zorg1000 said:
Ka-pi96 said:
zorg1000 said:
Ka-pi96 said:
There's no reason they couldn't have a solid base to work from that is similar to PS/Xbox as well as trying new and different things. Besides I think it should be the games that differentiate the consoles, not the hardware.
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But what will being similar to PS/XB gain them? Third party games that won't sell? People seem to forget that Gamecube did have pretty solid 3rd party support while being powerful and cheap and that didn't do much for them.
The hardware is many times necessary to differentiate the games, things like DS & Wii wouldn't have been nearly as successful if they were just standard upgrades to GBA & GC.
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3rd party games will sell if they are comparable to the PS/Xbox versions. Contrary to popular belief people do actually have reasons other than 'eww Nintendo' for not buying Nintendo consoles and all the 3rd party games on them that they would buy anyways. Take away those reasons by being similar enough to the other consoles and Nintendo open themselves up to the huge multi plat audience of gamers.
The Gamecube example doesn't really work at all. Remember the original Xbox released that gen as well, that too had third party games, was powerful and wasn't overly expensive. It didn't really matter what they did that gen though, PS2 was just set up to win regardless of the competition. But look at what happened to the Xbox after that, MS went for a more powerful console, got all the 3rd party support and massively increased their sales. Nintendo boosted their sales a different way, but that way was clearly a one off, while the way Sony and MS have been doing it has worked many times and still does.
As I mentioned before they could have a solid hardcore console and then try the new stuff on top of that. The Xbox 360 released a year before the Wii and was only $50 more expensive. I expect they easily could have boosted the Wii's specs while still retaining some profitability, even if they only broke even on console sales the software would make up for that. Just imagine if they had the same specs as the 360, were just as easy to develop for and had an optional standard controller at launch. They would have got all the 3rd party support, had Nintendo's 1st party, motion controls and would still have been affordable. With both the casual audience they got and a chunk of the PS360 audience they could have matched or even exceeded PS2 numbers.
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Let's take a look at Nintendo platforms and see how much they relied on 3rd parties
NES-15/20 top sellers Nintendo published
SNES-13/20 top sellers Nintendo published
N64-20/20 top sellers Nintendo published
GC-16/20 top sellers Nintendo published
Wii-14/20 top sellers Nintendo published, 1 other based on Nintendo ip
On average 78% of the top sellers on Nintendo hardware belongs to Nintendo
Nintendo's success/failures have always come down to their own output, if they are able to come up with new concepts and execute them properly they have success, if they have a poor strategy then they fail. Adding 3rd party support does little for Nintendo, of course they are welcome but Nintendo software has always been to main reason to own a Nintendo console.
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I think this is an oversimplification.
For starters, sales figures from the NES and SNES era are spotty at best, so we don't know the sales of all the games from that era.
Even so, something like 33 or 34 out of 54 of the top selling NES games are third party titles per Wikipedia, though I think certain games are missing like Contra and Super C, Double Dragon, Batman, Ninja Turtles II, Ninja Gaiden, etc.
For the Super NES, sales of the system were not meeting Nintendo's expectations until Street Fighter II came out and really changed things for the machine. And they would have lost flat out to the Genesis had they not caved and uncensored Mortal Kombat 2.
The Nintendo consoles that haven't had market leading third party support ... the N64, Wii, GCN, and Wii U ... 3 out of 4 of those systems have gotten decimated by Sony (as in not even competitve with Sony). The only one that was competive was the Wii and that was more due to the motion gaming fad.
So third party support certainly matters. I remember when I first got my NES, I didn't really know much about the differences in systems and I asked my friend "the Sega Master System looks pretty cool too" and he quickly made sure I didn't get the Sega because while it had good games (1st party stuff) it didn't have the variety of games (which I now know to be third party support). Over the years Nintendo basically became the Sega Master System, the modern day NES now is the Playstation 4.
