quickrick said:
explain why there home consoles don't sell well since N64 while they offer a much better gameplay experience then there handhelds, other then the wii which was driven by motion controls. there home consoles get all the the nintendo ip at a much higher quality. |
There are several factors that you are missing here as to why their handhelds have done better.
1. They have better output compared to their stationary consoles. The production values of handhelds has typically grown at a far smaller pace than for stationary consoles; hence when their development teams are fragmented to support both a home console and a handheld, the teams making games for the handhelds can finish and release titles quicker. This has, for the most part, left their handhelds with more titles and fewer droughts compared to the stationary consoles. The only exception to this was Wii, which to my memory had fewer droughts and that was largely because production values from Gamecube to Wii had not increased by much. In addition, third-party support, particularly out of Japan, has always been better on their handhelds compared to their stationary systems. This is a problem that they rectifying with Switch by combining all of their development efforts to primary focus on one platform (and one that also happens to be portable).
2. Nintendo is better established in the portable console space. This space has had a core audience of about 75-80 million users (the only exception was the DS/PSP era, where casuals also came on board increasing the audience temporarily but later left for smartphones; but this was also true for home consoles in both the 6th and especially 7th generation), and Nintendo has been big enough here to thwart most competitors. The GB/GBC, DS/DSi, 3DS/New 3DS were able to soundly outsell their competition, and the GBA (much like the Switch now) was pretty much left alone in the market place as the only option for portable core gamers. On the other hand, they have stiff competition in the stationary console space from two other direct competitors. Because they have less third-party support and more first-party droughts (which hurts a system that is first-party driven), their offering is not competitive with their other direct competitors in the stationary console space. Furthermore, with stationary consoles a great deal of people only choose a single system for a whole generation, so it is difficult to justify these people purchasing another stationary console that largely serves the same purpose. On the other hand, a portable system is setup to compliment a stationary console by offering the flexibility to play core games away from the TV (be it somewhere else in the house, during transit, in schools, etc); the vast majority of people that own portable systems (that 75-80 million consistent base that I was speaking about) also own a home console but they can justify owning because they serve different purposes. This same effect is repeating with the Switch, as the vast majority of Switch owners have a PS4 as their primary stationary system (much like many DS owners also owned a Wii/PS3, 3DS owners also owned a PS4, and the majority of GBA owners had a PS2, etc.).
BTW, this effect is not exclusive to the gaming space. Look at Apple, their Macs (particularly the desktops but even to a lesser degree the laptops) have far lower sales than iPhone (much like portable Nintendo gamers owning non-Nintendo stationary systems; most people that own an iPhone own a Windows PC). The opposite is true for a company like Lenovo, which sells more PCs than mobile devices. The sales of one product category does not necessarily dictate the sales of another. Much like with their handhelds, the Switch is offering a portable companion device to the stationary PC, PS4, XONE (much like the 3DS, DS, GBA, and GB were also offering a companion portable system; and unlike the Wii U, Wii, GC, N64, etc. which were attempting to be direct stationary competition).
