Honestly, I just think it's before its time, much like the rest of the home 3D market.

Agreed. I never said as much and you should know at this juncture that that isn't my PoV. The question at hand is, was stereoscopic 3D's price warranted?

Well, if loss-leading is any indication of Nintendo's financial success (sarcasm to be detected plz) this year, then I think we would both agree the answer is no.

But in general, since we're talking about video games and the legitimacy of graphical improvements, so long as the graphical improvements don't infringe on gameplay improvements (SW resource allocation and budgets) or on the affordability of the console on the short and long term, these should be offered to the consumers, especially when failure to do so results in considerable loss of marketshare (as was the case for the Wii - ie. lost opportunity). Mind you, that isn't the case of stereoscopic 3D so I can side more with OP on this one.

No, because the purpose of Sim-City and the objective are the same.

Minecraft You do not have to build a single thing, apart from essentials like I said. There is a campaign.

You decided to build something so that you could survive and grow.

Unlike Sim-City, it is not your objective to cover the world in bases. Sim-City is a points based game in which you are ranked on how well you put a city together given some variables. That is not Minecraft's point. That is the point that USERS GAVE to the game.

A lot of interesting discussion in here. I'll be back to read it all later.

If Minecraft is all about UGC, then what minecraft user made the creeper?

Minecraft works as a game because of the tensions caused by obstacles like monsters and lava, which are randomly generated, not user generated.

Many people saw the appeal in exploring huge randomly generated worlds, and uncover massive dungeons.

Remove those things and leave only UGC and Minecraft would be a sad shell of a game.

haha, true true.

Well, it's selling now, isn't it? Of course, it's not absolutely owning the market, but it also has a lot riding against it too. The smart phone market, people crying about eye troubles and dizziness, lack of games in the outset, etc etc.

I never said Minecraft is 100% UGC. I said gamers changed the Minecraft world into one in which they created all the content. The game was about survival, not about building. You had tools to build, but you never had to. Gamers decided, like our little friend here, to spend 12-20 hours creating a fortress and castle, or mining facility, or protective gateways and trains etc.

Tell me that is not UGC, and I'll show you someone who has a piss-poor definition of UGC.

There's a sweet spot for sales of a movie ticket for example.

When it costs you 11 to 13 dollars to watch a movie at the cinema when it used to cost you only 5 to 7 dollars, you start to wonder if it's worth your hard-earned cash.

The portable implementation of 3D on the 3DS is one of the best to date in my modest view. The reason being, it is practical. (no glasses, slider, visually improves gaming emersion)  Now that it's sold at a loss, maybe people will start to see its value, and its marketability go up.

I'm not sure if you understand what I mean by that, but it's in the same line as "the proof is in the pudding". If people always feel bad when they experience 3D (because it was too expensive), the tech gets a bad stigma, above and beyond the headaches. But when it's an important part of the experience and is offered at a steal of a price, as well as giving people the opportunity to get accustomed to it (not just a movie every so often, but regular gaming habits), that improves the marketability of the technology, imho.

At Nintendo's expense of course, and I agree with you it was not in their best interest. But when it comes to 3D itself, I believe that given the right opportunity (like the 3DS for example), it can break out of the stigma you portrayed.

Yeah, totally, and everyone cared that much about these points, sure :D (I don't even remember there were points, are you sure?) That's just straw-grasping on your part to consider points as a deciding factor to why people played SimCity, there's no any kind of scoreboard or hall of fame IIRC like in arcade games. Though even if there was one, that won't change anything.

Minecraft got sort of points btw, achievement system, but nobody cares.

The same could not be said for 8-bit games in the 16-bit era. You're pitting an era against an era and somehow equating it to comparing games in the same era. All the games I mentioned were 32-bit games. 2D vs 3D is not the same as 8-bit vs 16-bit. 2D and 3D had distinct advantages and disadvantages in the 32-bit era, but devs favoured 3D anyway. Try doing Heroes III in N64 3D graphics and see i it would look as appealing.

Of course it was dwindling in popularity after the childish themes in Yoshi's Island and after a 2D Mario not having been released for a while. That's not an indicator of anything. All we know is that it sold well in the beginning of the 16-bit era, the market was not satisfied with yoshi's island, and then when proper mario bros games are made again, they still sell like crazy!

I'm sorry if I ignored the graphs, but I couldn't figure out how to read them xD. Can you tell me how the research in them was conducted, what they display, and how I'm supposed to read them please, they were confusing :P

You say that sales were stagnating and there was time for something fresh, but if SM64 is to be considered mainline Mario, it just made the stagnation worse! I don't think a proper sequel near the end of the SNES would have tapped the market too much, a launch SMB and a late SMB on each console seems pretty reasonable to me. I also belive an SMB game would have sold more than SM64. just look at how much SM64 made the franchise decline from SMW!

How do you know that people didn't want it as much anymore? If it was because interrest had declined, then that can be explained by the lack of new games in the series. Street Fighter 3 is not the same because capcom had exhausted the market, while Nintendo only released one version, and waited a few years between releases (between SMW and SMW2 and SM64) Market exhaustion would not be that big a problem for Nintendo.