hmmm... interesting. back then the whole nintendo market value was probably like $10, $15 bln... a hostile takeover i guess would be silly, basically you'd be buying the IPs and end up losing the talent. probably no DS, no Wii. although both of them could be successful without the marios and the zeldas. the thriving software on those platforms are all new IPs. man, if anything, MS should have just given Miyamoto $1bln to work for them.

windbane said: [Make this postboard Firefox friendly, d@mn you! Can't cut ANYTHING off of these quote trails!] Nintendo wasn't propping anyone up the last 10 years. Sony carried and expanded the market, not Nintendo. Personally, I think it would be awesome if Nintendo was a software company, or at least partnered with a hardware company. Of course, it would be my dream for them to combine with Sony. Even if that never happens, their strength has always been the software, not the hardware. They tried to depend on their first party games to sell their consoles the last 10 years and they found out it didn't work. Despite having some of the best games ever made every generation, they still need third party support and hardware power. They have gotten some third party support back, but we'll see if they have the hardware to last because there are a ton of games that the Wii won't get.

You THINK they weren't propping this industry up. Yes Sony WAS expanding the market which is part of why they won but it's not the whole story. You really need to check out gaming history, man. Even when Nintendo's "losing" they still influence a great deal of what goes on with the competitors. I can just point out controllers for the most obvious example. EVERYONE follows them. EVERYONE. Sony was the golden boy, Nintendo was the quiet whiz behind the scene keeping things running. Don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain. Sony can't profit like Nintendo. They really don't know this business that well yet.

It's like steroids. As long as the enhancement drugs are in the body you get all the glory while the journeyman just puts in his steady good effort unsung. But those drugs will eventually corrupt the body and wear off with scandal following. The journeyman who diligently put in the work steps up to his rightful place and gets his due glory. I call the money Sony & Microsoft pump into their systems to keep them afloat "Green Steroids".

They're not successful so much because they're good. They're successful because they're rich. It's just financial brute force. Nintendo is the one who said load times were bad long ago and worked to keep game start up time low as a company rule. They don't NEED a bunch of hard drive storage to start their games because they've figured out how to manage load times better on their systems. They stuck with cartridges for a host of reasons (less easy to tear up than discs, quick start up times, fears of piracy). Problem was the cost of that in comparison to CD's. They paid the price for sticking to their principles. They said cartridge based systems were dead. Ha! Before XBox 1 came along they were still partial cartridge systems. How do they think you can save data to come back to play later? Memory CARD??? CARD-TRIDGE??? Sony made a mistake making a disc-based system for a portable. It made the system more fragile which is the LAST thing a portable needed to be.

DS still runs on what? Cartridges. More efficient smaller space-saving cartridges. Gamecube went to disc because of the public but Nintendo STILL managed to keep load times nearly nonexistent on their system. ESPECIALLY if it came from the company itself.

Would we REALLY have wireless controllers right now on consoles if Nintendo didn't come out with the Wavebird and finally make wireless controllers viable? The latest Sims is influenced by freakin' Animal Crossing! Not just hardware but Nintendo's software influences how other companies make their games.

Believe it buddy. Nintendo IS this industry not just a part of it. They will ALWAYS be the home team while the competition are the visitors. I guarantee you 15, 20 years down the line when maybe Microsoft and/or Sony have quit the gaming biz Nintendo will still be here to take on the next comers still preedominantely shaping the way this industry develops and behaves. When they took over from Atari they rewrote the game business bible in their own image. Sometimes a competitor can get the best of them for a time but in the end they will always come out on top because they wrote the playbook. You're seeing that now with DS & Wii. Even GBA. Folks thought it was MS's turn to be top dog because of "the Atari era, the Nintendo era, the Sony era, and now the Microsoft era" since it would seem equilateral and fair. If 3rd party never fell out with Nintendo there never woulda BEEN a Sony era and that was Nintendo's fault in the first place. They paid for it and now payment is in full.

Without their mighty funds could either of those guys have even broken into the business to challenge Nintendo? Sega was the only one of the old school to take it to Nintendo and the success went to their head causing the 32X/Sega CD/Saturn/double the price fiascoes. The other guys HAD to be rich and play losslead just to be able to get started in this business. And it's STILL not working quite as well as Microsoft hoped.

You'll see by the end of this generation. Even when they are not "in control" they are still in control. Others have some power here to influence company direction (I just talked about Microsoft changing launch patterns in a recent thread) but none like Nintendo. I realize I sound like a broken record sometimes when I talk about 'em but it's only the truth.

