Is Nintendo holding the industry back?

[Mudokon]

Nintendo is holding back the gaming industry ? i think nowadays gamers doesn't know history and not even the present situation of gaming industry, do some research and learn about Nintendo's current situation and history---> http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/this-is-how-nintendo-rescued-the-video-game-industry

 

[Brian Tams]

I say this because they seem to always be the last to follow trends

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Yup Nintendo are always last.The other console manufacturers are such trailblazers

You mean Nintendo didn't immediately release the following after realizing that playing some games with the WiiMote alone was infuriating as hell?

This is putting aside the fact that Kinect and PSMove aren't entire consoles based ground-up on motion controls, props to Nintendo for inventing such a godawful control scheme (that is mysteriously absent from the Wii U, yes?). Sony and MS released attachments i.e. afterthought cash-grabs aimed at the casual pastel-shirt-wearing happy family demographic (and nothing more).

All three companies should be ashamed of their attempts at motion controls, it's like a blind man guiding 2 other blind men.

There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with Nintendo trying motion controls. Most gamers (well, most truthful gamers) will admit that they were first intrigued when the Wii was announced. Most gamers I talk to at one point owned (or rented, I think that was still a thing at the dawn of the generation) a Wii. That is part of the reason why it sold so well for so long. Now, it turned out not to work well, but Nintendo should be applauded for trying something new, to try and see what gamers liked. Microsoft and Sony, though, all they saw was the $$$$ and not the complaints by gamers about the ineffectiveness of motion controls.

 

[Vivi22]

For them to hold the rest of the industry back, the rest of the industry would have to be taking their cues from them and actually making games for their system. Since neither are really the case, they're really just off in a corner making Mario and Zelda games while everyone else pats them on the head telling them that's nice and gets back to doing what they do.

 

[Roxas1359]

After all, it's currently almost neck-and-neck with the PS2 for the title of most successful console ever. Though yeah, smartphones are currently dominating that landscape now.

Anyways, think I'm gonna bow out of this thread for a bit. Everyone else has pretty much said what I would have anyways.

PS2 is still about 4 million or so ahead of the DS last time I checked, but I don't think either Sony nor Nintendo will ever release something as popular as that ever again because both of those had extreme innovations in them. The DS had a rechargeable battery (something handhelds needed), stylus, Wi-fi, and great use of the touch screen. The PS2 had popularized backwards compatibility making it's library gigantic, had a built in DVD player which helped to get DVDs even more popular, Linux online support, and had the most amazing 3rd party support I think any console has ever had.
Really nothing has really even come close to that except the Wii which broke 100 million earlier this year and is close to the PS1's sales numbers if it hasn't already surpassed them.
Anyway, see ya.

Unless there are a bunch of malicious assholes in the EU and NA Nintendo department that refuse to localize anything for Nintendo of Japan

Thing is that if you go by Nintendo's localization history that is what has seemed to happen. This was extremely the case on the GameCube, with many games never being localized outside of Japan at all. Really Nintendo's localization is quite bad actually, with the only companies being worse probably being SEGA and Bandi Namco, the latter being by far the worse offenders out there. Yes it's getting better, but they really aren't stepping up as much as they really should, and the types of regions they made with the 3DS along with region locking it have been terrible. I know at least 5 people who bought an American 3DS who live in Europe, simply because localization times are terrible. Personally I've always been against region locks because of how bad they've gotten.

to me it just seems that way because over the past few weeks there seems to be alot of anti Nintendo, and i hadnt expereinced that here until now, so im just curious why its happening recently

Really it's always been there, but for all consoles in general really. Whatever isn't selling well will get the most flack really. Before that it was the PS3 remember? It had all the memes of it having no games and took it years to shake that off. The issue people have is that at this point there are people honestly trying to bait the more overzealous fans and it is quite obvious, and then ones the fans have taken the bait they get frothy at the mouth defending everything and basically making it seem like whatever they are defending is the greatest of all things and that it can't do any wrong at all, which is a bad thing as nothing should be above criticism.

It's been that way for Microsoft discussions, Sony discussions, Nintendo discussions, and PC discussions. What it really is is that people get so caught up in their fandoms that they tend to lose rational thinking and while they think that they are making rational and thought provoking answers it will just come off like a chimp frantically chucking their poo at anything that they don't agree with.

I know right?! I came here from IGN partially because of that! Now I'm looking for another gaming news sites to join and replace this one, been having no luck though.

