zorg1000 said:
platformmaster918 said:
GC was cheaper and it had more residual Nintendo fans from their glory days. Basically that number of hardcore Nintendo fan of the 80s who buy new Nintendo systems is lessening every gen. Wii had the casuals so it's hard to tell, but now we see again the decline in fans of their franchises who are willing to invest in new stuff. Their holdover is pretty good but they can't generate new fans for whatever reason. There are exceptions to be sure such as my neighbors who have two small children who have a WiiU and never owned a system themselves but these are rare and the larger movement is less and less newbies each gen excluding Wii. NES 60, SNES 40, N64 32, NGC 21, WiiU 18 hopefully? |
No its not the number of hardcore Nintendo fans leaving, it's the number of non-hardcore Nintendo leaving.
The drop from NES to SNES mostly occured in America and was due to Nintendo giving Sega a 2 year head start which allowed them to build momentum and launch their killer app (Sonic) before SNES came to the market. Sega also had a successful ad campaign proclaiming Nintendo to be for kids, which Nintendo pretty much admitted to when they censored blood out of Mortal Kombat.
The drop from SNES to N64 mostly occurred in Japan due to losing the big RPG and fighting fanbases. Games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest moved onto PS which consisted of 40% of the SNES top 10 games and the Street Fighter fanbase moved onto the big 3D fighters of the mid 90's like Tekken and Virtua Fighter which were on the competitors consoles.
The drop from N64 to GC mostly occured in America due to losing their strong FPS fanbase. GoldenEye was basically the Call of Duty of the late 90's and they lost that crowd to Xbox and Halo. With the shooter fanbase gone, other genres like sports and racing took a hit as well due to those games typically sharing a similar demographic.
It was the loss of non-Nintendo gamers that contributed to Nintendo's decline gen over gen.
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This has been my experience.
I was always lucky enough to have competitive consoles (SNES and Genesis, PSX and N64, GCN and Xbox, etc.) when I was growing up. I've continued that trend into adulthood. I own both a PS4 and a Wii U - had a 360 and Wii last gen - and still consider myself primarlly a Nintendo fan. My brother and I shared systems, and that was how we justified having two consoles to my parents - one for each of us.
We each asked for and purchased games for both of the systems and were careful not to ever let the other believe that one system was "theirs" exclusively, ensuring equal access when we got the newest and greatest game.Still, right from the start, he tended to play more Genesis, and I tended to play more SNES. The last generation where we shared consoles was the N64/PSX era. After that point, we both were able to start working and purchased our own consoles. I first got a Dreamcast, then the GCN shortly after it launched, and eventually an Xbox. My brother opted for a PS2 and Xbox.
Since that time, he has only purchased one Nintendo console: the Wii. He bought it primarily to play Wii Sports, although he did play through "Twilight Princess". He has always made it a priority to pick up Sony and Microsoft consoles early on in their cycles, whereas I usually adopt the newest Nintendo machine before picking up a second console down the line.
I won't say that he never liked Nintendo games - "Donkey Kong Country" is his favorite game - but I never considered him to be a fan of the company in the way that I was; it was more a coincidence that the SNES was the most popular system in our early years of gaming, and that we didn't get a Sega until a few years later, that he went along with getting the N64 before our Playstation. Now, I believe the only reason he even picked up a Wii was because literally everyone on the planet wanted to have one for parties for about a minute and a half there.
Other friends and family that exhibited trends of preferring Nintendo (and specifically first-party Nintendo titles) when we were younger were the ones who, like me, picked up a Gamecube back in the day and now own a Wii U. That's not to say that Nintendo hasn't lost some fans along the way. They do make some terrible decisions on a fairly regular basis. By and large, though, the people who abandoned Nintendo after the N64 (or before) weren't the biggest of fans to begin with, just gamers who grew up with Mario & co. and were able to play most of the big mainstream titles on Nintendo's consoles. When that stopped happening, they chose to part ways with the Nintendo IPs - something hardcore Nintendo fans can't imagine.
