First of all, I apologize for a certain thread I posted several months ago that was quite uninformed (if you have to ask, you don't need to know about it).
Now, on to the next order of business...Nintendo and their addiction to failure.
TL;DR, Nintendo's gimmicky consoles and anti-consumer practices are hurting them more than the competition ever will.
Anyway, that's my two cents. I apologize for any grammatical errors that may have come up.
Now, on to the next order of business...Nintendo and their addiction to failure.
Okay, let me get the obvious out of the way: I am thoroughly aware Nintendo are still making money. In the last quarter, they made a larger profit than Sony, if memory serves me correctly. My problem isn't with that.
My problem is that they, as a company, seem to be doing everything in their power to alienate any potential audience they have and are more interesting in pretending that they are still the dominant force in the industry.
So where did this shitstorm start? Surprisingly enough, the NES. The NES was the dominant system of the day. It destroyed the competition so completely that any chance Atari had of returning triumphantly to the world of consoles went the way of the dinosaurs and the only way that SEGA bounced back was by having an aggressive marketing campaign.
But it created this idea that Nintendo, as the dominant force in the industry, could get away with anything they wanted. That idea became institutionalized, and shit began to hit the fan. Games had to be NES exclusive for two years. No blood anywhere. The "three games per year" rule. But then the SEGA Mega Drive (or Genesis if your country is dumb) was released and suddenly they didn't have any market dominance.
Yet they still persisted in this delusion that they had market dominance, and this led to anti-consumer behavior and failure. They kept the NES around for a good two years in the Americas and Europe, even though there was no chance of it competing with the Mega Drive/Genesis. They assumed everyone would buy the Virtual Boy, simply because it was Nintendo-branded. They stuck with cartridges because they assumed no-one would jump to the cheaper (both to develop for and to buy) PlayStation. Then, five years later, they pulled the same stunt with the GameCube. "What to people put in DVD trays besides games?", they said. "People will never adopt online gaming", they snickered.
In many ways, it's similar to what's currently happening at Apple. They had one product that was accidentally a massive success, now they believe they can do anything.
The difference here comes in the small rectangular shape that is the Wii and the even smaller and more rectangular DS. They were Nintendo's first massive success since the original Game Boy. To give you an idea, for every Wii U, there are roughly 2 GameCubes, 3 N64s, 4 SNESes, 8 NESes, 8 Game Boys, 9 Wiis and 11 DSes. They were such a massive successes. Nintendo is back, they were right all along!
Except they weren't. For, like all new technologies, the Wii was a fad. Soon enough, everyone had moved on to mobile, the 360 and the PS3. But Nintendo had a plan. The Wii's biggest selling point was the motion controller, the DS's the touchscreen. Gimmicks were obviously the way forward. Except again they weren't.
That's where we are today. The 3DS has been a success in Japan, but has been outshined by smartphones everywhere else. The Wii U is so utterly dead that not even the new Zelda has provoked the response Nintendo were hoping for.
As well as this they are hiding their new product for fears of 'copying'. But the idea that someone could make blueprint, prototype and produce a copy in under six months is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
The problem here is that Nintendo still have this mindset that they are on top of the world, even though they really aren't. They may have outdone Sony's profits in the last quarter but that's only because Sony is determined to keep their failing mobile business afloat.
Nintendo might be making money for the time being, but they are far behind the competition. The 3DS is a mobile gaming machine...and nothing more. Against the Vita it has the edge, it's cheaper and has better games. Against mobile? No chance. I love Majora's Mask 3D, but it's not going to make the 3DS a viable mobile competitor. In the home console business, they've failed. Home consoles are almost as much of a hardcore gaming platform as PCs these days (not in hardware, but in audience and content). The Wii U and it's cutesy Mario games might please fans, but it simply won't sell for $60.
Put bluntly, Nintendo has this delusion that they are on top of the world, and that their games will always sell and that the public loves nothing more than gimmicks. That's not going to work Nintendo. Mainstream consumers have shown they would rather play the flashy-est games than have a giant fat touchscreen. Your fans are tired of the fact that you persistently dick them over with crappy sequels to established franchises.
Some may believe that the NX will save Nintendo. But if the rumor mill is proven right, they've done the same thing all over again. A handheld with detachable controllers? Just...no.
What's particularly annoying is that Nintendo's two biggest franchises, Mario and Pokemon, don't even feature astronomical budgets and don't require massive development teams either, so they could be made on the cheap and sold digitally. That's a pile of money right there to fund Nintendo's pursuits. But no. "The captain never abandons his ship" seems to be the office mantra.
