How Nintendo just punked Sony and Microsoft

[psrock]

RolStoppable said:

Seece said:

I don't buy NSMB is the same sort of franchise as Halo or GT though, Mario is strewn across a ton of games and to think people wouldn't buy a Gamecube because there wasnt' a Mario Bros game but there was a ton of other Mario games, doesn't make sense to me.

Ever since Nintendo's first home console, up to the Wii, they were declining in userbase. A sign their core audience was dwindling, and I don't buy that 2009 saw a surge in core fans thanks to NSMB, the people that bought that game were the same that bought Mario Kart Wii ect mostly casuals.

Super Mario Bros. is the mainline of Mario games, everything else are spinoffs. Imagine how popular Halo would be on the next Xbox, if games like Halo Wars would be all it gets. If people complained that they want a Halo game, you would say they should just buy Halo Wars 2, because that is Halo. Same universe and all.

Ever since the NES Nintendo was losing course of what made them successful in the first place. With the sales of Super Mario Bros. games on the NES it should be clear what propelled Nintendo up to heaven. On the SNES we got Super Mario World (a.k.a. Super Mario Bros. 4) as a launch title and that was it. The SNES could have easily crossed the 50m mark, if it had gotten another SMB sequel, because SMW wasn't all that (to this very day there are debates whether SMB3 or SMW is the better game, even though the latter is a 16-bit title and should be superior by all accounts).

No Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube and sales continued to decline. Nintendo's core audience was dwindling, because Nintendo's bread and butter, Super Mario Bros., wasn't present anymore. Remember that the Wii posted record holiday sales in 2009. Priorly in this year Wii sales were on the decline and the launch of the PS3 Slim initiated discussions whether the Wii wouldn't be #1 that holiday. New hardware sales don't go to the people who already bought Mario Kart Wii, unless you want to suggest that those people were buying a second Wii.

And it's not just that the Wii spiked during the holidays 2009 due to NSMB Wii. Japan is especially telling of its impact. The situation in early 2010 and 2011 is very similar for the Wii in Japan. No noteworthy games released for the Wii, but the weekly sales level is notably higher in 2010 than in 2011 (I think Japan was even up yoy in early 2010). Wii sales worldwide have been on serious decline since spring 2009, but NSMB Wii put a stop to that for a few months. Of course, nothing lasts forever, so eventually the Wii continued its freefall, because the release schedule simply wasn't and isn't strong enough to keep a higher level of sales.

NSMB did not make the Wii what it is today though. Even if Nintendo did not release NSMB on the Wii, nothing would be different today. Yes, it's big but one game does not make or break a console war.