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LuckyTrouble on 20 June 2015
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Johnw1104 said:
LuckyTrouble said:
Johnw1104 said:
I'd argue Nintendo's unique approach, while often preventing them from winning a generation for reasons quirky or economical, is the primary reason they're still around while all other non-giant-conglomerates have stepped out of the console business.

Nintendo is certainly no small company, but they're the only one left that's essentially a gaming/toy company thats still finding a way to stay involved and make money. I don't think going mainstream is necessarily the answer.

This....this makes no sense. The only console developers of note from the past thirty years that have stepped out of the console making business are Atari because they never fully recovered after the video game crash, and Sega because they screwed up and buried themselves.

It's makes perfect sense. Aside from the two you mentioned, many others have failed outside of your arbitrary 30 year limitation as well as your subjective measure "of note"... But this is a tengent.

So you feel they'd be better off trying to compete directly by creating more generic consoles against two giants far more capable of providing the typical console and absorbing necessary losses?

Nintendo has found clever ways to profit from their systems with rare exception since they got involved. They certainly make some puzzling decisions, but they're still in it, making money, and doing it their way. Even when I find the end result disappointing, I rather like that one of the big three is trying out unusual things each generation, and every once in a while they seem to stumble on something quite fun.

Of note means being in direct competition on at least a consumer recognized level. You could list off tons of console developers pre video game crash, but guess what? They all went out because of the video game crash. That makes my 30 year time frame not so arbitrary because Nintendo literally did not even sort of matter prior to the crash. It's hard to glorify how amazing they were before the NES was really a thing. And otherwise the various attempts from other smaller companies at entering the console game have largely been unsuccessful because they haven't been trying to compete with the major companies, a double edged sword ultimately, but they usually aren't putting out hardware any devs would want to work with anyways. In the end, you've just painted Nintendo as a hero of gaming, persevering through hardship where others have failed, when really, that's just not right. I mean, yeah, Nintendo was a pioneer for modern gaming. Absolutely no doubt about it, but that's about it.

I'm not saying Nintendo's attempts are all bad, but it really wouldn't hurt to go mainline for at least one generation to try to build up a userbase again. They really need one, and even if it means going against their preferred methods, it's clear being unique isn't enough to keep people interested.