Why can't Nintendo....

[Champion]

actually, cartridges were a huge problem...

nintendo would have to start funding 3rd party development in order to get more third parties since they have kept their hardware so different from the pack. that will never happen because nintendo doesnt want to spend money on franchises that will end up on competing hardware. either nintendo has to start making consoles that reduce the burden on 3rd parties, or they have to rely more on 2nd party development.

nintendo makes pieces of software that they never release, unlike much of what western companies do. R&D is not about developing retail games, it is about experimentation and learning things that will hopefully end up in new games. of the 3, nintendo is far more focused on that.

It was a problem but there were only 2 competitors in the market at the time. So its not like it is now where publishers had a bunch of options. The N64 had much more issues than that. And all companies have games that are in development but get cancelled for whatever reason.

There is a reason that games like Resident Evil Revelations and other 3rd party games bombed on the Wii U but Rayman Legends sold better on that platform than any other. The audience buys platformers. You have to look at what kind of games these companies are making. Yea Sony makes a lot of mediocre 1st party games, but Killzone, LBP, etc are made so they have an audience for 3rd parties. Meanwhile Nintendo has several teams working on platformers.

Actually I feel that nintendo could pull a vast amount of market share with an equally powerful console. The market isnt there because nobody is gonna realistically buy a nintendo console for third party games with last gen quality.


Nintendo already has the biggest and most popular first party titles outta the three.
They also have more quantity of exclusives.

You could be right and that could work for them. But if youre wrong then they'd take more losses than they are now with the Wii U and the console ends up like the PS3 in its early years.... and Nintendo would pretty much be out of the hardware market. They arent a multimedia conglomerate like Sony and MS that have other divisions that can carry the weight of the losses the gaming division takes.

 

[NZA]

It was a problem but there were only 2 competitors in the market at the time. So its not like it is now where publishers had a bunch of options. The N64 had much more issues than that. And all companies have games that are in development but get cancelled for whatever reason.

There is a reason that games like Resident Evil Revelations and other 3rd party games bombed on the Wii U but Rayman Legends sold better on that platform than any other. The audience buys platformers. You have to look at what kind of games these companies are making. Yea Sony makes a lot of mediocre 1st party games, but Killzone, LBP, etc are made so they have an audience for 3rd parties. Meanwhile Nintendo has several teams working on platformers.

i think you have a view of research and development that i am not talking about. i am talking about spending resources to develop ideas that are never intended to be products. the sole purpose to make these things is to learn something and then apply what is learned elsewhere. what you are describing is vaporware or development disasters. i am not talking about that.

nintendo is working on getting games like bayonetta 2 out there to diversify its audience, but at the end of the day, people who are inclined to like those games know they would look and run better on a PS4, so the audience for that type of game is really with sony. nintendo's efforts are for naught right now. think about it, why would anybody in their right mind make the wii u their chosen console for a new battlefield game? on all objective measures it will be inferior. these games are better at serving nintendo's existing audience than they are at reaching out to steal sony or microsoft's.

 

[NZA]

I have no relation or interest in Nintendo. But in any discussion, I am weary of anyone that wishes to ignore context.

Nintendo is not a software focused company. They are a technologies focused company. Which is why they continue to file pattents, create new delivery systems, and innovate. Sony and MS are friendlier with 3rd parties because they need to be. They are competing with oneanother. Nintendo is competing with itself. Either it will top itself and control the market for an console generation (as is usually the case) or its experiment will fall short for whatever reason and they will go back into development, as with the Wii U or the Virtual Boy. Both like nothing that existed at the time, but commercially unsuccessful, or in the case of the Virtual Boy, decades ahead of the tech required and an outright failure.

Nintendo has never been concerned with 3rd party support. I'm not sure why people think this is new. It has never mattered for them one way or the other. The Wii (original, not U) dominated the market with terrible 3rd party support.
Lack of 3rd party support would tank the PS4 or XBONE, but cannot make or break a Nintendo home console. Its success is largely just up to the company. That is one of the reasons I study Nintendo. They are an anomoly in terms of how businesses tend to work. Certain companies (Nintendo, Disney, Playboy, the NBA) implement techniques that are worth knowing and understanding if you do any business at all, even if it is in a different field.

by a very loose definition, they are all tech companies. sony has lead the way with CPUs, disc formats, and now VR headsets. MS has pushed console networking forward and the way people buy games which in the future will probably be the only way to buy games.

nintendo has not dominated a console generation in a very long time. outside of the NES, they either split the market, fail, or carve out their own niche. im not blending handhelds into this. there are different dynamics at play in handhelds that are not relevant to the thread's question.

i agree, for the most part, nintendo is not focused on 3rd parties, however the wii was not dominant, it carved out its own niche (nintendo even admits this). and that niche was a fad, unfortunately (as nintendo has admitted as well)

 

[notPsychosiz]

You could be right and that could work for them. But if youre wrong then they'd take more losses than they are now with the Wii U and the console ends up like the PS3 in its early years.... and Nintendo would pretty much be out of the hardware market. They arent a multimedia conglomerate like Sony and MS that have other divisions that can carry the weight of the losses the gaming division takes.

