Topic: Nintendo's worst mistakes.

Nintendo is a very successful business, and gaming wouldn't be the same without them. Unfortunately, they've had their share of missteps.

What do you consider the worst decisions Nintendo have ever made? My pick would be sticking with cartridges for the N64, causing them to lose third party support.

The reason I say sticking with cartridges is the worst mistake Nintendo made and not breaking the SNES CD add-on deal with Sony is because if Nintendo had chosen to use CDs for the N64, they likely would have kept more third parties and beaten the Playstation, or at least not have lost as badly.

Objectively, Virtual Boy. Disaster, sold nothing, lead to Gunpei Yokoi leaving who would die in an accident a year later. The absolute worst situation.

Most of their decisions with Wii U are also high up there. In hindsight Nintendo was probably never gonna reach even close to the heights of the Wii with it, but they also made the successor to their casual gaming console (in the era of smartphones) marketed somewhat heavily with AAA games that you can get on consoles everyone had by that point, and NSMB which you can also get on your Wii or 3DS. And then fundamentally changed the main controller to a touch screen and refused to use it for half of their games. And then forgot to tell people its a new console.

I can't care that much about N64's failings, because Sega was gonna fall apart regardless and Nintendo without any competition again probably would've sucked for everyone(unless another company would've been the Sony in this situation anyway).

Also Mario Pinball Land. **** that game.

8 GB for Wii U Basic and 32 GB for Premium was the biggest mistake ever.

Mini DVD for Gamecube was also the biggest mistake.

Basically 2010-2016

The entire concept and naming behind the Wii U

@CastletonSnob Nintendo kept their deal with Sony there would have been no Playstation to beat. The Playstation came about because Nintendo screwed Sony over and embarrassed them.

Nintendo not acquiring Rare and instead letting Microsoft acquire them.

@Grumblevolcano That's the other way round isn't? You can argue that Nintendo sold them at the very best time as they made a lot money off the sale for a studio that had already lost a lot of key talent plus it's not like they have produced anything close to rival the glory days since those staff members left/the sale took place.

Virtual Boy - Too ambitious and ahead of its time, also was apparently marketed as just a toy so it's no surprise it didn't sell as well as Nintendo wanted.

Wii U - No explanation needed here

N64 using cartridges - Everyone was moving to CDs and Nintendo was the only company that was stubborn enough to stay behind the times yet again. This meant so optimizing games for the N64 was a pain for most 3rd parties and were almost absent except for a handful for the N64. There could've been so many more 3rd party games on it.

Nintendo ditching Playstation and indirectly creating their best competitor ever. All the playstation console sales blow Nintendo's out of the water except for a few. It's impressive how the only PS console to sell less than 100mil units was the PS3.

Making the 3DS so expensive at launch ($250). This killed sales and its momentum in the early days of the handheld, it didn't help that it had a weak library in the first year. Luckily Nintendo learned from this mistake by lowering the price significantly enough to bring new consumers and bring their old ones back with the ambassadors program so they didn't feel ripped off for buying a 3ds at launch.

I could list more mistakes, even with the Switch since it also has a ton of issues but they wouldn't be worth listing as it's a major success and it would just boil down to gripes with the system along with others.
Other things I could mention are the PR decisions Nintendo has made over the years along with the anti consumer decisions they continue to practice. But hey they're at the pinnacle of success right now, if the mistake isn't hurting them it isn't worth mentioning.

I don't think cartridges or the Wii U were as big a mistakes as some where making out. In my view they were reasonable gambles that didn't pay of. There were merits to the decisions they made they just misread the market. With the Wii U I think local streaming of games to make a "high end portable" was ahead of its time. Obviously didn't pay off. And the N64 gambled on load times and raw horsepower over mass storage, if you go back to that era the N64 games hold up better than their competition. But people were sold on pre-rendered cut-scenes and the novelty of CDs (first time I saw a PS1 I thought games on discs was something from the future)

Honestly, I'm a bit surprised I'm saying this, but I agree with @Anti-Matter on this one. I think the mini-DVD on the Gamecube was the worst mistake. I see absolutely no reason why that decision was made. It did nothing but artificially limit the size of games for no reason other than a target form factor. It also meant they entirely missed the main appeal of the PS2, that it was also a DVD player. Which is something that REALLY mattered for that console generation. I honestly can't see any positive or even theoretical positive that came out of that decision

The thing with Rare is that a lot of their problems were down to how Microsoft managed the studio after the takeover. A lot of the staff left precisely because they felt they were being micromanaged by people with little experience in the games industry and with unrealistic expectations, as well as being directed towards dead end projects like Kinect, which was in stark contrast to the degree of autonomy that Nintendo had given them.

