Pyro as Bill said:
Can you name all these major post-success mistakes that Nintendo has a reputation for because I only count WiiU? 3DS can't be a major mistake because it survived the onslaught of smartphones while the supposed King of Videogames joined Nintendo's ex-rivals in the handheld graveyard. Edit-I count the Virtual Boy as a failed experiment like PSVR, not a serious successor |
I mean they went from 95% marketshare with the NES/Famicom down to like 60% with the SNES and then eventually into a total tail spin ending up around 11% by the time the GameCube ended its run ... that's a pretty whopping drop.
The 3DS selling only half of the DS is still a pretty large dud, the XBox One is going to sell about half the XBox 360 ... you see any XBox fanboys really cheering that as a big success? If the PS5 sells only 65 million units, about half of what the PS4 should finish around, you can bet your ass a lot of people were term that a big disappointment. PS5 needs to sell a minimum of 90 million units I would say and a even flat 90 would be a bit of a disappointment.
Losing 80+ million customers from one cycle to another is never a good thing, especially when the 3DS required a massive panic price cut that led Nintendo to lose a lot of money. Almost every time Nintendo's had a huge success (NES, Wii, Game Boy, DS) the successor has sold notably less, in some cases disastrously less, the GBA being probably the sole exception there though since it had its lifecycle cut short prematurely it's not as well remembered.
So sure that's probably where that reputation of having doubts about Nintendo's ability to transition success from one generation to another comes from. You can claim its unfair, but you can't really control other people's opinions. If you're someone who claims loudly they're never late, but you're actually late half the time, you can't really sit there and throw a fit when people maybe make a joke about your punctuality.
Or if a hockey player scores 100 points one season, and then only 50 the next season or a basketball player goes from averaging 25 points per game to only 13 points per game, people are going to ask what's up with the drop, even if 50 points or 13 ppg is still OK for a lot of players. If the iPhone starts to sell half of what it used to sell, that would be a big story. That's just how the world works.
Last edited by Soundwave - on 27 February 2021
