http://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/why-nintendo-is-always-doomed/
Some excerpts:
The mistake is that many writers, once they believe they have grasped the trends concerning the game industry, then turn around and apply those trends to Nintendo. Nintendo, we can all agree, does what is best for Nintendo. The game industry, to these writers, is not customers but some mystical abstraction of infinite developers, publishers, ad infinitum that float, like angels, on a cloud that separates them from the earthly bonds of the market. In their minds, it makes perfect sense that a developer’s opinion is seen as an oracle expressing the future of ‘The Industry’. What the customers say and do, well, what do they matter? According to these writers, customers are not members of the industry. And when reality occurs, that customers do control what publishers and developers make, seething anger erupts among the keyboard jockeys. “Nintendo is destroying gaming!” where, by every indication, it is the opposite.
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Sony and Microsoft rely on third parties to create an install base with their consoles because both companies lack the first party studio strength to perform it themselves. In other words, relying on third party software to drive install base is considered ‘normal’ and ‘the future’. Nintendo, like Sega and Atari and Hudson, rely on first party software to drive the install base. Therefore, it is ‘concerning’, ‘problematic’ and eventually ‘doomed’.
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If Nintendo titles top the sales charts, it is ‘concerning’, ‘problematic’, and Nintendo is ‘doomed’ because ‘only Nintendo titles sell on Nintendo.” If a third party game, on Nintendo’s platform, tops the charts, why that third party company is so amazing, so talented, so wonderful! If that third party game does not sell, it isn’t because it is a bad game, that the company has no talent, or anything like that. Why, it is Nintendo’s fault. Somehow.
Curiously, when a third party game on a Microsoft or Sony platform, like a Grand Theft Auto, tops the sales lists, it is because of the genius and incredible talent of Microsoft and Sony, not the third party itself. When a third party game does poorly on Microsoft or Sony platform, it is because of that third party.
Worth read. Check it out.
