9 ms·

Of the big three i easily have the most faith in Nintendo. Why? Because they know how to make games i enjoy, and have been doing so for well over 2 decades. Ni

Of the big three i easily have the most faith in Nintendo. Why? Because they know how to make games i enjoy, and have been doing so for well over 2 decades. Nintendo put themselves in a tough spot, with dwindling Wii sales they were left with the choice of having no Console choice or having one with no games(very few). It can be argued which is the better option, obviously both suck. I do not consider Nintendo in trouble, there base(as has been proven time and time again) will always be there(mainly because they stick to there guns, for better or worse). Point & case of this is the 3DS, when this was release for a good 7-8 months it was considered a horrible console, with its best game being a remake of "The Legend of Zelda OOT"(arguably). Look at it now it is considered to be the best running console available. Granted it some good games in this 7-8 month period, but not much. My point is, when it comes down to it, games sell consoles, and the WiiU has no games, at all really. Once they come, and they will, the console will be in at least fine shape. I personally have not bought one, but it is on my list above both the xbox1 and the ps4. My 2 cents...

rocky1138 13y ago
I wish Wii U was as open as the Ouya. It's cool, though, that they put that JS library up for getting button-mapping in-browser from the control pad. I don't own a Wii U, either. It's way too expensive and I don't find any of the titles compelling. That, and when I played with one at Toys R Us I found the controller cheap to hold.
lauraura 13y ago
Nintendo's been mainly working off their portables for years, really. The N64 didn't sell that great either, and the Gamecube did pretty awfully, ending up selling what few units it did almost entirely on the merit of its first-party games and a couple rare gems, like Tales of Symphonia. The Wii was unusual -- the Wii U is more "normal", by Nintendo sales standards! Fortunately for them the 3DS is doing great, gathering dozens and dozens of great games, and probably makes a tidy profit margin too. They did a wonderful job pivoting the console; people pretty quickly lost interest in the 3D aspect, but there was no reason they had to market the console on those merits to begin with, so as far as I can tell they've mostly de-emphasized that aspect of the device (and nobody I know even uses it!) It's also cheap enough that even as the Vita does finally pick up sales and actual games (and it's happening, finally), it probably won't hurt the 3DS' sales -- their game lists seem more mutually exclusive than not and if someone can afford a Vita, they probably already have a 3DS if they ever wanted one. The Vita is really its own interesting story of a console with (initially) almost no games -- a lot of more minor and independent developers have found that they can get great sales on the Vita since the market is much less saturated. Amazingly, a few months ago, the top selling Vita game was actually a rather niche title that was released with no prior announcement on the e-shop and no marketing whatsoever. I kind of wonder if the Wii U will have a year or two (or ten??) of the same kind of thing -- it definitely could be an interesting platform for indie devs.
- smacktoward 13y ago
  It's true, they've pretty much owned portable gaming ever since the original Game Boy. But the problem they have there is that the portable gaming market is undergoing a huge shift from being about dedicated devices to being just another feature on smartphones. The 3DS' real competition isn't the Vita, in other words, it's the iPhone. And there's not a lot of evidence that Nintendo has a strategy to deal with this sea change.
  - adestefan 13y ago
    The real problem with games on a phone are non-swipe controls. I still haven't played a platformer on a phone that had decent controls.
    - MBCook 13y ago
      There are some that are... acceptable. But you're right. The fact that Apple has announced APIs for game controllers on iOS means that this will change with iOS 7, and that could be a big problem for Nintendo.
    - roc 13y ago
      That seems to be a de-facto-standard away from being solved though. Someone, or some collection of someones, are going to hit on a controller and/or case and/or variant device that establishes some set of inputs that clicks with the market. [1] And developers will design for said standard and that will be that. That seems much easier (if not entirely inevitable) than Nintendo discovering some way to halt and/or reverse the trend away from dedicated gaming devices. [1] a standard along the lines of the modern console: "dual analog sticks, d-pad, shoulder buttons, four face buttons"; or stand-up arcade fighter's: "analog stick + 6 buttons", etc. It doesn't have to be one-true-piece of hardware, just a general arrangement of inputs that developers can design for.
      - jessedhillon 13y ago
        I don't think lack of hardware or standards here is the issue. It's still an open question as to whether those same people who buy mobile games would walk around with a controller+phone in their pocket/purse.
macspoofing 13y ago
