I agree and disagree with the article in its entirety.

Yes consumers define a company but before consumers define that company it is the company that does the defining. Now Sean mentions the gamers who grew up with NES and GameBoy which were technically inferior but had games you'd want to keep playing and the consoles apparently did not have an expiry date.

Yah sure there was a market of 60-million consumers at that moment. A large user base that Nintendo slowly lost but is that really completely because they tried defining their own image? I don't believe so I note that Sean specifically states a major reason for Nintendo's success was arcade style games and family friendly software. But later with the fall of GameCube he specifically mentions the lack of hardcore mature software. He mentions that consumers have changed their view from family software to childrens software. Now why exactly did that image come into being?

I do not buy the fact that consumers are dead set from the day a company begins operating. I would share the view Sean claims Nintendo has that it is nostalgia. In the games industry their are constantly new gamers being introduced to gaming their is constantly gamers growing older who want games to grow older with them. I don't buy for a second that the whole consumer base in its entirety thought that Nintendo was a family friendly arcade game maker.

Why the downfall from NES onwards, yes partly due to Nostalgia but was SNES really a huge step backwards for Nintendo's NES? Everyone who shares this Nostalgic view that Nintendo used to be so amazing loved SNES. So why if SNES was such a true Nintendo console did SNES lose so many sales? I mean SNES lost over 10-million in sales compared to NES. Its true the largest dive Nintendo took was with Nintendo 64 and took a slightly smaller dive with GameCube. But is that all due to consumers image of the company? Partially I am sure it played a role but that is not the defining factor.

There were so many defining factors. I'd say the biggest one was the entry of Sony into the industry and Sega having more success with their Genesis then they did with Master System. Sega claims that Master System sold 13-million units world wide and VGChartz states Genesis sold 28-million units.

So lets look at this in greater detail, during the NES/Master System generation there was about 90-million consoles sold in total. That is almost 50-million for SNES, almost 30-million for Sega and 10 million for Turbo Grafx. But suddenly in the fifth generation we go from having about 90-million console market to over a 100 million that Sony sells alone. Sony sells more hardware in the fifth generation then all the companies combined did in the past generations! Now can you blame that entirely on Nintendo not meeting consumer's perception of Nintendo? Possibly a little bit but consumers not being satisfied with Nintendo wouldn't drive Sony's sales larger then all the past companies combined in their generations.Then include PS2 which actually sold even more units then PSOne selling 144 million units such a large increase that it basically added N64's sales and Sega's sales from the fifth generation together and put them onto the sixth generation. Nintendo losing market share is a no brainer and with Microsoft also entering the industry and selling 24-million units cuts Nintendo's market share even further.

So why did Nintendo lose so much market share, software and prices. Third parties were hugely supportive of NES/SNES but Nintendo was really harsh on the third parties and was not a very nice business partner. The third parties tried supporting Sega but Sega lacked the ability to over take Nintendo simply do to Nintendo's first party content killing Sega. Nintendo with N64/GCN was reliant almost entirely on first party software while Sony on the other hand had some of the highest selling third party software to date. N64's first party software did pretty good for the most part. But Sony's third party software built up! Then when PS2 came around you can see the highest selling title almost doubles that of the highest selling PSOne game.

Price was another huge pitfal with N64. lets face it I remember seeing games up to 129.99$ while towards 1999 some PSOne games were selling as cheap as 9.99$ this was a business decision by Nintendo that drastically hurt Nintendo's ability to compete. Yet Nintendo despite the very high priced software and lack of third party support managed to still sell over 30-million units. GameCube sought to remedy the price problem and bring back third parties, Nintendo had a lot of third parties interested but the lack of online turned them and LucasArts away.

In the end Wii was the fastest selling game console to date. It sold this well long before any (Arcade or classic) software was released. None of the titles launched within the first year even arguably the second year featured any of the games people call arcade. So Wii did not sell because of this it sold because of the new Wiimote and the new gameplay experiances Nintendo offered. Even Sony and Microsoft came to the same conclusion. Some of the highest selling Wii games aren't traditional Nintendo games at all games like WiiFit and on DS games like Brain Age and Nintendogs. None of these high selling games fit the profile that Sean lists.

In fact during the time that Sean refers to Pokemon was born. Pokemon on GBC/GBA/N64/GCN was massive so big that Nintendo sold over 100 million copies of Pokemon games in a short period of time. But Pokemon didn't fit Nintendo's classic profile either it offered a new gameplay experiance catch them all. Other new franchises like Animal Crossing and Pikmin weren't classic Nintendo franchises either and both have proven to be some of Nintendo's biggest games (AC on DS/Wii) sold shit loads and Pikmin 1+2 on GCN sold very well considering the software sales on the platform.

As for why DS didn't sell well in the beginning. This wasn't because of the touch screen really it was the lack of software. The lack of high quality software that took advantage of the touch screen. In fact GBA is the closest thing to Sean description it featured games that were classic Nintendo games whether they were remakes or entirely new titles.

Other titles like MetroidOtherM took the Metroid franchise in another direction. Consumers had gotten used to FPS Metroid but that goes against Sean's theory because those Nintendo consumers would have wanted a return of classic Metroid and Metroid Prime would not have been a powerhouse.

