Seriously, Nintendo is not THAT Important

[Pristine20]

TornadoCreator said:

Pristine20 said:

Cut quote down for sake of brevity - TornadoCreator

When I say "nintendo games", I actually mean games that nintendo had a hand in developing/publishing. There was a time when Nintendo platforms were the primary option i.e NES and SNES eras so anyone who played games in that time period was likely to discover  interests on their platforms. To be fair though, I developed my interests on PS1, the same cosole that truly got me into gaming. While FF may have been introduced on the NES, it doesn't sit well with me to give nintendo credit for the interest in those games instead of Squaresoft. One could even make the argument that those games didn't gain blockbuster status till they hit the ps1 and then thank Sony instead. Most of the credit you give to nintendo simply come as a result of getting there first.

Apologies for misjudging the games you play. It seems like most people who play nintendo systems always need some back up system i.e most "gamers" with Wiis always ended up having a 360 or ps3 as well but for some reason, many these people will always give nintendo all the credit because of past accolades even when doing most of their gaming on other platforms and playing non-nintendo games. I just don't get it. I agree with you that nintendo is important. They sure have a lot of fans. However, I also do believe that gaming will go on just fine without them as well. I disagree that the old way is best but don't mind the variety.

Fair enough. I think there's a lot of high tention on this topic. Far too many people presume so much about people they don't know without considering that the person at the other end is a human being and it puts everyone on edge, so I apologise if I've come across as short-fused.

For me the golden age of gaming is pretty much right now, but then it depends on why you game. There where a few interesting threads recently that discussed this, the most recent one being "Story vs. Gameplay Gamer", which I posted in earlier. Depending on what you get out of gaming, everyone can have a very different view of what is good and bad for the medium. I do maintain that what is good for gaming and what is good for the games industry is a very different thing though. Sure like you say, if Nintendo disappeared, another company would take it's place but it wouldn't be the same. I honestly miss Sega for that reason and they still make games now. The style of games like Shinobi, Streets Of Rage, Strider, Ranger X, these where the kind of games that dragged me into gaming and following the Mega Drive they seemed to slow right down. There was a final harah on the Dreamcast, and a few games like Shinobi got a modern equivalent on PS2, but never was it the forefront of gaming again and where it does rear up again, such as the PS3 reimagining of Splatterhouse, it's always a commercial flop, a critical "meh", and results in shake-downs at companies with most of the Splatterhouse team fired following it's poor reception. Niché means precisely that, niché, but so many publishers can't accept that some styles of game, some franchises, hell, some entire genres; are lucky to get more than 1-2million sales on a game at best, and really 500,000 units is pretty damn good.

Whilst you'd not miss Nintendo quite so much, I know I would, just as I'm sure you'd miss the subtlely different approach Sega brings to RPGs with Valkyria Chronicles, Resonance Of Fate, and Shining Force, if they vanished. In essence, I think we can all agree that the loss of any major facet of gaming would be a bad thing, if not for the people who like those games or that approach, but because without the variety, we end up with the same old crap from everyone and that's never good. The more players in the industry, the more innovation, and the greater range we'll get. That can only be a good thing surely.

I certainly do not want to see nintendo go away. Any company supporting home consoles gets best wishes from me. The more, the merrier. I just do not like hearing that the gaming industry would collapse without them because I do not think that to be true. Sadly, genres do come and go as much as we wish otherwise. I don't know if it's because of technology or what. It just doesn't explain why say fighting games and beat-'em ups have dwindled in popularity.