Are you kidding? Of the big three, I consider Nintendo dead-man walking. The reality is that the console business is a big company game, and Nintendo is just too small. You need to sink billions of dollars to develop and subsidize the console, be willing to lose money for years and then do it all over again 6-10 years later. Microsoft can do it, and Sony can do it, Nintendo can't. They need to make money because unlike Microsoft and Sony, they don't have other revenue streams. This necessities them releasing under-powered consoles. They got lucky with the Wii. They are not so lucky with the WiiU. They are still the king of mobile console gaming ... sort of. Tablet and smartphones are eating away their bottom line, and the trend will continue (the minute that Apple and Google decide to focus on mobile gaming in earnest will spell the end of Nintendo). The problem for Nintendo is that mobile gaming is an afterthought for Apple and Google. They don't need to do well in that area to survive, however every point of marketshare that Nintendo loses because little Johnny is fine enough playing games on his iPad instead of buying a 3DS hurts Nintendo incredibly. Everyone will have a smartphone or a tablet, so justifying a 3DS purchase is that much harder. They make good games, yes, but it won't change the fact that they are in a lot of trouble.
- Afforess 13y ago
  I agree. I don't see Nintendo still being a hardware company in 10 years. They are either liquidated, sold to someone else for IP's, or transform into a software game company. I hope it's the latter. There is no money in hardware, it has no future outside of ever-tinier margins.
  - kamaal 13y ago
    >>There is no money in hardware, it has no future outside of ever-tinier margins. You've got to be kidding me. People don't go around put an iPhone with an app, in places where they need a $5 embedded system.
- Keyframe 13y ago
  People have been saying they're good as dead since N64. It seems to me they are doing just fine.
aviraldg 13y ago
I'd be willing to buy one of their consoles for every Fire Emblem game they release. Seriously.
- lauraura 13y ago
  If only they localize Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem...
danielweber 13y ago
Ordered list of important things for a console: 1. Fun games. . (Okay, I'm ignoring a few things, like cost. But no one gives a hoot about a zillion pentagons per second. They care about fun games. If those zillion pentagons make the game more fun, then win.)
InclinedPlane 13y ago
Nintendo used to have a big advantage. First off, it always sold everything at a per-product profit from day one. Games, consoles, everything. That made it hard for them to lose money unless they failed to cover development costs by selling too few consoles, for example. Second, they had the only portable gaming system that was extremely popular worldwide and just as profitable. Third, they had a huge 1st party game lineup that always brought a lot of fans. Fourth, they were able to make a different kind of game than the rest of the industry. Generally gameplay and character based games instead of visual appeal / physics based games like many of the traditional major AAA games. This dramatically lowered their production costs. Add to that the lure of motion controls during the glory years of the Wii. Compare, for example, titles such as Halo 3 or Call of Duty: MW2 vs Super Smash Brothers Brawl or New Super Mario Bros Wii. Halo 3 sold something like 12 million copies and MW2 sold about 22 million. Those are impressive numbers, pushing gross revenue up near the billion dollar range. However, these are also very expensive games to produce, due to all the art assets, voice acting, the complexity of the game, and so forth. In contrast Brawl sold about 12 million copies and New SMB Wii sold about 28 million. But what's the development budget on Smash Bros. or even New SMB Wii in comparison? They don't have the same high-def 3D rendered immersive, interactive environment requirements as a modern AAA FPS or adventure game, they have a pitiful amount of voice acting, and typically so little that internationalization is comparatively trivial, and they just aren't as complicated of games overall. Nintendo was able to sell its quirky little gameplay centric games and earn AAA revenue on the back of fractional development costs compared to most AAA titles. That translated into, as they say, "printing money". But there are some problems. People stopped buying Wiis and playing Wii games. So Nintendo felt they needed to come out with a new console to try to deal with the competition. Unfortunately, the Wii-U isn't a coherent or inspired design, it's just designed by a committee who has no conception of what's happening in gaming right now. The result is a sort of weird little HD Wii with a questionably useful tablet controller. Meanwhile, the rest of the gaming industry has been changing a great deal. Digital distribution has become not just a part of the industry but has gained enough momentum to seem like it will be the future core of the industry. And partly because of that indie games have had a renaissance. Additionally, smartphones and tablets have inserted themselves as pillars of the mobile gaming market. And both Microsoft and Sony have produced better motion control hardware schemes than Nintendo has managed to develop. Nintendo is now being threatened from every side. Its motion control advantage is now lost. Its quirky gameplay centric advantage is now under assault by a veritable army of indie game devs, some of whom can finance their games on kickstarter and sell them for $10 or less through digital channels. Its mobile gaming systems are finding it tough to compete with more advanced tablets and smartphones with burgeoning game libraries. And its persistent weakness in online communities and underlying game system OS technology has started to take its toll in an era where everyone is more connected than ever. Almost nobody is seriously excited about the potential of the Wii-U hardware, it's boring and largely already obsoleted by other console hardware and by the Xbox One and PS4 hardware. Pretty much the only thing keeping Nintendo alive is their 1st party titles, but