Is Nintendo entering a new golden age?

[DevilRising]

New golden age? I'd say that's debatable. If we're talking about pure sales, I suppose Wii/DS era was a "golden age" for them, of profit. As for 3DS, while the sales are a sharp decline from DS, it is more logical to point out that DS' sales were in large part greatly inflated by the so-called "casual" market, and games like Brain Training, Professor Layton, Phoenix Wright, and Nintendogs, etc., that became popular with so-called "casual" gamers. A lot of those same gamers seem to have not adopted the 3DS, and in kind, Nintendo largely stopped producing games like Nintendogs and Brain Training that were aimed directly at them. Looked at through the lense of the current games market, and the drop in "casual" support, the 3DS' sales are actually quite steady, and quite healthy.

The Wii U's failures have been well documented, and there was basically no chance for it to repeat the massive sales of the Nintendo Wii. Though Nintendo themselves certainly didn't help matters. It is their own fault, due to their own many mis-steps with Wii U, that the system failed as badly as it did. They failed to capitalize on their "casual" success with a launch title that really grabbed people the way Wii Sports did. They tried with Nintendo Land, but it simply wasn't the same kind of "easy to pick up and play for anyone" type of experience, and it really wasn't all that fun of a game. Certainly not by comparison to Wii Sports, which on it's face was fairly brilliant, easy to play, and fun. They tried to bring back Wii Sports, but in a confusing digital promotion form. They made one last Wii Party game, and a Wii Fit game, but it was kind of "too little too late" by that point, as they had failed to reel in the "casual" crowd out of the gate like they needed to. Even so, with the right decisions being made, with the proper marketing, system support, etc., Wii U could have easily surpassed 20 million or even 30 million units sold. It could have surpassed N64 numbers. But the third party support dried up, because of Nintendo's mis-steps, and even their own support was sporadic, as they seemed to struggle adjusting to HD development.


So if there was a "Dark Age" during the Wii U's run, it was Nintendo's own fault. If you ask me though, as a long time gamer, and Nintendo fan, their true "Golden Age" was back in the NES/GameBoy/SNES era. That is when they were truly "on top" of the gaming world, mostly dominating the market (outside of some early 90s Genesis success), and that is when, quite frankly, they produced the vast majority of their most highly regarded games.