RolStoppable said:
I can't say for sure what is the best thing for NIntendo to do, but I know what is the wrong thing to do. Like trying to be liked by everyone who in the current direction Nintendo is taking are third parties and the gaming media. What little they gain is more than offset by what they are going to lose and Nintendo's goal should be growth, not decline. If Nintendo were flawless, then they wouldn't have put out three consoles in a row that sold less than their respective predecessor. There's enough of a history to study what went wrong and it's in Nintendo's best interest to not make the same mistakes again. |
It's a two-track thing. We can't underestimate the fact that Sony swooped in and started a new era of third party dominance as undermining the N64, but also that Nintendo got trapped in parallel thinking with the rest of the industry, or at least bound enough to parallel thinking that they couldn't really spread their wings and do what they needed to do.
While some advocate the position that it was the decline in quality of NIntendo's studios that produced N64 and GameCube sales, and the rebound that produced Wii sales, there is merit to courting third parties, certainly. Equally there is merit to courting the media in the short term, to play them as the hype machine they are. Pandering to the media is quite impossible in Nintendo's case without betraying their true values utterly, but they can string them along and get some positive buzz going.
The ground has shifted under the third parties, and once again they need the hardware makers more than the hardware makers need them, so long as hardware makers are willing to meet them halfway on tech specs. Nintendo can meet those tech specs handily enough now, and thus can lock third party parity
The question is if Nintendo can retain their Wii-level first-party dominance, and they can secure strongholds across the market.
Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.