Really good luck then as your only bet would be an Nintendo only site where people will only praise Nintendo and criticism will get maimed by all. Being critical about something doesn't mean it's hated, but you should know that there will always be people who don't like what you like and will make up stuff or point out flaws that will get to you. Really you just need to learn to ignore it and move on because in all honesty getting flustered and angry about a company seems really stupid since the one thing that must always be remembered is that generally a business is out there to make money, and if they aren't then something is wrong.

Plus, at least you didn't come from G4 like I did. That place was the worst of the worst and the mods on G4 were so powermad that they would ban you if you simply disagreed with their opinion on a game.

Also, calling all Sony and Microsoft fanboys ignorant isn't really helping your case at all really. All fandoms can be ignorant about many things.

 

[ClockworkUniverse]

Yeah, what pretty much everyone else said. Even if we take it as a given that their approach isn't a valid one (which I'm not necessarily in agreement with) for them to be holding the industry back, the rest of the industry would have to be following suit, which really isn't the case. The Kinect and PS Move exist, admittedly, but Kinect has kind of spun off into its own thing focusing mainly on the voice command aspect that Nintendo doesn't even do, while the Move is just kind of dying.

 

[Mudokon]

Apple may have taken the touchscreen ball and ran with it, but Nintendo were one of the companies revolved for making touchscreen gaming popular.

Technically if you wanna go further then the Microsoft XP Tablet sorta did it first. Nintendo went and applied it more to certain games, and Apple made touch screens and more importantly tablets a lot more popular today. Really the same could be said with motion controls when it came to the EyeToy, but motion controls didn't catch on until Nintendo made them popular with the Wiimote and nunchuck.
Mainly nowadays while Nintendo did start to make touch screen gaming more popular, it's more Apple's doing that made it as popular as it is today.

so the eye toy is older that nintendo's power glove for nes.

 

[wulf3n]

This is putting aside the fact that Kinect and PSMove aren't entire consoles based ground-up on motion controls, props to Nintendo for inventing such a godawful control scheme (that is mysteriously absent from the Wii U, yes?). Sony and MS released attachments i.e. afterthought cash-grabs aimed at the casual pastel-shirt-wearing happy family demographic (and nothing more).

All three companies should be ashamed of their attempts at motion controls, it's like a blind man guiding 2 other blind men.

Why should Nintendo be ashamed for attempting something that didn't work? Yeah motion controls with current technology don't work, but Nintendo were the first to accept that, removing it for the WiiU.

Sony and Microsoft yes because they simply jumped on the bandwagon even though the technology wasn't ready.

 

[TheEvilCheese]

Except the touch screen controls for the DS were total ass, and a lot of the games (the good games) towards the end of its life span maybe had one or two gimmicky features with the touchscreen. I said got the ball rolling; Nintendo put the ball out there, Apple pushed it down the hill that showed games controlled entirely through touch and rotating the iPad were functional. The WiiU controller is, after all, merely a tablet with joy sticks.

I seriously disagree with the DS touchscreen being bad. That's entirely personal preference. There are plenty of DS games that use the touch screen exclusively and still play excellently in my opinion. Hell, there are excellent series that would have never existed or faded into obscurity if it wasn't for touch controls.

Granted, the resistive display isn't as responsive as its modern capacitive brethren and there are some very very good games on smartphones and tablets that couldn't really work on another platform. And some DS games horribly overused the gimmicks available to them, but to suggest that the DS touch controls were not a good thing doesn't make sense to me.

Again though, It's personal experience which dictates how you feel about a platform and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the DS.

(damn that makes me sound like a proper fanboy, just want to throw it out there: I own a 360, 3ds, vita and gaming PC and while I love some of Nintendo's stuff I think they've made some massive mistakes in recent years, just that the ds wasn't one of them)

 

[Roxas1359]

so the eye toy is older that nintendo's power glove for nes.

My mistake, forgot about that one. Although the Power Glove was a commercial failure and really the motion controls on it weren't the best persay. EyeToy's weren't as good either, but really motion controls never were popularized until Nintendo's Wii. I remember that there was once gonna be a Final Fantasy game with motion controls in the 90s, but it was scrapped entirely.

The company that makes motion controls popular enough in everyday life, or in this case in gaming, will get all the credit. That's pretty much how it works.

 

[Dragonbums]

-snip-

Not gonna like Neronium. IGN has gotten a lot worse in terms of commenting on anything.

