Nuvendil said:
The Wii was at least twice as powerful as the GameCube and more powerful than the PS2 and the Xbox. That "modest power upgrade" was a 100% increase and, again, more powerful than all 6th gen offerings. And it would not help NIntendo's output that much at all because they still have to cater to two demographics which clearly don't overlap as much as people think. Having the same games on both would not help all that much as many handheld franchises clearly don't interest those who don't buy the handhelds but do buy the consoles. Same for the other way around. I do agree with unifying the underlying structures of the consoles, but that can be done without compromising the progress of their home console offerings. If the programming techniques are similar to each other then that will already allow for a very fluid workforce that can drift between platforms freely, allowing for a hihgly efficient development process in general. A better investment would be expanding their output capabilities with more teams while maintaining the efficiency of individual teams. |
Who cares that Wii was more powerful than PS2/Xbox? That aspect had absolutely no bearing on the success of Wii.
Their really isn't this huge difference between handheld and console gamers, at least when it comes to Nintendo. Look at all the big selling titles on 3DS, the majority of them are popular games that originated on consoles with the exception of Pokemon. Certain games have more success on one or the other, something like Animal Crossing is popular on both but clearly more so on handhelds just as a game like 3D Zelda is probably more suited towards consoles.
Gameboy pre-Pokemon had mostly sequels/spinoffs to popular NES games, Tetris was the only game that sold vastly better on the handheld. Big games on GBC/GBA, outside of Pokemon were mostly sequels/spinoffs/ports to popular NES/SNES games.
PSP was mostly sequels/spinoffs/ports of popular home console games. Monster Hunter was the only one that sold a lot better on handhelds.
DS was the only handheld that has had a large selection of handheld specific titles and many of those games have seen huge declines recently. Brain Age is practically dead, Nintendogs had a nearly 20 million decline from the DS version.
Pokemon and Monster Hunter are the only really big titles are still relevant with a much bigger handled presence. Even so, Monster Hunter is still fairly popular on consoles and Pokémon never saw a mainline console title but they have had a bunch of successful spinoffs, so no reason to believe a mainline title wouldn't be successful as well.
When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.