John Lucas

(someone pointed out Rare. Nintendo's control freakiness influenced how Rare put out their games. They influence their 2nd party developers as well and Goldeneye 007 & Perfect Dark influenced FPS's games. Rare hasn't been Rare since they left for Microsoft though they are trying to get back to their old selves. Yes I'm aware that the Stamper Bros. & the original braintrust behind Rare left long ago. In the N64 days Nintendo & Rare were almost like 2 halves 'dark & light' of the same entity for awhile)

Well this is the best thread I've seen around. Very educational and intelligent conversation. Wish I had something to add to all of this but I don't. I would like to say though that just kinda asking random people (not online) they seem to lean more to Wii or PS3. I'm just seeing everyone putting so much emphasis on online gaming, but thats of course on all of the online forums and blogs. A good amount of people don't care about online gaming. I myself am not thrilled about online gaming but I do like the idea of downloading content. I personally want a PS3 but Wii looks kinda nice too. Not a fan of the 360 just because I'm into RPGs and don't really see 360 doing that much, didn't see Xbox doing them. Only games for Xbox that I thought looked nice was Fable and Oddworld games. Plus Xbox in general comes off as shooters and sports, at least thats what I think of when I think of them. I know PS3 doesn't really have any RPGs right now but you know they will. Well I'll stop bothering everyone will my rambling now I just wanted to say people should consider the none online gamers. Sorry I contributed nothing and just in general didn't say anything within this topic.

So Bungie, Rare, MGS, FASA, Lionhead, Ensemble, ACES, and the remainder of the Microsoft internal development teams are just worthless then, and anything they acquire in the future probably will be, too, right?

WOW: 7 million; Live: 6 million. But then again, what exactly does WOW have to do with consoles? Let's try comparing them to their competitors. Nintendo is a complete and total joke who less than three years ago said "Customers do not want online games." Sony's at least trying, but they've got a ways to go.

The first four on that list had no real competition, if any at all. Sony's competition committed suicide, and Sony, like Microsoft, used its money to buy its way into the industry. Microsoft had to deal with the best brand the industry has ever seen. Like the previous comparison with WOW, this isn't exactly a useful one.

You assume I like Xbox because I defend it. Just like you assume I like Sony because I defend them. Pick an assumption that's right next time. Oh, and an analyst talk out of his ass? Nah, never happen.

Microsoft's worried about Nintendo? When did that happen, and why was I not informed?

Erik Aston said: MS figured out an amazing business model to both create the market for and gain a monopoly of PC OSs. But they haven't demonstrated any ability to repeatedly create new market space like these other companies have.

Actually Erik,

                       Microsoft stumbled upon the model. They didn't design the initial model then put it into action. They had something more valuable than being good; Luck.

This is why I feel MS is having a hard time recapturing their success. They had a lot of luck fall their way, and for the most part they have just been able to keep their monology. It has expanded as computers have expanded.

But not because of MS's sheer veracity; unless you count them killing off small time competition.

Shane: just watch and see Nintendo's online plan come together. It will never be like XBL... And the "hardcore" audience will probably always hate it... But Wii will pass DS to have the most successful online network among game machines, in terms of numbers of users and in terms of profitability. They'll have more users because the service is free and aimed at "casual" online play (sharing Miis, visiting friends cities, getting health feedback from hospitals), and VC will be many, many, many times more profitable than all the downloadable content on XBL. Those "casual" online elements I mentioned Nintendo is betting can be more important than what I like to call "splitscreen online." 95% of the time, MS and Sony are merely taking the existing kind of multiplayer we had, and putting it online. This is highly expensive, yet has absolutely no chance of expanding the market, but merely attacking each others userbase. The things Nintendo is doing, which games like Spore and LittleBigPlanet are also doing, is trying to create fundamentally different gameplay experiences through use of online. Only then can online become important in driving profits growth and userbase growth in the industry. And the VC is a stroke of genius. Nintendo have a system without an HDD (which keeps the cost low), which is going to quickly become the leader in downloadable content!!! Disallowing games to have added features prevents companies from trying to compete with each other to get the best enhanced games on the service, and in turn allows Nintendo to drive the library size sky high very quickly. Nintendo won't put other things up for download because its expensive, and they don't need to when they're profiting from everything else already. WoW is totally relevant when we're talking about online. When one game by itself is outpacing both of MSs consoles combined, and actually showing how an online-based model can be hugely profitable, its hard to think of MS as a big online leader.

From what I have seen, Nintendo's online strategy seems to be to get people interested in their console every couple of weeks because there is something new. The virtual console gets new game releases every week (which seem to get decent press at mainstream sites), most of the Wii channels seem to have constant updates, and it seems like Nintendo is attempting to add a new Wii channel every 6 weeks or 2 months.

Certainly, this is no XBox Live or Playstation Home but I think Nintendo may be able to convince more people to connect their console to the internet through this approach than Microsoft and Sony ever have.

I'm with albionus, Erik and johnlucas. MS tried to diversify, they can't be blamed for that, but it's half time now and one can't deny that they have failed with what they have tried so far.

Not everything that MS pumps money into becomes gold. Windows CE and derivatives. MSN. Tablets. Web TV. All these projects are older than the Xbox and were money pits.

FishyJoe, isn't that what I've just said?