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JWeinCom on 18 October 2012
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happydolphin said:
JWeinCom said:

I get that, but that's far easier said than done.  Making a console that would compete head on with M$ and Sony in terms of horsepower would have been a HUGE financial risk.  Nintendo could have probably survived even if the Wii had Gamecube levels of success.  If Nintendo made an expensive system that lost them 100+ $ per console, and that didn't sell, they would be in a dire financial situation.

And frankly, Nintendo wasn't as good as appealing to the market that Microsoft did.  There are hardcore Nintendo fans, and hardcore Nintendo games.  Skyward Sword is a hardcore game, Mario Galaxy is a hardcore game, Donkey Kong Country Returns is a hardcore game, and Pikmin is a hardcore game.  However, the Nintendo hardcore and Microsoft hardcore are two different beasts altogether.  Nintendo doesn't really make games that appeals to that fratcore crowd, and without those kinds of exclusives they wouldn't have done pretty well.  Plus, if they tried to develop those kinds of games, that means less time and resources to develop Mario Galaxy, Wii Sports, etc.

In the end Microsoft went from 25m to 69m with the benefit of Sony shooting themselves in the foot.  Meanwhile, Nintendo went from 20 to 95 million and despite what the article's author may say, was the undisputed winner of this generation.  I think their strategy was a sound one.  I don't think they could have done all of that while still competing directly with the X-Box and PS3.

@underlined. But I thought I said happy medium in a later post. I'm not talking about bleeding edge, I'm just talking about a more HW competitive Wii. And even though Nintendo wasn't as good at appealing to the market that Microsoft appealed to, at least if they offered something they could have picked up some of the scraps. The Nintendo core I talked about in the 15m core on the Nintendo console, those are the NinCore. I'm talking about the traditional core that migrated onto the PS platform during the SNES exodus and that grew and later split-migrated to the 360 during the PS3 launch fail.

As for offering those kinds of exclusives, Retro could easily have replaced DKCR with a tradcore title and it wouldn't have hindered any of Nintendo's output.

You can say they are the undisputed winner, but most will not agree with you. They are the winner, that's not being disputed, but they're not the Undisputed winner, meaning people can still claim certain things against the victory. For example, that the HD twins combined sold more than the Wii. The PS2 was therefore a stronger winner, as was the DS. The Wii did not win in the red ocean market, that's something the PS2 pulled off. The Wii won off of the casual market, which does not hold as much respect where the debate matters.


Donkey Kong Country Returns was amazing, and actually sold more than Uncharted 3 or Gears of War 3.  It's one of the best games on the Wii, and the Wii's library would be diminished quite a bit without it.  Besides, even IF Retro could produce some amazing FPS, would that be enough to compete with Halo and Gears of War?  How could they take a huge chunk of the COD market without spending the money to make a killer online service, which I'm not sure they could have done at the time?

As for not being an undisputed winner.  Go ahead then, dispute that the Wii is the winner of this generation.  Explain to me how either the X-Box 360 or the Playstation 3 can be considered the winner of this generation.  They sold less hardware, less software, and made less money.  Can't see how there is a legitimate claim that the Wii did not win this generation.