Totally agree with that article as a old school gamer myself i understand.

I was a C64 guy then Amiga 500 - 1200 then PC. My friends when growing up had Master Systems, Megaddrives, ST's etc.

Also personally can't say for most english Nintendo's games never appealed to me. Much preferred the more realistic games or "serious".

Wii U is practically dead in this country - 3DS is fine but not as big as it should be.

I've theorised this myself but remain quite sceptical.

When I was kid it seemed lots of kids had either nes or a gameboy. Yes, sega did well, and sold many more megadrives and seemed to have an ok masersystem presence in kids homes. But don't think kids weren't playing lots of Nintendo.

Segas popularity meant I (as a Snes owner) was always on the smallest team in a silly fanboy argument. But kids were always talking about SNES games with other kids at school. Everyone knew plenty of kids with nintendos even if they only had a sega and kids would go around to each others homes and get to play both brands.

And then there was the crowd at school that I retrospective label the Amiga master race.

Nintendos big fail was in the playstation generation. Many people who began gaming then went on to never even touch a nintendo game.

the nostalgia is there, its just that the average 10 year old kid in the UK no longer wants the type of game Nintendo produce, they would rather have a tablet/phone/shoes these days.

Most of the UK Nintendo fans are in their mid to late 20s or older at this point, the kids that grew up on DS mania are now older teens and don't want to play "kiddies games", as the social stigma around doing so isnt cool.

After all if all your friends at school are playing call of duty and GTA V, you cant really join in with "ive been playing captain toad" as an icebreaker.

Nintendo focus on, and cater for, a very specific market, pretty much a niche market if you will, and with each generation the popularity and proliferation of that "type" of gamer shifts, taking Nintendo's sales along with it.

I think this lack of nostalgia happens a bit across Europe as well. The PS1 was really the start of mainstream gaming in Europe while gaming was more well established in Japan and US before the 5th gen. I never met people in my school that had n64, yet many knew about PS1 and even Sega Saturn. Later in the Wii days Nintendo gained more attention, but just with the Wii and Ds.

Yes, the social stigma has been there since the snes. I don't know if it's stronger in the uk than America.

dont often write on these forums as most of the topics are by imature under 15's. this article is spot on we were spolit in the uk, the zx spectrum was an awesome bit of kit, this along with the zx80/81. I remeber seeing my first zx81, and wanted one lol moved onto the speccy then the amiga blew me away. had several of those including the the 500 and 1200. Never bought a nintendo prod never will, there games imo are child like and havnt changed for years. its about time they came up with new IP, sort of reminds me of disney cant understand why people are obbsessed about that either. Must be my age :)

It must be the cold and wet miserable climate that makes gamers prefer shooters. Not entirely sure I understand this correlation though.

cold and wet, says who, get your facts correct before posting nonsense!!

Without the nostalgia factor, I think the fortunes of Nintendo go down a great deal. Placed head to head against the competition in a location where Nintendo systems never dominated, I think a console like the Wii U would get annihilated. Yeah, it was illegal and cut-throat, but the best thing Nintendo ever did for their future was to freeze their competitors out of the United States. This allowed them to ingrain the idea that the Nintendo way is the right way into a lot of kids.

Most of my friends enjoy Nintendo, at least to a degree. It's just Nintendo didn't advertise enough or sell their concepts to the next generation, which is where it's hurting them now.