@Waltz, Nintendo never said they'd be competitive in fact they said they DON'T want to be competitive
Man seeing everyone complain is seriously making me think I should rebuy, I wasn't going to yesterday, but I may now because of how all of you are, I wasn't unless it was for 3DS but now.... Yep considered sold...

Yeah and I'm Mel Gibson's lover.

Whether or not Nintendo says its in direct competition with Microsoft, Sony and Apple, it is. It's in the video game business sharing room with other companies developing attractive software and hardware to win attention from gamers to buy its products. Just like the others.

Nintendo said it didn't want to be competitive on the price of its games (actually it's more about preserving the value/ price of its games than not worrying about competition. Nintendo's trying to compete on price by offering games that justify their price better than the cheaper games justify their prices)

That's a massive difference to a company being competitive in the market - of which price competition is only one way competition can manifest.

Any company that is not competitive is no longer here. Nintendo tries to be competitive.

Edit: if you're talking about those times Nintendo has spoken about "not worrying what the competition is doing" - and actually believed that - then you've fallen for marketing rhetoric.

...Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like that's already been explained several times in this thread alone to Hokori.

Looks like it had to be explained again, lol.

Re buy what?

My VC collection... But yeah I just hate it when peoe try to make me look like a fool, when it's clear I'm not >:} I have brains just in a different way. mwahahaa

The fact remains that Nintendo IS competitive, just not in the way some people want. They continue to make money from at least two rather large demographics: the first being longtime fans who will choose Mario, Zelda, and Metroid over anything the competition tosses out, the second being the more casual gamers. The casual gamers are more or less irrelevant here, as they will not have large VC collections (if any). The longtime fans will either complain or defend them, but either way most will not have any sort of opinion changed here because the competition doesn't offer their favorite IPs. Because, in all honesty, even if this small fee goes against the competition, actual long time fans aren't swayed when they already are emotionally invested in the franchises. Either way, Nintendo isn't oblivious that this is against the norm. They've been making money far too long to be that out of it. I'd be willing to bet that they have done plenty of cost analysis and consumer research to conclude that this will hardly affect their consumer base. It doesn't affect new consumers and the old consumers will either cough up the cash or keep the games in Wii Mode. It may piss you off, but Nintendo has built enough of a fanbase that they know they can squeeze some money out of them here and there. Other companies have their own ways of doing so, like XBox Live's fees for examples. Companies are well aware what ways their consumers are willing to pay a few bucks.

Seriously, this whole argument about better consoles and company tactics is like Spy vs. Spy. No one ever wins, no one ever loses. Buy, or don't buy, it doesn't matter. It's a personal choice for you guys apparently. As for me, I'm just gonna go cough up some dough and hand it over. They're just gonna print whatever money I spend next year. No big deal...

If the "Wii U experience" was rubbish I'd say fair point but it's not, so whether or not a small minority are upset by forking out an extra .99 for this update is pretty irrelevant. I expect that even if VC sales end up stagnant it won't change. There's no real reason for them to give the software away for free when they allowed folk to transfer purchases from their previous console in the first place. That right there shows that Nintendo IS being competitive as you say. Before the Wii what was Nintendo's track record on backwards-compatibility even?

You're right about "outrage" though. What you actually said in that post (194, I believe) was this, which is equally OTT:

This is an operational cost, and it's like saying that any game that has an online component should be charging people a monthly subscription for server maintenance. Nintendo as a corporation has a responsibility to keep these back end operational activities going on anyway. To charge for it is, frankly, offensive.

you have toned it down since, I'll warrant.

it's not that bad because you're only going to shell out $1/$1.50 for the extra features, but I'm probably gonna stick with the originals so I can get more original games. seems a little tempting for me though

Nintendo is competitive since they are in the market, although I highly doubt they're going to win the competition any time soon (if at all). It's time like this that makes me realize Nintendo would be better off as a third party developer. They make amazing games, but have meh hardware and horrible online.

For Nintendo to become a 3rd party wouldn't be smart on their part. Portable gaming would pretty much dissipate. You've got to keep in mind that the 3DS surpassed 10 million units in Japan and outsold the PS3 in the territory, a system that's been out for over 6 years, in less than 2 years. They're destroying the competition in that regard (when phones/tablets aren't counted. Whether they should be or not is debatable). It's making them lots of mulla.

When it comes to the Wii U, let's wait and see whether it will truly be competitive or not. Playable 3D Mario and Mario Kart at E3, combined with their way of handling 3rd parties evidenced by SMT X Fire Emblem is a clear sign that they're very serious with the system.

It's fine to not like hardware, but other people are clearly buying into it or at least interested. Now isn't the best time to pull out of the hardware business for them, in my opinion.

