You should have posted this and just given a short link to the other story in the beginning. This post (yours) is so much better than the editorial that it's ridiculous.

Why did you want us to read all of that? None of it was anything we didn't already know and most of it came off pretty whiny.

sadly nintendo its giving it back to us..

i for one bought the gamecube before the ps2

even if they got the third place their games were better than what they are releasing now (wii music, wii fit, animal crossing, wii sports).

yes they throw their big titles already, but as someone who is making a billion each quarter fund a phew good games for xmas 08 was not a big thing.

You've played Wii Music and Animal Crossing? And Animal Crossing was on the Gamecube too..

The one thing that stuck out TO ME was, he made it sound like Nintendo was scared to make games in fear of losing money or wasting time.

Nintendo made $1 billionin 3 months and have NEVER made a game that cost anywhere near $35 million. What could they be afraid of? How could one "underperforming" game possibly hurt them.

The article was full of holes, sorry to say. At least that Sniper Cat was funny.

WTF !?

Zelda: TP has sold 6 million copies, it is one of the most sucessful ( sale-wise) Zelda game.

SMG too sold very well.

BTW I agree with Noname. To me seems the author of the articles is well informed about what Nintendo did but instead to think that was the rest of the industry to be left behind by Nintendo and its paradigm shift, he thought that was Nintendo that has changed in worse.

The situation is really easy if you are open minded and like the new set of values brought by the paradigm shift then you like the way pursuited by Nintendo otherwise , even if you are a long-life Nintendo fan, you will not be glad.

This isn't a matter about Nintendo itself but about two distinct and opposed ideology/set of values. 

Its not that Nintendo doesn't care about the "Hardcore" its that their demands can never be met because the "Hardcore" gamers are a small demographic of gamers who have (virtually) unlimited demands ... In order to "Satisfy" the "Hardcore" Nintendo would have to:

• Produce a system that is powerful enough to match the display capabilities of the minority of people who have hardware to have state of the art equipment, and to take a massive loss on the sale of each peice of hardware.
• Produce every one of their major franchises within 18 months of the launch of the system, where they all take full advantage of the hardware regardless of the cost to Nintendo
• Produce dozens of brand new  "Hardcore" franchises within 18 months of the launch of the system, where they all take full advantage of the hardware regardless of the cost to Nintendo
• Not produce a single game which targets anyone who would take away from the pristine image of gamers.

Nintendo has always been trying to expand out beyond just gamers. The NES showed a whole family on the box playing the system. They've always incorporated a learning curve or tutorial in their games. They've always tried to appeal to everyone. The Wii and DS are the moments when they found the working formula for this long-time goal.

On top of which, Nintendo has not abandoned the core gamer. If anything, third party companies have done that where the Wii is considered since too many neither try to understand Nintendo's modern business model nor do they try to focus on appealing to target audiences. In the first year of the Wii's release, Nintendo gave us new titles from three flagship franchises: Mario, Zelda, and Metroid--and they delivered a killer app within about the first year (Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros Brawl) when neither MS nor Sony managed that. Their killer apps didn't come until much later.

The first year the Wii was out, Nintendo released Zelda: Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime 3, Super Mario Galaxy, SSBB, Fire Emblem, Battalion Wars II, Excite Truck, Paper Mario, and others. That's hardly an abandonment of core gamers. They've also mentioned Kirby and Pikmin titles in the works at various times, as well as titles like Disaster: Day of Crisis and Fatal Frame IV.

I think it's sad that the essay's author actually mentioned that it took about 3-4 years to craft Super Mario Galaxy, mentioned that Nintendo has stated that work is well under way for future core titles, and still just assumes that the only thing they see in their future is Wii Music. Pathetic. I don't mind at all that Nintendo still wants to appeal to the Blue Ocean crowd, nor do I mind when they decide to let 3rd party companies take center stage for a while. After all, that's what they did during the twilight years of the SNES--when Square pretty much ruled that roost.

Nintendo is not going to drop core gaming like they dropped playing cards back in the day. Core gaming is a major part of their business and they know that. Sure, I'm a little annoyed that some core games (like SMG and MP3: Corruption) were easier than I had wanted, but then again, it's not like I didn't still have tons of fun playing them.

Gosh there's no pleasing some people. We have already had Metroid Prime 3, Zelda TP, Galaxy, Mario Kart & Brawl and people talk as if there has been no core Nintendo game this gen.