What Has Nintendo Done Right Lately?

[Foolery]

Everywhere else just seems to have more potential in gaming these days, particularly story. A company that's been around as long as nintendo hasn't even attempted a story really.

Depends what you're into. If you want a story, the 3DS has plenty in the form of JRPGs.

Crimson Shroud
Bravely Default
Fire Emblem Awakening
Shin Megami Tensei IV
Shin Megami Tensei Devil Survivor Overclocked
Shin Megami Tensei Devil Summoner Soul Hackers

And so on.

Those are all incredibly story heavy games. Might not be your cup of tea, but it's silly to claim Nintendo systems lack titles that have story.

 

[Dark Knifer]

Everywhere else just seems to have more potential in gaming these days, particularly story. A company that's been around as long as nintendo hasn't even attempted a story really.

Depends what you're into. If you want a story, the 3DS has plenty in the form of JRPGs.

Crimson Shroud
Bravely Default
Fire Emblem Awakening
Shin Megami Tensei IV
Shin Megami Tensei Devil Survivor Overclocked
Shin Megami Tensei Devil Summoner Soul Hackers

And so on.

Those are all incredibly story heavy games. Might not be your cup of tea, but it's silly to claim Nintendo systems lack titles that have story.

Forgive me on that. I didn't know about them because I'm not big on jrpgs and I also meant as in first party nintendo games have yet to try story, not the systems themselves. I'm sure the consoles have stuff.

I think fire emblem is the only one made by nintendo though I could be wrong.

 

[gizmo2300]

If I had to play armchair CEO for Nintendo I'd say the problem lies in the marketing department. In Scandinavia at least, I can't speak for the rest of the world of course, Nintendo is neigh invisible to the casual eye. No newspaper ads, nearly no TV ads, no ads at all really. You want people to talk about your product you have to remind people that you exist.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

If I had to play armchair CEO for Nintendo I'd say the problem lies in the marketing department. In Scandinavia at least, I can't speak for the rest of the world of course, Nintendo is neigh invincible to the casual eye. No newspaper ads, nearly no TV ads, no ads at all really. You want people to talk about your product you have to remind people that you exist.

I think you mean invisible.

I think Yahtzee (and a bunch of forum posters who know who they are) need to revisit Yahtzee's own Gears of War 2 review, and ask if a game needs to blow the world away with innovation to be good.

Didn't he later say in the Gears of War 3 video that he didn't remember a thing from the second apart from the Freudian worm segment?

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

The Nintendo Fanboys are out in force today!

It's good to see more people coming around to the idea of Nintendo going third-party. Hope they come to their senses soon. I'm imagining Majora's Mask on Steam, maybe even with mod support, and I'm drooling a little bit...

Coming around?, with all that you wrote you kinda remind me of Senator Armstrong from MGR, what he thought was ideal,just and right but really he had an opinion and well it was wrong and Raiden proved that with action.

Even then they'd lose a massive amount of consumers (quite a few million people that do matter) and trade from one platform exclusivity right into another (with just Steam and just PC), which in the end isn't really fair but from what I'm guessing that's your opinion on not caring what happens to anyone else in the process.

 

[Foolery]

Everywhere else just seems to have more potential in gaming these days, particularly story. A company that's been around as long as nintendo hasn't even attempted a story really.

Depends what you're into. If you want a story, the 3DS has plenty in the form of JRPGs.

Crimson Shroud
Bravely Default
Fire Emblem Awakening
Shin Megami Tensei IV
Shin Megami Tensei Devil Survivor Overclocked
Shin Megami Tensei Devil Summoner Soul Hackers

And so on.

Those are all incredibly story heavy games. Might not be your cup of tea, but it's silly to claim Nintendo systems lack titles that have story.

Forgive me on that. I didn't know about them because I'm not big on jrpgs and I also meant as in first party nintendo games have yet to try story, not the systems themselves. I'm sure the consoles have stuff.

I think fire emblem is the only one made by nintendo though I could be wrong.

No worries. Fire Emblem is the only first party title in that list. So yeah, I guess they could improve in that area with other Nintendo IPs. Zelda is very formulaic in its story. The Oracle games do stand out for mixing it up along Majora's Mask. Mario did a bit better in that regard with the RPG titles. Nothing mind-blowing, but Paper Mario always had enjoyable characters.

 

[MrHide-Patten]

Hell a big idea that has gone completely over Nintendo's head is Mario with a jet-pack. They had the super-soaker do-dah in Mario Sunshine, combine that with flying around on planetoids and they'd have a license to print money... but nope. Sort of "over" my Nintendo phase, maybe one day I will blossom from my cocoon of a Sony console into a full blown PC Elitist.

