This is a thread to express and discuss the culture (environment) of videogames through each generation. While I am interested in reading from Nintendo fans like myself, I really am interested in the perspectives from other fans too. Here is my experience with last and current-gen.

Vert1 wrote:

Consoles have become boring. The magic of the console wars is over. We've seen most of the game franchises transformation into 3D. I think I've also run out of capacity for those graphical wows where you are jolted by extreme improvement of visuals (like my leap from N64's FPS Goldeneye to XBOX Halo and GC Metroid Prime) So there really isn't anything that new and exciting to pull off that can captivate people this upcoming gen from my cynical perspective.

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Well the console wars contributed to the spirit of oneupsmanship amongst companies. This is something Nintendo has distanced itself from. I disagree with the way you’ve portrayed shock value of game aesthetic prowess is something cheap as if it’s an attention getting device done solely out of a desperation like in movies (ala goreporn or extremely crude poop, nudity or other depravity in comedies).

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To expand more on the last paragraph let me ramble: The console wars last gen consisted of 3 groups: diehard Nintendo fans, new kids on the block Xbox fans (also composed of Dreamcast fans), and the mainstream crowd favorite Sony fans. (Dreamcast is dead.) This console war was the war to end all wars. I will recap from a Nintendo perspective. Nintendo and Microsoft had to fight for scraps. These were serious times. Nintendo was no longer cool from its N64 FPS dominant days in the USA. Nintendo and Microsoft would fight for scraps of exclusives to gain position from a closely contested 2nd place with their consoles. Xbox had Ninja Gaiden, Sega games, and enhanced ports. Nintendo had the infamous Capcom 5. Then something big went down. Nintendo sold Rare. There was real excitement when Microsoft dropped the 16-player LAN Halo which was something most console gamers had never imagined. Microsoft's machine was defined by this game. People were talking about making "Halo-killers". Nintendo's supposed counter killer app on the FPS market was Metroid Prime. Metroid in 3D was a new thing. Metroid in 3D as a FPS was shocking. It turned out ahmazing and people were blown away by how detailed the world was. Immersiveness to the max. This blown away impact would never have occurred had the game been a sidescroller. Nintendo was battling a kiddy image. Some companies started discriminating right from the onset of Cube's launch. Companies lauded the third parties and mature games can't sell on a Nintendo system ideology. This lead many debates over the kiddiness or maturity of games. The biggest debates were over the cell-shading in TLOZ: Wind Waker. There also was the "bombshell" that was Super Mario Sunshine's clean is better than dirty commercial. Nintendo made Super Mario Sunshine into a hardcore platformer. Nintendo made Metroid Prime into a "mature" FPS game. Nintendo had Silicon Knights make the horror game masterpiece Eternal Darkness. Nintendo let Sega -- brief pause to retell that this was shocking to have both Nintendo and Sega names appear for the first time on a game screen together -- hardcoritize F-Zero into a brutal racing game (best racing game ever) that took the franchise to its limits. They published M-rated Geist. Nintendo had garnered exclusive Resident Evil support. And don't forget how Resident Evil 4 was to REVOLUTIONIZE survival horror. None of this deterred the constant kiddie attacks. You had people bitch about scores of Nintendo games in EGM where one reviewer would slight a game by .5 to take away a Platinum award. You had GamePro low score Paper Mario: TTYD for being "kiddie". You had EGM start rumors that Nintendo was going 3rd party. EGM was steadfast with negative coverage of Nintendo's console (even going so far as to mention in a review how when Resident Evil 4 launched in 2005 that it "couldn't save a dead console"). (Note: system seller TLOZ: Twilight Princess was still scheduled for Cube at the time. Super Mario Strikers which sold a million+ copies also had not been released at the time). All this took a toll on Nintendo business of getting games and Nintendo fans of defending the company. Nobody knew what Wii was. Nintendo fans threw fits over the name and the controller. People were scared that this would end Nintendo for good. ("Wii? You named the console Wii?" and the "looks like a dildo" comments about the controller.) It didn't. After all of that there is no real animosity any longer. Doomsayers of Nintendo ate crow. Nintendo sold their soul for sales with the dumbed down accessibility Wii console. Microsoft and Sony now share an almost identical library catalogue for the most part since Sony lost majority of its exclusives. You can't really bitch about exclusives when all the big name third party games like Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, Devil May Cry, etc are multi-platform. As for Nintendo: As I stated above Nintendo no longer has anything of interest on Wii. No mature exclusives like Eternal Darkness and Resident Evil 4. No mindblowing departures (Rare) and co-ops (Sega). No new kickass Mario sports game (Super Mario Strikers). No increase of challenge for the hardcore with their games (like Sunshine, F-Zero GX, Super Smash Bros. Melee). No offbeat awesomeness like Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat or Cubivore. No super controversial decisions (FPS Metroid and Toonshading Zelda). No superhyped projects (some mystery game titled Project Zero -- not the Fatal Frame game now. The MEGATON announcement). No big support from one third party support with a cool sounding name like the Capcom 5. No games that blow you away visually by the intense contrast in graphics from the last gen "graphical wows'"(like Metroid Prime, Resident Evil 4). Now it's the rare argument over little things like screen tearing and steady fps on ports that are left for fanboys to argue over. Magazines with score of games are no longer so sensational as people turn to the internet community and magazine companies go out of business. People will bring up how Nintendo is gonna go fail again or whatever every now and then as of late, but nobody really gives a damn anymore since we can all post "it prints money" images.

my comments originally made here