Nintendo is in trouble

February 28, 2013 by Dan Hoyt

I hate to say it, but Nintendo is in trouble. I’m saying this as a fan of Nintendo so it’s even harder for me to admit. There is plenty of logical reason’s why I could argue that they need to work on some stuff, but I would like to tell you the worst sign that they may have a serious problem on the way.

Last fall my younger brother asked for an Xbox 360 for Christmas. My brother, who has owned every Nintendo system ever, wanted an Xbox 360 instead of the new Wii U. My brother would rather own an eight-year-old console that originally launched in 2005 than the new Wii U that was released in 2012. Think about that.

He’s actually stuck by the Wii until now. He bought one fairly early on in its cycle and has quite a collection of games. Unfortunately, after years of jealously watching all the other super fun games being released on the PS3 and Xbox 360, he looked at the roster for the Wii U and said, “no more.” Most of what he saw was more of the same and he has had his fill of Nintendo.

“I feel like I’ve missed so many games over the past few years,” he said. “I used to really like playing games and watching shows like X-Play, but now it’s actually kind of sad when I see those shows and there are no games I could get.”

I think the final straw may have been last year when he played From Dust at my house. I told him the game cost around $15 and I could tell there was a tiny moment of despair as he realized this same game would probably have cost much more than that on his Wii and would have required a disc. Showing him how I could download all these excellent games and keep them on my hard drive had to be a little annoying.

“One of the things I like about going to your house is being able to play video games,” he said. “Isn’t that just ridiculous? I have a Wii and I go to your house because you have real video games. Like when I play Call of Duty on the Wii and then play it on your Xbox it feels like a cheap knock-off or something like that.”

He joked about how it would be nice to just shoot people in one of his games. I bought him Mad World for his birthday when it was first released and while he admits that it was good, it would’ve been nice if he felt like there were more games for adults for him to choose from. Creative platformers has kind of been his staple for a while and when Nintendo launched with a Rayman title he knew where this was going.

Oh yeah, and my Xbox 360 has the ESPN app for no reason other than it just does. He’s clearly very angry that his Wii doesn’t even play DVDs.

“I heard the Wii U will play DVDs, which is just fucking stupid because the Wii could actually play DVDs if Nintendo would just allow us to. It has the player, but because Nintendo never put some kind of software on it, my Wii can’t play stupid DVDs. So, I have a Wii and a DVD player hooked up to my TV. How much sense does that make?”

He owns an Ipad, so a Nintendo version of a tablet doesn’t impress him either. Nintendo talks about maybe competing as the second console that gamers would have in their home, but that’s what a tablet is for. My tablet and my brother’s tablet both play a few really good games like Sid Meier’s Pirates!, so why would we need two consoles, a tablet and a PC?

Remake this game!

I’m sure Nintendo is going to sell a ton of Wii Us for the next few months. People will buy them, but what is going to happen when Sony and Microsoft roll out their next system? Sony released some information this past week about their new PS4 and it looks like they are going to make it much easier for developers to work with them. I’m sure Microsoft is going to do the same. Nintendo is going to be left, once again, making their own first-party games and developers are going to have even more incentive to flock to the PC, Xbox 360 and PS4. If Nintendo released one really unique game for the Wii U, (like Pokemon Snap utilizing the Wii U tablet!) I wouldn’t be so pessimistic, but I’m incredibly underwhelmed and so are most of the people I talk to.

Deep down I want Nintendo to keep amazing us with their games, but if they can’t get me and my brother excited enough about their new console to consider buying it, then they are in serious trouble. I have a Legend of Zelda themed Xbox Live gamertag and I’m not even interested in the Wii U! My brother represented the last bastion of my friends who was holding out on the potential that Nintendo has always had and now that he’s gone, who is left and who is going to be around next year when Nintendo has to compete with the next console cycle?

http://thebestgamesiteever.com/2013/02/nintendo-is-in-trouble/

It's sad but not surprising

The SNES was the first system I bought using my grand mothers Christmas gift money

Nintendo has been slowly dieing of a painful death for more than a decade

Thanks to the major successes and impact that Xbox and PlayStation

have had in North America & Europe

It's time to pull the plug on the life support that is hardware Nintendo

Rethink your future and pursue a software only business model

Why did you just copy and paste the entire article?

@mariachimacabre said:

Really, why does ShinjiEx do any of the things that he does?

To his credit, he also added a punctuation-less stream of consciousness summary of his thoughts after the article, with bizarre use of line breaks. Maybe it's poetry? Who can say.

I'll wait for the movie.

So this guy thinks nintendo is in trouble because his younger brother doesn't want to own a Wii U and instead get an Xbox 360? Yeah once again they could be screwing up with third parties but as long as Nintendo keeps release some first party goodness then everything will be fine.

