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Soundwave on 10 August 2020
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curl-6 said:
Soundwave said:

Most companies can't actually. Especially Nintendo, people forget that they're not actually a very large company, for a video game company actually they're fairly small in staff and that is on purpose because it fosters the type of culture/control that Nintendo likes. 

But balancing late gen support with having great early gen support is always going to be hard for Nintendo. 

Even with Switch ... take away BOTW, Mario Kart 8, and Splatoon 2 in the first 8 months which is the result of cannibalizing basically a failed console (a situation you can't really rely on repeating nor would you really want to) ... the system probably would not even be able to launch until November 2017 in that case and the launch likely wouldn't have been anywhere near as successful. 

People think this stuff is easy but it's really not. In Nintendo's case they should always err on the side of caution FOR the console to come (not the aging console that is) after having been burned multiple times by early product cycle nightmares.

I could understand if consumers had some kind of brand loyalty in the sense of sticking with a company like a friend during rough times, but really consumers don't give a shit. They're more like kids in junior high that will freeze out/alienate a kid that's no longer cool enough at the drop of a hat. 

I mean Nintendo gave fans everything they had with the DS, years of support, and what they had a few soft months with the 3DS and all of the sudden inside of a year their entire handheld gaming division is in big trouble and needing a giant ass bailout. You cannot count of loyalty for what you've done in the past, even if the "past" is as recent as 12 months ago. Even Sony's ass was not immune, during late 2006/early 2007 they were suddenly the black sheep of the industry after completely dominating it for like 11 straight years and had to basically prove themselves again from scratch, lol. No one cares what you did last generation the second the next product cycle starts, that's all you're judged on. You get no bounce, no favors, no coddling for past work.

And you can't stay in the comfort zone of the previous generation forever either, there's no loyalty there either, people lose interest and go to the competition. Harsh business but that's how it goes. 

Nobody said it was easy, but it is possible. This idea that a console must end with two years of weak support for its predecessor to succeed is silly, especially in the case of the Wii where games cheap to make.

It's difficult I think. Even like I said with the Switch, I mean the launch year was great, but again, you take away several repurposed Wii U titles and it's not really anywhere near as impressive of a launch window and probably couldn't even launch at all until Mario Odyssey was ready. The last time Nintendo really, truly had a great all around launch without benefit of taking games from a previous system was really maybe the SNES, almost 30 years ago. 

For Nintendo I think it is simply a better rule of thumb to err on the side of caution and ensure the console to come (whatever it is) always takes priority. 

Gamers are not loyal to you or your friends even your so-called "loyalists" will fuck you hard the second you ask for some patience with a new system. No one ever wants to hear "can you please just give us a few months to get Mario Kart 7 and Mario 3D Land ready and not bail out on us, please?".

There is very little residual bounce or goodwill for past performance when you have a lukewarm or bad launch. 

I mean shit even the Super NES ... Nintendo had a virtual monopoly on the game market and were at peak top of the world in summer/fall 1990 thanks to the unprecedented launch of Super Mario Bros. 3. People even just as blanket term referred to all video games as just "Nintendo" ("little Johnny is playing Nintendo", even if he's playing an arcade game).

Even with Super Mario World and Nintendo promising a new Zelda just a few months later and several other pretty good launch games, Sega from out of fucking nowhere suddenly by holiday 1991 is giving Nintendo a major problem. 12 months earlier Sega couldn't even get stocked by several major US retailers and one damn blue hedgehog and a year+ more mature library and all of the sudden Nintendo's complete dominance of the industry is thrown upside down. 

Hiroshi Yamauchi (president of Nintendo) was so angry that the SNES actually had (relative to expectations) a somewhat lukewarm early period of sales in the US that he went to a Japanese newspaper to publically shame and berate his own son-in-law, NOA president Minoru Arakawa, lol. This lit a fire under Arakawa's ass and Nintendo became much more aggressive towards Sega in the 2nd half of the 16-bit gen.