a keyboard and mouse is overly large, clunky, and unneccesary. Unless Xzi thinks that, somehow, a keyboard and mouse are more appropriate for a game like Super Mario Brothers than an NES controller. And that's not even factoring in games using motion controls, since methinks a keyboard is a little harder to swing around than a WiiMote...

I didn't say keyboard and mouse. I said literal game controllers. There were several joysticks and gamepads designed for use with DOS that were years ahead of their time. Shoulder buttons, trigger buttons, even the analog stick existed on them prior to/during the SNES days.

...huh. Not to doubt the veracity of your claims, sir, but I fail to see WHY such elements would be needed in the DOS-only days. I can't imagine there was much call for shoulder buttons when playing Commander Keen or Wizardry. I admit, assuming your accuracy on this matter, it's a hole in my knowledge base; would you be so kind as to link me to information regarding this so I can better educate myself?