how much will that encourage people to buy into their console hardware, potentially at the cost of not being able to buy an iPad or either of the other 2 new consoles coming out this year? The Wii-U has already had a huge price drop since launch about half a year ago and sales are still anemic, that's not a good sign considering that sales are unlikely to be better 6 months from now when the xbox and playstation next gen consoles are on the market, let alone after the next ipad rev. hits. If they were smart they'd transition into a software only company. Edit: to add to this, I used to own a Wii (though I sold it after I realized I hadn't even bothered to turn it on for about a year), and I've used the Wii-U extensively. I love some of the games for the Wii-U but I'm not sure they have enough pull to get many gamers to buy a whole new console. Also, the Wii-U software is a nightmare. For a device that is entirely based on solid state storage it takes a remarkably long time to do anything. Also, the very first update for the console took an hour (literally, a full hour, regardless of internet connection speed). And the battery life on the gamepad is decidedly underwhelming, as is the lack of multi-touch. Overall these aren't good selling points to the average consumer, or even to the Nintendo enthusiast.
b3b0p 13y ago
I agree and I am not an accountant, but financially I think Nintendo may be fine, at least according to the Financial Times balance sheet here: http://markets.ft.com/research//Markets/Tearsheets/Financials?s=7974:TYO&subview=BalanceSheet&period=a http://markets.ft.com/research//Markets/Tearsheets/Financial... It looks like they have plenty of cash in the bank as well as zero debt. A Wii U is also on my list. I have no interest in Xbox One or Playstation 4. Almost all the games are multiplatform now and many are now coming to Steam. There are also so many games coming out and the fact I have limited time to go around I'm limiting my options this generation to Nintendo and Steam. That gives me plenty of gaming. I don't need to play everything, but I do need to play Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. Does Nintendo really need to bother competing with Sony and MSFT? Especially with almost all games being multiplatform now. Isn't the main reason to buy a console for the exclusives and content it provides?
- hudibras 13y ago
  Don't forget Pikmin 3. A lot of people (including me) have been holding off buying a WiiU until that game comes out. I've been waiting nine years to accidentally kill me some more Pikmins!! /fanboy
Zergy 13y ago
Nintendo makes great games. So does Playdead So does Turn 10 Studios So does BioWare So does Bethesda So does Dice So does Team Meat I could actually go on for a bit but I think I make my point that having Nintendo make good games consistently doesn't compare to a more open platform that has dozens of developers many of who consistently put out excellent games. Nintendo is far behind in terms of hardware and completely relied on their blue ocean strategy to carry them last time. They tried again and it’s not looking too good. Sales will pick up I'm sure when games actually come out but between half the people I know thinking it’s a peripheral and it having to actually compete because people are not going crazy over a gimmick I don’t think its going to do well this generation.
- aclevernickname 13y ago
  > So does Playdead So does Turn 10 Studios So does BioWare So does Bethesda So does Dice So does Team Meat Nintendo has made more great games in the last 10 years than all the above companies combined have made in their lifetimes. It's pretty disingenuous to dismiss them so lackadaisically.
ekianjo 13y ago
Is this a joke? Nintendo has just been lucky ONCE with the Wii, and you call that "doing so well" for 2 decades? Let's not forget they lost the console supremacy with the N64. That the Gamecube was a dead console when it came out. The only reason Nintendo is still alive nowadays is because of their portable consoles business. That's where they go unchallenged. And no, Sony is not very successful in that field, except in a few markets (the PSP(first one) did very well in Japan, and is still going on strong). Their base "will always be there" is exactly the kind of statement that brought Sony down in the last generation. They thought they could sell PS3 at the price they wanted. Nintendo made the same mistake with the 3DS, by pricing it very high at launch timing and facing extremely disappointing sales until they cut the price and released more games for the system. It was one of the worst Nintendo launches EVER. Even if the games come on WiiU, it's too late for Nintendo. There will be fantastic-looking games for the PS4 (and XBox one) which will catch the attention of gamers for a while. And the WiiU did not repeat the same thing as the Wii in the first place: most people dont "get" the concept, because it's not a very cool concept in the first place. Another reason the WiiU is dead is that they have no 3rd party developer support. There's no games for it because most developers are working for other systems already. They don't bet on the WiiU. It will be obsolete in no time.
- adw 13y ago
  The GBA and DS lines were pretty significant hits.
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    I'm talking about the home console business. Read my post.
    - aclevernickname 13y ago
      just read the post. didn't see one instance of "home console". I even control-f'd it. However, you specifically mentioned the 3DS in it, which means that you were considering the 3DS to be a console, at that time. Doesn't this fit the definition of moving the goalposts? [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts

