New Nintendo Platform Teased at Conference, "NX"

[DanneSandin]

RolStoppable said:

DanneSandin said:

Today's industry is a more open place and it's easier for more people to make and earn money from making games. Just take a look at the indie scene. That scene wasn't of Nintendo's making, and considering how harsh they treated 3rd parties for a long time, it probably wouldn't have been a scene at all if Nintendo had been left to dominate the industry.

I did say CERTAIN DLC practices. DLC in and of itself is not a bad thing. It means that people can enjoy their games for a bit longer than what would have been possible before. Nintendo is doing DLC so right, right now. But so has Ubisoft with the release Blood Dragon for Far Cry 3, or Sony with the DLC for The Last of Us. Let's not pretend that every piece of DLC is shit. And glitch-fests wouldn't be a thing if we as costumers didn't buy those shitty products. If people didn't buy Ass Creed EVERY year, they wouldn't put them out every year, unfinished.

What did Nintendo do to make gaming more respectful? I'm genuinly curious now. I agree that games have gotten more bloody and immature since the end of Nintendo's dominance. BUT, let's not kid ourselves that Nintendo stood for any sort of mature image. Their games are called kiddie, and not unfairly so. Doesn't mean they're immature, but they do promote games as something fun. What has happened, especially the last few years, is that games have started to take themselves seriously, they've started to ask serious questions. Spec Ops the Line is one great example. Or the Walking Dead. Those games are asking questions about ourselves. And there are other games that's very different from Nintendo's design philosophy, like Journey. Nintendo is all anout game play, and that's great. That's why I play those games. But they don't ask any questions at all.  What does it mean to follow orders? What would you do to survive a catastrophe?

Games are JUST becoming mature, contrary to popular belief that "M for Mature" stand for adult and mature games. And Nintendo have had NOTHING to do with that development withing the gaming industry.

My argument is that being a gamer now is better than it was 20 years ago. You have more options. More choices. And that's always good. When Nintendo dominated you had ONE console (later you had TWO consoles), and Nintendo had ABSOLUTE control of what was put on that console. It is HIGHLY doubtful that gaming would have gotten as big as it is today if Nintendo had continued to dominate.

You seem to think that 3rd parties are dominating nowadays, but you're wrong. You wanna know who's the boss? We are. We tell developers what we want by buying certain products. Why do you think Madden and Ass Creed and Cod are annual frnachises? Because WE said so.

The indie scene originated on the PC, so it would have definitely existed, and regardless of what Nintendo did. Heck, back during the days of Nintendomination, a thing like Shareware existed on the PC. That's where indies made their name long before what you know today as the indie scene. You portray history as if Nintendomination was a bad thing, but that's clearly not the case. Nintendo never had all-encompassing control over gaming because the PC always existed side by side.

It's clear that "everything is better now" is simply not true. I have no interest to go into semantics of things that are besides the point.

Nintendo made the Wii. Wii Sports basically single-handedly changed the public image of gaming for the better, but for some reason you think that immature hardcore gamers decide the actual image of gaming. They don't, hence why I mentioned that gaming's image was one of killing hookers. Wii Fit is another major title with a huge impact. It doesn't get much more mature than taking care of your body and keeping yourself fit in order to prevent/reduce illnesses and diseases.

I don't see the games you mentioned lighting up the sales charts, so they aren't changing anything. That's probably because they are trying to mimic other entertainment media and the problem here is that other media do the same things better. But whatever the reasons may be, these games aren't selling at a level where anybody could claim that they are changing the image of gaming.

Well, your argument is wrong because of what I already pointed out in the first paragraph. Additionally, of course the Nintendo of the '80s couldn't have the same reach as gaming has today because it didn't have the benefit of building on a large existing market, falling costs for massproduction, other advances in technology that simply did not exist back then and benefits that concern the average level of wealth in individual countries.

I don't know where you took away the thing about me thinking that third parties dominate, but it honestly doesn't matter. What I want to address is the other part of your final paragraph and you are right about that. Ultimately it's consumers who shape the market and what that means for Nintendo is that there is no demand for stinking third party multiplatform games. And this ties back into my initial post in this thread. At the point where I entered the discussion, it was about whether or not Nintendo should adjust to what third parties expect from a console manufacturer. So are we in agreement now?

But indie wouldn't be as big as it is without XBox and Playstation - and of course Nintendo. But would indies be as big as they are on consoles now if Nintendo had continued to dominate?

And you make it out to be as if everything WAS better in the Nintendo days, which it clearly wasn't. Nintendo is perhaps THE single most important gaming company that ever existed, at least from the 3rd gen onwards, and they did what they had to do back in the days. But that policy of theirs were also restricting the industry, which was needed in the 80's, and it's a good thing PS came around and shock things up.

Where did I say that hardcore gamers decide the image of gaming? I don't think I did. Media and the general public decides the image of gaming. As they did with GamerGate last year. And that "Wii image" is long since dead by now. The image of gaming now is either that of mobile gaming or hooker killing, so there's a case to be made that Nintendo's "Wii image" didn't have any long lasting effects. And that's because gamers, as a whole, enjoy killing hookers more than to work on their bodies.

No, they don't light up the charts, and that's because killing hookers is more fun than to make tough desicions and examine humanity from your own actions. And these games are NOT mimicing other media. They're telling the stories through your actions. They're not long cut scenes with a few gameplay elements thrown in there inbetween the cut scenes (as in MGS). They're leading the way for telling stories that's unique for gaming. YOUR actions, YOUR consequenses. But they're the beginning of what games CAN be, how games CAN tell compelling stores without extended use of cut scenes.

But honestly, even if Nintendo had continued to be the top dog, it's very unlikely that gaming would be as big as it is today. What PlayStation did was attract older gamers, those that felt that Nintendo didn't really offer them anything more. That's also one of the reasons why Sega did so well with the Genesis; they were the more "mature" option that had blooooooood in Mortal Kombat. Even with new technology, Nintendo haven't reallt diversified all that much when it comes to Ratings; they're still still family friendly company and refuses to let go of that pure white image. This image (and adhering games) would surely restrict the growth of the market if Nintendo dominated compared to the land scape of today.

My bad, I think it might have been Khan that made the argument that this is the epoch of 3rd parties calling the shots... Yes, there is no demand for "stinking" 3rd parties among NINTENDO FANS. But EVERYONE else seem to enjoy them. So I think you have to ask yourself; do you want Nintendo to cater only to the fans and accept a small (or declining) revenue from dedicated gaming, or should they do something about all of this and try to get 3rd parties AND all the other gamers onboard as well? Everyone keeps telling us Nintendo fans how WELL Nintendo would do as a 3rd party developer; how they would sell millions upon millions of their games. Well, I think we quite easily can turn that argument around; imagine how many CONSOLE Nintendo would sell if they had the same srtaing point as PlayStation or Xbox - that is to say, a powerful console, proper 3rd party support, a more diversed line up of games and an image of being for EVERY gamer (aka loosing that "kiddie" image). They'd sell bangbusters and probably sell more than the PS2, AND they'd sell more copies of their own games.