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Soundwave on 26 January 2015
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Skullwaker said:
Soundwave said:

I agree but probably not for the reasons the author thinks.

Nintendo is finished with the mainstream home console market IMO.

They have mismanaged themselves into a corner and are no longer relevant to the mainstream console player. As such, outreach to third parties is futile at this point. No third party takes them seriously for consoles, not even the Japanese companies that work with them, for example Bandai-Namco won't even give the Wii U the new Tekken game even though they collaborate with Nintendo. 

Nintendo allowed Sony and MS to gain too much traction in the market and cement themselves in place and between the two third parties have all they want. There is no room for Nintendo anymore and engaging now in a "war" for third party support versus the entrenched Sony and MS would just lead to Nintendo getting (predicably) routed. 

Their next home system IMO will basically just be a way to play their handheld library on the TV and will kind of absolve Nintendo of the pressure of competing in the home market. It'll just be like an accessory, if it sells great, if it doesn't, well they can still make some money off the handheld variants. They won't need third party devs for that.

People said this exact thing when the GameCube flopped. We all know what happened after that.


But there was a plausible audience there of people for Nintendo to go after -- if you were a casual player or someone who could play games with the complexity of Pac-Man or the original Mario Bros. and not much else, there wasn't really much on the PS2/GCN/PC/XBox for you to turn to. Nintendo successfuly exploited that for a few years before others copied it (Kinect) and then Apple completely took that audience away. 

What audience is under served right now for gaming? Casuals are very happy with smart devices there are hundreds of new games every year. So are kids. Core/hardcore gamers are well served with the PS4/XBox 1 and then you have Steam on the PC. I mean I guess no one's making games for dogs/cats?

I don't think Nintendo will be able to find a new fad this time. Every level of gamer from the fringe/casual/non-player all the way up to the most hardcore player has a ton of options. I mean maybe VR? OK. But it looks like Sony, MS, and Facebook/Occulus are already moving on that. 

Just because Sega hit paydirt once with Sonic on the Genesis to save their bacon didn't mean the "hail mary killer app" formula ever worked again for them, not on the Saturn with NiGHTS or the Dreamcast with Shenmue (even though Sega spent a small fortune on the game). I don't think there is a Brain Training or Wii Sports coming again to save Nintendo this time.