Let’s face it, Sony and MS steam roll us with game after game for their consoles, show developer after developer willing to bend over backwards for them, show great things they plan to do for their new upcoming gaming peripherals. Meanwhile no one seriously gave wii motion controls a real effort… and Nintendo just plugs along…

Despite all their setbacks it’s clear that Microsoft and Sony are infinitely more adept at adapting to setbacks and re-training market focus to their favor. They’re making lemonade from lemons and damn tasty lemonade at that.

Basically everything that Wii gamers had claimed would happen for the Wii back in 2006/2007 has happened for the PS3. The Wii would eventually win over the core gamer, but it was the PS3 that is slowly doing so. The Wii has loads of quality games on the way, but it is only the PS3 that has delivered on delayed quality this generation.

While this generation is a lost cause for Nintendo in regards to core gaming, there is hope for the next gen, assuming Nintendo is smart enough to give the consumer what they want. We’ve already seen Nintendo dump massive amounts of revenue into new studios for developers and create a sub-company dedicated towards quality control. However…

From the outset, Nintendo faced many problems this generation:

-         Developers entered this generation not wanting to seriously support Nintendo.

-         Nintendo worked poorly with third party developers and failed to back third party titles.

-         Nintendo failed to diversify their image and product appeal, relying too heavily on casual gaming.

-         Nintendo did not cultivate the Wii to be a console geared towards selling a variety of software.

-         Nintendo was not prepared for the success of the Wii, lacked the infrastructure and second party studios to create a software snowball effect that is needed to get any console to become a viable software selling machine

In the end, its largely Nintendo’s inability to please third party developers and create a product that will sell their games. Nintendo can recover from this, but while gaining considerable ground this generation, they’ve lost their golden opportunity to take the market back, assuming that was even possible given their inbound handicap.

Nintendo needs to learn from Microsoft and Sony or they’ll end up losing the casual market to them too in due time. Nintendo needs to be willing to pay money out of their own pockets to get quality third party games put on their console.

While I’m sure some of you are just content with the way things are going for the Wii and DS, there are those of us who see that Nintendo can do more.

The core gamer abandoned Nintendo years before the Wii. And it only looks like the core did that to the PS3 because they are just claiming that is so. It's just the same audience that refused to embrace the Wii in the first place.

And this audience is not the core gamer. It's a vocal minority that is too full of itself to get the Wii in the first place.

Hit games tell us who the core gamers favor, and those are spread out, not focused on any one system.

Yeah Nintendo clearly isn't giving the consumer what they want. They just have managed to sell almost as much as the two other systems combined. The quality of the core games are just terrible too. Super Smash Bros Brawl was just god awful. Metroid Prime Trilogy was easily the worst thing to ever happen to the series, and lets not even start on the critical failure that was Super MArio Galaxy. I can't believe they even made a sequel to that game.

Until Nintendo starts getting studios to put big series like Dragon Quest, or Monster Hunter on their console the who effect is a lost cause. You would never see a development studio like Team Ninja touch the console because Nintendo is just not willing to work with them. Hopefully they just drop out of the console market next generation.

I'm perfectly ok with Nintendo getting rid of so called core. The less of them the better. Teenage whining about gaming has become ridiculously annoying recently. Well done, Ninty.

If you actually listened to what Nintendo said before the release of Wii, it really isn't a shock..

- They kept saying that they wanted it to be an 'and' console, not an 'or' console.

- They kept saying they wanted it to be played be everyone in a household, including the parents.

- They brought all the core franchises out at the very beginning: Zelda, Pokemon, Metroid, Mario, Smash, Kart among others which served to bring in all the Nintendo fans along with giving the core something that they cannot find on any other console.

Now to say they've lost the hardcore can't be accurate when it's quite arguable that they never had the hardcore. The Wii has very similar titles to the GameCube but has also gotten the casual titles that the PS2 had. The PS3 has lost these casual titles but has retained the hardcore games. The XBOX has always had more hardcore titles. So when exactly did Nintendo 'lose' the hardcore? And if you want to argue that they have, why is it such a surprise?

If this is the same mentality that forgets the team is called "X-Men", not "Wolverine and a bunch of mutants" (I mean the franchise entire, not just the recent cartoon), then they wouldn't get the Wii no matter what.

I could care less if Nintendo received any great third party support. I just want my Nintendo games, I bought a Nintendo system to play great Nintendo games. I personally feel Nintendo is lacking in their first party software this Gen, and while they do have the new Wii series games they just feel so empty to me, I need some new IP's and More classic Nintendo fun!

I 100% Agree. People say the core abandoned Nintendo? Not true especially during the Gamecube/N64 era it was the core gamer that kept them afloat. I find it ironic that it was Nintendo who invented the quality assurance seal during the NES days and today they have mostly shovelware doing exceptionally well on their system.

Your words encourage me and I certainly hope your optimism pays off, but things clearly need to developer better for third party support.

Monster Hunter and Dragon Quest are fine and all, but there is no garantee these will in anyway validate the Wi or for every quality franchise the Wii gets, those developers give five fold to other platforms.

Even then DS an Wii sales slow and consoles like the 360, PS3 and PSP continue to gain steadily.

Still let's hope intendo can continue to turn things to their favor. I think it would be wise to use their foothold in casual gaming with the Wii to slowly take back other demograhics.

Well this post is just full of nuts isn't it?

In other news, has anyone watched this nice youtube explanation of Disruptive Innovation?:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaKgMcFP4Mo