Are you saying that 3rd parties tell lies to justify their actions and don`t mind looking like fools when they have to do exactly what they said they would not? That is preposterous.

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/06/15/sega-wii-hype-may-soon-wear-off/

http://kotaku.com/5037329/sega-says-wii-opportunity-for-hardcore-calls-shovelware-crap

I'm not sure what your sources are, but the industry's view on Nitnendo since its early Gamecube days has significantly improved. Nintendo changed to an "open arms" policy with developers, welcoming new ones aboard and treating them well, and the developers started warming up to Nintendo, and now with the growing 3rd party support for the DS and Wii, that's pretty easy to see. The prices on the games are reasonable, the lowest of the bunch. I can understand Blu Ray games costing mroe due to the media type, but XB360 games areon normal DVDs. why are they $60 as opposed to 40-50 for Wii games?

Iwill concur on the media solution, o0nly in terms of saved/downloaded data, though the move to regular DVds was welcomed.

The nice thing about a blue ocean product is that the insults and threats flung wholesale like week-old lemon meringue pies by the hardcore audiences and incumbent companies ultimately amount to very little in terms of impact on the performance of the market-expanding item. And rightly so, since that market is a minority of the total market which the blue ocean encompasses.

While such tactics are wildly effective in marginalizing products in a red ocean situation where everybody is fighting with the same values (and is one of the driving factors behind Nintendo's fall from grace once Sony got into the picture and Microsoft started contributing to it), it only works on an otherwise level playing field. When a particularly large blue ocean is created, the cries of distaste and hatred from the red ocean that spawned it is little more than the buzzing of gnats during an orchestral performance.

Considering that Nintendo is always making money, I don't think they've done anything wrong. They're just riding the market's ups and downs.

I both agree and disagree. I think you are right on the money that Nintendo started making consoles with their competitors in mind, and that put them in a position Sony could conqueor them. However, Nintendo was looking for blue oceans at the same time - which brought us the Gameboy.

The answer is unchecked greed. Nintendo had and still has an unquenchable thirst for bilking as much money out of their consoles as is possible. There is nothing wrong with wanting to make money, but Nintendo has always been damn near myopic of the concerns and needs of others. From their corporate partners to their very own customers. That is the thing about unchecked greed by its nature it is short sighted. Nintendo was so busy grabbing money that it was burning bridges and burning everyone around them.

Nintendo chose cartridges for one overriding reason. They owned the license to the format, and they owned the manufacturing. Which means they could run a monopoly forcing third parties to go through them to manufacture the games. This after they had already charged a hefty licensing fee. They have continued this policy through all of their consoles. Proprietary formats are good for Nintendo, and bad for everyone else.

Nintendo controlled their library with an iron fist, and more often then not it wasn't about quality concerns. They want their libraries skewed to a particular consumer usually younger who are more interested in their own first party games. It does nothing for them personally if they attract consumers that do not buy their games to their console. For Nintendo it is a logical conclusion that their hardware is explicitly for their software. This is also why Nintendo never forks out for third party exclusives. They see no reason to spend their money to drive consumers away from their software. There was a valid reason and still is one why Nintendo consoles are referred to as kiddie.

Nintendo loves its gimmicks, and more specifically selling their gimmicks after the fact. This is wonderful for Nintendo, because their games are always compatible with their new gimmick, and gives them a competitive edge over third party developers. This is often why third party developers are caught flat footed. You still see that to this day. Nintendo announces a new peripheral to be packed in with a game, and it is still six months before a third party can actually use it in their games. Why is this well Nintendo does not warn them. Nintendo treats its third parties like the enemy.

Nintendo still hasn't rectified this mindset instead they have maintained the mindset, and have decided that their winning strategy is to go after verdant untouched markets. That is a good strategy in the short term however Nintendo still has the same problem that it had all along. They are so caught up in making short term profit that they are not stopping to think of the consequences. Right now Nintendo should be building bridges to offset the lean times that are bound to come.

Anyway it all boils down to unmitigated greed which usually means that compromises are out of the question. Which is what got them into trouble in the first place. Nintendo was not working well with others, and not taking into consideration their needs.

No one can deny that Nintendo likes money, and that it makes decisions based around making more money. But your analysis fails to account for why Nintendo has continued to dominate the lucrative handheld market (if they're as arrogant as ever, why didn't one of their many handheld competitors get a stranglehold on third parties?), why Nintendo is currently seeing unprecedented console success (if it's just the "new market", why are traditional titles also outselling their Gamecube predecessors?), and why companies which do more to reach out to third parties are not smashing successes (Microsoft is still a distant second...).

No, greed may form part of the answer, but it's nowhere near as all-encompassing as your post suggests.

I'd say 3rd part support.

They've done very well this generation up until Wii Motion Plus as far as relationships with 3rd parties.

The problem with your theory, Dodece, is that it doesn't hold up in all tests. Specifically, the NES and Wii run counter to your claim that greed is a downfall characteristic for Nintendo. In both cases, they opted for proprietary media, "gimmick" controllers galore, near-monopolistic control over their game library, and low consideration for the needs of their third-party developers. And instead of being shortcomings, those traits have allowed Nintendo to be even more successful instead.

Greed served Nintendo well at times, and poorly at others. The issue, therefore, is not greed. The issue lies higher still in terms of their interaction with the market at large. In what situation is unrelenting greed beneficial? When you have a virtual or actual monopoly, of course. And when is it bad for a company? The rest of the time, naturally. Ergo, the issue is not the greed, but the factors that led to the greed no longer being an advantage for them, that being the factors that lost them their virtual monopoly in the first place.

You cannot lose a monopoly, literal or virtual, simply through greed; Microsoft would have been out of the home O/S business before the turn of the century happened if that were the case. A monopoly only ceases to be a monopoly when the barriers to entry are breached and authentic competition appears, causing the monopolist corporate values to become competitive corporate liabilities.

I was all set to give some huge rebuttal when Sky Render cut right to the heart of the matter, answering the post better than I would have and more concisely too.

him --