being 'unique' has cost nintendo every recent generation!!!!

[Jon-Erich]

Nogamez said:

Nintendo's obsession with been unique is killing them Gen by Gen. Sure sometimes it looks like their been succesful but really they are damaging their reputation and profits.

 

Here's why IMO ( for what its worth) 

Nes- same as competition very successful console

SNES - same as competition success

N64- unique for generation but still regonizable to previous gens. Moderately success

Gamecube- unique discs unique look. Moderate success

Wii- totally unique makes Nintendo billions. Complete failure as it has cost Nintendo there reputation as a GAMES console. Most gamers hate this console. 

Wii u- totally unique to competition. complete failure

Reputation with gamers destroyed by previous wii.

 

So make a console that is the same as competition in power and looks and conventional. Yes its boring but hey end of the day gamers just want a games consoles that holds up to the completion and has RESPECT from other gamers. You know those people who actually buy consoles not grandmas and OAP's and 5 year olds. 

 

Thoughts ( expecting much hate from fans but as a fan its how I feel)

I have to correct you on a few things. Your problem is you're looking at this after it all happened, not as it happened.

NES - The NES came out BEFORE the other third generation consoles and was nothing like the consoles that preceeded it or the consoles it was competing against. First, look at the NES's button layout. It had two main buttons, two sub-buttons and a d-pad. Nobody else was doing this. This was at a time when just pausing a videogame was considered a luxury. Even the Atari 7800, which was released later didn't replicate that controller. So Nintendo did in infact create a revolutionary controller that would go on to become a standard in the industry for the next decade. Then there's the software. Although the hardware made this possible, games like Super Mario Bros. weren't possible before. Yes, there were platformers, but they did not  move that fast. Games like Zelda and Metroid were almost unthinkable and almost nobody else was doing games like that at the time.

SNES - Although the SNES had more similarities to it's competition than the NES did, there were still huge differences. Nintendo and Sega had two very different controller setups. Their approach to an attempt to create more compelling games were different. Sega saw hardware expansions as the best approach (which it wasn't) whereas Nintendo saw the FX chip as their answer. Again, two completely different approaches.

N64 - Nintendo did take more similar hardware approaches to the competition, but their focus was different. Sony wanted nice production values to sell TV's. Sega wanted the ultimate arcade experience. Nintendo wanted to create compelling 3D gameplay. This is why Nintendo had made a controller with an analog stick a standard from the beginning.

GameCube - The GameCube was actually the safest console NIntendo has ever developed. While it's design were radically different from the competition, the customized hardware wasn't much more or less powerful than the competition. The controller layout was pretty much what Sony had done. In some ways, the GameCube failed because Nintendo couldn't be different enough. They offered the same as what the competition had to offer but less of it. Less multimedia features, less online, less games, just less of everything.

Wii - Despite being a so-called hated console, a lot of core gamers still supported the Wii. A lot of Nintendo more traditional games still sold really well. THe Wii was just the right console at the right time. It was inexpensive compared to the competition and whereas the competition were busy creating flashier verisons of 6th generation games, Nintendo had created something the felt new and compelling. 

Wii U - If the Wii was the right console at the right time, Wii U was the wrong console at the wrong time. Because tablet technology had advanced so much between the time Wii U was still in production and after it was released, it didn't seem that new or different. It lacked the intuitive friendliness of the Wii and also lacked the support that the core gamers were looking for. Still, it's a very great system and it's tragic that it's being overlooked.

So if you look at everything from this perspective, Nintendo was on top of their game when they were being unique. If anything, the more safe they became, the less successful they were. Wii U is the only exception to this.