rocky1138 13y ago

I wish Wii U was as open as the Ouya. It's cool, though, that they put that JS library up for getting button-mapping in-browser from the control pad. I don't own a Wii U, either. It's way too expensive and I don't find any of the titles compelling. That, and when I played with one at Toys R Us I found the controller cheap to hold.

lauraura 13y ago

Nintendo's been mainly working off their portables for years, really. The N64 didn't sell that great either, and the Gamecube did pretty awfully, ending up selling what few units it did almost entirely on the merit of its first-party games and a couple rare gems, like Tales of Symphonia. The Wii was unusual -- the Wii U is more "normal", by Nintendo sales standards! Fortunately for them the 3DS is doing great, gathering dozens and dozens of great games, and probably makes a tidy profit margin too. They did a wonderful job pivoting the console; people pretty quickly lost interest in the 3D aspect, but there was no reason they had to market the console on those merits to begin with, so as far as I can tell they've mostly de-emphasized that aspect of the device (and nobody I know even uses it!) It's also cheap enough that even as the Vita does finally pick up sales and actual games (and it's happening, finally), it probably won't hurt the 3DS' sales -- their game lists seem more mutually exclusive than not and if someone can afford a Vita, they probably already have a 3DS if they ever wanted one. The Vita is really its own interesting story of a console with (initially) almost no games -- a lot of more minor and independent developers have found that they can get great sales on the Vita since the market is much less saturated. Amazingly, a few months ago, the top selling Vita game was actually a rather niche title that was released with no prior announcement on the e-shop and no marketing whatsoever. I kind of wonder if the Wii U will have a year or two (or ten??) of the same kind of thing -- it definitely could be an interesting platform for indie devs.

smacktoward 13y ago
It's true, they've pretty much owned portable gaming ever since the original Game Boy. But the problem they have there is that the portable gaming market is undergoing a huge shift from being about dedicated devices to being just another feature on smartphones. The 3DS' real competition isn't the Vita, in other words, it's the iPhone. And there's not a lot of evidence that Nintendo has a strategy to deal with this sea change.
- adestefan 13y ago
  The real problem with games on a phone are non-swipe controls. I still haven't played a platformer on a phone that had decent controls.
  - MBCook 13y ago
    There are some that are... acceptable. But you're right. The fact that Apple has announced APIs for game controllers on iOS means that this will change with iOS 7, and that could be a big problem for Nintendo.
  - roc 13y ago
    That seems to be a de-facto-standard away from being solved though. Someone, or some collection of someones, are going to hit on a controller and/or case and/or variant device that establishes some set of inputs that clicks with the market. [1] And developers will design for said standard and that will be that. That seems much easier (if not entirely inevitable) than Nintendo discovering some way to halt and/or reverse the trend away from dedicated gaming devices. [1] a standard along the lines of the modern console: "dual analog sticks, d-pad, shoulder buttons, four face buttons"; or stand-up arcade fighter's: "analog stick + 6 buttons", etc. It doesn't have to be one-true-piece of hardware, just a general arrangement of inputs that developers can design for.
    - jessedhillon 13y ago
      I don't think lack of hardware or standards here is the issue. It's still an open question as to whether those same people who buy mobile games would walk around with a controller+phone in their pocket/purse.

macspoofing 13y ago

Are you kidding? Of the big three, I consider Nintendo dead-man walking. The reality is that the console business is a big company game, and Nintendo is just too small. You need to sink billions of dollars to develop and subsidize the console, be willing to lose money for years and then do it all over again 6-10 years later. Microsoft can do it, and Sony can do it, Nintendo can't. They need to make money because unlike Microsoft and Sony, they don't have other revenue streams. This necessities them releasing under-powered consoles. They got lucky with the Wii. They are not so lucky with the WiiU. They are still the king of mobile console gaming ... sort of. Tablet and smartphones are eating away their bottom line, and the trend will continue (the minute that Apple and Google decide to focus on mobile gaming in earnest will spell the end of Nintendo). The problem for Nintendo is that mobile gaming is an afterthought for Apple and Google. They don't need to do well in that area to survive, however every point of marketshare that Nintendo loses because little Johnny is fine enough playing games on his iPad instead of buying a 3DS hurts Nintendo incredibly. Everyone will have a smartphone or a tablet, so justifying a 3DS purchase is that much harder. They make good games, yes, but it won't change the fact that they are in a lot of trouble.

