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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Have Nintendo consoles always been the red headed step child?

 

So?

Yes since wii era 28 35.44%
 
Yes since wii u 4 5.06%
 
Yes since sooner(specify) 20 25.32%
 
No 27 34.18%
 
Total:79
Arius Dion said:
BloodyRain said:
Arius Dion said:
History started yesterday.

I'm not sure what your comment means? Unless it's just sarcasm then lol

LoL. Sorry, I'll explain; Many young people don't have a good understanding of things that took place before they become aware of it. Your question is rather simple to answer because if you study the history of the gaming industry since the 3rd gen on you'll see history repeating, ebbing and flowing. : )

ahh alright. I did read briefly on the history of the gaming industry(crash and stuff like that) though it wasn't company centric or anything. I'll prob give it a more in dept read sometime.



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The video game market is always changing, but I'd say Nintendo has been the oddball since the Wii. The GC had a very conservative design, and the N64 was actually the powerhouse of its generation.

Most of this is because who Nintendo is up against. Back as recently as 2001 Nintendo had companies similar to them in the market, but since Sega cancelled the Dreamcast and went software only there are but two companies left to compete with Nintendo: Sony and Microsoft. Both are huge tech companies with very deep pockets and reputations for power.

It would be suicidal for Nintendo to play the console game like these companies play it. Nintendo simply can't afford to launch cutting-edge hardware at a loss because they're a toy manufacturer. Sega leaving the console business fundamentally changed the dynamics of the console business, and Nintendo has had to adjust to survive.



BloodyRain said:
Arius Dion said:
BloodyRain said:
Arius Dion said:
History started yesterday.

I'm not sure what your comment means? Unless it's just sarcasm then lol

LoL. Sorry, I'll explain; Many young people don't have a good understanding of things that took place before they become aware of it. Your question is rather simple to answer because if you study the history of the gaming industry since the 3rd gen on you'll see history repeating, ebbing and flowing. : )

ahh alright. I did read briefly on the history of the gaming industry(crash and stuff like that) though it wasn't company centric or anything. I'll prob give it a more in dept read sometime.

Cool. Yeah it is interesting. I'm not an old fuddy duddy, but even when I've read on the history I can remember being a part of the different gens. And it makes it easier to tell who is full of shit with their revisionist history and who is being honest. Heck revisionist history already occurs within the 7th gen!



Bet between Slimbeast and Arius Dion about Wii sales 2009:


If the Wii sells less than 20 million in 2009 (as defined by VGC sales between week ending 3d Jan 2009 to week ending 4th Jan 2010) Slimebeast wins and get to control Arius Dion's sig for 1 month.

If the Wii sells more than 20 million in 2009 (as defined above) Arius Dion wins and gets to control Slimebeast's sig for 1 month.

Something I think younger gamers might not realize is that gaming was very much for kids back when the NES and SNES were out. That's how it was presented, that's who used it, and if you were an older teen or beyond who played video-games, there was more than a bit of frowning by society in general. It was seen in the same light as action figure or toy guns. The situation, though, was that the people who played video-games were growing up. Quite a few dropped off, of course, but plenty more still wanted to play. Some were looking for something a bit different.

I know I drifted away from gaming during the life-cycle of the SNES. It was better than the NES, obviously, in what it could do, but somehow I thought it felt like more of the same. The fact that I played and was blown away by Final Fantasy VI actually made it worse, as I could find few other games with that same kind of deep experience.

Then Final Fantasy VII hit and it was like a bomb went off in the gaming world. In my opinion, that was one of the more influential events in gaming history. I credit FF7 with luring back a lot of the people who had grown a bit weary of gaming, with winning people who had never thought much of gaming, and with giving non-gamers a reason to take the medium a bit more seriously.

The PS2 took that acceptance a bit further and was the first time, that I can remember, where there seemed to be almost no social disapproval to an adult/older teen owning one. In that regard, I don't think it was anything that Nintendo did, but rather that they made very little effort to adapt to a changing market. I think that's when some people began to look at Nintendo critically and say, "you know, I want to try something different, thanks for the memories."

As far as I can remember, the N64 was respected, it just got pwned by what the PS1 had on offer. Some people during that time struggled with leaving Nintendo. The GameCube, though, was the one that people made fun of, both for how it looked and how the PS2 had so much more variety. In particular, I remember people my age getting excited over SOCOM and Medal of Honor. Personally, the JRPG onslaught was what made me jump to Playstation.



It could be argued that the Wii was the first console where Nintendo was seen as the oddball of the industry, but I would say the Nintendo DS was the first system that did that, although the signs have been there for years starting with the N64.

