kilenem said:
It seems like when ever something bad for goes for Nintendo its bigger news then problems at Microsoft and Sony. People start jumping to conclusions like its the Death of Nintendo. In comparison Microsoft lost a billion dollars this year on the Xbox brand and that is a improvement. Sony is set to lose 1 billion this year and has laid off 5000 people. It seems like those two are doing worse.
Do you remember E3? Do you remember the sheer volume of shit that hit the fan for Microsoft to the point where they had to drastically change how their console would function? Do you remember the memes and bile that came out of the whole thing? It was far larger than anything on Nintendo. The different with Nintendo is that it's a ship that we're watching sinking whereas Microsoft's mistakes were huge explosions that eventually disappate. If Microsoft's mistakes result in them faltering like the WiiU then that will get reported on every step of the way too. But that isn't the case, yet, and there is still wiggle room for Microsoft to try and better its position whereas Nintendo is in its second year.
Nintendo's failures are generation killing for them. This problem is even larger because that's all Nintendo is, a game and console manufacturer. Sony and Microsoft are massive corporations and this is only one of their divisions. So a failure here is a bigger deal for the company. When you read failures of Sony or Microsoft it's company-wide and may not impact the gaming division at all. Sony lost its money in other departments and sold of the computer division (which, by the way, includes many of those 5,000 layoffs). In what way does that impact the entertainment and gaming division? It doesn't, not directly.
Additionally, Nintendo is most of our childhoods as gamers. I still remember duck hunt and the original Mario games. I remember sticking that orange and gray gun directly against the screen and still missing. I remember wanting to murder a laughing dog. Everything. Nintendo IS nostalgia for us. It faltering IS news, especially if this is the first step to our loss of Nintendo consoles going forward. Keep in mind, Nintendo was falling in the 5th generation. That N64 we all remember and love lost something like 33% or more of its market share from the previous console to the ps1 which only existed because they broke contract with Sony. Then in the 6th generation it dropped another 33% and that was a generation where their console was more powerful than the other consoles and cheaper.
Only the Wiimote saved the Wii because of its innovation. This generation, the WiiU is no better than the gamecube was, functionally, because the gamepad just isn't anywhere close to the innovative explosion that the Wiimote ushered in and Microsoft and Sony both have their own peripherals to accomodate motion control. Heck, Sony even has a "gamepad" that allows remote play from across the world of the system games as well as an application that is coming out that makes Android and iOS devices similar to a Vita in that aspect. So without innovation, what's to keep them from getting back on track to sliding down to failure if their software wasn't enough before? SNES->49 million, N64->33 million->, Gamecube->22 million. Not much changed software-wise with the Wii that was 100million+ units sold.
So we care about Nintendo's failures a bit more. There is no parent company to catch them if they fall and we mostly still have a soft spot for them even if we no longer prefer their console. Things people care about are what news reports are for.