Malstrom's latest blog post

[The Ghost of RubangB]

disolitude said:

The Ghost of RubangB said:
I think the self-proclaimed "hardcore" abandoned Nintendo, and Nintendo said "good riddance" and had the revolution without them. They can come back at anytime. And most of them will eventually.

Don't tons of people love Wind Waker more than Sunshine too? I don't think WW was a failure. Just in the eyes of snobcores who couldn't handle the grafyx.

While Wii is a huge success...it has very little to do with the hardcore games nintendo has released for that system. the system sells gazillion units even without a single "must play" title for over 6 months for a hardcore gamer.

Therefore we can easily conclude that Motion controlls and wii sports/wii fit is much more important than Zelda, Mario, metroid and any other hardocre game combined...when it comes to sales of the Wii system.

Also, I think nintendo's revolution...heh...was pretty close to being an utter failure. I mean, lets not pretend that losing marketshare with n64 and then gamecube was part of nintendos brilliant strategy. Wii and DS was the break from the norm and it paid big time...but Virtual boy was also a break from the norm and we all know how taht turned out. Lets not pretend nintendo is the all knowing/all powerful gaming company here...

I for one agree that the hardcore "snobs" (me included) slowly left nintendo and nintendo decided that they dont have the means to aquire them back when competing with sony and Microsoft...so they decided to explore other markets. And I am happy for their success...but at this point, I don't expect them to ever come back to being the hardcore gaming giant they once were.

How many must play titles does a hardcore gamer need to keep themselves happy in their mom's basement?

I'd also add that motion controls and Wii Sports/Fit weren't just the most important thing for sales of the Wii system, but the most important thing for sustaining and expanding the pathetic weak dying joke of a game industry.

Yeah Nintendo is exploring other markets, but that does't mean they stopped exploring traditional markets. Nintendo's genius is that they're exploring all markets. Most companies have opened a Wii-only division or sadly a "casual division" in addition to (not in place of) their traditional development teams.

While Nintendo might be making tons of casual games and bridge games, Nintendo is also making traditional "core" games faster than ever before.