Greg the White wrote:

Think back to when you were really young. if your parents gave you the opportunity to get Mortal Kombat (maybe GTA3 for our younger members), would you say "No, I want that game intended more for my age group." I bet I'd hear more small children on Call of Duty online than Smash Bros. E ratings theoretically leave it open to all ages, but as a kid, you would rather get what you couldn't have. Forbidden fruits is Marketing 101 with kids, which is why you'll see teenagers on commercials selling toys to little kids. They'll buy what the older generation would think is cool.

OK I see what your saying here. Makes sense I suppose so no need to retaliate.

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Because MS has one (which is still riding high off of fanboyism and online gaming, despite being bland and unfun) and Sony has some, but has the same problems that Nintendo does, and they will rehash the crap out of some of them. To be fair, Nintendo does tend to at least mix it up once in a while (Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, Paper Mario...), but when those prove successful, they'll just start milking again. Think about it: We didn't get a real Mario platformer for years after Super Mario World, then Mario 64 came out and blew everyone's mind. If you oversaturate an IP (or in Sonic's extreme case, oversaturate it with shitty games), you run the risk of losing customers with fatigue of same-old same-old, as we saw with Guitar Hero (predicting Call of Duty to follow) and EA's old corporate structure. Nintendo doesn't need new IP's, they just need to learn how to market and sell their current ones in a more beneficial way.

OK, but even if Nintendo is over-saturating the market with the same mascots, at least they're all worth playing. And I'm not just talking Mario, Zelda and Metroid. I'm also talking about Star Fox, Wave Race, Pilot Wings, Nintendogs, Pikmin, F-Zero, Wii Sports, Mario Party, Kirby, Smash Bros., Wario, Endless Ocean, Animal Crossing, Kid Icarus, Donkey Kong, etc...And then to some extent, even though it's the same mascot, you could count things like Mario Kart, Paper Mario, and any number of other Mario sports games and such as separate IPs. Microsoft, as you said, has /one/. And Sony has about a half dozen or so. Until the day when a Mario or Zelda game is released that is unplayable, I don't think Nintendo ever needs to make another IP and any that they do make is a bonus, not something that's been missing.

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Unique doesn't always sell, which is a damned shame. And really, they both have very large libraries, but the problem was that the Wii was really just treated like a fad by smaller developers who wanted to but in and charged $60 for cheap games that would have flopped on XBLA. On the other hand, the DS has a great library full of all types of games, with great new ones coming out regularly, with a lot of third party support. I don't see the DS being the problem in all of this. It sold, and as I understand, continues to sell very well, and I see people of all ages playing one everywhere I go. One thing I have to wonder about is the trade-in or re-sale estimates on Wiis. You'd see casual, previously non-gamers buying them in droves upon release, leading to its massive sales, but how many of them actually kept up with it and kept buying games? The DS doesn't really have that problem I guess, because people use it to keep themselves busy while traveling and such. In that case, buying a new game is like buying a new book, or new song for your MP3 player. It's a smart, profitable business model.

Unique or not, I don't agree that 3rd parties were releasing a lot of Wii games. Most of the big heavy hitters all came from the same companies; Ubisoft, Activision and EA. When others did give the Wii a shot, they came out with things like The Conduit. I never tried it, but I can't imagine it would convince anyone to run out and buy a Wii just to play it. Meanwhile Nintendo releases Metroid Prime 3 to amazing success. Some of the games on the Wii that I consider hidden gems are things like Elebits, Endless Ocean, Boom Blox, and the Rune Factory series. While none of these sold amazingly well, we at least know that some companies do care. As I said, I understand that any big budget game (or any that had a decent amount of thought or time put into it) was considered a risk for the company and system. But again, it was only ever a risk because the companies made it a risk, by not making the games which would eventually make the install base. It's a catch-22 and no one was willing to get themselves out of it.

