zorg1000 said:
Everybody knows that excluding Wii, Nintendo consoles have declined. The general thought is this is due to the added competition from the likes of Sega, Sony & Microsoft coming and stealing their audience. Well I have another theory, Nintendo wasn't losing their audience to the competitors, their audience was gradually shifting from Nintendo consoles to Nintendo handhelds. Let's take a look at Nintendo hardware sales per generation pre-Wii.
NES-62 million, Game & Watch-43 million
SNES-49 million, Gameboy (89-96)-54 million
Nintendo 64-33 million, Gameboy (97-03)-64 million
Gamecube-22 million, Gameboy Advance-81 million
Each generation sold 100 million give or take a few million, with the handheld sales increasing at roughly the same rate as console sales declining. So what exactly would be the reason for people shifting from from one to the other?
Nintendo's best selling games and consoles are ones that emphasize on simple, pick up and play, casual experiences. As consoles became more complex by adding more face buttons, shoulder buttons, triggers, analog sticks, the games became more complex by default. Nintendo handhelds on the other hand retained their simple, casual style thus consoles began to decrease and handhelds increase.
With Wii & DS, Nintendo created the ultimate casual experiences thus sales exploded, with Wii U & 3DS they have reverted back to making more complex control schemes and games thus it is on track to becoming the worst selling generation in Nintendo history.
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