Here's something I just thought of: In 2006 I was extremely excited for the Wii. I didn't care/know about tech specs or anything like that, I just knew it was the next Nintendo console and that alone made it a must-have. Playing it for those first few months was a magical experience.

Was the Wii really bad, or did it just eventually turn out that way? As a kid I never thought anything was being done to separate "casual" and "core" gamers, I just played the games I liked and ignored the ones I didn't. But I feel like had I been older in 2006, I would've seen the whole thing as a cash grab and my Wii nostalgia (what little there is) wouldn't exist.

Nowadays I'm guessing Nintendo kids are the same way - there's a new Nintendo console coming, I have to have it, etc. Here's what I'm wondering: are they any dumber than we were? Are they seeing anything we're not seeing? Has Nintendo actually changed all that much, or have we just become more cynical and come to expect different things from consoles?

I mean they must have changed if they've lost literally half of their money, but still, I think cynicism plays a role for sure

Was the Wii really bad, or did it just eventually turn out that way?

the wii itself was fine and around release it was a revolutionary (lol) console. thing is, nintendo did not support it enough, and neither did anyone else. it fell into shovelware hell as a result. i loved it for the first year or two of release and then realized it was, for the most part, a pile of shit with short-term appeal whenever all support for it fell off the face of the earth.

all these people not understanding nintendo's business model... it's almost lyk Nintendo's primary market is Japan or something...

but yeah i mean i actually don't even think nintendo has invested too heavily in its global infrastructure. it doesn't have to. and they probably know that it would be a bad idea to do so when the market actually isn't really feasible. sure there's a lot of nintendo fans globally but i don't really think they'd make much more money than the amount that they make right now.

having said that i think they're in a precarious place and they'll be the first out of the Big Three to have to make some big consolidations to the way that they operate. but afaik that's what they've always done ever since they started out selling playing cards and building love hotels

i see that argument a lot and frankly i think it's flat out unfair to allow them to function that way.

whether nintendo likes it or not they're a global business and they have been for nearly 2 decades. they have several franchises that sell extremely well in the west that they refuse to do anything with because they're still stuck in the 80s and probably will be for another handful of years.

what nintendo should be doing is restructuring, giving each "major" area of sales a dedicated game dev team, so they have a wider spread and understanding of what each region wants. there's no excuse for a franchise like metroid to get dug an early grave when nearly every game makes over 2 million in sales in the west alone.

Nintendo of America could also be made to be not a useless meme factory.

Yeah Nintendo is a global business, not a Japanese one. For fuck's sake don't have a "Nintendo of America" if you don't care about the American market. After all they're hemorrhaging money, so I don't think that model is really working out. And regardless of what the fanbois say, Ninty can't afford to keep ignoring their own market indefinitely. They either have to make changes, or scale down their company to be Japan-only like they so clearly desire it to be

Breaking News: Nintendo restructuring! Pulls plug on all game development, turns to full-time meme export instead

Breaking News: Nintendo restructuring! Pulls plug on all game development, turns to full-time meme export instead

The first time in decades Sega will be better than Nintendo

i guess sega really did what nintendon't all along

i see that argument a lot and frankly i think it's flat out unfair to allow them to function that way.

whether nintendo likes it or not they're a global business and they have been for nearly 2 decades. they have several franchises that sell extremely well in the west that they refuse to do anything with because they're still stuck in the 80s and probably will be for another handful of years.

what nintendo should be doing is restructuring, giving each "major" area of sales a dedicated game dev team, so they have a wider spread and understanding of what each region wants. there's no excuse for a franchise like metroid to get dug an early grave when nearly every game makes over 2 million in sales in the west alone.

nintendo isn't stuck in the 80s, they just don't operate like a western business does. it's a typical mindset to equate traditional japanese business with being outdated but that's just simply not the case. it's real nice that you think they should restructure but i really don't think they care lmao.

