javi741 said:
Some people may want to discredit Yamauchi by stating he was anti-3rd party and allowed Sony to enter the games industry.
But imo, should people really discredit him for that? Nintendo even after Sony & Microsoft entered the games business has been more profitable than both of them despite not appealing to 3rd party developers. Nintendo not letting 3rd parties dictate their business has done more good than bad for them. Nintendo doesn't need to worry about money hatting developers to get certain games for their platform, 3rd party sales also make less money than 1st party sales, Nintendo wouldn't need to worry as much about 3rd party games stealing their 1st party sales and profit since they're not known as a 3rd party game platform.
I think most importantly though is that Nintendo being anti-3rd party means that they're free to make a platform that goes a completely different direction and creates it's own market anomaly. This adds so many benefits, Nintendo wouldn't need to worry about making a console that's similar to PS/Xbox in architecture and worry about pricing it at a competitive price point which can be detrimental since Nintendo would more than likely have to take a bigger loss on each console sold. There's no way imo that a competitive Nintendo console would sell close to what the Switch is at right now. Some people might argue that PS/Xbox wouldn't even exist if Nintendo was 3rd party friendly with N64, but that is false.
So tbh Yamauchi not being overly reliant on 3rd parties could be seen as a benefit. |
It's not so much "discrediting" him as holding him accountable to for his misfires; on his watch, the N64 took Nintendo from the market leader to second place, and the Gamecube fell further to third place.
It took the arrival of his successor to bring them back to market leadership with the Wii, even if Iwata then subsequently lost that lead with the failure of the Wii U.
Yamauchi was responsible for making Nintendo a power player in the gaming industry to this day, but we can't only acknowledge his successes and turn a blind eye to his mistakes.