Afforess 13y ago
I agree. I don't see Nintendo still being a hardware company in 10 years. They are either liquidated, sold to someone else for IP's, or transform into a software game company. I hope it's the latter. There is no money in hardware, it has no future outside of ever-tinier margins.
- kamaal 13y ago
  >>There is no money in hardware, it has no future outside of ever-tinier margins. You've got to be kidding me. People don't go around put an iPhone with an app, in places where they need a $5 embedded system.
Keyframe 13y ago
People have been saying they're good as dead since N64. It seems to me they are doing just fine.

aviraldg 13y ago

I'd be willing to buy one of their consoles for every Fire Emblem game they release. Seriously.

lauraura 13y ago
If only they localize Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem...

danielweber 13y ago

Ordered list of important things for a console: 1. Fun games. . (Okay, I'm ignoring a few things, like cost. But no one gives a hoot about a zillion pentagons per second. They care about fun games. If those zillion pentagons make the game more fun, then win.)

InclinedPlane 13y ago

Nintendo used to have a big advantage. First off, it always sold everything at a per-product profit from day one. Games, consoles, everything. That made it hard for them to lose money unless they failed to cover development costs by selling too few consoles, for example. Second, they had the only portable gaming system that was extremely popular worldwide and just as profitable. Third, they had a huge 1st party game lineup that always brought a lot of fans. Fourth, they were able to make a different kind of game than the rest of the industry. Generally gameplay and character based games instead of visual appeal / physics based games like many of the traditional major AAA games. This dramatically lowered their production costs. Add to that the lure of motion controls during the glory years of the Wii. Compare, for example, titles such as Halo 3 or Call of Duty: MW2 vs Super Smash Brothers Brawl or New Super Mario Bros Wii. Halo 3 sold something like 12 million copies and MW2 sold about 22 million. Those are impressive numbers, pushing gross revenue up near the billion dollar range. However, these are also very expensive games to produce, due to all the art assets, voice acting, the complexity of the game, and so forth. In contrast Brawl sold about 12 million copies and New SMB Wii sold about 28 million. But what's the development budget on Smash Bros. or even New SMB Wii in comparison? They don't have the same high-def 3D rendered immersive, interactive environment requirements as a modern AAA FPS or adventure game, they have a pitiful amount of voice acting, and typically so little that internationalization is comparatively trivial, and they just aren't as complicated of games overall. Nintendo was able to sell its quirky little gameplay centric games and earn AAA revenue on the back of fractional development costs compared to most AAA titles. That translated into, as they say, "printing money". But there are some problems. People stopped buying Wiis and playing Wii games. So Nintendo felt they needed to come out with a new console to try to deal with the competition. Unfortunately, the Wii-U isn't a coherent or inspired design, it's just designed by a committee who has no conception of what's happening in gaming right now. The result is a sort of weird little HD Wii with a questionably useful tablet controller. Meanwhile, the rest of the gaming industry has been changing a great deal. Digital distribution has become not just a part of the industry but has gained enough momentum to seem like it will be the future core of the industry. And partly because of that indie games have had a renaissance. Additionally, smartphones and tablets have inserted themselves as pillars of the mobile gaming market. And both Microsoft and Sony have produced better motion control hardware schemes than Nintendo has managed to develop. Nintendo is now being threatened from every side. Its motion control advantage is now lost. Its quirky gameplay centric advantage is now under assault by a veritable army of indie game devs, some of whom can finance their games on kickstarter and sell them for $10 or less through digital channels. Its mobile gaming systems are finding it tough to compete with more advanced tablets and smartphones with burgeoning game libraries. And its persistent weakness in online communities and underlying game system OS technology has started to take its toll in an era where everyone is more connected than ever. Almost nobody is seriously excited about the potential of the Wii-U hardware, it's boring and largely already obsoleted by other console hardware and by the Xbox One and PS4 hardware. Pretty much the only thing keeping Nintendo alive is their 1st party titles, but how much will that encourage people to buy into their console hardware, potentially at the cost of not being able to buy an iPad or either of the other 2 new consoles coming out this year? The Wii-U has already had a huge price drop since launch about half a year ago and sales are still anemic, that's not a good sign considering that sales are unlikely to be better 6 months from now when the xbox and playstation next gen consoles are on the market, let alone after the next ipad rev. hits. If they were smart they'd transition into a software only company. Edit: to add to this, I used to own a Wii (though I sold it after I realized I hadn't even bothered to turn it on for about a year), and I've used the Wii-U extensively. I love some of the games for the Wii-U but I'm not sure they have enough pull to get many gamers to buy a whole new console. Also, the Wii-U software is a nightmare. For a device that is entirely based on solid state storage it takes a remarkably long time to do anything. Also, the very first update for the console took an hour (literally, a full hour, regardless of internet connection speed). And the battery life on the gamepad is decidedly underwhelming, as is the lack of multi-touch. Overall these aren't good selling points to the average consumer, or even to the Nintendo enthusiast.

