Cracked thinks Nintendo's Lost It
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I have a theory: Nintendo thinks its market is 90% pre-teens.
They think gaming hasn't changed since the '90s.
Everything they do supports this. Their first-party titles, their bright-'n-friendly color schemes, their "friend codes" approach to connectivity, their "we don't need the latest hardware" thinking. They are literally stuck in the past.
And to some degree, it works. But it works despite Nintendo's efforts, not because of them. It works because despite the cutesy colors and simple hardware and gimmicks, Nintendo makes good games.
However...
I don't think it'll work forever. At some point Nintendo will start to lose market share as the kids and those who used to be kids move on. At some point Fischer-Price gaming won't work any more. And at that point, I fear Nintendo may be left with a strict and simple choice: Evolve, or die.
And the gaming world may well be poorer for it.
They think gaming hasn't changed since the '90s.
Everything they do supports this. Their first-party titles, their bright-'n-friendly color schemes, their "friend codes" approach to connectivity, their "we don't need the latest hardware" thinking. They are literally stuck in the past.
And to some degree, it works. But it works despite Nintendo's efforts, not because of them. It works because despite the cutesy colors and simple hardware and gimmicks, Nintendo makes good games.
However...
I don't think it'll work forever. At some point Nintendo will start to lose market share as the kids and those who used to be kids move on. At some point Fischer-Price gaming won't work any more. And at that point, I fear Nintendo may be left with a strict and simple choice: Evolve, or die.
And the gaming world may well be poorer for it.
I disagree. Cracked is, and has been as long as I've been reading, very hit-and-miss. Seanbaby is hilarious when he does a comic, less so when he doesn't. Soren makes me laugh in After Hours but I don't enjoy his columns. Bucholz is hilarious all the time, but his Unlikely Advice columns always have me in stitches. The point is that, as with any site that has user-submitted content, the pendulum of quality swings all over the damn place, and when it comes to columnists everyone has their own tastes. When they're putting out a consistent 3/4 articles a day plus videos, photoshop contests and Quick Fixes, it's worth putting up with 3 'meh' articles for one that genuinely amuses.Matthew94 said:
See, you and I have very different views on the comment section. I see a lot of people quoting the article as if repeating a joke they just heard makes them funny by extension, a lot of people trolling, and a metric fuckton of spambots. Or, worse, the people who think they're hilarious by responding to spambots. Sure, you do get the occasional pedant claiming that the article is badly researched, but do you ever actually read those posts? hell, I'm thicker than a brick sandwich and sometimes I can prove the "corrections" wrong.Matthew94 said:
I live in hope and relative certainty that they'll pull it off. It is Nintendo we're talking about, and no matter how much people have suddenly started to hate everything they do around here lately, I will always have faith in their abilities.Buretsu said:
Verbs gotta conjugate.Evil Smurf said:Potatoes gonna potateSonicWaffle said:Oh, the ironyj-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
It saddens me that the market of games for children is slowly dying. I see a lot of people saying Nintendo is appealing to casuals but I think what they mean is kids. Nintendo isn't going after the gamer you and I know, their main audience is kids. It sucks that that sort of demographic is almost never addressed.omicron1 said:
You do realise that the Gamecube and N64 were both relative failures, right? And that, despite the success of the Wii based on unit sales (which do not mean it's a good console), their good game to shovelware horseshit ratio is still considerably worse than any other console.ReservoirAngel said:
His comments are actually valid, especially the last one. As I was watching the presentation I kept finding myself thinking "Wow, this is Super Mario Galaxy all over again". Nobody wants to sit back and just help you, they actually want to PLAY THE GAME. It's not that difficult Nintendo. Giving someone a different experience to the rest is not a good idea, and damn I can see a lot of arguments arising over who gets the controller. Especially that Luigi's Mansion game, what are you supposed to do if you can't find enough people?
However, he did over=react a lot, and I think it may be a bit too early to judge, especially as we don't know all the details yet.
However, he did over=react a lot, and I think it may be a bit too early to judge, especially as we don't know all the details yet.
All this doom and gloom about Nintendo is premature. Remember that they are the only company that profits from console sales themselves. Sony and MS take a loss for each console sold and make up the difference from games.
I suppose that's also why Nintendo is less willing to accomodate 3rd parties -- they truly feel that Mario 80 and Zelda 52 can carry the load, and it doesn't need 3rd party royalties to make money.
