Going to sound like a bad echo here, but yeah, I've never seen this double standard from journalists. Regular board posters here, and in places like kotaku, sure, but people are ready to pounce and crow about anything that even looks like it might be an oncoming trainwreck. People were predicting Microsoft crashing and burning after E3, people loved to talk about the PS3 failing miserably in its first year, and people were predicting the Gamecube and xbox failing utterly and forcing them out of the market.
It's not hatred of Nintendo, it's that the people are not so far removed from the days of the gladiatorial games, we salivate at the thought of seeing these monolithic companies injured and shedding blood. It is Schadenfreude in its purest form, and we care not whether they wear the symbols of the mighty N, S, or M, as long as they bleed all the same, we will share some satisfaction at the thought of them suffering.
Besides, most of the criticism is at the Wii U anyway, people shut up about the 3DS when it turned out to be more popular than the Vita and still held on to a respectable chunk of the market amidst the rise of smartphone games. The WiiU is genuinely struggling, will it knock Nintendo out of the console market? No, probably not, but we may see Nintendo cut support for it sooner than planned, maybe launch a new system a few years earlier than originally planned, or maybe something else, Nintendo won't be forced out of the business, they saved too much money when the Wii sold like crack to let a single disappointing console knock them out of the market, but it could force them to take action to either get a new console out in the next 5 years or so, or try and redesign the one they have.
As for their games, I used to love Nintendo games, but as time went on, I felt less and less enthusiastic about buying each installment. The sense of boredom and apathy grew with each new title, and the interesting spinoffs seem to all be dead at this point. When I was younger, I would have shanked the President of Nintendo to get a new Mario RPG title, but that series was dead before it even began. The somewhat worthwhile replacement in the Paper Mario series has pretty much been dead since the gamecube era, the Wii Super Paper Mario, was pretty much just another platformer, so that's another series down the drain. Metroid Prime seems to pretty much be dead and gone, and Metroid as a whole (even the 2D sidescrollers) are in a coma at this point after the abomination that was Other M. Star Fox is pretty much MIA as well, joining F-zero on life support. What's left at this point? Another Mario game? No matter how tight the gameplay, there's only so many goombas I can stomp before the artstyle and setting start to intrude on my fun, even the platforming just feels like I'm going through the motions at this point. Another Zelda game? They at least switch up the story, but it all starts to blur together at some point, the window dressing changes, but it still feels like I've done this all before. Pokemon? Same issue, here, I can tell you most of the story for any Pokemon game before it's even released, and I've never been interested in the competitive metagame, so all I'm left with is a dozen iterations of the same story with a roster update every once in awhile.
I don't begrudge people for buying Nintendo games, I don't even dislike the company itself, I'm just bored of them at this point, I have to work up some effort just to think about buying another Nintendo game, much less buying a console just to play them.
