People (some people) also like to associate with those they see as strong, powerful and cool. Nintendo has not been cool since Sega's defamatory ads in the 90s, and is seen as smaller and weaker. The third wheel.

They are the third wheel, so seeing them as that is just being honest with the situation nothing more.

As far as not being cool, thats pretty much by their own choice not any cricumstances or hardship.  

You should add " imo" after such insanity

Heres the thing, would anyone care if its replaced or not.

Ninty is irreplaceable only to a very small numbers of gamers, to most they are irrelevant.  

I don't know. I believe Nintendo is indeed important.
Put it this way: Back in the days Nintendo and Sega tried to destroy each other. Sega's commercial were ridiculously agressive towards Nintendo. It was a fight to death between two titans. Now, Sony and Microsoft don't fight like that. They share a lot of things. Similar specs, similar controllers, most games are multiplat, similar services. Sure, they have their differences and exclusives, but not enough.

I, honestly, think MS and Sony are both too scared to try anything that could unleash a serious war. If Sony destroys Xbox, there goes any chance of making considerable profit out of the gaming division in Microsoft, making everything a colossal waste of resources and time. If Microsoft annihilates Sony, PS4 failing/not being very profitable would be bad news for Sony since, despite being one of their smallest divisions, it's one of their most successful products and obviously a company in a delicate situation need to produce as much profit as they can (Unless I have a horribly wrong understanding of Sony's current situation).

So, in the end, I believe Nintendo is important because Sony and Microsoft are basically the same since that's the only way they can play it relatively safe, while Nintendo is the one taking risky moves in order to offer different experiences, which, if successful, MS and Sony can try to implement and it would be a much safer bet due to the simple fact that it would be a refined version of an already existing successful product.

But this is just my opinion.

They are all important. Even the 'newbie' Microsoft. Stop trying to play up or play down your favorite or hated company. Deal with it.

Also, Nintendo is the only one that needs to be successful. If Microsoft wanted it, they could subsidize the Xbox forever with their Windows and Office profits. Sony is not as healthy as Microsoft, but videogames are a small part of their corporation.
Nintendo is the only one that needs to be profitable.

Intreseting that you can be so wrong.

PS is basically going to be saving Sony and has done it in the past, they desperatly need it to do well.  They are uniting all of Sony around the PS brand.  

MS is about profits, the only reason its stuck by xbox so long is a few people at the top being stubborn as fuck.  Shareholders would not tolarate such bs, this is the real world not a childish lalaland.  

Ninty could drop hardware and easily do great as a trd party, if their hardware utterly fails they will be just fine.  

"Risky moves " + "nintendo games" is not a good fit...

a lot of people think because MS and sony have a lot of games in common that means Sony has less exclusives than nintendo, that's totally nonsens, you could have 60% exclusives among Wii U games and 20% exclusives among PS4 games, PS4 still would have more exclusives because much more games. ( this is what will happen with much more support from Japan + Sony making at least as much exclusives than nintendo per year )

Seriously.. what the fuck is the point of this topic? People that love Nintendo games are ALWAYS going to love Nintendo games, and people that despise them are always going to despise them. It's not like you're going to change someone's opinion with this topic. No one is going to suddenly read this and go, "shit.. you know what.. This topic has made me see the light! Nintendo games aren't as great as I thought! Therefore they AREN'T as important in the industry as I thought!" So basically, I only see this thread as flamebait.

Personally, from my 23+ years of gaming, Nintendo games for the most part, are about 100x better than the vast majority of video games I've experienced, and nothing is ever going to change my views on that. I WILL say that modern Nintendo is far inferior than retro Nintendo, but even modern Nintendo is still in a completely different league than most developers of the modern era.