This is a significantly small market Malstrom is talking about, and he's making it seem this is the biggest market Nintendo should go for. Nintendo does not need to have every old successful game have some sort of revitalized effort to pick up older gamers. Sony did not utilize this strategy when they pulled the rug out from under Nintendo. This article also doesn't explain the drop from the NES to the SNES since the SNES had the exact same games as the NES, just more of them and better versions in many cases, perfectly employing Malstrom's suggested strategy and dropping in sales anyways.

Console success is far too complicated to be shoved into this nice, neat package. I would say Nintendo's failure had far more to do with bad management decisions regarding third party relations, better marketing campaigns from competitors and a horrible decision to stick with carts than it ever did because they made Mario and Zelda 3D.

I agree with you but saying that everyone knows something doesn't make it a good argument

it was actually nintendo scaring off third parties.

SNES era was pain, PS1 came by not only let third party publish it own games, but also the could price it cheaper to because of standard CDSs then ps1 sold millions,  way more than NES.
GC was change but they were kinda like PSP with their UMD, stll not DVD.
Ps2 then again did it.
Wii new found success it's mainly due a loyal fanbase and expanded wii fit, wii sport game.
third party never came back.

I want to make a sequel to the NEw world that Malstrom made earlier:

And as the core gaming imploded the blue ocean washed the core the old world away. Most of the gaming companies relies on blockbuster titles dont care about the long term sales and milking the established franchise to death.

Nintendo: and now we are in the new world we change the face of gaming now we're not in the old world that emmersive---- OH! Someone's raises a hand what your question will be?

Malstrom: What about the old long time fans. The retro gamers. The people thats stand by you since the NEs days?

Nintendo: What are you talking about? I thought these type of gamers are extinct since the N64 era. Gamers dont care for simple type of games anymore.

Malstrom: But did the Wii invented to cater to these type of gamers? The ones that----

Nintendo: I dont want to talk to you anymore. We profit to the casuals and family. The retro gamers the core gamers in the past left us long time ago since the PSX. And for bigger announcement we would venture to digital distribution as DLC and UGC as a new content to this new world. With this----

Malstrom: THATS ABSURD! Thats not what the Wii and the new generation's philosophy should be! Why would we buy a game thats digital! SHOULD YOU be the ones that should make us new content in every game you make?!!

Nintendo: Guard seize him! he should drown in blue ocean and die with the rest of core gamers in the old world.

As you can see reality bites for malstrom. UGC and DLC have more benefits than we're perceived it to be. For one thing, you dont need to buy games with the same title only with different numbers anymore. Activision could just monopolized the music games and FPS industry with DLC but it blows up them on their faces with too many spinoffs and sequels. As for FPS same thing happened. And now because of their greediness they want to pay the core gamer 3 times as much as the original game just to play new maps and weapons. 

And still lemmings(the core gamers) will buy it anyway. Just look at PC gaming and just look at the sales WoW. The game only lived because of DLC and Blizzard profit on it very well. Its even worse than DLC because you need to pay monthly fee to play WoW.

Yushire, you don't listen to what Nintendo say do you? They've said repeatedly that the Wii was designed to appeal to people who no longer play video games and people or have never played. They've mentioned the term 'lapsed gamer' so many times it's not funny. Nintendo ARE wanting the NES gamers to buy a Wii, the gamers that have since left because gaming got too complicated.

These gamers don't want DLC, they don't want UGC. They want to buy a game, stick it in the machine and have fun straight away. You talk about WoW, that's 10 million subscribers. Should Nintendo be focused on a group that consists of 10 million? Or should they perhaps focus on the NES audience of 60 million? Should they focus on the Wii Fit audience of 20 million? The PS2 audience of 140 million? PS2 didn't have DLC, PS3 does and it hasn't helped. That's not what the consumer wants. If DLC was THE defining feature of current gen consoles and was what consumers wanted then the HD consoles should have absolutely creamed the Wii.

OT: I'm not sure I agree with Malstrom here. The most important thing that the NES had was variety. I think what Nintendo lacks right now when compared to the NES is variety, not certain games competing with older games. Nintendo have shown that having games not possible on previous generations of console (such as Wii Fit) brings in the completely new consumers to gaming. Wii Vitality Sensor will continue that trend. Having sequels to the top selling GameCube titles obviously secured the 24 or so million GameCube users into buying a Wii - or at least that was the idea and the core gamer outside of that hasn't been catered to specifically. What's the point though? You have two competitors that cater to this group specifically, why put in the resources when you know they cannot be beaten?

I agree that Nintendo's greatest competition is its predescessors however I disagree that gaming ditched gamers. I've been around for the Atari2600 - Wii and to be honest I grew up gaming and gaming's evolution did not alienate gamers. Simply Nintendo's user base chose to leave Nintendo for the competition (PSOne/PS2).

The market for the Wii is not that past demographic. Nintendo is not going after all those gamers who ditched gaming they are going after all the people who never picked up games in the past. I for example didn't actually like 2D Zelda , nor Metroid it was the 3D titles OOT and Prime that really got me into these franchises.

That being said I still think Nintendo's competing with itself. Nintendo Wii needs to break 60-million units and beat the NES in order for Nintendo to truly call it a success. Once it becomes Nintendo's highest selling home platform its time to turn its sites to handheld. If Nintendo can bring the Wii up to beating the GBA, or maybe in lifetime sales the DS that would be a true feat!

I almost WAS a lapsed gamer. I didn't own a console last generation, and played nothing but StarCraft for years. I just dabbled with the GTAs and the Halos and the Mario Karts at friends' houses. It wasn't until the Wii's first demo video with motion controls that I turned into one of those guys who goes on the internet to argue about video game sales almost every day. And I've been gaming like mad ever since, tons of genres and everything. The Wii saved me from Blizzard. I might have been playing WoW or something... ::shivers::

And it wasn't until I got a Wii that I started playing games like Pikmin and Killer7. Last gen kicked ass. I missed out.

That's horrible D:

Wii beating the NES is a forgone conclusion at this point. I'd say it's probable the Wii will outsell the SNES + N64 + GameCube combined actually.

The N64 btw would've sold more than the SNES if Nintendo had compromised with third parties and included a CD-ROM or at least some kind of CD-ROM add-on instead of wasting their time with the 64DD which amounted to nothing. That would've allowed games like Final Fantasy VII and Resident Evil to appear on the N64.

Yamauchi's complete arrogance in alienating the entire third party community is what led to Nintendo's regression, you can't fault EAD or Rare there ... those two companies did an amazing job carrying an entire platform on their shoulders almost single handedly and pumped out amazing games like Super Mario 64, GoldenEye, Zelda: OoT, Banjo-Kazooie, Wave Race 64, Star Fox 64, etc. year after year for about a four year span. 

This article is build on the false impression than people have been left by gaming (which he tries to prove by showing shrinking nintendo consoles sales).
Well that's cool and all but the small problem here is that there have been steady growth in total number of machines sold over generations while Nintendo was losing market share.