ironmanDX said:
I don't see why we can't take anything from it. After all, they're targeting a lot of the same people. People who play games on dedicated gaming systems.
While Nintendo doesn't conform to much of what the rest of the industry is doing, it's still quite telling that their most successful home console is one that just happened to capture lightning in a bottle despite being in the business for the longest of time. When 3rd parties shifted to Sony after the first PlayStation.... Well... Yeah. |
Well you were talking about software - "Some 80% of sales on the Xbox and PlayStation brands are 3rd party titles. Out of the top 10 best-selling games, only 1 game is an exclusive on each console last time I checked.", in which case your example is literally not relevant to Nintendo in the slightest, because pretty much every Nintendo console had Nintendo games selling the best - even the ones that got good third party.
I will agree to some extent with your furthered explanation, although it's not really due to a loss of the power of exclusives. I think Wii sold a lot because it had hardware that was appealing to a mass audience due to it's uniqueness, in the same way the Switch does currently. Of course the Wii's lasting appeal was (or most likely will be) much shorter than the Switch's, but the biggest problem is that Nintendo consoles that weren't handhelds were offering substandard hardware to play games with. It's not so much that they were lacking in power (the N64 and Gamecube clearly weren't), but there were a lot of caveats that weren't outweighed by a different type of play. Of course the Switch is a handheld, and Nintendo handhelds always get more third party support - but I doubt the third party that the Switch is getting is affecting the sales as much as the exclusives are (and the third party games that sell Nintendo handhelds tend to be heavily Japanese oriented anyways).
I think the winning ticket for Nintendo is exclusives and unique catches - one can not function without the other, which is why I don't ultimately agree that exclusives have lost their power on Nintendo consoles. Without great games, Switch would sell, but it wouldn't be selling nearly as great as it is.
