"Monopoly is an American-originated board game originally published by Parker Brothers. Subtitled "The Fast-Dealing Property Trading Game," the game is named after the economic concept of monopoly — the domination of a market by a single entity. It is produced by the United States game and toy company (if there is no difference, why name them both) Hasbro. Players move around the game board buying or trading properties, developing their properties with houses and hotels, and collecting rent from their opponents, the ultimate goal being to drive them into bankruptcy."

I don't actually understand this.

Is Nintendo important to the home console industry? Of course, they're one of the primary hardware and software companies in gaming. Are they more important than the others? Probably not. If they exited tomorrow, developers would rush to fill that niche, including former Nintendo employees. Platforming fans would either have to migrate or quit gaming.

Now, as far as handheld gaming goes, they are more important, though that importance has been mitigated by mobile phone gaming. In Japan, Capcom would release a Monster Hunter for the Vita and all would be well. In North America, people would probably jump to tablets and phones. Someone would release a Pokemon clone and life would go on.

They're important, though certainly not essential.

Yeah, sorry, that's not really a valid thing to say. The gaming industry adapts from what Nintendo does (in the same way that it adapts from what Sony and Microsoft does). If Nintendo would just suddenly disappear one day for some reason everyone gets affected, whether you're a supporter of Nintendo or not. You can't "do just fine without them", as if they're a separate entity that you can just dispatch of and trod along as if nothing will happen. The PS4 and the Xbox One everyone are enjoying today are the results of what their competitors, including Nintendo, are doing and have been doing for the last 35 years, adapted to suit their philosophies and tweaked to fit their audience.

Truth be told, they're still the most ballsy gaming hardware manufacturer in the business. Motion controls inspired Kinect which in turn inspired the design for Xbox One. The Virtual Console inspired the digital distribution of old Xbox- and Playstation-titles on Xbox Live and PSN, which now is a huge selling point for Sony when it comes to what Playstation Now can offer. Their hardware design and game design has always influenced the industry, and guess what? Nintendo will continue to.

Indispensable? Well, Sony and Microsoft also have a history of innovation (although not nearly as extensive or ballsy) so it would probably not destroy the industry. But it would be a very boring industry with little variety and fewer innovations. If they're not indispensable then at least very important to its well-being, arguably more important than Microsoft and Sony are on their own (although both disappearing would obviously be the biggest possible disaster).

Why do you feel insulted? Because something you spent so much time on is being called toys? Get over it.

Where did you get those definitions from anyway. Did you come up with them yourself?

The general idea is that Nintendo is relevant to people that use gaming as a leisure activity, kids or adults.

I can relax and forget about my work and adult everyday life problems when I build an empire (Civilization), plunder the seven seas (AC4), go around wearing green and having epic advetures (Zelda) or travel through crazy alucinogenic worlds (Mario 3d land), this is all fun stuff and Nintendo getd the fact that a tough man wearing a gun and shooting everything he sees does not have to be involved.

We NEED Nintendo, to remind us that games come in wide variety of colors and styles, not only gritty brown and bloody military massacres.

But the main thing is to express my feelings about how I enjoy their efforts, and that coming from ME, a notorious Sony fanboy and Xbox One owner.

Pretty much this. Looking at his most recent post he clearly doesn't intend to stop resorting to this shallow attempt at argumentation either.

By all means, enlighten me. Why do you think they are not important?

Yeah, every game on non-Nintendo platforms is a gritty brown game, they are all in the same style and have even the same goal and gameplay!

Like Bastion, Beyond, Bioshock Infinite, Braid, Broken Age, Broken Sword 5, Brothers, Costume Quest, Cut the Rope, Deponia, Guacamelee!, Fable, FEZ, Flower, Forza Horizon, Jacob Jones, Journey, Limbo, LittleBigPlanet, Minecraft, Mirror's Edge, Ni No Kuni, Persona 4, Portal 2, Ratchet & Clank, Rayman, Resogun, Sine Mora, Sword & Sworcery, Tearaway, The Witness, Trine, Uncharted...

We really NEED Nintendo for some diversity in games.

By all means, enlighten me. When did I say they weren't important?

What I'm saying is that they aren't anywhere near as important as you make them out to be. Whenever a gap arises in a market, another company will come and fill it. Suggesting that brown shooters would be the only type of game remaining if Nintendo left the industry shows incredible ignorance regarding how markets actually work.