New golden age? I'd say that's debatable. If we're talking about pure sales, I suppose Wii/DS era was a "golden age" for them, of profit. As for 3DS, while the sales are a sharp decline from DS, it is more logical to point out that DS' sales were in large part greatly inflated by the so-called "casual" market, and games like Brain Training, Professor Layton, Phoenix Wright, and Nintendogs, etc., that became popular with so-called "casual" gamers. A lot of those same gamers seem to have not adopted the 3DS, and in kind, Nintendo largely stopped producing games like Nintendogs and Brain Training that were aimed directly at them. Looked at through the lense of the current games market, and the drop in "casual" support, the 3DS' sales are actually quite steady, and quite healthy.

The Wii U's failures have been well documented, and there was basically no chance for it to repeat the massive sales of the Nintendo Wii. Though Nintendo themselves certainly didn't help matters. It is their own fault, due to their own many mis-steps with Wii U, that the system failed as badly as it did. They failed to capitalize on their "casual" success with a launch title that really grabbed people the way Wii Sports did. They tried with Nintendo Land, but it simply wasn't the same kind of "easy to pick up and play for anyone" type of experience, and it really wasn't all that fun of a game. Certainly not by comparison to Wii Sports, which on it's face was fairly brilliant, easy to play, and fun. They tried to bring back Wii Sports, but in a confusing digital promotion form. They made one last Wii Party game, and a Wii Fit game, but it was kind of "too little too late" by that point, as they had failed to reel in the "casual" crowd out of the gate like they needed to. Even so, with the right decisions being made, with the proper marketing, system support, etc., Wii U could have easily surpassed 20 million or even 30 million units sold. It could have surpassed N64 numbers. But the third party support dried up, because of Nintendo's mis-steps, and even their own support was sporadic, as they seemed to struggle adjusting to HD development.


So if there was a "Dark Age" during the Wii U's run, it was Nintendo's own fault. If you ask me though, as a long time gamer, and Nintendo fan, their true "Golden Age" was back in the NES/GameBoy/SNES era. That is when they were truly "on top" of the gaming world, mostly dominating the market (outside of some early 90s Genesis success), and that is when, quite frankly, they produced the vast majority of their most highly regarded games.

Yes, definitely. The Switch is very inviting, like the NES, Gameboy, Wii and DS were. We had a little birthday party yesterday and our living room was absolutely crowded with people playing Bomberman, ARMS, Mario Kart and Tetris. The Wii U and 3DS never had that same appeal. The girls liked the console in particular, which is always a good sign.

Enjoyed motion controls as something different and games like wii sport etc but felt for many games it took away playability not added. I think famitsu preferred the gamecube controls of twilight princess to those of wii. Don't get me wrong though the motion controls was the saving grace of some games or at least provided reason to double dip on wii u for example (call of duty black ops 2).  However as I said software sales were much less on wii and I also believe the average time spent per game is less on wii but can't find the original article I read to back up that up although to be expected with a console with much more casual light gaming experiences overall. 

Not really, they are just doing what they should do. Instead of being stubborn.

Motion controls weren't always well implemented, it's true, but for games like, say, Metroid Prime 3, Mario Galaxy 1 & 2, Red Steel 2, Skyward Sword, Wii Sports Resort, etc I really enjoyed them.

Software sales weren't "much less" on Wii, they were only about 1% less than PS3, while Wii won in hardware by close to 20% over PS3/360.

A new golden age for Ninty is definitely possible.
But the big, scary question is: will Malstrom start blathering again about disruption? :-O

Looking at the top 25 or so best games from each platform (minus old ports and sports/mini-game-a-thons):

GameCube: Metroid Prime, Resident Evil 4, Zelda: Twilight Princess, Zelda: Wind Waker, Super Mario Sunshine, Metroid Prime 2, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Pikmin, Pikmin 2, Soul Calibur II, Viewtiful Joe, Eternal Darkness, Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, F-Zero GX, Animal Crossing, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Beyond Good & Evil, Resident Evil 0, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron II, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron III, Paper Mario: TYD, Mario Kart: Double Dash, Viewtiful Joe 2, Tales of Symphonia, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, TimeSplitters, Final Fantasy: CC, Wave Race: BS, Resident Evil REMake, DK: Jungle Beat, Super Monkey Ball.

