Ok, so there's a lot of posts and it would be really hard and time consuming to answer every angle and question so I'll try to sum it up in my post and better explain.
First, I chose the word "fanboy" for a reason. I grew up and loved Nintendo and almost resented anybody that challenged them. As you can see, I've owned all their consoles and a few of their handhelds. At the same time, I rarely considered any other console. The only other consoles I owned were Sega Genesis and Dreamcast and both were clearance items well past their prime and no threat to Nintendo. This is how I'm different now.
It's not that I would never buy a Nintendo system again, I just probably wouldn't buy one again first before the competition. If Nintendo stays on this course, they would be my second choice behind either Microsoft or Sony. I would've never done that before. I don't hate Nintendo and I'm very happy for their success. I just think that some of you diehard Nintendo fans are kidding yourselves. Their gaming lineup isn't nearly as good as their older generations. And that's not just speaking of 3rd party games but their own games as well.
If you look at the Nintendo published games, only Zelda, Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3, Super Smash Brothers Brawl and Mario Kart stand out. All the rest of their games are fun, some are unique and original but I wouldn't call any of the rest great games. And that great list of games I mentioned above, well the last one released a year ago. Where was our selection of games during Christmas? What about this year? We have Punch Out to look ahead to and that's it that I know of. Sure Wii Sports 2 will be good and a lot of fun playing with friends and family but for most gamers, is that the type of thing that will you'll be playing for hours at a time by yourself in the same way you would a hardcore game?
I'd hope the announcement(s) at E3 would be something to look forward to but at this point, I doubt it. Something I liked about other generations was the fact that Nintendo tried to give us games that fit in with what was popular. In the 16 bit era, fighting games were very popular so they came up with Killer Instinct through Rare. Later FPS games were popular along with survial horror so they gave us Metroid Prime and Eternal Darkness respectively. This generation, we got Metroid Prime along with sequels in a few of their popular series but other than those few, it's been all family games. The fact that they outright denied many regions Disaster:Day of Crisis and now Fatal Frame 4 doesn't help matters.
I know a few questioned how I can only now become less interested in Nintendo with the Wii if I had no problem during the GC gen. It's simple, Nintendo tried to still give us great games, either their own or with the deal they signed with Capcom. Sure that deal didn't work so well but at least we got three excellent RE games (RE1, RE0 and RE4 being considered one of the best games ever). Silicon Knights worked on Metal Gear Solid so that was an excellent game we got and I was never really bored with my selection of games but yet it didn't compare to PS2 and yes, this was where I lost a little faith in Nintendo.
One thing about the Gamecube though was that it was technologically competitive with PS2 and Xbox so any game made for those could also be released for GC. This gen, they chose to go a different direction which I understand their reasons but it hurts them for keeping the hardcore gamers because we know we won't see games like Metal Gear 4, Resident Evil 5, Street Fighter 4 or anything on par with Gears of War, Killzone 2. It's also the fact that Nintendo hasn't even tried to give us anything hardcore lately. And yes, I blame them for 3rd party not trying to either.
Since the first Nintendo system, 3rd party as well as their competiton has tried to copy Nintendo's strategy. So if Nintendo is going to release a lot of party games and they're successful, that's what we're going to get from 3rd party as well. And as always, 3rd party rarely matches Nintendo's quality so what we get is a bunch of crap. At least when companies couldn't match the quality of a Nintendo game, they might come close and we could still get some gems. How many great party games have we gotten? Not many but we sure do have a lot them anyway.
There are too many points to be made and too much to say and I know I'm already rambling. My main point is that Nintendo isn't what they used to be and there's no point lying to yourself. I don't truly believe that any gamer over the age of 20 is having as much fun playing the Wii as they did back in the NES, SNES, N64 era. To me in all honesty, if I want to play similar style games advanced for today, it would have to be Xbox 360 or PS3. I can only hope that Nintendo decides and tries to reach out to their traditional gamers once again while still hitting their family market.
I'll come up with something better eventually...