They're hardware is better than PS3 and Xbox 360. It's been a while since a new PS/Xbox, but those had tons of harware problems. Nintendo just watched from the sidelines, then when PS/Xbox got tired, they picked up the slack. I don't really need to listen to music or watch videos on my game console. It's nice it's there, but I look at it as more of a gimmick(lol!). Judging by your avatar pic, I'm guessing you wanted Sega to not become a 3rd party? Once Sega went 3rd party, most of their games went to crap IMO, because they no longer knew the hardware they were deving for like the back of their hand.

Not reading the 18 pages of replies, but to everyone upset about having to pay $1 (pound, euro, whatever) to get reasonable updates for your games, GROW UP. You paid for a product; you received what you paid for; and you still have that product conveniently available. Nintendo included full - or damn close to it - backwards compatibility with Wii U and let owners transfer over all Wii-based digital content in a (relatively) easy action. They haven't taken anything away from you.

You aren't entitled to free upgrades, and aren't being asked to pay full price (or anywhere near that) if you decide that an upgrade is worthwhile. If you don't want to pay for upgrades to the Wii U versions of virtual console titles, then just don't. End of story.
#gamersindiapers

Outside of Knux, I don't know of anyone that doesn't agree with you on this point.

As for online, they add what's necessary, WHEN it's necessary. PS3/Xbox 360 did an all out sprint, and tripped every part of the way. Wii just jogged and caught up.

The whole charging a few dollars for enhanced versions of VC games is just like DLC. Good DLC is extra content created after the games initial release. Nintendo is going back and adding these new functions to old VC games. You don't have to pay for these extras and still have a full game as you always had before. If you want the new features that they have created since the initial release you can buy the DLC. The new versions of the VC games being the same price as what we paid on Wii years ago is just like when companies release a "Game of the Year edition" for the price of a normal game.

Exactly. Being first party is working out great for them, regardless of these questionable decisions. They're making plenty of money as a first party. People buy their products, even many of those who complain.

@moomoo: The reason I said that Nintendo would benefit from dropping out of hardware development is simply because they would be able to concentrate more on developing awesome games rather than juggling between their hardware and games. But I know Nintendo would rather drop out of developing games than cease making hardware, which I suppose is out of strange sense of stubbornness and pride. And I know how well Nintendo is doing right now. They won't even consider it unless their fortunes take a vast drop. I'm just saying it wouldn't be the end of the world if they did became a third party developer.

@SCAR392: Your statements are very biased. First of all, the PS3 is probably the most stable seventh generation console. I never had a problem with my PS3, while I had problems with both my Wii and Xbox 360. I know this from personal experience.

Also, the entire ''most Sega games after they became a 3rd party developer are crap'' is once again biased. Sonic Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog, and Sonic 06 are awful games (or mediocre in the case of Sonic Heroes) but that doesn't mean that the majority of their games after their drop from the hardware market are bad. Sega has more good games than bad games ever since they dropped out of the hardware market. If you hate them, then that's just your own personal bias against them or their games. But pretty much every 2D Sonic platformer, Sonic Colors, Sonic Generations, and the majority of their other franchises' games after the Dreamcast range from good to awesome. If you don't believe me, go look at Metacritic and you'll see that more of Sega's games since the Dreamcast died are good rather than bad.

And the issue of Sega was more of the fact that they veered in the wrong direction for 3D Sonic games more than anything else and concentrated too much on that one franchise. Hudson Soft didn't go to crap when they stop making hardware (TurboGrafx-16 was co-developed by Hudson in case you didn't know that). So the entire suggestion that a developer becomes crap as soon as they stop making hardware is just wrong.

Not to mention that there were good Sonic games on non-Sega hardware from the beginning (Sonic Advance is awesome and is the first Sonic game to be released after Sega dropped out of the hardware market). Now Sega is pretty much on a roll with games.

Of course I'm sad that Sega dropped out of the console market, but I care more about the games than the hardware obviously.

Sony and Microsoft's online services are still superior to Nintendo's in terms of quality. The only reason I don't consider Microsoft's service ''better'' than Nintendo's is because you have to pay for it. But no, Nintendo's online sucked back during the Wii's lifespan and even with the Wii U, it's still behind it's competitors. Even with accounts, Nintendo still has it locked to one Wii U. Not to mention that the 3DS is still not tied to an account. They haven't made everything account based, which was something Sony and Microsoft did ages ago.

Not sure where you think Sony and Microsoft messed up on online. They have been doing great with their service ever since they started. Having friend codes for every game and very primitive online isn't my idea of ''superior''. And out of curiosity, have you ever even owned a PS3 or Xbox 360? Probably not, otherwise you wouldn't be saying this stuff.

The truth of the matter is that Sony and Microsoft did an all out sprint, but they didn't ''trip'' like you claimed. Nintendo's ''jog'' was more of a ''crawl'' and they might be a few feet closer to their competitors than in the past, but they're still far behind.