If Nintendo didn't make hardware, there would be no Wii. If there was no Wii, there would be no Wii Sports Resort.

That would be a very bad thing.

I'd much much rather Sony and Microsoft leave the hardware business than Nintendo.

nordlead said: Rpruett said: Going completely against the grain here... I think people dramatically over state Nintendo. Sure, they have made plenty of innovations but these ideas certainly wouldn't 'vanish' or never be seen if Nintendo wasn't around. It has absolutely nothing to do with the company of Nintendo merely the people working for Nintendo generating ideas. You don't think these people would land elsewhere? People act as if Nintendo is just light years ahead of the competition? Hardly. Nintendo has lived off of a core group of fans and generally regarded as a very positive child oriented system. (IE: I personally have bought Nintendo systems just because they were a Nintendo system with Mario, Zelda, etc games...Gamecube sticks out). I think most software on Nintendo systems dating back to the N64 (Outside of Nintendo software) has been pretty mediocre as a whole. I think you may lose some of the charm and nostalgia of not having a Nintendo...but truly the games would drastically improve IMHO. I think that the argument that Nintendo 'invented' ______ or 'introduced' ______ is just a cop out argument. It's acting as if Nintendo had Einstein moments that no one would have discovered at any point down the road. Which is abundantly false IMO. ok, argue against this. Nintendo always has their software group feedback ideas to their hardware group. Had Nitnendo only created software (which was the argument, not that they didn't exist) and their hardware guys gone over to the other company (Sony/Sega, and now Microsoft) would they have invented half the things they did? OR, would the software guys (like Miyamoto) said, "I wish we had rumble, but we don't make hardware" and nothing happened.

It's true that someone would have invented it down the road but the question is how long. Without Nintendo there wouldn't have been any advances until a generation later. The analog stick wouldn't have been introduced until the 6th gen and motion controls wouldn't have been introduced until the 8th gen or maybe even further down the road. The point is Nintendo bring innovation everytime they release new hardware while others just play catch up. No other company ever gets close to the ideas that Nintendo comes up with.

If that happened a new videogame crash would be imminent.

If that happened we would lose the main driver of innovation for the video game industry. Also, there would be no fun in a PS and Xbox world - competition wise. Things would just be more expensive.

Otherwise, I probably won't care

Wouldn't really matter to me. Mario on PS4 would be hilarious.

Kenryoku_Maxis said: On the flip side, ask yourself this. Could Sony or Microsoft ever survive in game development going software only?

Yes, in both cases. Recall that before the PS1, Sony actually was a 3rd-party game company. (Search SNES and Sony Imagesoft here, and you'll get 17 games.) I would expect to see Sony return to this, given the number of studios they have. As for Microsoft, they've been doing PC games for a while, in addition to the occasional game for one of Nintendo's portables. Again, I think Microsoft Game Studios would go back to this method, focusing on PC and handhelds, but without a console of their own, I also see them developing possibly for one of the consoles. Something in me says the Wii, due to prior experience with Nintendo, coupled with the mouse versus pointer, but be it Wii or PS3, something else in me says console exclusivity.

Rpruett said: Going completely against the grain here... I think people dramatically over state Nintendo. Sure, they have made plenty of innovations but these ideas certainly wouldn't 'vanish' or never be seen if Nintendo wasn't around. It has absolutely nothing to do with the company of Nintendo merely the people working for Nintendo generating ideas. You don't think these people would land elsewhere? People act as if Nintendo is just light years ahead of the competition? Hardly. Nintendo has lived off of a core group of fans and generally regarded as a very positive child oriented system. (IE: I personally have bought Nintendo systems just because they were a Nintendo system with Mario, Zelda, etc games...Gamecube sticks out). I think most software on Nintendo systems dating back to the N64 (Outside of Nintendo software) has been pretty mediocre as a whole. I think you may lose some of the charm and nostalgia of not having a Nintendo...but truly the games would drastically improve IMHO. I think that the argument that Nintendo 'invented' ______ or 'introduced' ______ is just a cop out argument. It's acting as if Nintendo had Einstein moments that no one would have discovered at any point down the road. Which is abundantly false IMO.

I think you’re underestimating the power of group-think within the industry, and how it can take decades for a single company to be able to break out of conventional thinking to make advancements. Knowing full well that 3D games are (virtually) unplayable with a single digial pad, neither the Sony (with the Playstation) or Sega (with the Saturn) saw the need to put an analogue stick on their first 3D platforms because they were so focused on producing powerful hardware; and they didn’t consider the requirements of the software they were producing.

As long as the industry believes that something is adequate there is little effort put towards improving it, as can be seen by the button layouts of the XBox 360 and PS3 controllers. Someone who is new to their system, or doesn’t play it regularly enough to have memorized the button layout, spends far more time looking at the controller than playing the game; and their death caused by a cut-scene which asks them to press the triangle button really pisses them off. If it wasn’t for Nintendo this generation, you would probably see Sony and Microsoft release the exact same controllers generation after generation without ever questioning whether they were adequate controllers anymore.

i would rather play all Nintendo games on one Nintendo system with innovation than play them the same old way all the time.

if Nintendo's way of thinking (well some of it) was not around gaming might still be around but not as good as it is today... for me anyway

seriously there is no franchise out there that has made me stay with it as much as Nintendo's games

Rpruett said: Going completely against the grain here... I think people dramatically over state Nintendo. Sure, they have made plenty of innovations but these ideas certainly wouldn't 'vanish' or never be seen if Nintendo wasn't around. It has absolutely nothing to do with the company of Nintendo merely the people working for Nintendo generating ideas. You don't think these people would land elsewhere?

Others have addressed the other sections, so I'd just like to hazard that you either 1) haven't worked at multiple corporations, or 2) have worked low enough down the ladder to have zero effect on what the corporation as a whole decides.

Corporate culture plays a massive role in how employee talents are developed and utilized, dude. I don't see how you could possibly argue otherwise. Seriously, my mind is boggled here.