Is Nintendo holding the industry back?

[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".

 

[wulf3n]

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.

It's all relative.

You may feel Nintendo's fan base is different and more diverse, but that's because you frequent their hangout. But do you give the same attention to Sony and Microsoft forums?

 

[Mudokon]

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.

all of Nintendo's controllers were risk cause it changes the gameplay drastically, N64 gamecube wii wiiU all the controllers are so different, i agree with region lock though i dont like it at all.

 

[Brian Tams]

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.

What Nintendo really needs to consider doing is picking up one or two tablet developers for the WiiU, since it really is just a tablet with joysticks. Its bugged me that they haven't thought to load their virtual market place with cheap, 4-5$ touch screen apps like they're the fucking app store. I mean, they're in this great position to cash in on a very lucrative market and refuse. I'm not saying that they'd sell many WiiU's on the back of tablet gaming, but I guarantee you there are many owners who would totally drop a mere three bucks for Angry Birds: Butts edition or whatever the fuck they're on now, as an impulse buy.