I always thought the bad Star Treks were Deep Space 9 and Enterprise. One was a prequel, and the other was a Space Station with lots of episodes where nothing happened.

Anyway, as far as Bladerunner and Van Gogh go, those are two things enjoyed by a certain type of person. I believe in English they are called "pretentious".

Bearing in mind that i've never watched DS9 (the only Treks i've thoroughly watched being TNG and Voyager), my impression was that DS9 was better received by critics and subjectively the "better" series, but that it was too non-traditional and thus poorly received by the public at large, prompting Voyager, which was 100% about exploration, at least as far as the plot went, to try to recapture the core audience, but Voyager was plagued by the problem of poor execution

The second analog accessory seems likely to me but this seems a bit far fetch. Why would they ship development kit if they had so much trouble? I doubt the situation is as bad as the article claim.

Why?´I can only assume it is because you (and supposedly 'the market') want them to make those kinds of games. My point is, that's not good enough. No one has any mandate to dictate how Nintendo should perform their business, either from a venture capitalistic or artistic standpoint. Nintendo doesn't serve the needs of the market - their products do (or don't). They are free to seek fortune wherever they wish, and in fact they could just as easily quit making games altogether, just as they quit making cards (which, by the way, had been profitable for nearly a century).

That would a valid criticism, if by 'whims of the market' I was referring to anything other than the myriad of cases of scientifically documented cultural malleability.  The rise and fall of traditional adventure games is a good example. It is incredibly conceited of Malstrom to assume that our current paradigm of games has anything but a temporary appeal (since, naturally, he not only posits that there is an essential human nature, but holds that he alone has found the key to our enjoyment of video games). The arcade paradigm has, in any case, shown examples of both zeniths and nadirs, which would indicate that it is not a cultural constant.

Moreover, if popular culture is not subverted, we would never experience change. That was the original point of that argument, and it still strikes me as a fatal flaw in your little episteme.

As an aside, you are aware that your reading of that passage from Hamlet relies on a particular socio-linguistic basis, don't you? I could deconstruct it, if I wanted to. Who, indeed, is actually to say that 'natural meaning' is everlasting? Similarly, what makes you so sure a Japanese reading of Hamlet will even come to that same conclusion?

Finally someone on my side!

Thank you Helios, for saying what I was not able to say. Truly, yours are some excellent posts!

Another thought that crossed my mind was in response to Lord's analogy of today's customer as the patrons of old. Correct me if I'm wrong but this analogy is lacking. If anything, the equivalent of a patron to Nintendo would be its share-holders. In comparison to them, the few hundred dollars a year we invest in Nintendo products are insignificant. More importantly our investment isn't as transparent (and predictable) to Nintendo as those of the share-holders and it carries less obligations with it, not to mention the fact that us consumers have no open channel of communication with Nintendo, unlike the shareholders.
To make the analogy complete, I guess you could try to equate the consumers of today with the common working class of the renaissance: those people who would come to church in order to pray, and upon witnessing the magnificence of the frescoes and the architectural mastery around them, would be so humbled as to increase their donation to the church. (ie: if we buy more games, ultimately Nintendo's stock goes up, which makes the shareholders wealthier and happier).

It's not a perfect analogy because I doubt the artist ever received a cut from these donations during that period, but I think it illustrates some parts of the relationship a bit better.
Thankfully for us, the consumer, Nintendo never allows itself to be too heavily influenced by its share-holders, and no one in this forum would suggest they should be.

The second thing I wanted to point out is in response to an earlier reply by Lord regarding Van Gogh. The fundamental argument here has already been made by Helios but I just wanted to add that even Lord's assessment of Van Gogh's situation is in agreement with this point of view: Namely, that Van Gogh did not see a high level of success until his work was presented before a different audience than the one who had seen it initially (contemporary artists, according to Lord). 
Once again, had he been working under a single oligarchical patron it is quite possible his career as an artist would never have developed in the first place. Therefor only the option to choose his audience (one made for him posthumously, but a choice nonetheless) is what allowed him to build the reputation he has today.

Finally, my reply to Rol about my last paragraph being written by someone "who must be high" (lol) was going to address the difference between Nintendo the publicly traded company, and Nintendo the collection of human beings, but Helios made that point already, and in a commendable manner IMO.

Hopefully I have now tied up all the loose ends I've left in this conversation.

One could argue that the end of the arcade-game epoch was due to development of those games no longer occuring, and not due to decreased demand, though i'm typing this off the top of my head and am unprepared to properly argue the point

True enough, but you can't argue against fact that the norms and trends of any culture are in a constant state of flux. Even if arcade games are as long-lasting as the ancient myths, we would have no way of determining that fact today. Further, even the most basic assumptions we make about a medium (such as the supremacy of tonality, being the dominant form of (western) musical expression for over a millenium) have proven to be subject of cultural subversion. Why would arcade games be any different?

We've certainly slid very far off-point. The main point is that the short-sighted firing of Iwata would just lead Nintendo further down, and in no way be a fix.

1. That's not what a "whim" means.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/whim

* 1. A sudden or capricious idea; a fancy.

* 2. Arbitrary thought or impulse

A maleable culture is a different thing, so using that word just invited confusion.

Also, when cultures change, it actually is a good idea to change with it. The point I, Malstrom, and others, maintain is that the games that are classics are STILL classics, and that has NOT changed, or else the sales on those would drop.

2. That genre is about PC gamers, which is a different thing than the arcade style, which is where games like Mario and Zelda come into play. Plus genre popularity does NOT prove an entire market shift, just that one genre lost its appeal. The problem is PREMATURELY deciding certain types of games lose their appeal BEFORE the market does.

3. He has not declared that. And from what he writes, he actually wants that not to be the case. I think you just are pretending he's claiming that so you can slap a false label of arrogance to try to discredit him. We aren't buying it.

4. That's not a culture thing. That's just about genres working, not working, saturating, and getting replaced when people get sick of the saturation.

5. "human nature" is NOT the same thing as "popular culture". We aren't claiming pop culture doesn't change. So that was not a point in that argument, so you are claiming a fatal flaw that doesn't exist.

6.  Unless the words in that line have different meanings back then, than as of now, and that sentence structure was different, then the basis isn't that much differnt. Plus the actual context of the line is Hamlet trying to help the people in the play, which is directly related to art. So the context actually fit's the way Malstrom uses that line.

7. "human nature" is also not the same as "natural meaning". As for who's to say, that's what the fields of history and anthropology are about.

8. You are missing the point of him using that term. He's not claimng "they should read Hamlet", but that the best art does what Hamlet describes, even if they never heard of the play.