Wii: Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Mario Kart Wii, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Metroid Prime III, Zelda: Twilight Princess, Zelda: Skyward Sword, Xenoblade, NSMBU, Kirby Epic Yarn, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Little King Story, Sin & Punishment 2, Monster Hunter Tri, GoldenEye, Punch-Out!, Tatsuonko Vs. Capcom, Murumasa, The Last Story, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Super Paper Mario, Excite Truck, Kirby Dream Land, World of Goo, Rayman Origins, Kirby: Return to Dreamland, Red Steel 2.

N64: Super Mario 64, GoldenEye, Zelda: OoT, Zelda: MM, Perfect Dark, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, Turok 2, Beetle Adventure Racing, Star Fox 64, Kirby 64, Wave Race 64, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Star Wars Episode I Racer, Mario Tennis, Mario Kart 64, Blast Corps, Donkey Kong 64, Jet Force Gemini, Killer Instinct Gold, Excitebike 64, San Fransico Rush, Ogre Battle 64, Diddy Kong Racing, Paper Mario, F-Zero X, Pilotwings 64, Super Smash Bros.

SNES: Super Mario World, Final Fantasy VI, Super Metroid, Legend of Zelda: LttP, Star Fox, Yoshi's Island, DKC, DKC2, DKC3, Super Mario Kart, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, Contra III, Street Fighter II Turbo, Mortal Kombat 2, Earthbound, Castlevania IV, Sim City, F-Zero, Pilotwings, Secret of Mana, Megaman X, Super Punch-Out!, Tetris Attack, Super Star Wars, Super Empire, Super Return of the Jedi, Mario RPG, Earthworm Jim, Super Mario All-Stars.

I'd say Super NES is the best, then there is a fair drop off, but GameCube is probably underrated in actual software quality. Mario Sunshine not being that great really is what sinks the GCN a bit, if Mario Galaxy was a GCN game, it'd be far better remembered, in terms of depth, GCN had a lot of good games and good variety. Shame they made it look like a damn console for an 8 year old and that basically killed it right from the get go.

Squaresoft did great work on the SNES, Rare did a lot of heavy lifting on N64, EAD Tokyo saves the Wii IMO.

NightlyPoe said: Alby_da_Wolf said: A new golden age for Ninty is definitely possible. But the big, scary question is: will Malstrom start blathering again about disruption? :-O Heh, well fortunately, the Switch is not a particularly "disruptive" piece of technology.  Games on Switch will be more or less the same as they would be on Sony or Microsoft.  The handheld availibility is merely a value-added feature. The question for me is how long until the hybrid design becomes industry standard.

Maybe MS and Sony will in future include hybrids in their range of home console models, but being a lot more power-whorish than Ninty, I'm quite sure they'll keep on offering full-power standard and premium home-only models too. And they'll have to wait anyhow, as the undocked hybrid being the lowest common denominator, it will have anyway to offer some perforamnce increase compared to 8th gen PS4 and XBOne base models (if not in GPU power, at least in CPU power and RAM size, to offer the capability to handle larger and more complex game worlds and higher level of interaction), and this will take some more years to be not just possible, but also viable. Not many years, as already now Ninty can offer quite a beefy hybrid, if considered a portable, for $300, and AMD and GlobalFoundries have just announced they'll skip 10nm process to concentrate on the 7nm one and accelerate the transition to it, and this will allow them to mostly fill the remaining gap with Intel and NVidia, so in a very few years we'll have  a lot more competition across the whole CPU, GPU and APU range from low-end and embedded up to high-end, this will be an ideal situation for console manufacturers too, as if it weren't good enough news that AMD in the short term would concentrate on Vega GPUs, not weaker Polaris ones, for its next Zen CPU-based APUs.
Waiting for 7nm will allow Sony and MS (and Ninty too for Switch successor and/or possible upgraded Switch model) to get enough computing power at a low enough power consumption and price.

Its almost certain that Switch will have onother 3D Mario game, but it doesnt mean it will be Mario Oddessey 2, it can be SM3DW2, Mario Galaxy 3 or again something new or difrent. My best bet would be on SM3DW2.