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Teeqoz on 27 September 2014
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RolStoppable said:
Teeqoz said:
RolStoppable said:
Teeqoz said:

the 3DS has the sequels to two of the four 20 million+ sellers (at least, I don't know about Nintendogs.) Yet none of them are close to those numbers. Obviously those games largely drifted on the incredible success of the DS. What you're saying is akin to saying that

'it wasn't the motion controls that sold the Wii, it was Wii Sports that did it'

And the DS didn't have the fierce competetion of phones and tablets that the 3DS has now.

That gave me a good chuckle.

How?

Because you imply that that is wrong when it actually is how things work.

Think about it: How can Nintendo hardware continue to exist when third party support is so lackluster and has been for two decades now? The only explanation is that Nintendo content drives the hardware sales, because ultimately dedicated gaming machines are bought to play video games. Hardware doesn't sell itself.

Your last sentence in the preceding post makes the mistake of drawing a conclusion based on current market conditions and accepting them as definitive. Let's go back ten years: It's 2004, the GameCube struggles mightily, third parties are abandoning ship. Now the question is posed if Nintendo will ever be able to reach the NES height again. Your answer would be: "No, because the NES didn't have the fierce competition of Sony and Microsoft that Nintendo has now." - But if we go back to the present, to the year 2014, we have the benefit of hindsight. Now we know that Nintendo not only reached the NES height, but eclipsed it. We know that looking at market conditions of a given time and thinking of them as unchangeable can make us horribly wrong, especially in a business that resets to 0 each generation.

And this leads back to it being in Nintendo's hands to create software that pushes their hardware to such heights. Nintendogs and Brain Training have fizzled out in the 3DS era, but what's there that prevents Nintendo from making new IPs? Only their own decision-making processes. Nintendogs and Brain Training were new IPs in the DS era and largely responsible for the sales uptick in hardware. Before their releases, the DS lagged behind the GBA. Afterwards the DS accelerated and never looked back.

Nintendo could've used any game that utilises the motion controls for the marketing. Heck, they could've used a Kinect Adventures style game.  In the Wii's case, the only important role Wii Sports played was marketing the concept, the Wii. I'm not disputing the "software sells hardware" thing.

"Now the question is posed if Nintendo will ever be able to reach the NES height again"

But that isn't what this should be compared to. The question would be "can Nintendo reach PS2 levels" because the PS2 is the highest selling homeconsole, while I'm saying Nintendo will never replicate the DS , the highest selling handheld. I'm sure Nintendo could make a handheld that could replicate the succes of the original gameboy, the equivalent to the Wii to NES comparison.