While Nintendo had to differentiate itself from Sony to compete in the console market, it is not like Nintendo isn’t a competitor to Sony and Microsoft. That’s just a fact. 

But more importantly, for the sake of your thread discussion, particularly in 2007-2009 the success of Nintendo in comparison to Sony was not an absolute and much of the traffic generated here at VGC was a result of folks coming to the site to monitor that race. You may think it was a foregone conclusion but it absolutely was not, and even as Nintendo dominated the number of fanboys from other console bases who were claiming that Nintendo’s success was empty and shallow definitely helped to drive up traffic on this site. 

I didn’t take your comment as a slight against Nintendo, but rather it is telling of your understanding of the culture that helped VGC thrive in its heyday. 

CGI actually did it, I have my old name back! Thanks dude!

That's a blast from the past!

@Deyon the forums are absolutely less active than years past, but simply by coming back and making this thread (and others), you're helping. @NintendoPie too :) Honestly, I've been more engaged than usual this past week due to the return of some familiar faces and some added frivolity on the forums.

More threads, more memes, more conversations...it all helps. I don't think we can turn back the clock, but we can definitely improve.

it's fun to be back and posting some but i must say, it does feel empty. i'm so used to posting a topic and then leaving and coming back to 100 replies haha.

i think that you can see some increase in activity in the famitsu threads alone. the fact those are getting such engagement is surprising and i think this has to do with an exciting time for nintendo and playstation fans and then the microsoft acquisition engaging everyone else. there's some crazy stuff going on in the industry and that obviously leads to talking!

once the switch 2 is announced, i'm sure things will pick up even more.

I agree with everyone who said has dropped off because of the lack of real console wars. I remember when I first started coming here people cared so much more about their console of choice. I remember when Chad Warden made that ps triple video and people lost their shit. Including me haha. Good times.

One issue is that solid data used to be a lot easier to acquire and discuss, before digital sales really took off. For example, it seems like each year NPD/Circana seems to give even less relevant information than the year before. It's not surprising to me that the Famitsu thread still gets activity, because that is one place where we still get solid data on a regular basis.

Welcome to old age

Forums are an old person's game.

All these young ones use TIkTok, Instagram, Twitch, whatever the next cool thing will be. Their brains are wired differently they need affection and love from a fan base instead of want to participate online and have meaningful discussions.

Don't forget (he has also made one for PS4 and PS5)

So many games are cross platform that console wars have died out. And for me, MS doesn't have exclusives like GoW, Last, etc.

Internet forums in general are on the decline. It's not unique to this site. Seems unlikely to me that there's anything VGC could do to reverse this larger trend.