Especially anything Nintendo.
I don't think one person dissenting opinion or otherwise can make one comment on that site without being called some variation of sheep, abused fan, retard, idiot, or any other colorful language on the planet over there. (Also FIRST comments and it's ilk)

I used to enjoy looking at the comments section IGN years ago, but now after being on the Escapist, it's gotten really cringeworthy.

The only place where the comments section still have a modicum of intelligence are Kotaku, Destructoid, and Polygon.

 

[Roxas1359]

I'll just reply with what I just told someone else: I am on a Nintendo only site, and we definitely criticize Nintendo in addition to praising them. We're not like Sony or MS fanboys; we're not ignorant. To say their fans never admit mistakes is just wrong, and the proof is at the site I go to. I come on general gaming sites because I like to stay on top of EVERYTHING, not just Nintendo. But I can't seem to find a good, reputable site that isn't full of Nintendo haters. I'm still looking, though.
Added: Wow G4 sounds horrible! I now know where not to look!

But saying that only Sony and Microsoft fanboys are ingnorant, which is what your wording makes it sound like, is ignorant all it's own. Every fandom has ignorance to it, and while some have more than others, claiming an entire fanbase to be ignorant is not something you should go around saying.
And claiming the site is full of haters isn't something one should do either. As Dragonbums has said, most people are either apathetic here, and last time I checked apathy does not exactly equal hatred.

Also, G4 is gone completely I think. They shut down like years ago, and most of those powermad mods were fired a little after the time I had left since I came to this site in 2008, joined in 2009 though.

-snip-

Not gonna like Neronium. IGN has gotten a lot worse in terms of commenting on anything.

I've seen it from time to time and it's pretty bad. Still it's nothing when compared to how G4 was as it was an Xbox/Microsoft fandom paradise, with Sony and Nintendo being destroyed in every comment section, even if it wasn't about a Sony or Nintendo game.
I've seen some of the worst commenting sections, and while the Escapist's can be pretty bad with certain things, it's still nowhere near the levels of IGN or G4.

 

[Evonisia]

No, they're the only ones trying to push consoles forward. Nintendo are the only company with an 8th Gen Console that is actually significantly different to it's predecessor. Say what you want about the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4, but they're both just the previous console upgraded in power with the odd tweak here and there.

Nintendo are also the trend setters, the Wii's motion controls were later stolen by Sony and Microsoft to 'improve' their own consoles. I'm also pretty sure that the Wii U is the only 8th gen console that still has proper backwards compatibility. I guarantee in three years, the Xbox One or the PlayStation 4 will be introducing a Wii U esque pad so you can play without the TV on.

 

[Yuuki]

If all three should be ashamed of motion controls, then why are we praising the Oculus Rift?

Define "we", I'm of the opinion that it's nothing more than a gimmick that at least has a decade of development to go before we see the typical gamer even consider it's existence, especially in the upcoming PS4/XBone generation where TV + handheld controls will be the way to go. Also Oculus Rift is simply a camera-controlling headset last I checked, you still have to be using a mouse+keyboard (or controller) to actually play the game.

If you're talking about the VR Treadmill, then you will find that people are pretty divided on how much of an addition that thing is to gaming. The moment I saw the guy wearing a VR headset and holding a plastic gun while running on the spot strapped into that contraption, I literally burst out laughing. I was instantly reminded of those DDR machines, motorbike simulators or showboard/skateboard simulators that you find in arcades. Extremely one-off gimmicks that are interesting to mess-around on, but at the same time completely irrelevant to anyone's living room...and not even worth paying the slightest attention to if you're a core controller-driven (or PC) gamer who tends to play for 3-5 hour sessions.

Put into the fact that they didn't make a big ass deal about it like Microsoft and Sony did with their move technology.

That was the entire point, a rather pathetic and slapdash cash-grab out of the Nintendo crowd. I'm very much with Yahtzee regarding what he said in his E3 2010 episode:

If gaming is going through puberty, then motion controls are its first period. It's become clear to me now that motion controls are something each game company just needs to get out of their system. Nintendo were the early bloomers who are now saying: "Motion controls? What are those? We're just making five million reboots of our popular franchises!" And I'm all like, "oh, Nintendo, it's like you never left us!" But now Microsoft and Sony are triumphantly waving their bloodstained underpants.

