Recently I've put together a home arcade complete with a nice front loader and plenty of emulators. It's funny, with thousands and thousands of games to choose from over multiple platforms the only games I play for more than 5 minutes are the one's developed by Nintendo.
See, I am an ex-Nintendo fan boy. I loved Nintendo for years, stuck with them through the Gamecube, but ultimately fell during the current generation. However, all this nostalgic revelry leads me to a terrible conclusion: Nintendo has fallen... hard, and I'm not sure if they'll ever be able to get up. There was a time that many of us can remember when Nintendo developed software set the standard for the rest of the videogame industry. Nintendo's current MO, however, seams content with pushing out rehashed titles onto their consumers, while spending the majority of their time developing hardware peripherals in lieu of actual creativity.
The root cause of this, in my opinion, is Nintendo’s inability to borrow ideas. I’ve been trying to pinpoint when Nintendo first took this unfortunate turn, and I think it began during the N64.
Nintendo refused to embrace CD tech and Sony successfully etched itself a corner of the market in part, by being able to include space hogging features such as full-motion video and large amounts of digital audio in their titles. This trend continued on in the next generation, when Nintendo failed to embrace DVD tech (it’s crazy that even in the current gen, you still can’t play DVDs on a Nintendo). The trend continues in the WII; Nintendo refuses to encourage any type of online community or deep online functionality on the system or in its software.
Now, the truth is that along the way Nintendo has made some great games (Pikmin, Wind Waker, Super Mario Galaxy), but while these games are great, they are not setting any trends. Also, the limited selection of Nintendo developed games is not enough to carry the platform and refusal to embrace other ideas and technologies has significantly hurt their relationships with other developers.
I wish the Wii failed, because its success is really just enabling Nintendo to make the same mistakes all over again.
Basically, I want to be won back, I want something more from Nintendo as a gamer… but let’s just accept this fact together: it will never happen. Goodnight Nintendo, and Good Luck.
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