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Soundwave on 21 August 2015
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nuckles87 said:

This article's constant mischaracterizations of Nintendo's past hardware, combined with it confusion rampant speculation for things they "know", has made this a difficult read. The former is especially disappointing since without it this would at least be fun. So I need to get this of my chest now:

The specs of Nintendo's consoles have had very little to do with its success. The Wii did not "make them a non-factor in the industry's larger ecosystem", it WAS a part of the industry's larger ecosystem. The DS WAS the larger ecosystem of handhelds, and the Wii was by far the biggest seller in game consoles for most of its lifespan.

The Wii U's specs were not the obstacle for third parties either, lest everyone somehow forget that the vast majority of major releases since the Wii U came out have been cross-generational so far. The Wii U has missed out on LOADS of games being released for 360 and PS3 that it could have easily handled, and this had nothing to do with specs

3DS, likewise, is not exactly underpowered in a portable ecosystem that favors low spec games, and the Vita has certainly not been helped by its far superior specs in that regard.

And let's also not forget the failure that was the Gamecube, a system that was more than capable of handling anything the PS2 threw at it.

Nintendo's issues cannot be simplified to something as basic as "specs". If anything, Wii and DS should prove that specs are a non-factor when it comes to mass market success. What matters is price, branding, marketing, and the yes, the "gimmick".

Wii and DS were accompanied by great marketing and innovative software that caught the interest of the public, and built on that. Wii launched with Wii Sports for the masses and major Nintendo releases for the gamer crowd. The massive success of the DS was built on the popularity of Nintendogs and various Nintendo franchises that catered to all manner of gamer from grandma to a NeoGaf forum-goer (Mario Kart, New Super Mario Bros)

The Wii U's biggest problem is that it was designed to appeal to every kind of gamer, and ended up appealing to no one. The game pad is a poorly defined gimmick that even Nintendo has been struggling to figure out what to do with. It's too complicated for the mass market, which latched onto the Wiimote due to its simplicity, and it offered no real benefits for the hardcore gamer, who are perfectly happy with controllers as they are now. The Gamepad's cost out weighed the benefits it provided (easier access to game menus, off-TV play, touchscreen interface and game play). This resulted in the Wii U not only being underspecced, but also OVER PRICED, with a gimmick that appealed to no one.

3DS is, frankly, doing fine, but stumbled horribly out of the gate for a similar reason: over-priced at release, for a gimmick NO ONE CARED ABOUT.

Of course, even this isn't the whole story. There's Nintendo's inability to attract gamers who would buy third party software, and Nintendo gamer's general refusal to buy third party software (with some exceptions of course) which is a problem that's existed at least since the Gamecube, if not N64. This, again, had nothing to do with specs, and while the Wii's specs may have exacerbated the problem somewhat, they were not the cause. In fact, the Wii actually had very healthy third party support compared to Gamecube and Wii U. Unfortunately, the great third party games were ignored by most, and the rest were games that gamers like us (and the guy who wrote this article) don't care about or tend to acknowledge whenever they talk about the industry's "larger ecosystem".

Alright, rant over.


Wii and DS show you can have success with low powered consoles if you have a novelty attached to them which is a legitimate game changer to a clear and unchallenged audience base. 

But that doesn't mean that concept works as a blanket strategy either. The Virtual Boy and Wii U were underpowered too and we saw how those two turned out. 

You can't have success with that formula though unless you have something incredibly special as an interface going for you and a completely unchallenged audience (today this is far from the case, as millions of casuals play smartphone/tablet games on a regular basis). 

It's kind of like if you have a female friend and she says "well I don't need to go to school or get a job, I'm just going to be a Victoria Secret model, because that girl on the billboard didn't need to finish college". 

Well yeah, ok great, but you better damn well be incredibly good looking if that's your philosophy. Because that whole thing don't work if you look like an average person. So yeah if they're going to bet the farm on the "we're using hardware 1-2 generations behind what anyone would!" philosophy can work, but they better have one incredible, unbelievable novelty to go with it and even then I don't think they can replicate the Wii/DS because casual gamers today have smartphone games for free in their pocket 24/7, something that didn't exist in 2004-2006.