Let me make my position clear: gaming should be about games, not about controllers. Controllers as they stand are a perfectly adequate conduit for connecting man to machine by way of thumbs. It doesn't matter of A Tale of Two Cities is printed on the side of a horse or if every other word is in Greek; what matters is that Sidney Carton sacrifices himself for Charles Darnay at the end (spoiler alert). Delude yourself all you like with videos of happy families in pastel-coloured shirts spending quality time with bouncy castle simulators, but in the long term people want to play games the same way they want to read books or watch TV: slouched on the settee with a big bag of Maltesers. How on Earth do you think forcing them to do a sit-up every now and again is going to revolutionise entertainment?

 

[Mudokon]

so the eye toy is older that nintendo's power glove for nes.

My mistake, forgot about that one. Although the Power Glove was a commercial failure and really the motion controls on it weren't the best persay. EyeToy's weren't as good either, but really motion controls never were popularized until Nintendo's Wii. I remember that there was once gonna be a Final Fantasy game with motion controls in the 90s, but it was scrapped entirely.

The company that makes motion controls popular enough in everyday life, or in this case in gaming, will get all the credit. That's pretty much how it works.

yea you are right but when a company makes tons of money --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_game_franchises then its only good to experiment.

and Nintendo allready made motion controls popular enough in every day life with the wii or else i dont think microsoft and sony would invest at motion technology.

 

[WanderingFool]

Do you think Nintendo is holding back the industry? I say this because they seem to always be the last to follow trends, such as CDs, online, and HD. They're always behind the times, and maybe they should drop out of the console race.

This seems pretty relevant...

From what I have seen here, there will be a mass shitstorm of people defending Nintendo, just like with Valve. Whether its missplaced or not is not for me to say... Hell, with a title like that, Only a matter of time till Jeffers gets here, if he hasnt already...

Anyways, I would say no. Nintendo isnt doing so hot with the WiiU (Feel like I should say told ya so), but they really dont need to. They got themselves a nice little corner of the market, and are running it like their own kingdom.

Personally, I only really cared for their first party IPs, and havent been impressed with them as of late, so Im not planning on buying a WiiU anytime soon, Unless theres some news about a new Zelda or Metroid game.

 

[Brian Tams]

Except the touch screen controls for the DS were total ass, and a lot of the games (the good games) towards the end of its life span maybe had one or two gimmicky features with the touchscreen. I said got the ball rolling; Nintendo put the ball out there, Apple pushed it down the hill that showed games controlled entirely through touch and rotating the iPad were functional. The WiiU controller is, after all, merely a tablet with joy sticks.

I seriously disagree with the DS touchscreen being bad. That's entirely personal preference. There are plenty of DS games that use the touch screen exclusively and still play excellently in my opinion. Hell, there are excellent series that would have never existed or faded into obscurity if it wasn't for touch controls.

Granted, the resistive display isn't as responsive as its modern capacitive brethren and there are some very very good games on smartphones and tablets that couldn't really work on another platform. And some DS games horribly overused the gimmicks available to them, but to suggest that the DS touch controls were not a good thing doesn't make sense to me.

Again though, It's personal experience which dictates how you feel about a platform and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the DS.

(damn that makes me sound like a proper fanboy, just want to throw it out there: I own a 360, 3ds, vita and gaming PC and while I love some of Nintendo's stuff I think they've made some massive mistakes in recent years, just that the ds wasn't one of them)

Oh no, I'm not saying that the DS is a bad system; hell, the DS line is the only handheld system I own (excluding smartphones, of course). I just think the touch screen wasn't implemented that well in its early incarnations, and that the stylus was frustrating (for me, anyways. I constantly kept breaking or losing them because the little tab that holds it in the back of the DS would always wear down. One time I scratched the screen with it because I hadn't realized that the tip had broken off, leaving a jagged piece.) Also, the touch screen does work well if the Devs focus on that. I just remember games like The World Ends With You coming along that try and marry buttons with the touch screen, but end up having the whole thing blow up in their faces (still liked that game, though). I just didn't think it was fair that Nintendo was getting a lot of credit for touch screen gaming, when it was really companies like Apple and later Windows who did a lot of the innovating between the DS and the WiiU, and that a lot of the features of the Wii U controller were lifted from these innovations (the gyroscope comes to mind). I also should apologize for jumping the gun, because when I read touch controls, I assumed the Wii U was being referenced.

