Switch Close to Passing Sales of N64 (UPDATE: Now Passed!)

[The_Liquid_Laser]

RolStoppable said:

The_Liquid_Laser said:

1. Ocarina and Smash Bros were definitely important games.  It may be too early to tell with the Wii U, but it also has games like Splatoon and Mario Maker.  It's hardware is also important in leading to the Switch.  In these ways it is influential.  It was just not terribly successful.

2. Nintendo's losses were due to the 3DS.  Their first loss came before the Wii U was even released.  

On the other hand Nintendo had a perfect record before the N64 was released.  It got clobbered by Sony.  It's influence is how it influenced Nintendo away from first place for generations to come.

3. Ocarina of Time mostly influenced the Zelda series and little else.  Zelda was actually more influential when it was 2D, because it inspired a lot more direct competitors than Ocarina ever did.  Goldeneye is not nearly as important to FPS as Doom or Call of Duty. 

Mario 64 is more well known for it's negative influence on platformers than anything else.  The 8/16 bit eras are known for having tons of platformers.  All of these games were imitating 2D Mario.  How many 3D platformers are made nowadays?  Not many.  3D platformers are now a niche genre.  2D platformers used to be the primary genre.  That is the legacy of Mario 64.

Really, you left out the best game: Smash Bros.  It's funny what people think are the "influential games".

4. 4 controller ports is a legitamitely great contribution.  I'll give you that.  Because that lead to games like Smash Bros which is still growing in popularity today.

All of the other "contributions" you listed actually helped Sony more than Nintendo.  They solved 3D camera and combat for Playstation games.  They brought FPS to consoles so that it could be done better by Playstation games (and the third party games that are mostly on Playstation/XBox).  They solved a lot of technical problems that helped their competitors more than it helped Nintendo.  If the N64 influenced anything, then it influenced Nintendo's downfall.

On top of that, while N64 may have innovated in very technical ways, it actually had very few great games.  Donkey Kong, Duck Hunt, Super Mario Bros (1&3), The Legend of Zelda, Tetris, and Mario Kart are really some of the greatest and most influential games ever made.  That is the Nintendo from the arcade/8-bit-16-bit eras.  All of the games I just listed are more important than anything the N64 turned out.  And all of the games I listed made Nintendo a crap-ton of money.  They excited fans like the N64 games never could.

That is why I compare the N64 to the Wii U.  It sold better objectively, but Nintendo had a lot of momentum and positive good will going into the N64 era and they squandered it all away.  By the Wii U era, Nintendo had already pissed off lots and lots of people.  Both have a few good games, but neither is really successful as a whole.  But I feel the N64 did a lot more permanent damage.  Nintendo started focusing on games that most people don't want, and it had just kept doing this sort of thing for several generations now.

Your whole post is a crazy defense of the Wii U. You've taken it to a new level.

1. Splatoon and Super Mario Maker aren't influential games. You won't be seeing other companies make games like those.

All the Wii U's hardware showed was how not to do it. Using your logic, the Virtual Boy is one of the most influential consoles of all times. That's not how it works.

2. The Wii U, along with the Virtual Boy, are the only Nintendo consoles that were not profitable over their lifetime. While the 3DS accounted for losses at first, it at least made it all back. On the other hand, the Wii U was sold at a loss from the start and Nintendo could only explain the continued bleeding to investors by pointing to the lack of massproduction as the culprit for the absence of reductions to the manufacturing costs. There's a reason why the Wii U never got a second price cut.

3. You deny Ocarina of Time's importance in your third response of the quote stack, but acknowledge its importance in the fourth response by twisting it into something negative. You are applying massive double standards by saying that Wii U games still have to be given time to prove their influence whereas the influence of Nintendo 64 games was already omnipresent during the generation they released in.

4. If the Nintendo 64 was so bad in your eyes, then how come that you are championing the Wii U in comparison where everything was worse? Nintendo's momentum going into the Wii U era was better than their momentum going into the N64 era. Wii U is Nintendo's worst generation and it came right after Nintendo's most successful generation.

It's not that I think the Wii U is great.  It's that I put the Wii U and N64 in the same category.  Other posters in this thread see the N64 as great and the Wii U as a total flop.  I see them as more or less the same.  Both represent Nintendo in mediocre fail-ish type of mode.  Neither is a blunder like the Virtual Boy.  Neither is really great either. 

When you look at the style of games that Nintendo has made on their home consoles you can basically lump them into 3 categories:

NES/SNES style (i.e. 2D)

N64/Gamecube/Wii U style (i.e. 3D with analogue stick)

Wii style (i.e. 3D with motion controls)


When you look at these types of games, there is only one style where Nintendo's business consistently does poorly: 3D with analogue stick.  The N64 set Nintendo on this path.  These type of games on the N64 are largely what you see on the Gamecube and Wii U as well.  I do see N64 as influential to Nintendo, but the influence was all bad.  It set them on the path to repeated failure.  Sony can consistently be successful making 3D-analogue stick type of consoles.  This has not been a good path for Nintendo and it started with the N64.