Even though I don't like the direction Nintendo has been going in (havn't since the Wii), what the crap is going on in this thread?

Nintendogs isn't selling? Are you high? I think over half of all 3DS sales have come with a Nintendogs sale. Sure the 3DS is selling a bit under what Nintendo originally projected, but thats easy to figure. Price, economy, lack of 3D actually adding much to the gaming experience as apposed to what motion controls added. Still, the 3DS is going to be a success, probably still a larger success than the NGP.

We do not know enough about project cafe to make any predictions on whether it furthers Nintendos departure in traditional gaming or whether its an attempt to bring everything back together again.

I tell you what, but what disappoints me the most about the last zelda _was_ the sword fighting with the remote. What I liked about zelda was the RPG elements (fantasy setting, collecting gear, dungeons, etc) combined with the puzzle aspect. Twighlight Princess ruined it for me, not to mention that the motion controls for TP also sucked. I have a feeling skyward sword may be more of the same, though at least the precision is finally there. But really, I just don't want to _swing_ the damn sword. I want to solve puzzles.

The big hoopla about this game is that the Wii Motion Plus is going to directly correlate to the puzzles also. I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse for you, but there you go.

 Hurray for forum prophets!

And another hurray for Malstrom sheep!

Check the history 1989 and 1990 are the years with the biggest amount of NES games released including Super Mario Bros 3; Sega did a great job with the Genesis with games like Strider, Moonwalker and Sonic, the first two were promoted as "True Arcade experiences" and the last one as "The next cool thing", Strider and Moonwalker are impossible to recreate in the NES due the system lack of power and Sonic is just a good game with good PR, the SNES was released 2 years later and even with big chunck of the 16-bit market distributed between the Genesis and the TurboGrafx it ended up selling more than both.

Also there's a good amount of support for the Balance Board in fact checking the games that made use of it is a good example of how the so called "casual audience" is a double edge weapon, just comparte this with this, yes the lack of support for the motion plus is bad, but honestly most people didn't buy Wii Sports Resort for the Motion Plus. And yes 2D Mario sell console but you can't release them year after year.

These Malstrom inspired unfoundedly negative threads are giving me migraines. Cherry pick a few games and statistics, declare that this defines Nintendo's entire direction, then declare doom

It's just as asinine as the people earlier in the generation who cherry-picked Nintendo's casual moves and declared that they abandoned the core. It's the same damn thing just from a different perspective

The problem is that this perspective is more annoying.

And pretentious.

Everyone, hold on a minute.

This strategy of "abandoning the consumer" in order to appease 3rd parties has worked perfectly for Microsoft and Sony this gen, allowing their age to be a non-factor; 360 is still seeing YOY gains after nearly 6 years on the market.

Nintendo will still make casual games. Now if they have tons of 3rd party support in addition to their killer-app 1st party offerings, they could potentially push 20 million consoles out the door every year for 5 years straight.

Nintendo can never pull off a PS2 strategy. The "Call of Duty/Grand Theft Auto" demographic tends to have an Anti-Nintendo bias and sees Nintendo as kiddie. Nintendo can't change that perception no matter what. To them, "real gamers" game on a Playstation or Xbox. Chasing after this demographic is a waste of Nintendo's time and resources and they will lose a lot of potential profits. I think the Nintendo DS Strategy is the best for Nintendo. The Nintendo DS had the so-called "casual games" but it did the old-school style retro games thing waaayyy better than the Wii as well. The DS is basically SNES on the go with a touchscreen. That's sort of the model to follow. Nintendo needs to focus on a right balance of old-school 8-bit/16-bit retro and innovation at an affordable, mass market price.

Right now 3DS is focusing on graphical wow factor (stereoscopic 3D), alienates a whole bunch of gamers to boot and it's not priced for the mass market. A lot of people can't see in 3D very well or at all or they get headaches. I think I personally might be unable to see in stereoscopic 3D (fully) myself. My eye doctor has said that telling from my tests, I wouldn't be able to see 3D movies and games very well because my 20/20 left eye is more dominant. Even with glasses (which don't come cheap. I never had a problem with my eyesight ever. Because my left eye is 20/20 and that's all I need for day-to-day tasks), I don't think it's possible to correct that issue because my brain has been "programmed" to make the left eye dominant. That's why you're supposed to visit the eye doctor when you are a kid so that they can nip this shit in the bud before adulthood. I went to watch Avatar and it's probable I didn't see all the 3D effects because I couldn't see why so many people were sucking that movie's cock. Yeah there were effects but I didn't see what the big deal was. Maybe I'm just hard to impress. I don't know. Thankfully it looks like the 3D movie fad is dying down. And if you turn the 3D off, what would be the point of getting a 3DS anyway when the system revolves around 3D? Might as well stick with your DS.