Gen 9: Nintendo Light/ Nintendo Dark branding

[zorg1000]

Shadow1980 said:

padib said:

Good post. There are a million reasons why going with the competitive attitude is detrimental to Nintendo at the moment. It took me years to come to grips with this, since I was always of your point of view, but after mulling it over and wrestling with Rol and a few other users, I finally got it.

The problem is that Nintendo really is not able to play Sony and MS at their game right now, and competing would be much too costly for them. If you want I can explain further why. For now, take a look at the gamecube. If you dig down beyond all kinds of reasons people will give for its failure, at the core ultimately you'll find that Nintendo did everything to compete with Sony and MS, but to no avail.

It's my strong belief that until they are ready to get their hands bloody (excuse the pun), they really should secure their current target audience (family-friendly). The unified approach is the winning solution for accomplishing that mission at the moment, it doubles their apparent throughput instantly.

I disagree. I don't think they did what was needed with the GC, or the N64 for that matter. As I've said repeatedly these past couple of weeks, the only reason the N64 and GC got crushed by Sony was bad hardware decisions from Nintendo. Sure, the N64 and GC both had better specs than the PS1 and PS2 respectively, but that didn't mean much because of the format. Third party support for Nintendo was severely reduced starting in the fifth generation because third parties wanted CDs because of the greater storage capacity and lower costs, but Nintendo gave them a cartridge-based system. So, the devs packed up and left for Sony's new CD-based system. The fact that Nintendo went with a proprietary miniDVD-based format with the GC didn't exactly improve the situation, what with the format having only a third the capacity of a single-layer DVD. If Nintendo had just gone with CDs with the N64 and regular DVDs with the GC, Nintendo probably would have won those generations as all the third parties wouldn't have left them for Sony.

Nintendo's problems derive from hardware design decisions that, while they may fit Nintendo's needs, do not fit the needs of third parties. Trying to once again come up with something radically different from the competition — and that something is unlikely to attract third parties — and hope it becomes the next Wii is just too damn risky. If their next system fails, then what? Wait unti 2023 and hope they still have the cash to make a "true" tenth-gen system? I believe now is the time for a modern-day resurrection of the NES model, the same model that made them household names in the first place. They need to do it while they still can. While they may not dominate, they could at least have something that's guaranteed to sell. They have several years to prepare for this, as the ninth generation likely won't start on Sony and MS's end until 2018. If you believe the opposite and that Nintendo can't compete directly with MS and Sony and should yet again try an unconventional system, I'd like to hear why.

The thing about Gamecube tho is that it did have really good 3rd party support.

Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, Prince of Persia, Need for Speed, Madden, FIFA, NBA Street, NFL Street, Burnout, Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, Spider-Man, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Spyro the Dragon, Crash Bandicoot, Sonic Heroes, Soul Calibur II, James Bond 007, Lego Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Dragon Ball Z: Budokai, The Sims, True Crime, SSX, X-Men Legends, WWE Wrestlemania, Crazy Taxi, Enter the Matrix, Dance Dance Revolution, Timesplitters 2, Mortal Kombat, Naruto, Turok, King Kong and many others.

Also it got great 3rd party exclusives/timed exclusives

Viewtiful Joe, Resident Evil Zero, Resident Evil Remake, Resident Evil 4, Billy Hatcher, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, Tales of Symphonia, Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles, Super Monkey Ball, Metal Gear Solid Twin Snakes

Also a few collaborations like F-Zero GX (Sega) and Star Fox Assault (Namco)

Gamecube had great third party support but most games still sold like shit.