In 2002, Nintendo was not in a good place. The GameCube was being trounced by the PS2, Sony was announcing that they were making a new handheld, the adoption of optical media had not led to very great third party support, etc. This was the position Satoru Iwata found himself in when he took charge of Nintendo.
Since then, Nintendo has released the most popular handheld of all-time, dominated the 7th generation of consoles, released a wide variety of huge and critically acclaimed games, and generally stuck it to the haters.
But it can not be denied; Nintendo's path has not been all roses since Iwata took charge. For both good and bad reasons, Nintendo has made some major mistakes over the past eleven and a half years. And I'm going to try to list them.
10. System Naming - Nintendo systems never had very vanila names, but in recent years, their naming schemes have become downright confusing for casual audiences. First, you had the 3DS. It's a DS with 3D. The problem was, this doesn't inform the public that the hardware is actually next-gen. Then you have the Wii U. Nobody hasn't heard stories of how the Gamepad's been mistaken for a peripheral, by casual players, dedicated gamers, and even some members of the press. Most recently, there is the 2DS. To an average customer, this sounds like weaker hardware than the 3DS. What if somebody wants a 2DS game?
9. Console Storage - The Wii didn't have much internal memory. This was fine... until WiiWare came online. All the sudden, 512 KB of memory isn't very much. It took months for Nintendo to update the Wii to allow the use of SD Cards to store games. This no doubt helped to sabotage the development of the WiiWare platform, with games such as Super Meat Boyh simply skipping over the system from lack of storage memory. More recently, the Wii U came in two models: virtually no hard drive and small hard drive. 32 GB is barely enough to store a big retail download and the operating system. Sure, you can attach an external hard drive, but surely this isn't the ideal situation?
8. Localizations - Remember in 2011 when the Wii had about three major games all year in North America? It sure would have helped to receive more software. Said software existed... but wasn't localized. Some games were eventually brought to America, but always with strings attached. Xenoblade was a GameStop exclusive, XSeed published the other two Rainfall games, one of those games came out only in 2013, etc. And that's not mentioning other, less publicized games like Chibi Robo and bloody Dragon Quest X. Admittedly, these games were never going to be big sellers. However, they would have helped the Wii during its last two years.
7. Not getting 3rd party games for the Wii U - This is not entirely Nintendo's fault, but considering all the known factors, one has to wonder why Nintendo is barely on speaking terms with some companies. Their rivalry with EA at least makes sense, in a stupid sort of way. And not getting some games in early 2013 like Bioshock Infinite makes sense. But can anybody explain why the Wii U doesn't even qualify for a possible GTA5 port nearly a year after launch? This would be further up the list, except I'm convinced that 3rd parties are at least as much to blame as Nintendo is.
6. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword - Look, I'm not saying Skyward Sword is a bad game. Most Nintendo fans agree that it was a highlight in the Wii's latter years, even its detractors. But so many things went wrong with this game, its hard to count. From being delayed multiple times, to requiring a peripheral only owned by a fraction of Wii owners, to requiring decreasingly popular motion controls, to plain old weird design choices, this game had a load of problems and issues attached. And considering how it may have been Nintendo's most expensive game ever...
5. The Great Wii drought of Late 2008 to Early 2009 - Nintendo systems often have droughts. It's an unfortunate fact of life. However, one drought that can not be simply overlooked is the one between Spring 2008 and Summer 2009. During that critical time in the Wii's life, no major sellers were released. Sure, you had a few minor hits like Animal Crossing and Wii Music, but compared to the Super Smash Bros/Wii Fit/Mario Kart combo of early 2008 and the Wii Fit Plus/Sports Resort/NSMBWii combo of mid to late 2009, this was a huge downer. The sad thing is, this lack of software might have robbed the Wii of long term support, considering how sales began to decline by the time the drought was over. Even though the Wii sold over 20 million units in both 2008 and 2009, this drought might have been what eventually ended widespread support of the system.
4. The Wii's Online - The Wii had the worst online services of any Gen 7 console. There was minimal voice chat, no demos, no retail downloads, not even a proper eShop until 2008. I really don't have to explain this in detail. If it weren't for the Virtual Console, the Wii's online services may have been stillborn.
3. E3 2011 and 2012 - At E3 2004, Nintendo explained the DS by showing how Super Mario 64 could be played with a map always available. In 2006, the Wii was explained using prototype Wii Sports games. In 2010, the 3DS was shown off using demo units that actually worked in 3D. In 2011 and 2012... Nintendo kind of let the Wii U speak for itself. Which it did a bad job at. Potential for ingenuity and prowess was hinted at, but never shown. It wasn't until E3 2013, with the unveiling of several major games, that the Wii U finally got some identity... months into its life.
2. The 3DS Launch - The 3DS launched too soon. It had only one major game at launch, the eShop and Virtual Console weren't ready, the price was too high, and honestly, Nintendo could have waited a couple of months. Even waiting until just June, when the eShop would be operational, Ocarina of Time 3D would be out, and the price would go down somewhat, could have saved Nintendo a lot of pain and agony. Not to mention they could probably have gotten away with pricing the hardware at $200 had they done this.
1. The Wii U's First 8 Months - Seriously, who thought this spot would belong to anything else?
Honorary Mention:
*Launching the DSi XL the day after the 3DS was announced.