Fact is Wii's success is almost entirely due to Nintendo offering new experiances. Sean obviously is unaware of this he talks about the changes made to Mario, but what about MarioKart? I mean online play, motorcycles new weapons and characters new modes. The only reason Platformers are as popular as they are is because it is Nintendo's platformers that are selling.

In the end Sean has it right Nostalgic gamers who bought NES/SNES bought Wii for the classics. A funny thing about this is that NSMBW was launched and from then on when all these classics launched like Donkey Kong Country Return's etc...etc... Wii sales have actually been dropping since the release of these classic games. Hardware sales were not amazing because of Nintendo making arcade style games or classics. It was successful because almost all of the software from Nintendo's first parties offered new and unique experiances!

@NightDragon83 - you my hate it but there are alot of people out there who like. Such as myself. Without things such as Super Guide I would not be able to complete games. Not everyone who loves games is automatically an expert. Some of us need those helping hands from Nintendo. Also, I find Nintendo's games continue to push boundaries, not so much technically but in gameplay and sometimes look (such as Kirbys Epic Yarn).

The only reason SNES and N64 and GC lost sales was not because of this bullshit about customer definition but because Nintendo faced stronger competition, on N64/GC lacked full third-party support, and was outdone on price by PS1/PS2.

Nintendo love hotels?????

Wow, sorry, after finishing reading the text and recovering from the concept of Nintendo love hotels (wow, just wow) I can comment something more meaningful.

I pretty much agree with him. It seems Nintendo wants to become a 'hardcore' gamer company, and that is just like swimming against the current or, even worse, spitting against the wind. The 3DS ads I've seen lately are pretty baffling and I don't understand why Nintendo would shoot themselves in the foot like that. DS was a massive success and I don't think Nintendo have anything to gain by going 'hardcore'.

It's pretty hard for Nintendo to grasp that market, not so many hardcore gamers are going to buy a Nintendo console, it's just that when people hear Nintendo they associate it to other kinds of games, and those images are very difficult to change. A lot of effort and a lot of money is needed for that, and it's, in most cases, not worth it. It's like New Coke.

MS could enter the business because it was associated with PC games, and that's why shooters and WRPG's do so well in MS consoles to this day, they used to be PC games.

On the other hand, I don't totally agree with the examples of the DS's touchscreen and Wii's motion controls. There is room for the integration of new concepts, as long as those concepts are aimed at the same market. I am sure many people liked the Wii because of motion controls, because having these doesn't necessarily mean Nintendo is losing its identity, it can add up to what people want. Basically if Nintendo=family fun (perhaps an oversimplification, but for the example's sake), then Nintendo can still add to that formula with other methods, as long as these don't deviate their strategy.

"On the other hand, I don't totally agree with the examples of the DS's touchscreen and Wii's motion controls."

He meant in terms of showing off how "creative" developers could be with them, instead of making them just another way to control awesome games.

I agree. Nintendo needs to stay on their turf with pure arcade games and not try to compete with Sony and Microsoft.

He's saying what I've been saying since the Project café days - Nintendo goes against what consumers expect of them and will fail at trying to eat up "hardcore" customers, people who simply don't see them as part of the crowd.

...he just says it in a far more eloquent, educated, and logical way.

edit: am I the only one who's more baffled by Nintendo rice than love hotels? Nintendo love hotels would be awesome! Princess peach and mario costumes waiting for you in the closet, 1-2 music by just a push of a button... XD

This is where I a conflict of interest.

I am the NES generation and still loved what was offered on N64/GC and of course Wii. I also look forward to WiiU.

My reasoning is I hope to see Nintendo bringing the same "Nintendo" games that we've loved on Wii to the WiiU, but I also hope that with the push to bring the system to contain the same 'core' elements as its competitors along with Nintendo's uniqueness, we'll see no reason to own two systems.

I have a wide variation of games I enjoy and Wii this gen simply didn't have it all covered due to its limited power. WiiU shows the promise of offering both.

I think 3DS is finally doing this as well. Its offering "Nintendo" with its latest Mario game, upcoming mario Kart, eventual pokemon/zelda/etc/etc. Along with the hopefully AAA content from 3rd parties. It has the same core capabilities plus the unique 3D option. It has the online (its growing all the time) as well as the traditional solid local connections.

3DS was a weak start simply because there were no 1st party titles. But they are here by this holiday.

WiiU won't have that fate. It will have the solid 1st party out the door and hopefully it will be joined by the AAA 3rd party titles vs the one-off and generally weak titles Wii received.

Hopefully it will also come with a 2D Mario and my favorite would be a 2D Metroid as well.

Since when has nintendo EVER tried to be hardcore? The wii was as un hardcore as it gets, I don't even understand the complaints. What are you expecting from them?

Since when have they ever treid to "compete" with them? THey do things their own way, completly different from sony and microsoft

and did he just say the wii wasn't succesful because of motion controls? quite possibly the most idiotic thing I have ever heard. the sole reason it was succesuful was because of motion controls and nice cheap price. Classics like donkey kong country and new super mario bros wii were actually the decline of the wii.so that motto doesn't make much sense.