The N64 was a machine built on principle whereas PlayStation was built based on developer demand. the N64 used cartridges to scale back on pirating and because gameplay was more essential to Nintendo than voiceovers and FMV cutscenes. The N64 was deliberately difficult to develop for because Hiroshi Yamauchi wanted only the best developers to make N64 games, although this move backfired. Nintendo also continued to appeal to children even though the industry was "growing up".

With GameCube, they realized that easy game development was the way to go, but still wanted a powerhouse machine. Since multimedia was starting to become all the rage (playing DVD's and music CD's on your console was considered real multimedia back then), Nintendo rejected this by making the GameCube a device that would only play games. They made sure of this by making the disc tray too small to fit even a music CD and deliberately had the title "game" in the system's name. It had a simple design that was very Japanese. Even though many people made fun of the lunch box handle, it was very practical. I guess GameCube was all about simplicity. It was a game machine and nothing else. It was easy to make games for and didn't have any complications when it came to developers maxing out it's power.

By the time the DS came around, Nintendo was already marketing itself as the oddball of the industry but that transformation was not complete. While GameCube was different from it's competition in principle, it was still pretty much like it's competition. The DS changed all this. When Sony introduced PSP, it was what seemed like a natural transition from Nintendo's Game Boy line. Sony just shrunk a PS2 into a portable device. After all, that's what the Game Boy systems were. They were shrunken little brothers of past consoles. Except Nintendo no longer followed this principle. The Nintendo DS was something of it's own. It was a big risk too. A handheld device with two fairly small screens that looked weird and was competing with what looked like a portable PS2 with a nice sexy 5" wide screen? This is when Nintendo made the full transition to the industry oddball and it paid off for them. After the DS, everyone knew they would pull a similar move with the Wii, but no one knew if their success of the DS could be replicated with their console market.



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Ever since the GameCube, Sega went third party and the GC wasn't selling so well so everybody thought Nintendo would meet the same terrible fate. Now they realise Nintendo and Sega are 2 very different companies and can't stand the fact that Nintendo is still around after all the doom predictions.



RolStoppable said:
Ajescent said:
Gamecube, didn't that get laughed at because of its shape?

Nah, the GameCube was very much a beloved console. Just ask any of the former Nintendo fans that are everywhere.

Being a longtime Nintendo fan, I can't see how Gamecube was anything but a terrible console for true Nintendo fans. it was more like a mix of everything that we disliked about the N64, and trying to be a gimped PS2.  It was more a console for people who wanted a console like Sony's under a Nintendo label.

True Nintendo fans were playing Nintendo-like games on GBA SP and DS. Gamecube's library was more like the left-over table scraps from Sony and Microsoft.

Nintendo had three good consoles which followed very strong Nintendo philosophy of innovating and pushing the industry to new grounds while giving the consumers what they want at an affordable price: NES, SNES, and Wii.

One low-medium console which pushed the industry, but did so at the expense of the consumer with incredibly expensive cartridges: N64.

One bad console which made no attempt to follow Nintendo's philosophy in software or innovative hardware, and instead made a bad attempt at copying Sony and packaging it to look like a child's toy:  Gamecube.

Wii U looks like it might be their second low-medium console as while it did advance the interface of its games, it failed to follow the Wii example of "doing it at an afforable price." The Wii U Gamepad is a great idea, but the technology is too expensive right now. Although, this is something that will change probably in the next year or two, we'll see.



I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.

BloodyRain said:
Jumpin said:

This poll doesn't even offer the answers that the question is asking for.

Why, I gave yes or no choices during specific era's that it may have started from?

The three "yes since wii era," "yes since Wii u," and "yes since sooner" answers are not actually referring to this question. The question is "Have Nintendo consoles ALWAYS been the red headed step child?"



I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.

Actually Ninty consoles have been treated that way since midway through the N64 era. With GC the carpet started matching the drapes, and by the time Wii was released we had a full blown ginger on our hands.



On 2/24/13, MB1025 said:
You know I was always wondering why no one ever used the dollar sign for $ony, but then I realized they have no money so it would be pointless.

Nah, the Wii is the first crappy console Nintendo has ever released. The consoles that were made before that weren't really considered bad at all. They didn't really have a lot of mass appeal but are very loved by niche communities like forums and stuff. NES-Gamcube all had all-time greats on them, and a majority of core gamers owned them. You ask a lot of people what their favorite game ever was you'll find that a lot of those games were on one of these past Nintendo consoles.



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