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potato_hamster on 22 October 2015
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spemanig said:
potato_hamster said:

It's absolutely arbitrary. If someone wants to group every 5 consoles that come out as a generation it's just as arbitrary as saying "between this time period and this time period is one generation, unless its a handheld then it's between this other time period and that other one". It literally doesn't mean anything. You just decided on random quasi-convenient criteria to what signifies a generation and poof that's suddenly a good way to measure Nintendo's success? Nope. not buying it. Let's just look at each type of console and compare it to the others in its lineage. That makes a lot more sense to any reasonable person, except some Nintendo fans who insist it really means something they totally promise just believe them okay? No.

Alright, if the Wii was no fluke, all Nintendo has to do is repeat its success. Go ahead Nintendo blow us away with a NX home console that sells 100M+ units. It should be easy right? Tell me though... if you were to bet. would you bet the NX home sells more like the PS3 (80M+) or more like the Gamecube (20-30M)? I think we know where you're betting if you actually had a significant amount of money on the line.

Try to be honest about this one too: if you were to bet a year before the PS4 was announced would you bet it would sell more like the PS3 (80M+) or more like the gamecube (20-30M)? I think we also know where you're betting.

What do you think that tells you?


It's a bit absurd to think that popular opinion has anything to do with the potential success of a future platform. A few poorly informed people betting for or against the success of the NX isn't indicative of anything. I think the NX has a very strong chance of being massively successful, just like the Wii. What Nintendo has said regarding the NX and its plans for its future platform and brand expansion are calculated, measured, and forward thinking.

The Wii was absolutely not a fluke, but how so is a debate that has been explored to death. The fluke comes from Nintendo's inability to take advantage of and maintain that success, but the actual breakout success was just as calculated as the NX will be. They new what they were doing. The problem with the Wii was that it was short sighted. The NX is being planned from inception to be a longterm success.

Saying "it should be easy" is moot. Making the Wii successful wasn't "easy." Making the PS4 a success wasn't "easy." It's not about ease. It's about compitence and execution. The Wii U and 3DS lacked the compitence and execution at launch that Nintendo will have going into the NX. You can see tangible examples of that compitence and execution right now with Amiibo, the Universal partnership, the N-Box, the merging of their handheld and console divisions, the restucturing of their company, and the DeNA investment. This is a very different Nintendo than the one who launched the Wii U, and that's for the better.


Let's see how that plays out when the rubber meets the road. If the Wii is not a fluke Nintendo needs to demonstrate as much, and they haven't yet. Why was the Wii successful? It was cheap, easy and novel. You could literally play video games with your grandparents and they would understand it and enjoy it. The NX doesn't appear to be any of those things from what I've seen. The Wii U was confusing, more expensive,  and had no real novel ideas (let's take a DS and make one of the screens a television). Now the NX appears to be more of the same. If anything by unifying theit handheld and home consoles under one banner, if the games made arent compatible with every version, you're making it even more confusing than the WIi/Wii U naming confusion debcale. You think Nintendo is setting themselves up for massive success, where as I think they're setting themselves up for more of the same failure. It seems to me with all of those initiatives you speak of do nothing to make their video games more entertaining or their consoles more desirable. They're just doubling down on the Nintendo fans they already have, trying to wrench every last dollar out of them rather than trying to appeal to an audience that doesn't appear to be shrinking with every successive console release. Meanwhile, they're doing nothing to make the devices more desirable to iPhone/iPad gamers and non-Nintendo fans.

I seriously think you're in for an unpleasant suprise when the NX releases. The writing is on the wall, and it appears you just do not want to read it.