Hell, I love Nintendo and am planning on getting a WiiU now that the price was slashed. To someone like me, who games a lot on a PC (and has a limited budget), they are the only company worth a damn to invest in since they have most of the exclusives that don't come out on PC (I'm also crossing my fingers hoping that KH3 comes out on the Wii U).

EDIT- I do, however, believe that the concept of the WiiU (enhancing gameplay with two screens) is something they pulled from the DS, forgetting the fact that the reason the DS did so well was because it had a massive gaming library by the end of its lifespan.

 

[HardkorSB]

Do you think Nintendo is holding back the industry? I say this because they seem to always be the last to follow trends, such as CDs, online, and HD. They're always behind the times, and maybe they should drop out of the console race.

Weren't they the first ones to use to use a pad instead of a joystick, as well as motion controls? You know, the things that everyone else copied from them? They don't have to follow trends, they set trends.

Also, Nintendo is selling a different kind of product than Sony and Microsoft, with focus on different aspects of gaming, targeted towards different people.
Not to mention that their flagship games are really fun.

 

[Roxas1359]

yea you are right but when a company makes tons of money --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_game_franchises then its only good to experiment.

and Nintendo allready made motion controls popular enough in every day life with the wii or else i dont think microsoft and sony would invest at motion technology.

Yes, but Nintendo doesn't take as many risks really anymore when they obviously have the money.
I get the feeling you think I'm one of those "anti-Nintendo" people that constantly get brought up into threads like these. I'm honestly not, and hell for the last 3 generations my first console in those was a Nintendo one (GameCube, Wii, and now I have a Wii U Deluxe).

Only main thing I want Nintendo to do, more than anything else, is either get their localization team in high gear or simply get rid of region locking in general. That's the only main problem I have with them, and it's one of the problems I had with Sony and Microsoft back when they region locked.

Ok maybe my wording was a little off, I don't think ALL Sony/MS fanboys are ignorant. But there certainly is a great number of ignorant fanboys in the fan bases of Sony and MS, much greater ratio than Nintendo's fan base.

I figured that the it was a wording issue, one should be especially careful about that. And believe me, there are a lot of ignorant people in Microsoft and Sony's fandoms, but there are some extremely more overzealous Nintendo fans that make themselves more vocal than I have from Sony or Microsoft ones, especially lately. Hell if you wanna see something bad check out Chuggaconroy's comment section for his first episode of Sonic Colors. I thought the Sonic Fandom was the worst, and I'm in that fandom. >.<

 

[renegade7]

Nintendo caters to their own market, I guess you could say. Others have said and I will follow in saying that Nintendo's greatest strength is its IPs (Pokemon, Mario, Zelda, all of which are spectacular games) and add that its other greatest strength is its returning customers.

Nintendo doesn't really need to compete. They just need to keep producing the stuff that fans of Nintendo games like. I'm not slighting Nintendo with the tired "Well they just make the same thing over and over again", but I mean it in a good way. Nintendo has a business model that just works for them: a number of tried and true franchises that there is no real reason to change. This business model doesn't really need to update itself as frequently as the other companies to work.

Granted, Nintendo's strategy also has some weak points. It's ironic; they build their image as being innovators and ground breakers but they must be one of the most conservative companies in the industry right now when it comes to new ideas. They aren't exactly threatened by their stubborn resistance to change, but it does result in a lot of unused potential and leaving a lot of money on the table.

Though I love what could now be called the "Classic IPs" the fact that new IPs are so rare means it's going to be that much harder for their market share to expand. Chances at this point are that anyone who is going to buy the next Zelda has already bought at least the last one and thus Nintendo will have more trouble getting more customers rather than just keeping the same repeat customers. Again, that's not a threat to their future but just a problem of wasted potential.

Then there's the utter refusal to be accommodating to independent designers and developers. The independent market is huge now, Nintendo is seriously missing out by not being more accommodating to them.

 

[wulf3n]

I'm very much with Yahtzee regarding what he said in his E3 2010 episode:

Let me make my position clear: gaming should be about games, not about controllers. Controllers as they stand are a perfectly adequate conduit for connecting man to machine by way of thumbs.

Yahtzees position has always bugged me.

Firstly how a game is controlled is very much about the game. Try playing halo on a N64 controller or any PC RTS using anything other than a keyboard and mouse, it's not the same game.

Secondly "perfectly adequate" isn't exactly high praise. Yes controllers work, but it's becoming painfully obvious that the complexity modern games are trying to achieve is limited by the number of buttons on a controller which is why you end up with "Press A to do everything".