If they wanted to fix this, the next system would be about the games. It would feature less anti-consumer exclusivity. It wouldn't try to ship 100 2D Mario levels as a AAA title. But at the current rate it seems that Nintendo would prefer to live in it's own little world, unaware of the fact that they are losing the Console Crusades.
My problem is that they, as a company, seem to be doing everything in their power to alienate any potential audience they have and are more interesting in pretending that they are still the dominant force in the industry.
So where did this shitstorm start? Surprisingly enough, the NES. The NES was the dominant system of the day. It destroyed the competition so completely that any chance Atari had of returning triumphantly to the world of consoles went the way of the dinosaurs and the only way that SEGA bounced back was by having an aggressive marketing campaign.
But it created this idea that Nintendo, as the dominant force in the industry, could get away with anything they wanted. That idea became institutionalized, and shit began to hit the fan. Games had to be NES exclusive for two years. No blood anywhere. The "three games per year" rule. But then the SEGA Mega Drive (or Genesis if your country is dumb) was released and suddenly they didn't have any market dominance.
Yet they still persisted in this delusion that they had market dominance, and this led to anti-consumer behavior and failure. They kept the NES around for a good two years in the Americas and Europe, even though there was no chance of it competing with the Mega Drive/Genesis. They assumed everyone would buy the Virtual Boy, simply because it was Nintendo-branded. They stuck with cartridges because they assumed no-one would jump to the cheaper (both to develop for and to buy) PlayStation. Then, five years later, they pulled the same stunt with the GameCube. "What to people put in DVD trays besides games?", they said. "People will never adopt online gaming", they snickered.
In many ways, it's similar to what's currently happening at Apple. They had one product that was accidentally a massive success, now they believe they can do anything.
The difference here comes in the small rectangular shape that is the Wii and the even smaller and more rectangular DS. They were Nintendo's first massive success since the original Game Boy. To give you an idea, for every Wii U, there are roughly 2 GameCubes, 3 N64s, 4 SNESes, 8 NESes, 8 Game Boys, 9 Wiis and 11 DSes. They were such a massive successes. Nintendo is back, they were right all along!
Except they weren't. For, like all new technologies, the Wii was a fad. Soon enough, everyone had moved on to mobile, the 360 and the PS3. But Nintendo had a plan. The Wii's biggest selling point was the motion controller, the DS's the touchscreen. Gimmicks were obviously the way forward. Except again they weren't.
That's where we are today. The 3DS has been a success in Japan, but has been outshined by smartphones everywhere else. The Wii U is so utterly dead that not even the new Zelda has provoked the response Nintendo were hoping for.
As well as this they are hiding their new product for fears of 'copying'. But the idea that someone could make blueprint, prototype and produce a copy in under six months is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
The problem here is that Nintendo still have this mindset that they are on top of the world, even though they really aren't. They may have outdone Sony's profits in the last quarter but that's only because Sony is determined to keep their failing mobile business afloat.
Nintendo might be making money for the time being, but they are far behind the competition. The 3DS is a mobile gaming machine...and nothing more. Against the Vita it has the edge, it's cheaper and has better games. Against mobile? No chance. I love Majora's Mask 3D, but it's not going to make the 3DS a viable mobile competitor. In the home console business, they've failed. Home consoles are almost as much of a hardcore gaming platform as PCs these days (not in hardware, but in audience and content). The Wii U and it's cutesy Mario games might please fans, but it simply won't sell for $60.
Put bluntly, Nintendo has this delusion that they are on top of the world, and that their games will always sell and that the public loves nothing more than gimmicks. That's not going to work Nintendo. Mainstream consumers have shown they would rather play the flashy-est games than have a giant fat touchscreen. Your fans are tired of the fact that you persistently dick them over with crappy sequels to established franchises.
Some may believe that the NX will save Nintendo. But if the rumor mill is proven right, they've done the same thing all over again. A handheld with detachable controllers? Just...no.
What's particularly annoying is that Nintendo's two biggest franchises, Mario and Pokemon, don't even feature astronomical budgets and don't require massive development teams either, so they could be made on the cheap and sold digitally. That's a pile of money right there to fund Nintendo's pursuits. But no. "The captain never abandons his ship" seems to be the office mantra.
If they wanted to fix this, the next system would be about the games. It would feature less anti-consumer exclusivity. It wouldn't try to ship 100 2D Mario levels as a AAA title. But at the current rate it seems that Nintendo would prefer to live in it's own little world, unaware of the fact that they are losing the Console Crusades.
TL;DR, Nintendo's gimmicky consoles and anti-consumer practices are hurting them more than the competition ever will.
Anyway, that's my two cents. I apologize for any grammatical errors that may have come up.