If they make that shit (a hell) of a lot cheaper, then I'll throw money at it. For the amount of games it's going to get (for the decent exclusives, like Platinum's fare, it's more of a Platinum console at this stage than a Nintendo console) it's just not worth it in the long run. I spent a proverbial fuck tonne for Australian hardware and the Wii and no less than 5 years later, the thing goes for at least %85 less the original price tag.
I'm not buying a Wii-U for the simple fact that I stopped playing on my Wii for years, I saw no software that intrigued my personal tastes and thus was unstimulated to plug it back in. The last good game was a port of the superior Prime series on the Gamecube.

But they ain't going third party, no much reason they should if only the be the first to do away with console exclusivity bullshit. I'm a console gamer and upon reflection exclusives are all a load of wank, if film studios only let you watch DVD's on certain brands of DVD player we'd say the CEO's have all been replaced by brainless gibbons.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Nintendo would never go third party and I wish people will stop saying they will.Nintendo has always done their own thing and that is unlikely to change

That may very well be true, and unless Nintendo pulls their head out of their ass and changes how they do business, it will be their undoing.

 

[Dark Knifer]

snip

Its a minor gripe considering nintendo is gameplay first and foremost and that's fine.

I really want them to bounce back with some great games of their own soon, rather then become the terribleness of sega, especially one the wiiu because I don't want the first hd nintendo console to go to waste, especially with that controller could have many nifty things to do. Like a dungeons and dragons role playing game where the tablet is used by the dungeon master and they can craft the story, dungeons etc and being able to withhold information from players by using the tablet has many possibilities.

I do hope nintendo come back swinging sometime soon, maybe after smash bros starts selling consoles.

 

[Saltyk]

The N64 was immensely successful.

Well, let's look at the sales data.
N64: 32.93 M
Playstation: 104.25 M

The Playstation sold more consoles in North America (38.94M), than the N64 sold worldwide. Yeah, I wouldn't call that "immensely successful". Now, they may have had some great games on the system, I doubt anyone would deny that. But, if we're looking at sales, I don't think anyone can deny which system sold better.

The GameCube is probably my favorite console of all time.

That's nice. I actually kind of enjoyed the Sega Game Gear. Remember that thing with it's six AA batteries that lasted about 3 hours?

The Wii won last generation in sales.

Well, current sales data doesn't deny that, but it's not like the Wii outsold the competition 2-1. They were very successful in hardware sales last generation, however. That is true. So were Sony and Microsoft. That is also true.

Wii: 100.95M
PS3: 82.48M
360: 81.11M

When one looks at the games sales data, it becomes clear that people only bought Nintendo games on the Wii. With five of the top ten being Wii Sports or Wii Fit related games. Wii Sports itself sold 81.84 million units. The sales figures are pretty impressive mind you.

For comparisons sake, Sony and Microsoft's consoles both had a variety of developers that sold well on their systems. Though, even their top selling games didn't really break 20 million units sold.

But they also show that no new Mario title will be enough to move Wii U systems. Super Mario Bros Wii sold 27.75 Million units and Smash Bros sold 12.05 million units. Since there seems to be no killer app, like Wii Sports, they do need third party support to move their systems.

Say what you will, but these are facts.

The WiiU had its problems because Nintendo told third party developers that they were gonna wait a year to release their flagship franchise games, so no real competition from Nintendo for a year on their own console. Few took them up on that. How is that Nintendo's fault, really?

Because they didn't even try to make their system appealing to developers? I'd say entirely their fault. By all accounts, Sony and Microsoft asked developers what they wanted and worked with them when designing their new consoles. It seems Nintendo designed their own console for Nintendo. I'd compare this to Sega releasing the Dreamcast early, so that the system had no games and generally confusing consumers and developers.

And looking at recent history, I doubt any developer would be smart to develop for the system. The ones that did have done very poorly. Assassin's Creed Black Flag sold .14 million units on Wii U versus 1.31 million on PS4 and .65 million on Xbox One. This is despite the systems currently having similar numbers of units out. No, developers are right to avoid the Wii U. You don't want to hear it, but third party games really don't sell on Nintendo products. That may not have been true in the 90's, but today it is true.

You can check all my data at VGChartz.com, if you wish.
Platform totals are here [http://www.vgchartz.com/analysis/platform_totals/].
Game sales total can be found here [http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/]. You can select from the list to filter out the systems.