In the wide scope of things you can boil Nintendo's problems down to a single issue: an outright refusal to innovate. I've always considered video game years much like 'dog years' (don't worry, I am going somewhere with this...), for example the recent generation is eight years old, or in 'dog years' it's 56, time to retire. It's similar for previous generations. The same goes for games, most series are either killed off or completely redone after a similar time period. Now take Nintendo's primary first party games; Mario, Zelda, Metroid, etc., they've been around for very near to 30 years, or by my demented logic, approximately 240 years. Mario in particular is one that gets under my skin. They still sell the games for full retail price despite with the exception of graphical updates, they are practically mechanical copies of their predecessors. Nintendo's been beating a dead horse for so long that it's no longer even a bloody pulp, it has become a fine powder of bone dust.

Then there's their systems. Sure the Wii sold well as a casual platform and it was great for the demographics that the other consoles didn't cater to. Namely children and people who were old enough to have missed the console gaming explosion of the 80's. I also have to respect it just for the colossal amount destruction that those Wiimotes have caused. However, out came the Wii U, a gimmicky, still technologically inferior system with a controller that has to be charged every half hour, not to mention the size and weight of that over sized Game Gear. I still have yet to see something that that controller can do that couldn't have been done on screen. So they market the Wii to one demographic and then alienate that same demographic with their next system.

You see I grew up with Nintendo. I had the NES, the SNES, and an N64 and enjoyed all of those quite a lot. Now with the direction that they're heading they're going to go the way of Sega and end up as a third party dev, and judging by their current line up, will probably fail at that as well, and that makes me just a little bit sad.

Shinji... you're drunk. :|

Even if the Wii U really does bomb, nintendo can drop it and still will be fine. They can be successful being 3DS only. Monster Hunter has chosen them. The software only future people think Nintendo has is very far away still.

I would say Nintendo could do find in Japan with hardware cause Xbox does not do well in that country

But Sony is still the factor that does well in Japan and around the world

Nintendo will never have "a stake" in North America or Europe ever again

quote Jericho

Is he related to Chris Jericho?

Who the fuck is Dan Hoyt and why should we care what he has to say about Nintendo?

Other than WiiU sales (which need to be improved somehow) I don't think they are in too much trouble.

Nintendo? More like...

...

...

I got nothin'

When you take a look at the wider market where small teams are making good money on other mobile platforms where the DS is prohibitively expensive then you see why they aren't in a good place either.

I love my 3DS XL and I think that'll hold em up nicely.
Nintendo's coming out with some awesome games on that platform and you might not be seeing the big picture.
I don't care for it, but Monster Hunter's coming out, and Japanese people:
1) Love portable consoles
2) Love Nintendo
3) Frickin love Monster Hunter

And this is coming from someone who is never gonna buy a Wii U.
I still love Nintendo however. NES, SNES, (kinda N64), & (some games for Wii). They will always have space in my heart.

"My brother would rather own an eight-year-old console that originally launched in 2005 than the new Wii U that was released in 2012"

The PlayStation 3 is a failure because when it came out I bought a PlayStation 2 instead.

I like to imagine everything he writes is attempts at beat poetry.

I don't think people who want to play Call of Duty have ever been Nintendo's target audience. And if they have a PC why can't he shoot people on that instead? Besides isn't the 3DS doing alright? And...

if they can’t get me and my brother excited enough about their new console to consider buying it, then they are in serious trouble

Damn, I guess you're right. Nintendo's fucked.

I thought you were going to say they were in trouble because they don't have Halo 5, just like you said about the PS4 being in trouble

Wait....you think Nintendo's problem is it's refusal to innovate?

Nintendo is probably the most innovative of the big 3 console manufacturers. They've consistently tried to separate themselves from MS and Sony by simply not competing on the same level, not even catering to the same audience. Making glasses-free 3D handhelds or having a motion controller as the primary control interface for their console or making your controller a giant gamepad/tablet hybrid. That doesn't strike you as innovative?

Nintendo doesn't have a problem with innovation at least not when it comes to hardware, their problem is more the execution of a lot of these weird, sometimes grand ideas. They need people at the company who can reign in some of these concepts and ground them in some market reality. Nintendo's refusal to look at their competition and take notes is hurting them as MS and Sony continue to improve upon their already attractive infrastructures while Nintendo plays catch-up. Meanwhile the mainstream audience they attracted during the last cycle is slowly beginning to realize that iPads and Tablet and Phones offer similar kinds of experiences in a more attractive, more useful package.

Nintendo really needs to take a hard look at where they want to be in the next 5 years. Is being the 'casual console' a tenable position going forward.

Say this again in October and you'll be laughed off the forums.

Even if the Wii U flops, the 3DS will be fine.

Unless you have something new or meaningful to contribute, simply copying and pasting an article into a new thread is kinda spammy. As such what we have here is a random article with from a site nobody has ever heard of by a writer that nobody knows. You basically just posted someone else's poor attempt at trolling. There are no legitimate sources or facts to back up these opinions. This whole thing is dumb.

There's a reason that nobody knows who this guy is. Think about that.