Topic: Rick Aristotle: "Nintendo Will Never Be Great Again"

Yeah absolutely. Thinking completely rationally if Nintendo's 3DS and Wii U businesses fell through, the company has such a massive product portfolio of other stuff behind it to keep it going.

Oh wait.

Nintendo IS great...

Sorry, minor typo there. What was supposed to go there was carrying over the DS* concept, so I still pretty much stand by what I said with that exception. But you can't exactly say that Nintendo was doing any better until the Wii and DS. I'll give them credit for the N64 with 3d modeling; It was decent start in its earliest stages for what we have now, but let's not forget about Virtual Boy or GameCube. Virtual Boy flopped, and GameCube wasn't all that exception either way. Even GameBoy had some growing to do; the original's LCD screen wasn't anywhere near clarity vs GameGear or Atari Lynx at the time, no brightness, Pocket was at least sharper; Color again had no no backlight, though I do give it a huge plus when you've got a nice place to sit in the sun because the light reflection brings out the colors flawlessly. Advance was a decent new model, and SP's problem was that gamma light or whatever that whitish glow was coming off the screen which made it hard to see some things clearly.

Ah now I agree with you. Out of all of Nintendo's handhelds, the Game Boy Color displayed colors the best. Seeing that screen in a bright room just made the colors pop. They were so crisp. The GBA had some washed-out colors, and this was only made worse with the front-lit GBA SP.

Komicturtle92: Nintendo will always be great.

Yeah, they can't handle anything going wrong with the Wii U and 3DS at all. They must be huge successes because their profits were down to $1billion US last year. How will they survive? Surely companies like Sony who lost $2billion US last year are in a much better position to ride out the storm.

Seriously though, Sega "failed" and they still exist as a company. Not only that but Sega had MULTIPLE console failures before they went out of the business. And even then Nintendo is a world class games developer so even if they do fail hard in the console race they have something decent to fall back on. Unless the gaming industry as a whole fails.......

I think I have heard that name before....
Oh no, wait, it was Astley, not Aristotle.

Mario, Zelda, Star Fox, Metroid, etc., all of which sell millions of games.

If the Wii U wasn't happening and Nintendo was simply going to retire from the console race...... What if they then announced a new cross-platform HD Zelda for 360 and PS3? Or a brand new Mario or Metroid? What if they went the mobile route also and made a fully fledged Pokemon for Android/Apple?

I have a feeling that if Nintendo's hardware dreams fell apart they'd be in a much better position than Sega.

Fixed.

As for WaltzElf, Nintendo has a huge portfolio of characters and franchises that can keep them afloat if their hardware business ever fails. People seem to forget that Nintendo is not just a hardware company, they are also a software company.

Here's a similar analogy: Microsoft has recently (in the past 10 years) invested in hardware devices like the Xbox and Zune, but they are primarily a software company. If the Xbox division fails, Microsoft has their Windows OS and other software to fall back on.

I stopped caring about the business side of things.

I only care for the software nowadays.

I think some people should do the same.

I agree. I don't get why the video game industry is so scrutinized when it comes to business decisions and sales numbers.

What if people did this with other products?

"I'm not going to buy that Sony TV. Samsung has more marketshare."
"I want to get an LG phone, but all my friends have Nokia."
"I want to get this Ford car, but the market data says Toyota has a bigger chunk of the market... so I'll just buy from them."

Gets kind of ridiculous, doesn't it?

If you ask me, it's good to know which console is most likely to get the most support, which does mean following the business side of things.

The marketshare is important but only because products with bigger markets tend to attract more support. If you were one of the people who got a Dreamcast you would have been pretty pissed off that it failed and lost software support. As potential Wii U owners it would be great if the best games were appearing on that platform well into the future.

The "my friends have a" thing is VERY important with gaming machines because you want to be able to play games with them. Why would you get a PSVita if all your friends had a 3DS and spent all their time playing Mario Kart and Starfox? Why would you get a 3DS if all your friends had a PSVita and played Ridge Racer and Resistance?

"I want to get this Ford car, but the market data says Toyota has a bigger chunk of the market... so I'll just buy from them."
Yes... maybe not Ford/Toyota so much but people say that. If you buy a Toyota and it breaks down you can be sure that the service center will have the right part. If you got a Kia or something you might have to wait for months and the mechanics won't know how to deal with it as well as they would with a Toyota.

lolz.

And who said Nintendo WASN'T great already? It kinda takes not being great for a time to "become great again."

But my other 2 examples, of the TV and cell phone manufacturers... What do you say to that?

Do people base their TV or phone purchases on which brand is the most popular? I have a Samsung laptop. I didn't go out and think: "Dell and HP sell the most laptops, so I'll just buy their products cause that's what everyone else is doing." I have a cheap little Sanyo phone. I bought it cause it was affordable.

Another example: I bought a Wii cause I like the games that Nintendo makes. I could have gotten a PS3, but at the time the price was too expensive, and I'm not a big fan of the majority of games on that system. I could have followed the mainstream market and said "Well, online gaming sure is popular, and I won't get much of that on the Wii."

I based my purchases on what I wanted, not on what's popular. It's about personal preference. I don't care about what's trendy or mainstream.

The Phone and TV arguments are the same as the Car arguments. The only reason it's less of an issue is because people tend not to bother sending them in for repairs. For a really big TV they still want the peace of mind that if they get a dud that the company doesn't go under leaving them hanging... but that's about it.

But a console isn't like a TV or Phone. It's got software and hardware that ONLY works with it and not the other consoles. For the most part they can ONLY work with local or online multiplayer within the brands. In your TV example that would be like Sony TVs only working with Sony Blu-Ray player and Sony branded Blu-Ray disks. Or if your Nokia Phone could only call other Nokia phones and your friend all had Nokias. So it's not really the same.

I'm a business journalist. So sue me.

Incidently the way a company conducts its business is 100 per cent related to the quality of the stuff it makes.

I think some people should remember that the games industry isn't a hobby for the people that make games.

But it used to be a hobby. People used to make games for fun, because it's a creative outlet. And for the hundreds (thousands?) of small indie developers out there, it still is a hobby.

Game design can be a hobby, just like drawing, writing, photography, singing, etc. It's simply another form of creativity.

... sometimes I wonder whether you're just a massive troll, or you actually believe this tripe.

The people who are working at Nintendo are not doing it because it's their hobby. Everyone, except apparently you, would have realised I wasn't talking about the teenage kid in his room programming RPG Maker games when I made that comment.