SNIP

Nintendo would never go third party and I wish people will stop saying they will.Nintendo has always done their own thing and that is unlikely to change

And I disagreed with you? I said I don't see it happening at this time. But, when I was a kid playing on my Genesis, I don't think anyone would have suggested that Sega would go third party. That was insane! But they did that a long time ago. After a string of failures.

With the exception of the Wii, each and every Nintendo console has sold less than the one before it. By a good 10 million units or more in each case. Their handhelds have generally done well, with the DS being the second highest selling system of all time, but that should not, and can not, be their entire market.

If Nintendo does not turn around the Wii U, does not create a console that sells next generation (assuming they survive that long), and does not go third party, there will simply no longer be a Nintendo. Isn't that a far worse fate?

 

[Riverwolf]

If I had to play armchair CEO for Nintendo I'd say the problem lies in the marketing department. In Scandinavia at least, I can't speak for the rest of the world of course, Nintendo is neigh invisible to the casual eye. No newspaper ads, nearly no TV ads, no ads at all really. You want people to talk about your product you have to remind people that you exist.

That's the case here in the States, as well. I think they did get too cocky and put too much faith in word-of-mouth.

Lack of marketing can make giants invisible.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

I think Yahtzee (and a bunch of forum posters who know who they are) need to revisit Yahtzee's own Gears of War 2 review, and ask if a game needs to blow the world away with innovation to be good.

Found it! He did touch again on Gears of War 2 during his review of the third instalment.

I remember being kind to Gears of War 2 but I honestly can't remember why. I think at the time I was trying to meet it halfway, on the assumption that the waist-deep pool of scummy brown water shooters had devolved into was something I was going to have to live with.

To elaborate, I can't remember much about Gears of War 2 at all, despite playing it through to the end. I remember a bit carrying a box, and a bit where you go inside a giant worm, which probably still wins the prize for most Freudian moment in the entire series and that's saying a lot, considering the main characters ongoing chainsaw vasectomy side-clinic business. But I couldn't tell you how it fitted into the alpha male, tyre swing, cock slapper looser.

But in final analysis a game can't be good if the moment you put it down your brain balls up everything to do with it and tosses it into your mental junk drawer, so that everything I remember a year on is so much brown noise. A big sweating blurred together lump of head scarves and steroids.

Also eating 14 slices of pizza in under two hours isn't the smarted thing to do no matter how hungry you are.

 

[144_v1legacy]

I think Yahtzee (and a bunch of forum posters who know who they are) need to revisit Yahtzee's own Gears of War 2 review, and ask if a game needs to blow the world away with innovation to be good.

Found it! He did touch again on Gears of War 2 during his review of the third instalment.

I remember being kind to Gears of War 2 but I honestly can't remember why. I think at the time I was trying to meet it halfway, on the assumption that the waist-deep pool of scummy brown water shooters had devolved into was something I was going to have to live with.

To elaborate, I can't remember much about Gears of War 2 at all, despite playing it through to the end. I remember a bit carrying a box, and a bit where you go inside a giant worm, which probably still wins the prize for most Freudian moment in the entire series and that's saying a lot, considering the main characters ongoing chainsaw vasectomy side-clinic business. But I couldn't tell you how it fitted into the alpha male, tyre swing, cock slapper looser.

But in final analysis a game can't be good if the moment you put it down your brain balls up everything to do with it and tosses it into your mental junk drawer, so that everything I remember a year on is so much brown noise. A big sweating blurred together lump of head scarves and steroids.

Also eating 14 slices of pizza in under two hours isn't the smarted thing to do no matter how hungry you are.

Thanks for finding that. Right. He says they all blur together. But I wonder, in the context of itself, i.e., if Yahtzee wasn't forced to always play shooters, would GoW be more memorable to him? I wouldn't know. I should play it. I don't finish a videogame a week, or even close, and all the Zeldas are unique experiences that vary like night and day. To him, it's a blur of green character and pink princess. On a another note, innovation is something that AAA's usually attempt through new IP's, rather than their most reliable licenses, lest they hurt their safety nets.

 

[Gerishnakov]

Despite starting out as a Nintendo fan boy, many moons ago, I have now reached the point where I would be quite happy to see the next Zelda console release on Xbox and Playstation, even PC. It's telling that the only reason I even own a Wii is to play my collection of Zeldas.

 

[IrisNetwork]

On hindsight, Nintendo really isn't good at doing other than games. Remember when they made TV shows and movies?

 

[Stealth]

"I think the conclusion we reached is that Nintendo as a dedicated creator of games hardware are losing their footing in a world where gaming preference leans more and more towards multi-function devices"

So the 3DS which has sold 40 million units in less than 3 years is loosing their footing?

http://www.metacritic.com/game/3ds/the-legend-of-zelda-a-link-between-worlds Average review "91". Yep, A Link Between Worlds is nothing but bad nostalgia right? It could not possibly be a good game......

