| Soundwave said: Unified library is good for Nintendo users. For one you don't have to pay $500 to play ALL the Nintendo games, the fact is 80% of Nintendo's own userbase did not bother with either the Wii U or GameCube. Never owned either one. That means it doesn't matter who pretty Zelda U or Metroid Prime looked ... the majority of Nintendo's usberbase never played those games. There are other benefits to unified platform too ... less/no droughts for one. The other is a better diversity of games. If the Mario Kart team doesn't need make two Mario Kart games, because one Mario Kart suffices for the entire NX ecosystem then they can work on something else like a new franchise of making bringing back something like Wave Race or F-Zero. There actually are little/no benefits to a segregated library in this day and age. You pay $500 for hardware to largely play the same 10 franchises over and over and over again. Even most Nintendo buyers are saying "no thanks" to this proposition. Unless Nintendo has a miracle controller that can sell the console on its own, this situation is not likely to improve. They are making money off console software but they're also leaving a lot of money on the table ... Splatoon should easily have sold 2x whatever it's going to sell. This is no way to run a business, you don't keep your best products away from the majority of your userbase. |
Again, you're holding it the wrong way around. No one denies that, between Wii U and 3DS, Nintendo's most ambitious efforts are wasted on Wii U. That's because Wii U is a failed ecosystem. Had Nintendo not botched the launch, there's no reason why a Nintendo home console couldn't be just as successful and financially viable as PS4 is right now. It's not about "this day and age" and something something "days long gone". PS4 and PC are proof that the traditional model still works. Sony et al make hugely expensive AAA titles, and they sell 10 million copies and more.
The other thing where your perspective is off (imho) is when you say Nintendo "doesn't need make two Mario Kart games". If Nintendo makes 2 Mario Kart games, chances are fans will buy them both! Yeah yeah not MK8, for the same reason as above - Wii U was dead in the water from the start. Under normal circumstances MK8 would have been the bestselling entry in the series, and I wouldn't want to miss neither MK7 nor 8.
Let me say this, if Nintendo manages to build what you proposed – a handheld powerful enough to scale AAA home console games nicely - fine. But you must admit that it would go against everything they've always done. Every single Nintendo handheld was lo-fi, built like a tank and cheap. And that's why they're so successful.
