As someone who was actually around during the time, Street Fighter II was THE killer app for the SNES. SF2 was the COD or Destiny or whatever for its day and it being only the SNES in 1992 was huuuuuuuuge.

When it came out the console wars started to tilt in Nintendo's favor again, but then the mistake of censoring Mortal Kombat in '93 scuttled Nintendo's momentum until in '94 they came back with uncensored MK2 + Donkey Kong Country and they finally KO-ed the Genesis.

Back in those days you played as much third party content if not moreso than Nintendo games on Nintendo consoles. 

I played a ton of Megaman, Contra, Super C, Ninja Turtles, Blade of Steel, Metal Gear, Wizards & Warriors, Ninja Gaiden, Double Dragon II, Duck Tales on my NES, all these games were hit games many of these games outsold many Nintendo IP. 

On SNES, Street Fighter II, Final Fantasy III (VI), NHL '94, Top Gear, Chrono Trigger, Mortal Kombat 2, NBA Live, Megaman X, Super Star Wars, NBA Jam, Contra III, etc.

The NES/SNES were the PS4 of their day. 

I think an important thing to keep in mind is that it does not appear Nintendo is going anywhere anytime soon. Essentially, it isn't as if they've got to right the home console ship in the next two years or so... They can take another stab or two at it.

The one advantage they've maintained is that they aren't losing money when they sell a console, a reality for Microsoft and Sony that has led them to stretch the lifespan of their respective consoles out as long as possible. Microsoft's system is selling at a respectable rate so they'll likely be content to sit on it for another half decade.

Sony, meanwhile, is in a fairly dire financial situation to the point that it's not even clear whether or not they could release another console and absorb the initial losses even if they wanted to (consider, for instance, that just a year ago Nintendo's market value was higher than Sony's despite being exclusively a gaming company). When one considers that we're likely to see potentially terrible losses from the leaked movies/emails once they release their delayed quarterly report and that the PS4 is dominating this gen it seems likely they'll milk this console for all they can.

What I'm suggesting is Nintendo has the time and money to approach this situation with caution, and the next system needn't necessarily be a make-or-break for them. Some of these comparisons to sega's situation through the 90's are certainly unfair; Microsoft isn't going anywhere (they treat the Xbox almost as if it were a pet project with it serving as the face of their company, never expecting actual profit with a massive piggy bank to fund it) but the current leader of this gen has been hemorrhaging money for some time now and won't want to participate in a quick succession of generations.

Nintendo has generally made sound business decisions from the start, still have enough money to operate at a loss for many years to come without issue, have worked their way out of the red despite an unpopular home console, still dominate an admittedly dwindling handheld market... Basically, there's no need for the doom and gloom jargon when discussing their future. As has been shown nearly every generation, there's very little brand loyalty in the NA market; there's no reason we should project forward and count Nintendo out of this race over the coming decade.

I see the it the same way as you.

It´s not that simple. Some people say that Nintendo should just put a lot of money on third party companies´pockets, but they still need to produce their own games. Being a company focused only on videogames and with the urge to post some profits, they just can´t afford that.

I wouldn't mind if Nintendo went fully digital next generation and returned to arcade digital titles compatible to both its home and handheld devices. Not all games need to be ZeldaU, but you can certainly fill in your schedule with smaller titles like CaptainToadTT or KirbyRC.

They are talking about multiplats, not 3rd parties in general. Most of those titles u listed were exclusive to Nintendo so that proves their point, multiplats have never been a driving force for Nintendo.

Street Fighter II was on SNES for about 2 years before Genesis got a version of it, also games like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Mega Man, Castlevania, etc didn't sell NES/SNES because they were third party games, it was because they were high-quality games that couldn't be found elsewhere. Same goes for the N64 third party games, Turok, Star Wars, wrestling/sports/racing games that sold well were mostly exclusive, the only really strong selling multiplat was Tony Hawk.

It's the same reason PS1 was able to steal so much of Nintendo's market, it wasn't because it had third parties, it was because it had more and bigger exclusives, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Tekken, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Solid, Twisted Metal, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon were on PS1 but not N64.

