Saying I’m a fan of Nintendo would be wrong, because that just isn’t true anymore. Although Nintendo has a huge library of great games they just can’t compete in the market as a console developer anymore.
Sega made a lot of bad decisions starting with the Sega CD and continuing with the 32X, Saturn, Game Gear and by the time they finally made a product that was selling well (Dreamcast) they were too far gone to come back. They changed their business model to only create software as opposed to hardware. This was a smart business move for them. Although they still aren’t doing as well as I’m sure they wish they were doing they are doing better than they would have been if they had attempted to continue to support hardware.
Nintendo began to make bad business decisions as early as 1996 with the Nintendo 64. They aren’t falling quite as fast and hard as Sega did but ever since their decision to support cartridges for the Nintendo 64 they haven’t been able to gain what they had lost. Up until recently Nintendo was always able to depend on their sales in the handheld market to help cover their loss in the console market.
Nintendo has recently released the 3DS handheld game system and just announced their new console, the Wii U. The 3DS released with no solid games and the only game currently out that has anyone’s interest is Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3DS, which is just a remake of an old Nintendo 64 game. Last week Nintendo revealed that the price of the 3DS system is going down by almost $100 and that in the last 3 months they lost about $330 billion.
Nintendo needs to understand that they are really good at making great games. Franchises like Mario, Zelda, Kirby, Metroid and Donkey Kong are things people think about when video games are brought up. Systems aren’t their thing anymore and they need to gracefully give up. The sooner they do this the better off they will be.
Stop development of the Wii U and before the problem gets worse stop production of the 3DS. Drop everything like a bad habit. I have no doubt that lots of Nintendo fans who have purchased a 3DS (I own a 3DS) will be really pissed off but in the end it’s for the best. There will be massive lay-offs and jobs lost but they can’t sustain themselves as a company at the pace they’re going. Once they come out as a software only company, just as Sega did, they can begin to publish their games on the systems that are selling. It would be smart to take advantage of the hardware and user base already dedicated to Playstation and Xbox. They could even tackle the PC market by releasing games on a service like Steam or Direct 2 Drive.
That’s my 2 cents.
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