RolStoppable said:
The DS and Wii successors could have been mere power upgrades (both) and improved motion controllers (Wii successor) and they would have worked. The PSP successor wouldn't have stood a chance, PS Move fell flat fast and Microsoft's Kinect didn't have much staying power either. A key part of the Wii was that its motion controller wasn't just an add-on and that the console was more than just motion controls, so games could be created beyond that. But with the 3DS and Wii U Nintendo wanted to push other things, so we got those abominations. Nevertheless, even the aforementioned hypothetical DS and Wii successors would have run into the issue of increased development times for games, so they wouldn't have been as successful as the DS and Wii due to fewer Nintendo games getting released. The entire point of Nintendo's differentiation was that both Sony and Microsoft had deeper pockets, so they could sell the hardware at a loss to provide better specs at the same price, and buy up third party content to tip the scale in their favor. Now with Sony being eliminated from the handheld market, Nintendo's hybrid console design comes with the built-in differentiating factor of portability, so innovations in control or otherwise aren't necessary anymore. I just hope Nintendo doesn't forget about this and stays their course instead of taking a stupid route along the lines of "our developers want to do something crazy because they would be bored otherwise." |
TBH the 3DS is kinda just an upgraded DS, the 3DS didn't have a hardware design that was so vastly different from the DS. The 3DS if you look at it was essentially a more powerful DSI with the 3D feature added to it as it's innovative feature, and the 3D wasn't anything that completely changed the way you played games on the DS much at all. So by calling the 3DS an abomination, it's essentially like calling the DS an abomination since they're very similar products.
Imo the 3DS's lack of true innovation might've hurt the 3DS's sales in the long run, since the DS's design by the time the 3DS released in 2011 was considered outdated compared to smartphones which had one bigger capacitive touch screen and display than the smaller resistive lower res touch screen and display could offer. The 3DS didn't really offer anything new besides the 3D function, which wasn't a big deal at all to people and Nintendo releasing multiple non-3D 3DS's prove that.
I felt like if a Switch like system released in 2011 instead of the 3DS it would've done a lot better with the Switch having a more modern design with detachable controllers with a modern featureset being it's Innovation. A concept that hasn't really been mainstream before.
Also, the reason why Nintendo is trying to be so different now is not because of money, because they easily have the money to compete with Sony & Microsoft if they wanted to, Nintendo could lose 250Million every year and still be alive for 40 years. The reason is because they simply just don't want to even if it means that they make more money taking the competitive route. The upper management and top execs of Nintendo aren't just people who want to make money, they're passionate about the consoles and games they make. Nintendo execs just don't want to fathom the fact that they need to make a system that's conventional & powerful that competes with Sony & Microsoft and has a ton of multiplats. To Nintendo, making a system like that doesn't have enough personality and Nintendo's top execs want to make a system with tons of personality and innovation that pushes the industry forward even if it is risky. Nintendo easily has the money to get developers on board their systems and release high spec systems at a loss to compete with Sony & Microsoft, they simply just choose not to cause they want their products to stand out and have innovation.
Last edited by javi741 - on 09 June 2020
