10th December 2013, 7:46 PM
Some of them are investors, angry that Nintendo hasn't done certain things their competition is doing. This ranges from truly portable IDs (which are good) to pre-order exclusive DLC (which is bad).
I will eventually get a PS4 I think, but it won't be until I see some exclusives I really want. Sony's consoles in particular have a hard time with good exclusives right at launch, unless you like realistic racing games (which I'm not a fan of), so traditionally I've waited until big releases like Final Fantasy 7, Devil May Cry, and Uncharted come along.
It is observations like this that utterly confuse me when I see articles slamming Nintendo for "not having enough games at launch". Nintendo doesn't tend to hae a huge number of games at launch with most systems, but they generally come out with a handful of genre defining instant classics at launch, which is more than can be said for a lot of consoles. The Wii U had a surprisingly large number of pretty amazing games at launch, more than I remember the Gamecube having, for sure. What gets me is how rarely the press ever aims that criticism at the other company's consoles.
So I don't think Nintendo is coming out "on top" this generation. This is no "death", as Sony did well enough with a third place console for about 7 years to keep it going. It's just the cycle of consoles. Nintendo turned the 3DS sales around, and they're doing very well there. They FINALLY got beat in the handheld market, but it took mobile computers to do that, and frankly there's only a handful of games I'd actually want to play on those just yet. The Wii U had great sales last holiday season, but it took an unprecedented nosedive after Christmas. That said, the sales have been stead lately and they are set up to sweep up the low income crowd this holiday.
Mind you, this sounds like me defending them, but realistically I don't see how a low generation is their death knell. Nintendo's done worse off before, such as the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube generations, but still did well enough to keep plugging along. Frankly, Wii U sales are still doing better overall than those two consoles. If we are going to judge them by the crazy inflation of console sales that the last generation got, maybe some people still haven't learned a basic rule about economics. There is no such thing as "endless growth", everything hits a ceiling, and frankly operating under such ridiculously high sales expectations for too long results in Capcom's record sales being called, by them, a "failure". I don't want to see companies keep making such ridiculous mistakes as assuming they can "eternally grow", any real business plan needs to not just account for but PLAN for slump sales. Some companies actually do pretty well with the "we only expect to sell a few hundred thousand of most of our games" model, namely that company behind the Disgaia series and other strange and wonderful gems. The "every game needs to sell like a blockbuster Hollywood movie" business model is destined to fail. Heck, it is starting to fail Hollywood too.
I will eventually get a PS4 I think, but it won't be until I see some exclusives I really want. Sony's consoles in particular have a hard time with good exclusives right at launch, unless you like realistic racing games (which I'm not a fan of), so traditionally I've waited until big releases like Final Fantasy 7, Devil May Cry, and Uncharted come along.
It is observations like this that utterly confuse me when I see articles slamming Nintendo for "not having enough games at launch". Nintendo doesn't tend to hae a huge number of games at launch with most systems, but they generally come out with a handful of genre defining instant classics at launch, which is more than can be said for a lot of consoles. The Wii U had a surprisingly large number of pretty amazing games at launch, more than I remember the Gamecube having, for sure. What gets me is how rarely the press ever aims that criticism at the other company's consoles.
So I don't think Nintendo is coming out "on top" this generation. This is no "death", as Sony did well enough with a third place console for about 7 years to keep it going. It's just the cycle of consoles. Nintendo turned the 3DS sales around, and they're doing very well there. They FINALLY got beat in the handheld market, but it took mobile computers to do that, and frankly there's only a handful of games I'd actually want to play on those just yet. The Wii U had great sales last holiday season, but it took an unprecedented nosedive after Christmas. That said, the sales have been stead lately and they are set up to sweep up the low income crowd this holiday.
Mind you, this sounds like me defending them, but realistically I don't see how a low generation is their death knell. Nintendo's done worse off before, such as the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube generations, but still did well enough to keep plugging along. Frankly, Wii U sales are still doing better overall than those two consoles. If we are going to judge them by the crazy inflation of console sales that the last generation got, maybe some people still haven't learned a basic rule about economics. There is no such thing as "endless growth", everything hits a ceiling, and frankly operating under such ridiculously high sales expectations for too long results in Capcom's record sales being called, by them, a "failure". I don't want to see companies keep making such ridiculous mistakes as assuming they can "eternally grow", any real business plan needs to not just account for but PLAN for slump sales. Some companies actually do pretty well with the "we only expect to sell a few hundred thousand of most of our games" model, namely that company behind the Disgaia series and other strange and wonderful gems. The "every game needs to sell like a blockbuster Hollywood movie" business model is destined to fail. Heck, it is starting to fail Hollywood too.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)