In 2013, Nintendo sold the most hardware globally, they also sold the most software globally, they also had the highest reviewed games, and generally were named publisher of the year by many major publications.

I am not sure what more people want of them.

 

[GonzoGamer]

I am not sure what more people want of them.

I just want them to have games I want to play. I like everything else about nintendo, especially the fact that they still design consoles to be played by groups, in the same room. I'll get a WiiU as soon as it gets a couple of games I need to play; a Dawn of War, a Fallout, a GTA, or they could surprise me with something new and interesting like an RPG with a dungeon master & players.
But honestly, considering I need to have a pc anyway, I'm closer to buying the WiiU than I am to buying a ps4 or xbone.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

Spoilers son! I haven't played MGR yet.
I dont think they'd lose as many as you think they will. And even if they did, considering the Steam user base is significantly larger than the WiiU user base they'd probably get those numbers back quickly, if their work was up to snuff. Plus there's the other consoles too. No need for exclusivity, the more people who get to enjoy the better, Steam's just my preferred distribution platform.

There's not much to spoil when you're against a candidate for presidential election who uses nanomachines cheaply.

Also the games been out since last for over a year no and on Steam itself since Jan.

You're also heavily implying Nintendo will simply forget about their promise of not going third party, that they'll drop the 6 million Wii U owners at the drop of a hat to pander to another crowd and without thinking it will negatively hurt them and their image in the process.

But then again it's not like them Steam users give a flipping fuck for anyone but themselves, thus proving how incredibly selfish some gamers can be.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

Spoilers son! I haven't played MGR yet.
I dont think they'd lose as many as you think they will. And even if they did, considering the Steam user base is significantly larger than the WiiU user base they'd probably get those numbers back quickly, if their work was up to snuff. Plus there's the other consoles too. No need for exclusivity, the more people who get to enjoy the better, Steam's just my preferred distribution platform.

There's not much to spoil when you're against a candidate for presidential election who uses nanomachines cheaply.

Also the games been out since last for over a year no and on Steam itself since Jan.

You're also heavily implying Nintendo will simply forget about their promise of not going third party, that they'll drop the 6 million Wii U owners at the drop of a hat to pander to another crowd and without thinking it will negatively hurt them and their image in the process.

But then again it's not like them Steam users give a flipping fuck for anyone but themselves, thus proving how incredibly selfish some gamers can be.

Nintendo had no problem abandoning audiences before when a different one is willing to pay more money for less work, as we saw with the Wii. They're used to it. And that's good! A business should go where the money is, which, in this case, is far away from the WiiU.

I don't know why you're talking about Steam users as if I'm all of them (You know I'm not, right?). And despite that what I'd like would be bringing more games to more people, I'm selfish? It's okay, I am. Being selfish about something you're spending money on is a good thing. Except charity, I guess. Nintendo isn't a charity, they want my money so I get to be a little selfish. I don't care about Nintendo because they're a company that I have no personal stake in (And neither do you, probably).

I'll never understand people who clearly never cared nor wanted to support a company yet want and desire them to change because they want them to.

I never said you were all of Steam, in fact I've just been on the Steam forums to check that good old "PC vs consoles" "valve vs origin" threads to find that indeed nothing has changed, people on there still think exactly the same.

I really cannot imagine you taking it really well if suddenly your favourite hardware manufacturer or supported product suddenly got the shaft or you getting completely shafted for someone else (by someone else I mean other people just in case you didn't get that like my last implication), if you do then congrats you're incredibly laid back and are willing to get stepped on when getting the shaft, can't exactly tell all of us to just chillax and say "that's business", in fact you'd end up pissing off a good chunk of the world if you said that every time something shitty happened for bad reasons.

The last thing I'd want like others is to buy s Wii U, get the shaft and people on Steam getting rewarded for not moving a bloody inch and actually supporting Nintendo in the first place, that's what I heavily dislike, people not doing anything and wanting everything to come to them while original supporters get the shaft.

 

[windlenot]

Figure I might as well toss my two cents in here. Now, the newest Nintendo game I've played was Brawl, and probably Melee before that. What I'm saying is that I don't care about Nintendo and Nintendo sure as hell doesn't seem to care about me. I'm not invested in Nintendo's big IPs, nor the other exclusives it tosses for its system. Wonderful 101, Bayonetta 2 (whenever that'll be) or anything else don't really do anything for me. So why should I care about them? As an outside spectator, I'm genuinely baffled with how defensive Nintendo supporters are.