But that philosophy no doubt explains why they come out with lower tech consoles. They want to keep production cost low and keep the systems affordable by making pure gaming systems. They are partially right, though. When the Wii launched, very very few households had HDTV's. I don't know what the numbers are today, but personally I didn't upgrade to this gen until after I bought my hdtv... for $1500 in 09. I think the market is now catching up and putting out an hd console today is more financially savvy. The other two are going to release $6-800 behemoths that are 3d capable and give you a happy ending everytime you beat a game, but the vast majority of the people playing games won't have 3d hdtvs. Nintendo is going to stick with affordable technology that will fully utilize the entertainment systems in the majority of households. Their achilled heel is the way they exclude 3rd parties and force them to redesign their interfaces for Nintendo's whacky gimmicks... it's much easier for devs to say f u and make their games for 2/3 consoles withease.
With everyone bitching about the cost of games, don't tell me a console released for 1/2 - 2/3 its competitors won't be successful. People will eat it up, even if it collects dust after a year.
I suppose that's also why Nintendo is less willing to accomodate 3rd parties -- they truly feel that Mario 80 and Zelda 52 can carry the load, and it doesn't need 3rd party royalties to make money.
But that philosophy no doubt explains why they come out with lower tech consoles. They want to keep production cost low and keep the systems affordable by making pure gaming systems. They are partially right, though. When the Wii launched, very very few households had HDTV's. I don't know what the numbers are today, but personally I didn't upgrade to this gen until after I bought my hdtv... for $1500 in 09. I think the market is now catching up and putting out an hd console today is more financially savvy. The other two are going to release $6-800 behemoths that are 3d capable and give you a happy ending everytime you beat a game, but the vast majority of the people playing games won't have 3d hdtvs. Nintendo is going to stick with affordable technology that will fully utilize the entertainment systems in the majority of households. Their achilled heel is the way they exclude 3rd parties and force them to redesign their interfaces for Nintendo's whacky gimmicks... it's much easier for devs to say f u and make their games for 2/3 consoles withease.
With everyone bitching about the cost of games, don't tell me a console released for 1/2 - 2/3 its competitors won't be successful. People will eat it up, even if it collects dust after a year.
It really (absolutely, actually) depends on your tolerance for "helpful sidekick".SonicWaffle said:
Navi was annoying, but OoT still ended up being an awesome game despite her. Midna had a little too much """personality""", but was sometimes charming and didn't make TP unplayable in any way. King of Red Lions was stuck being a boat, so he couldn't follow you around everywhere and was generally pretty great.
FI is Fucking Insulting. If you really need as much help as Fi forces on you, you're also not old enough to read, making her completely pointless anyway. For the first six hours of the game, you really can't go more than two minutes with out being interrupted to be told to do what you were already going to do. I actually rage quit because the game was constantly being interrupted.
I understand if some Zelda fans are willing to force themselves through that to squeeze out any ounce of joy they can find in the game, but I've got a dozen other Zelda that games I can replay instead. Or Skyrim, which is really what this franchise should have become, when you boil down what made the original LoZ great.
[rant over, sorry]
Anyway, if you can put up with all that, then yeah, give it a go. The art design is great.
I read Cheese's article before this thread was made. Not only is Cheese one of the funniest writers at Cracked, but he makes some very good points about Nintendo. I don't agree with everything in his article, but the points about forcing one person to use the pad control to do menial tasks, or visa versa, and the point about how amazing it will be to play games that came out a year ago, are pretty good.
I bought the Wii, and while I have had some mild entertainment with it, it really wasn't worth it. When I look at the Wii U, I see the same problems as the Wii, but with the addition of brand new annoyances.
I wasn't going to buy the Wii U anyway, but this article does a decent job of explaining why no one should buy it.
P.S. I am not down on Nintendo, I would love to see them reinvent themselves and make people remember why they were famous in the first place. But the gimics, I just can't take anymore gimics.
I bought the Wii, and while I have had some mild entertainment with it, it really wasn't worth it. When I look at the Wii U, I see the same problems as the Wii, but with the addition of brand new annoyances.
I wasn't going to buy the Wii U anyway, but this article does a decent job of explaining why no one should buy it.
P.S. I am not down on Nintendo, I would love to see them reinvent themselves and make people remember why they were famous in the first place. But the gimics, I just can't take anymore gimics.
I agree, and ZombiU has done everything I could have asked for it to do with the new controller.Matthew94 said:
I haven't given Nintendo my patronage for years. Prettysure my last investment in Nintendo was Smash Bros Brawl, and in hindsight I don't feel all that good about the purchase.
Last Nintendo game I genuinely enjoyed was Pikmin. And in the tradition of Nintendo games, they've cloned that enjoyable game. Twice. The newest version is also sure to include annoying hardware features that people will get sick of in very short order.
Last Nintendo game I genuinely enjoyed was Pikmin. And in the tradition of Nintendo games, they've cloned that enjoyable game. Twice. The newest version is also sure to include annoying hardware features that people will get sick of in very short order.
