Was Nintendo right to opt out of the graphics arms race?

[Chrkeller]

burninmylight said:

Leynos said:

That would have killed Nintendo. It's naive and dumb to think otherwise. They had no market share. No one was going to support a 3rd $400-500 console on those other systems level and certainly with devs costs that generation. Nintendo would not be able to split dev costs between two platforms. They would be stretched too thin. You know who also stretched themselves too thin. Atari. SEGA. Nintendo is not selling 255 million systems if they went the HD route. They went with Wii and DS and sold more systems in one generation than any console maker ever has and no one has come remotely close. 

I think it's more naive to assume the Wii was successful only because it was an overclocked GCN sold at $250. No one supported the GCN when it was $50-100 cheaper than its contemporaries and could easily handle a port from them outside of ROM size concerns for larger games.

If the Wii didn't turn heads and catch national headlines with Wii Sports and Wii Fit, it would have been Virtual Boy Part II. Wii Sports became the zeitgeist of the generation not because of the simple graphics and price but because of the Wiimote. It is not "naive and dumb" at all to see an alternate reality where Nintendo releases a $300-400 Wii with specs in the range of X360 that still ships with Wii Sports and a Wiimote/nunchuk combo in the box and still not only owns the early generation, but now legs it out stronger at the end of it thanks to better third party support.

SEGA didn't stretch itself too thin, SEGA released one popular console after one decently popular console, then failure after boneheaded decision after failure after idiotic idea after failure.

Probably a bit of both.  Sony going $500 and $600 on the ps3 (my prices could be slightly off), while Nintendo went $250 had to help a lot.