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I see rage coming on at my previous comments. This is the problem with fanboyism, whether it's business or even something like politics. Nintendo has a money problem. Now whether or not it has to do with its hardware, software, or its demographics' woes during the downturn in the world markets is beyond me, but saying they've done everything "giganticly amazing," is just incorrect. They are having problems.

I'd love to continue this argument, but you don't provide any additional facts to back up your side. I'm not sure how the generation of the Wii/DS can be considered anything other than a gigantically amazing event which brought in boat loads of money for Nintendo to swim in. I mean people constantly made jokes about them printing money. I'm not saying what they did was good, business wise; I'm just going based on pure income and profit. We've been clearly told that the 3DS has sold more units than the DS in the same amount of time, and even if you throw in little things like the actual release dates per country and such, it still proves that Nintendo is right where they were seven years ago. Going from the Gamecube/GBA to the Wii/DS was of course going to bump up their stocks and give them their best looking quarter in nearly a decade. Furthermore, going from the Wii/DS generation to the 3DS/transitional to the Wii U, of course it's going to be a massive drop in stocks and profit. The drop was of course going to be the biggest in 30 years, because they had the most to lose in 30 years. I don't pretend to know how much profit they made on each 3DS that sold (however from my past knowledge of Nintendo, they refuse to take a loss on their systems like Sony and Microsoft have), before and after the price cut, but what we're seeing is the exact sales figures that the DS had in it's first year, so they are not taking a loss. They've just been selling fewer Wiis and making less of an overall profit compared to last year. I remember every year since the Wii first launched and how people would compare each month to the previous years matching month and when the Wii finally crested over the hill and began to sell less each year, people started to say it was the beginning of the end for Nintendo. But what they were selling was still double or even triple what Microsoft and Sony were selling at the same time.

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The best thing you could do as a customer or company is to encourage different avenues, or be open yourself. I went through a period about a year after I got my 360 where the games were getting horribly bland and samey. I wasn't buying anything, and almost considered selling it. Perhaps Microsoft saw that they weren't doing as well as they could, so they revamped Xbox Live, attracting great games to the Arcade, and tiny little popcorn (read: borderline plagiarism) games to the indie section. I especially like the Games on Demand section, which appeals to the impulse buyer in me. They typically release only mid-to-high quality games, something Nintendo can do to show off the best of the Wii's library. Older casual gamers and very young players have probably never played a Zelda or Mario game, and they should be introduced to them, but as older gamers we're in our own mindset of Nintendo's classic IP's being part of an everyday constant in the industry. People should be introduced these great games, new or old, but most of them don't really look into gaming news or history. It's just not going to happen if they're buried in Gamestop's bargain bin underneath Super Carnival Shooter 6 or something, if it could be worked into the online component.

I actually couldn't be more open to different avenues, personally. I've never felt any system has ever had too little to keep me interested and I've always owned every system just so that if such a time does ever occur, I can just enjoy the other systems instead.

And I'm not going to lie; I'm a Nintendo fanboy. However I also know when to back away and just say "Damn Nintendo, that's just down right shitty". I know the Wii was a gamble and will probably hurt them in the long run, seeing as how the casual crowd doesn't work the way they think, but I still enjoy the system to this day. I just picked up a few games for it recently in fact, so there's never dust collecting on my Wii or any other systems. I also don't intend to defend the Wii U just yet, but I would never write it off as a gimmick. I refuse to use the word gimmick, in fact, because all it's used for is a road block designed and created by the people that want to get stuck behind it. I despise the very thought of 3D; have since the day I was born. But I've also never given up on Nintendo when they release a new system, and when I saw the 3DS for the first time nearly two years ago, I knew it was brilliant. I'm not a blind fanboy, I'm just one who is concerned with the type of people that want to hate on Nintendo because they like to see the big man on campus fail. I should know, I cursed up a storm at Sony from day one of the original PS all the way up until nearly the end of the PS2 life cycle.[/quote]