Industry to Nintendo, "We finally got you."

[Mr Khan]

Kenny said:

While it is true that Nintendo's fortunes have waned for the seventh generation, they are in fact in the best position to seize the eighth generation.  Microsoft is only now close to breaking even on their investment for the XBox 360, taking an abnormally long generation to do so, and Sony has lost so much money that they've managed to wipe out all the gains they've made with the PS2, the most successful console of all time.  On the portables front, Sony shot itself in the foot with the PSP Go, and the NGP has given the 3DS a head start of an entire year.  As for third parties, they are just about bled dry, having witnessed a generation where record losses in the face of record revenues was the norm.

To put it simply, forjust about everybody except Nintendo, the seventh generation has been an unmitigated catastrophe.  Many practices that became prevalent in the seventh generation, like taking losses on hardware as a matter of course, and moneyhatting developers for exclusives, won't be repeatable in the eighth.  To top it off, Nintendo's competition is financially trapped in the seventh generation due to sunk costs, and the need to recoup expenses, as I alluded to earlier.  If Nintendo moves up the launch timetable, they put Microsoft and Sony in the uncomfortable position of having to choose between abandoning their sunk costs, or handing Nintendo a huge head start on the eighth generation.

I am aware that Nintendo has substantial challenges in attracting third party support and repairing their reputation with 'core' gamers, but this is meant largely as a dissenting opinion in terms of just how d0med Nintendo is.

To highlight and expand upon your point about third parties, this is why i feel Nintendo will have no problem "getting" the hardcore. Getting total control of the hardcore is impossible, but Nintendo can easily make their platform a third alternative for a gamer of any persuasion because they'll have all the third party blockbusters Sony and Microsoft will, simply because third parties will *need* the extra revenue in the future. I imagine there are a lot of PS360 gamers who only play the multiplats or play the consoles mostly for the multiplats, and aren't especially bound by preference for either Sony or Microsoft's first party fare. Nintendo has it all over Sony and MS as far as first parties go, except in the realm of the FPS and the Racing Sim, which third party franchises would necessarily bring to the table. Also, having a third viable platform in the system would make moneyhatting next to impossible, because either Sony or Microsoft would have to put up the kind of money to make a given publisher forgo not only one, but two whole platforms

The transition will be the toughest time as far as third party support goes. The flood of older ports and poorly-optimized new games for the first year or so is what Nintendo will have to soldier through, but once proper parity is established, the ball is in Nintendo's court, the question is if they can maintain that momentum and come out of that tough time ahead