Who is more likely to give Nintendo a run;next gen?Nintendo's demise?

[Erik Aston]

BengaBenga said:

People tend to "forget" that Nintendo always had very competitive hardware. WiiHD will probably be very close to what the competitors will release in terms of horsepower. The Wii was Nintendo's only possibility to survive even if sales totally failed. Nintendo is now a very healthy company with loads of money to spend on R&D. Besides that it WILL have the 3rd party support from the start next-gen. 3rd parties won't make the same mistake again. Besides with closer hardware specs 3rd parties don't even have to chose.

The casuals will of course be informed that every Wii game can be played on WiiHD, which will probably launch with WiiSports 2, which will have much better motion controls.
Sure Sony and Microsoft will try to catch the casual gamer, but that will be hard.
If Nintendo makes its next-gen consoles as strong as PS4, but at $250 AND Nintendo quality casual games I don't see how they can lose the next gen.

For more on this read Malstroms latest article. Even if you don't agree it's still a very interesting read on business strategies.

WiiHD? Wii Sports 2? I'm sorry, but Malstrom never said that's part of Nintendo's strategy. Because it isn't. There will be no WiiHD. There will be no Wii Sports 2.

And Nintendo will certainly not promote their next console by explaining that it plays the exact same games. "Hey, buy this new console because it plays old games!" Nintendo are about creating NEW experiences, if you haven't noticed.

And for Pete's sake, Nintendo aren't earning this money now simply to blow it on R&D for next gen. To some extent that's why they keep large cash reserves, but it isn't to develop a sustaining innovation like a graphical leap or improved motion control. That would be a SNES move or a PS2 move, and Nintendo are no longer looking for sustaining innovations like those.

And one more thing... Wii wasn't Nintendo's "only possibility to survive." They had no debt, high profits and large cash reserves throughout the PS2 era. In fact, Sony vastly increased their first party development and introduced a handheld console as a desperate attempt to copy Nintendo's traditional advantages and get the same kind of stability and profitability. That's how good of shape Nintendo was in last gen.