I found this article while looking for E3 news, impressions and analysis. It raises an interesting point...
Nintendo waves the white flag at E3 2010
Now that the dust has settled after each of the three console manufacturers held their press conference earlier this week, it’s a good time to look at what has and has not been announced and what this means for the future of the video games market. Many people seem to think that Nintendo had the best show and blew everyone away with the 3DS, but they are missing the bigger picture. During the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube generations Nintendo lived off of the proftis generated by its handheld line, the Gameboy. Portable gaming is very important to Nintendo because it allows them to still play with the big guys, Sony and Microsoft, in the home console space.
Naturally the PlayStation Portable poses a major threat to Nintendo’s core market. So far it sold approximately 60 million units and by doing that it wrestled away a big chunk of Nintendo’s market share that previously had been at an all time high during the Gameboy Advance era. With Nintendo’s dominance diminishing drastically in the portable gaming market, they had to react quickly and announce a successor to the DS. While the 3DS looks indeed promising, it’s only one side of the coin. On the flipside, the Wii is going to suffer due to Nintendo being forced to push their new handheld as hard as possible. Additionally, Microsoft and Sony are attempting to directly compete with the Wii now and Nintendo had nothing to show to combat that. They were waving the white flag at E3.
The Wii’s last hurrah, coming to a store near you in 2011.
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was the only major game shown that makes use of Wii Motion Plus and it wasn’t a pretty sight. A questionable art style for the graphics as well as, at least according to Nintendo, interferences that made the game look nearly unplayable were a big letdown for the Nintendo faithful who now might take another look at Sony’s Move and its games, particularly the innovative Sorcery. Or Kinect which garnered a mostly positive reception from the gaming enthusiast media. Even Shigeru Miyamoto was thoroughly impressed by Microsoft’s controller free gaming experience.
Facing such fierce competition from both, Sony and Microsoft, one would think that Nintendo would at least try to fight back, but yet another E3 has passed without an announcement of an HD enabled Wii coming in the near future. Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter explained why he continues to believe in Wii HD, but also why he thinks that Nintendo won’t launch it. “…So I always thought Nintendo would respond to Natal and PS3 plus Move by having Wii HD ready when those two things launched. I’ve been wrong consistently and the reason I’ve been wrong is Nintendo doesn’t see the world the way I do. So the answer to your question why do I think it? Because it’s logical. The answer to your question, why hasn’t Nintendo done it? Because they don’t think it’s logical.”
Nobody really knows what’s going on in the heads of the Nintendo executives, especially with games like this one being made:
Kirby: Epic Yarn is going to be a retail release…
This may be great for Nintendo fans, but certainly not for those gamers who don’t like Nintendo’s games. On a related note, the same holds true for the 3DS and titles like Kid Icarus. At least Nintendo this time tried to get third parties on board to get some of the more hardcore stuff like Metal Gear Solid, but honestly you can’t help but think how much better such games could be on a non-Nintendo platform. Anyways, while the 3DS seems to be good to go by the look of things, the Wii is pretty much done at this point. This year’s big holiday title Donkey Kong Country Returns is going to be yet another 2D platformer which looks like a desperate attempt on Nintendo’s part to milk the Wii audience as much as possible before those gamers are graduating to more fleshed out gaming experiences on other platforms.
Nintendo had a good run while it lasted. It greatly helped that they caught Sony and Microsoft by surprise with their Wii Remote controller and changed the gaming landscape, but all things have to come to an end eventually. Analyst Todd Greenwald expects Nintendo to lose market share in the near future. “I would say that Microsoft and Sony should get a pretty big boost over the next six months or so versus the Wii.”
