That's really bad. My advice: always copy your comment to the clipboard before posting and, if the comment is big, post it also on a word processor.

Bias, cherry-picked data, opinions stated as facts, I know I didn't but proving that demands a lot of text and iterations. I'm ok with such vague critics that end up being opinions. But please tell me 1 single fact of the OP that is not true. Note that you've separated "opinions stated as facts" from "not true", so I'm really curious about which fact of the OP can be easily proven to be a lie.

"Nintendo mastered the 3D movement with Mario 64" - This is an opinion, not a fact. I personally think that Sonic Adventure has mastered 3D movement much better than Mario 64.

Non-linear story telling may range from "press X to win" like it is on Heavy Rain (which doesn't mean it is bad) to character full-control like it is on LA Noire. Animations-based gameplay is the opposite of that.

I did play several Nintendo games and I tell you: they are fun but the gameplay is cheap. You, most probably, haven't paid attention to how I defined "cheap gameplay". Read it again, please. I didn't talk about worse or better games, I talked about cheap gameplay, which doesn't scare me at all (what am I afraid of?).

Yes, it is indeed amazing. Nintendo is a good money printer: huge revenues, astronomical profits and obscene ROI are engaging to the eye of any investor.

You have to stop calling him John Lucas. Next time i see it, you're out of here.

I have previously mentioned using more objective measures of quality (in the UNITY thread, perhaps where your confusion as to my identity lies) such as solid game mechanics, level design, bug-free releases (this shouldn't even be a consideration, but sadly is the case nowadays) etc. but in the end, I'm not here to fix your flawed system, only to point out it's faults. You are searching for a completely objective measure for what constitutes a quality game, while admitting that such a task is inherintly futile due to the subjective nature of the entertainment medium. Perhaps there is no wholly objective measure that will filter all quality games.

It's not odd at all when you realise that your criteria are fundamentally flawed. Not to mention your clear anti-Nintendo bias. There are too many facts pointing out to the same conclusion: Nintendo is not committed to your cherry-picked, incomplete and ultimately flawed definition of quality.

Doesn't matter, had fun.

Perhaps those actions could be justified in the context of the gaming crash, but gaming didn't crash anywhere outside of the US and gaming thrived all the same, and not through Nintendo HW but through more open platforms like PC, Amiga, Commodore, etc. In any case, I think Nintendo should have been a bit more lax after it was clear that video games weren't going anywhere, it's this behaviour that I think diminished its share of the market, despite being widely successful at the beginning. At the very least, it can be argued that they are a company of slow reactions and I believe some of these choices were the wrong ones when they were in a position of dominance.

About the faulty machines, I wasn't talking about the failure rate, but specifically about the no-refunds policy. The PSN hack was not intentional by Sony (though incredibly stupid and short-sighted). No backwards compatibilty sucks, I agree. The DRM scandal was the biggest F you by a gaming company to consumers in history and had they pulled it off the most damaging to the industry, so I also agree. I don't believe Sony has those policies you mention in place, I might be mistaken. Not trying to single out Nintendo, other companies have also tried to use their position to theri advantage. Sony tried to cram all the things they felt like in the PS3 and force them onto consumers to gain a position of power in other industries (talking about BD and Cell). Even MS, who hilariously thought they were the new leaders and could force whatever they wanted, when they had like a 30% market share the previous gen and a weak-sauce brand outside of NA.

About my last paragraph, I might not have been clear, but I didn't mean that the high profit margin approach was the thing to change or that their financial troubles are due to them changing it (I agree the 3DS and WiiU were major fuck-ups, I don't know how I would've followed the success of their predecessors, though). I was talking about the policies mentioned above. They changed their YouTube policies, reduced royalties, obviously the game limit and no-refunds policy, etc. Plus other changes like better online, account system, hopefully region-free games... that I believe they are kind of forced into.

Maybe, but somebody must have realized that a controller that big is just uncomfortable. :-/ I don't think enough R & D was done, Nintendo really just wanted a step up this gen.

My question is general and to go to the root of the problem: Nintendo is not used to negotiate. See what they did in the 80s. They need a dominant position so they can "negotiate" properly.

There are several PC standards. You have PCs for 300€ and for 3000€. The standard here doesn't have to do with low or high level but with type of architecture. 200$-300$? Put inflation on that: http://kotaku.com/36-years-of-console-prices-adjusted-for-inflation-1485353267

N64? You've just picked one of the cheapest consoles of all time. You call it the standard? The standard is around 400$. PS4 and even XOne are not expensive.