Had they continued to be able to initiate a lot of their own projects things might have gone much more smoothly, and that's apparently how they turned the corner of late. Similar things happened to most of the studios Microsoft picked up around that time too, where Nintendo's acquisitions of Retro Studios and Monolith Soft around that time produced results that speak for themselves.

In contrast, I don't think letting the PlayStation deal fall through was necessarily a bad move. It's worth remembering that the original machine was going to be a rather more basic 2D-focused console like the Sega CD or Philips CDi (the one Nintendo eventually backed, albeit half-heartedly) and those generally weren't so good. It was only Nintendo pulling out of the project, setting Sony back a couple of extra years, that allowed them to develop it as the 3D powerhouse we know and love. Ultimately, both parties could chalk it up as something of a win; life isn't just a succession of zero-sum games, after all.

Also, this had nothing to do with the N64 being a cartridge based machine. That was mostly for other reasons, such as Nintendo being concerned about piracy, reliability and faster load times. They certainly had access to CD technology, as can be seen on the 64DD prototypes prior to launch but just backed the wrong horse.

I'd think that its market performance relative to the PlayStation was more down to other factors, such as the two year head start that machine enjoyed, poor developer relations and a steep learning curve and limited tools for the ones who took it on. It's not like going with optical media helped the GameCube much either.

Making online play on Switch paid, going the same route Sony did, and Microsoft started. Saddens me really, especially when online play was free on Wii U, 3DS, Wii, and DS. Just buy your game, and play online. No annual subscription fees for basic online multiplayer, the way it should be.

A mistake I really dislike being someone who's primarily played Nintendo consoles and PC games for years. Never had to pay for online play until they did it for Switch.

Not releasing GameCube games on Switch

A lot of the suggestons are boring takes so how about Body Harvest.

Whilst the game was pretty cool for the time it's nothing special. However, it taught the then called DMA the skills how to create GTA3 later on but with the experience of micromanaging, dropping support etc the relationship between the two soured meaning that this mega must play blockbuster which was a massive reason to own a PS2 wasn't gonna get released on Nintendo consoles for 21 years later.

Also long before Microsoft bought Minecraft it was offered to Nintendo but they didn't get it so they passed on it despite becoming the best selling game of all time.

@Link-Hero Like in the vain of a GameCube app, much like the N64 etc.
Reggie said we would get GameCube games on Wii U, and that never happened.

The lack of clear marketing for the Wii U which lead to low sales and confusion.

Nintendo wasn't in a great place at the time, but it irks me that they didn't purchase Atlus back in 2013 when they were up for sale. Also, the N64 DD, wasn't that great either.

Virtual Boy and the marketing (not the system itself or its games) of the WiiU. Everything else I can see why they thought it was a good idea at the time. Business like hindsight is 20/20. It’s easy to say what they should have done after the fact but they have financial analysts, marketing specialists and the like that try to anticipate how the consumer market, supply chains, law makers, partners and rivals will react and because all of that includes the human element and resources, it doesn’t always go the way you hope. It’s not like companies want to lose money or waste billable hours.

For instance with the WiiU, anybody that watched E3 that year knew what it was and that, no it wasn’t an add on for the Wii. But Marketing didn’t convey that after the fact (honestly imo because they assumed customers were smarter than they are) and since the name wasn’t something iterative like Wii2 (granted they have NEVER done that so I am not even mad at the WiiU name because it does make sense in a Japanese marketing sort of way) and people are idiots or poorly informed, marketing would make or break the system. Which it did. Game libraries don’t sell systems, they keep systems fondly remembered. What sells systems is convincing people that they HAVE to have a product and all of their friends have this product and it is cool/sexy to have this product in the eyes of others (which may just be other people like them). Just like every other product on earth.

Virtual Boy however was just a mistake all around. I can’t defend/understand it aside from Nintendo trying to see if the VR space was viable back then.

I didn’t like the mini discs on the gamecube but that system got reasonable support after the N64 exodus of third parties.

Not bringing the social features from the 3DS to Switch was a mistake in my eyes. I used to really enjoy walking around the airport or the hotel collecting StreetPasses.

@Link-Hero Not like that, this was when Minecraft was looking for a publisher so they would have had it from the ground up like Pokemon.