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Soundwave on 04 January 2017
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zorg1000 said:
Soundwave said:

There are some misleading things here though. 

Like you can look at 3DS versus GBA and say "well GBA sold 80 million and 3DS is at 63 million or so, this is not a big decrease". 

But the GBA had a shortened lifespan in which it sold most of its systems over 3 years before the DS came out. 

Imagine where 3DS sales would be if Nintendo launched the Switch or 4DS or whatever in 2014. 

GBA was on pace to hit 100 million, and fairly easily at that. Nintendo rushing DS to market skewed things quite a bit. 

The last time Nintendo had sub-10 million shipments of portables before 3DS was 1996/March 1997 when they shipped 7 million Game Boys. After 1998 with the push of Pokemon and launch of Game Boy Color they've shipped 11+ million portables every year since then .... until we get to the 3DS era. The last 2-3 years of the 3DS have all seen sub-10 million portable shipments, so the wheels have maybe not fallen off with the 3DS, but they've definitely gotten themselves stuck in mud. 

The 6.79 million shipment of 3DS last fiscal year is the lowest number for Nintendo portables in 20+ years. You have to go back to before Pokemon was created to find a lower portable shipment. 

Sure, just like its misleading to say 3DS is a decline from Gameboy. A device with a 6 year cycle vs one with a 12 year cycle.

The whole argument started when he said 3DS+Wii U is a massive decline from pre-Playstation era sales, which is untrue.

A decline in overall sales perhaps not, but the industry was much smaller if you're talking early 1990s/1980s. 

A decline in Nintendo's overall influence/sway on the market ... if that was his general point, then he is mostly correct on that. 

Nintendo went from being the no.1 console maker and a huge a force in the console business and having a virtual monopoly on a sizable portable market to being a virtual non-factor in the console business today and while they do have a solid performer in the 3DS, ignoring the damage done to that market sector by smart devices is like trying to ignore an elephant sitting in a room. 

I mean at this stage, Nintendo basically has no home console market, which is an embarrassing fall from grace given their history in the market. It would be like Coca-Cola becoming almost locked out of the Cola market, even if they had a Quaker Oats division or something doing well, it's still a fairly bad situation. 

No question that since the Playstation has shown up, Nintendo's console presence has been gradually whittled away aside from a 4 year blip, now down to almost nothing. As someone who's been a Nintendo fan since the 1980s and actual was around for when the peak of the NES and SNES eras, what they've been reduced to today is sad, but it's tempered a bit because they've made so many stupid decisions over the course of the last 20 years, that it's hard not to conclude that they basically deserve to be where they are. 

They've completely and utterly mismanaged their console division from a leadership position to straight down the toilet. You don't get here by accident. 

PSP doesn't really sting Sony nearly as badly, PSP was like a fun spin-off try for Sony, it was never the centerpiece of the Playstation brand nor do they have any real history in the portable segment.