they only just added decent online functionality to their consoles in late 2012 and even then its still not up to standard

it's also like blatantly obvious they don't care, which is the core of the issue. they don't care, and every other nintendo apologist lets them get away with it because "they're nintendo" even though any self respecting human being can see a very blatant decline in quality, ESPECIALLY in recent years

it's lyk y'all whinge abt nintendo being backwards but they wouldn't be designing quality games in the idiosyncratic way that they do if they weren't 'backwards.' you aren't nintendo's target market, get over it hahahahahaha

i ain't even a "nintendo apologist" (LOL) i havent bought a nintendo console/game in years but i know that there's differences between western and japanese audiences (e.g. japanese audiences don't care so much about online capabilities because they tend to prefer local/solo play) so of couuuurrrrrse they don't care about some americans complaining about their products not being Western Enough lol

is sony not a japanese company anymore? last i checked just about everything sony related (especially playstation) originated in japan and they seem to be doing just fine worldwide, so that doesn't really hold when nintendo's doing much, much worse in console sales

This post was last modified: Sep 28, 2016 at 9:44 PM by Poxni.

it's lyk y'all whinge abt nintendo being backwards but they wouldn't be designing quality games in the idiosyncratic way that they do if they weren't 'backwards.' you aren't nintendo's target market, get over it hahahahahaha

i ain't even a "nintendo apologist" (LOL) i havent bought a nintendo console/game in years but i know that there's differences between western and japanese audiences (e.g. japanese audiences don't care so much about online capabilities because they tend to prefer local/solo play) so of couuuurrrrrse they don't care about some americans complaining about their products not being Western Enough lol

the problems with nintendo have little to do with how they make games toward a particular market. where are you getting that thought from this thread? most of what people are having a gripe about is the hardware and how they handle its marketing rather than software.

tbh I think splatoon for example would be a lot more immense if wii u didn't ultimately flop.

we aren't talking about sony tho.........

but if you want to talk about an irrelevant company to our discussion then yeah sony is probably 'less japanese' than nintendo in terms of their target market and infrastructure. they HAVE the resources to be global because Sony's revenue doesn't just come from video games. they make all sorts of stuff that are integral to entertainment and general electrical appliances worldwide. nintendo doesn't command that sort of overseas power. it is a significantly smaller enterprise than sony.

sony's video game sector also has a stronger appeal to western audiences by the nature of their product. why would nintendo try to prioritise the global market when they know that they will lose out to sony and microsoft in the long term? let's face it; outside of japan, nintendo's products are niche and really only rely on getting that one silver bullet fad every now and then to keep them afloat.

it's lyk y'all whinge abt nintendo being backwards but they wouldn't be designing quality games in the idiosyncratic way that they do if they weren't 'backwards.' you aren't nintendo's target market, get over it hahahahahaha

i ain't even a "nintendo apologist" (LOL) i havent bought a nintendo console/game in years but i know that there's differences between western and japanese audiences (e.g. japanese audiences don't care so much about online capabilities because they tend to prefer local/solo play) so of couuuurrrrrse they don't care about some americans complaining about their products not being Western Enough lol

the problems with nintendo have little to do with how they make games toward a particular market. where are you getting that thought from this thread? most of what people are having a gripe about is the hardware and how they handle its marketing rather than software.

tbh I think splatoon for example would be a lot more immense if wii u didn't ultimately flop.

Everyone wants Nintendo games, no one wants Nintendo hardware.

it's lyk y'all whinge abt nintendo being backwards but they wouldn't be designing quality games in the idiosyncratic way that they do if they weren't 'backwards.' you aren't nintendo's target market, get over it hahahahahaha

i ain't even a "nintendo apologist" (LOL) i havent bought a nintendo console/game in years but i know that there's differences between western and japanese audiences (e.g. japanese audiences don't care so much about online capabilities because they tend to prefer local/solo play) so of couuuurrrrrse they don't care about some americans complaining about their products not being Western Enough lol

the problems with nintendo have little to do with how they make games toward a particular market. where are you getting that thought from this thread? most of what people are having a gripe about is the hardware and how they handle its marketing rather than software.

tbh I think splatoon for example would be a lot more immense if wii u didn't ultimately flop.

i didn't say anything specifically about how they make games toward a particular market but for example i'm pretty sure mit mentioned their lack of investment into online play.

everything i've said is relevant to their hardware and marketing because i'm talking about japanese business and economics which is totally different to how companies operate in the west. they don't bother because they don't need to and it wouldn't be cost effective for them to invest in the resources required for them to bother with it. they know that their strength in the global market lies in fads and fads don't need long-term infrastructure. they do not have the sustain to maintain the upkeep that global investment requires.

maybe if we didnt nuke japan nintendo would have worked their way past friend codes a lot faster