b3b0p 13y ago

I agree and I am not an accountant, but financially I think Nintendo may be fine, at least according to the Financial Times balance sheet here: http://markets.ft.com/research//Markets/Tearsheets/Financials?s=7974:TYO&subview=BalanceSheet&period=a http://markets.ft.com/research//Markets/Tearsheets/Financial... It looks like they have plenty of cash in the bank as well as zero debt. A Wii U is also on my list. I have no interest in Xbox One or Playstation 4. Almost all the games are multiplatform now and many are now coming to Steam. There are also so many games coming out and the fact I have limited time to go around I'm limiting my options this generation to Nintendo and Steam. That gives me plenty of gaming. I don't need to play everything, but I do need to play Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. Does Nintendo really need to bother competing with Sony and MSFT? Especially with almost all games being multiplatform now. Isn't the main reason to buy a console for the exclusives and content it provides?

hudibras 13y ago
Don't forget Pikmin 3. A lot of people (including me) have been holding off buying a WiiU until that game comes out. I've been waiting nine years to accidentally kill me some more Pikmins!! /fanboy

Zergy 13y ago

Nintendo makes great games. So does Playdead So does Turn 10 Studios So does BioWare So does Bethesda So does Dice So does Team Meat I could actually go on for a bit but I think I make my point that having Nintendo make good games consistently doesn't compare to a more open platform that has dozens of developers many of who consistently put out excellent games. Nintendo is far behind in terms of hardware and completely relied on their blue ocean strategy to carry them last time. They tried again and it’s not looking too good. Sales will pick up I'm sure when games actually come out but between half the people I know thinking it’s a peripheral and it having to actually compete because people are not going crazy over a gimmick I don’t think its going to do well this generation.

aclevernickname 13y ago
> So does Playdead So does Turn 10 Studios So does BioWare So does Bethesda So does Dice So does Team Meat Nintendo has made more great games in the last 10 years than all the above companies combined have made in their lifetimes. It's pretty disingenuous to dismiss them so lackadaisically.

ekianjo 13y ago

Is this a joke? Nintendo has just been lucky ONCE with the Wii, and you call that "doing so well" for 2 decades? Let's not forget they lost the console supremacy with the N64. That the Gamecube was a dead console when it came out. The only reason Nintendo is still alive nowadays is because of their portable consoles business. That's where they go unchallenged. And no, Sony is not very successful in that field, except in a few markets (the PSP(first one) did very well in Japan, and is still going on strong). Their base "will always be there" is exactly the kind of statement that brought Sony down in the last generation. They thought they could sell PS3 at the price they wanted. Nintendo made the same mistake with the 3DS, by pricing it very high at launch timing and facing extremely disappointing sales until they cut the price and released more games for the system. It was one of the worst Nintendo launches EVER. Even if the games come on WiiU, it's too late for Nintendo. There will be fantastic-looking games for the PS4 (and XBox one) which will catch the attention of gamers for a while. And the WiiU did not repeat the same thing as the Wii in the first place: most people dont "get" the concept, because it's not a very cool concept in the first place. Another reason the WiiU is dead is that they have no 3rd party developer support. There's no games for it because most developers are working for other systems already. They don't bet on the WiiU. It will be obsolete in no time.

adw 13y ago
The GBA and DS lines were pretty significant hits.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  I'm talking about the home console business. Read my post.
  - aclevernickname 13y ago
    just read the post. didn't see one instance of "home console". I even control-f'd it. However, you specifically mentioned the 3DS in it, which means that you were considering the 3DS to be a console, at that time. Doesn't this fit the definition of moving the goalposts? [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts