8 Reasons Nintendo Consoles Will Die
Submitted by lukeprog on Thu, 08/05/2004 - 11:56
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- Nintendo is one of my favorite companies ever. Link and Mario are my two favorite game characters ever, and I love the games in those series. However, Nintendo is seriously going downhill, ever since Playstation dominated Nintedo 64. Here's the ten biggest reasons Nintendo will die in 10 years. They won't be gone completely, but they will cease to be a major force in the CONSOLE world.
- Nintendo ignores the adult market - everyone who grew up on games is older, but still playing games. They play GTA now, not Mario Sunshine or kiddy, cartoon Link.
- Nintendo isn't online - online gaming is becoming huge, and Nintendo refuses to join in. Morons.
- Nintendo thinks people want something new - I'd rather play a GTA, Zelda, Half-Life, or DOOM sequel over Pikmin or Luigi's mansion any day, and there are few that feel any different.
- Nintendo spurns its third parties - Nintendo thinks it still has a monopoly on videogaming, and makes life far more financially difficult for its third parties than Sony and Microsoft do. Multi-platform games now means PS2 and Xbox and occasionally PC, but not Gamecube.
- Nintendo only wants to make games - I personally agree with this standpoint; the PS2 and Xbox DVD players suck, but on a feature list, Gamecube looks horrible compared to the others. And peoople weren't about to get the 'cheapo' next-gen gaming system when PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube were coming out. Nintendo doesn't realize that it isn't about what THEY want, it's what the CUSTOMERS want.
- Nintendo doesn't focus enough on system launch - The Gamecube's launch title lineup was extremely weak, and for the first time didn't include a Mario title. The followup console looks to repeat as Nintendo keeps its tradition of spending a lot of time developing very late, first-party software, which is generous to Gamecube owners, but perhaps not wise when you'll be battling with PS3, Xbox 2, and Phantom in the next round, and you've lost ground with every console launch since 1996.
- Nintendo has promised it's next console will be a 'Revolution' - I don't want scratch-and-sniff controlers, a light gun, and music-based gameplay. I want, you guessed it, GTA with better graphics, bigger worlds, and more diverse gameplay, just like (virtually) everybody else. Nintendo is throwing itself into a niche market and it will get niche market sales numbers, while Sony continues to court broad third-party support, a massive title library, and therefore mass appeal.
- Nintendo's decision makers aren't in the modern world - This is evidenced by basically everything above. I don't know if it's Japanese culture or that the big hats are stuck in the past, but their decisions and tactics simply don't work today: the consumer has too much power.
- I personally give Nintendo 2 more consoles after Gamecube, and then they're out of that market. Possibly a third one that will completely fail and virtually not exist anyway. That is, of course, unless they change their tactics drastically over the course of the next decade.
While you make a few excellent points and I generally do agree with you, I disagree that marketing mainly children's games is a flaw. After all, I know a lot of kids too young for GTA, in fact too young for most playstation games. And even those kids who want to play Playstation or Xbox games still don't, because those games are too violent or time-consuming for parents to allow it. And while there are many adult gamers, there is still a huge market for childrens games, a niche which Nintendo alone seems to hold. I have younger siblings who loved Animal Crossing, Legend of Zelda, Mario Party, Pikmin, etc. Playstation is flawed in the opposite way, in that it does not generally make kids games. Nintendo has found a market as a family company, which I could see it maintaining, even if it isn't a major player anymore.
The point here is that Nintendo seems interested in only making games for kids, whereas someone like Sony has such a broad relationship with so many third party developers that several of them can serve up plenty of good kids material while others focus on everything else. Sony has all the bases covered, Nintendo Gamecube is lacking in:
Adult games
Spots games
RPGs
Much more
Nintendo is the greatest games company out at the Moment it has so Many Original characters
, i'd like to see another games company come up with that many:
Its a Shame its failing, it shouldnt
i dont agree with the comment about Nintendo being Morons because they havnt falle into the online Fad. because in my mind NINTENDO has always been a family / Multiplayer console as in its about parties and the players being same room.