Even most of the big system selling PS2 games were exclusive, Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy, Gran Turismo, Metal Gear Solid, Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, God of War. PS2 did have alot of strong selling multiplats but it was because they had already built up a huge lead over the competitors.

The HD twins in the 7th were really the first time that multiplats have been the driving force of sales for consoles.

Your right and I did think about going PC. The issue is I don't want to use a mouse and keyboard and they're required if I want to play games like BF4. Going against PC users with a controller is asking to get murdered and I already suck at the game as it is. I also can't relax on my couch using a mouse and keyboard it's just not comftorable. So that's pretty much what stopped me from going that route I used to be a heavy PC gamer so I do enjoy it. Another reason is back when I was PC gaming I pirated all games that I could. Consoles force me not to do that and I don't want to risk having my system bricked by modifying it. This forces me to contribute to the gaming community. I'm sure now that I have a much better job I wouldn't do that anymore but sometimes I wonder if I could resist because it was just so easy to do.

With all of that said I'm seriously considering going back to PC gaming once the PS4 is done. I've even thought about slowly building a machine already will see. I even thought about just going ahead and getting a Wii U. Being able to go back and play all the Wii games I missed plus Wii U games. I don't know what I'm going to do to many options in gaming wish we could just have one machine to play it all.

So you had a good time, therefore it was a good read.

I disagree, given that third parties abandoned Wii U *before* they abandoned PS360, that it's clearly not an issue of power. They simply aren't interested in putting their best foot forward in Nintendo's environment, and it would cost Nintendo a small fortune to get even a few of them to do so, and that's assuming that Sony and/or MS didn't try to stop them in the process.

Nintendo needs to focus on building their own environment, keep up the specific third-party partnerships (for abandoned games like B2 or Devil's Third and IP-partnerships like Pokken and Hyrule Warriors), and focus on tapping into low-end third party support that can't function elsewhere.

I don't think the writer read correctly what Adelman said.
What he was trying to imply is that Nintendo should back those publishers who actually try to utilize HW advantages and also to show people that those games are on par with Nintendo's own titles.
It's a matter of helping developers take a risk and communicating the quality of said game.

Nintendo also wants exclusive games on platforms and not just ports on all platforms. But we don't live in a time where that is possbile anymore.
You do need ports, especially if you get versions of the hit titles that month afer month, year after year, dominate the charts worldwide.
And that is something the writer kinda talks about but then doesn't make the necessary conclusions: it's true that 3rd parties sell the systems probably more than the actual 1st party games by MS and Sony. And if that happens, if those games are exactly what consumers want the most, if you don't have them and your exclusives are nowhere near those type of games, than you won't succeed. It's that simple.

What Nintendo needs to do first is try and make those type of games so that developers have a market to sell their own games and not the other way around. No amount of ports will help create a market on NIntendo's HW.

If they can create an ecosystem where for every MK, there's a Forza/Gran Turismo, for every Zelda, there's an Uncharted, for every Xenoblade there's Final Fantasy/Dragon Quest, etc., etc., then developers will have a place for their games and gamers will realize that they can not only play their ports, exclusive games of their liking and the next Mario, Zelda, DK, MK, Smash, etc.

To me, that's the path Nintendo needs to follow or they will never get out of distant 3rd place.

I very much agree with the author about third-party developers and publishers being intimidated by the first-party games of Nintendo. After all, the reason Activision refused to put CoD on Xbox is because Halo is such a sales juggernaut.

Yeah.

That has nothing to do with anything. It's like saying Borderlands or Destiny can't be successful because there are already so many big FPS games out there. It's a bullshit excuse, an attempt to rationalize in a way that makes Nintendo look good. If the audience is there, they will buy way more content than Nintendo can produce. That's the real point, that third-parties do not believe the audience on Nintendo home consoles will support anything but platformers and party games.

People really needs to stop believing stuff just because it's what they want to believe. A great man, Sosuke Aizen, once said, "Admiration is the furthest state from understanding.”