You seem to don't understand what a port to another console requires. You think it's just control reconfiguration. It's much more than that. Otherwise, GTA V woud have been already on WiiU along with many other X360/PS3 games that have been skipping the WiiU.

So, in your opinion, the norm is about risky concepts seen on the indie market but created as core franchises...what?

If Sony's audience is close-minded, how could a game like Flower be so much appreciated?

Cartoonish graphics are not less worthy than realistic graphics. You pulled that out of context. Read the 2nd reply of this post (http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=6108102) to understand that I don't necessarily consider realism a greater thing.

OK, I'm getting tired of this.  You wrote this "article" about history yet you know very little of the actual details.  It's like you pulled together a bunch of fanboy rants and tried to pass them off as a researched and coherent topic.

"Nintendo is not used to negotiate"?  Thsi is your factual truths?  How about the factual truth that Sony's contract would have granted them full licensing and branding control therefore reducing Nintendo to largely a 1st party role within Sony?   Do you know this at all?  If not, and I suspect you didn't, you're revisionist history needs to end here.

What you call truth is actually nothing more than hedged passive aggression. 

Your statements are tinged with a tone that alludes to your personal feelings.  Even if you don't say something overtly, you mean it with your tone. 

Your "quotes around words" are nothing more than a mask to hide behind.  So you claim something doesn't really mean something and you're just using the terms allegorically but it's purely a ruse to allay bias. 

Your article is non-factual, filled with bias and opinion, laced with passive aggresive attacks and as the executive editor of a video game network, I'd damn near fire you if you tried to pass that across my desk.  Start again, remove your personal feelings, do some real research (you know, call, email, contact actual people from back then), look at both sides, write from the view of the reader and then try to publish.  

I'll give you credit for be able to write with proper grammar and syntax.  You're educated.   But you're biased, misinformed/confused, and seem to have an agenda that you put above the integrity of truth.   And that is where you have failed. 

You've done all of those things and it's too easy to find 1 fact that isn't true.  I can provide you with plenty examples of "bias", "cherry-picked data", and "opinions stated as facts" you made.

I'll just point out the blatant lies: "They could never put a Mario game at 20€ or 10€ as Sony and Microsoft do with some of their games. Those are prices for virtual console titles"
"Not letting any of their games to be launched out of their consoles (not even on PC) was a way to tell the consumer that, no matter what, Nintendo games will ever only be played on Nintendo consoles."
"Thus, Nintendo can manage the availability of games and their prices by region to better squeeze each one of them. And, by doing so, there won’t be global negative reactions towards any of their localized abusive practices. If you’re from a tiny little region, you’re on your own against the powerful Nintendo."
"Moreover, that makes them free to launch western versions of japanese games one year later the original launch at full retail price. Actually, that makes them free not to launch at all some games in some regions if they think it won’t be as profitable. There is a military maxim that says “divide and conquer”. I find it sad that Nintendo is at war with gamers."
^--- Nintendo doesn't have "abusive practices" here.  You simply don't understand localization and that's why you think this.
"No one was doing that and Nintendo just felt the need to control third-parties even further, to give them even less space in the market, to profit even more from an already successful business they had created. Nintendo proactively restricted third-parties’ freedom. The other console makers have only reactively adopted the same logic" (Others have already explained to you time and time again why this is false)
"Sony and Microsoft have always attempted to develop powerful consoles using mainstream hardware tech that could please and be accessible to as many 3rd parties as possible, which could aim for protagonism within the console. Actually, Sony and Microsoft enhanced it, providing good software development tools and eventually financing some projects if they were to be exclusives. Their philosophy was: “if we develop the best system for 3rd party developers, it can’t be bad for our 1st party studios”."
"Again, Nintendo designing a console only for its needs"

(Nintendo is at the moment the only major console maker to use region lock.) <-- Not a lie, but it is worded in a way where it is almost a lie.  Region lock also still occurs with Sony/Microsoft systems, it's just up to the devs and competition HAVE used region lock before.  This is your cherry picking and half-lie.
(Some developers making ports from PS3/X360 to the Wii U told they had to cut back on some features due to the CPU not being powerful enough, which has impacted the game as a whole.) This is a dumb argument IMO.  XBO and PS4's CPU clock speeds are also lower than the 360/PS3's (the devs you're talking about was referring to clock speeds).


This is only SOME of the things.  Pretty much your entire "article" is filled with cherry picking, antagonistic bias, opinions stated as facts and all sorts of other things.