On a bad year they sit at around 17 billion dollars.
They can afford numerous consecutive years of dismal sales and at least three back to back generations of failed consoles before they would even have to have that hypothetical conversation.
Even if Pokemon never released another game the only thing even approaching it in franchising dollars is Disney's Princess line.

Thats what I mean about context. The reason they are doing things that seem weird, or missing out on what seems like obvious oppritunities is because they aren't focused on the same things the other companies are.
Its fascinating watching an entire gaming expo, because Sony & Microsoft will reference one another and Nintendo presents things as if no one else even exists. Its very strange to see in practice.

 

[(ALi)]

Nintendo is the side system and its worth it for their exclusives and the main console is SONY, it's always been like that for me.
I was upset when Nintendo did the reveal for the Wii-U and come to find out it's not even as powerful as the PS3 but I'm used to it now.

 

[Reid2Achieve]

If Nintendo's graphics were up to par and had a good online ecosystem, it would probably be the only console I would want right now (since I have a gaming PC)

 

[Kingshango]

Nintendo is the side system and its worth it for their exclusives and the main console is SONY, it's always been like that for me.
I was upset when Nintendo did the reveal for the Wii-U and come to find out it's not even as powerful as the PS3 but I'm used to it now.

Pretty much. The Wii U is the best secondary system to compliment the main console or PC.

It's just a shame that Nintendo has been seen as the "side console" and has been since the N64. It would be nice to have a powerful Nintendo console to be a main console for once.

 

[Champion]

Nintendo is the side system and its worth it for their exclusives and the main console is SONY, it's always been like that for me.
I was upset when Nintendo did the reveal for the Wii-U and come to find out it's not even as powerful as the PS3 but I'm used to it now.

I agree with the bolded and its been like that for 3 gens running for me.Wii U is stronger than PS360 in many ways though...there's just literally no reason for devs to put in substantial R&D with the hardware given the sales. Only 1st party games will run better and it is barely stronger. Kind of crazy when you consider how old PS360 are

i think you have a view of research and development that i am not talking about. i am talking about spending resources to develop ideas that are never intended to be products. the sole purpose to make these things is to learn something and then apply what is learned elsewhere. what you are describing is vaporware or development disasters. i am not talking about that.

nintendo is working on getting games like bayonetta 2 out there to diversify its audience, but at the end of the day, people who are inclined to like those games know they would look and run better on a PS4, so the audience for that type of game is really with sony. nintendo's efforts are for naught right now. think about it, why would anybody in their right mind make the wii u their chosen console for a new battlefield game? on all objective measures it will be inferior. these games are better at serving nintendo's existing audience than they are at reaching out to steal sony or microsoft's.

Do you have examples? Other than random patents...

 

[Animal House]

It will never happen as long as Iwata and Miyamoto are still alive

 

[NZA]

Do you have examples? Other than random patents...

starfox began as a prototype of a 3D free roam space shooter made for the NES by a british team working with nintendo. the graphics were impressive for a NES but kinda horrible still. they ported it over to SNES hardware but decided that it needed more power so the brits designed the superFX chip, miyamoto restricted the gameplay to being on rails, and someone else inside nintendo added the animals as humans look and we ended up with the starfox we know of today. once they got to the N64, they reintroduced free roaming flight for some sections.

obviously, using a second party and developing chips that have to go into every single cartridge is very expensive, and few companies other than nintendo would ever do something like that. nintendo would probably not do this for a 3rd party game since they cant keep it off other platforms, although i guess in today's market, 2nd and 3rd party is starting to blur a little...


EDIT: sega did do this for virtua racing but abandoned it because it was too expensive.

 

[notPsychosiz]

I agree with the bolded and its been like that for 3 gens running for me.Wii U is stronger than PS360 in many ways though...there's just literally no reason for devs to put in substantial R&D with the hardware given the sales. Only 1st party games will run better and it is barely stronger. Kind of crazy when you consider how old PS360 are

Do you have examples? Other than random patents...

They were developing concepts like DLC, downloadable games and services like Xbox Live/PSNetwork, etc way back in 1995 when games were still on cartridge and dial up coudn't support it at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellaview

Gaming is just now catching up to VR which they were working on back in 1995 as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Boy

The video games released by Nintendo, though usually very good, have never impresed me as much as the hardware or vision.

 

[notPsychosiz]

Nintendo gives zero fukks about what people think they should do. People are always basing what they think Nintendo should do on the current climate, when Nintendo is usually ahead of the curve by a full decade at least.

They were trying to connect the regular NES to the internet back in 1988
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famicom_Modem

 

[King Sun]

Nintendo gives zero fukks about what people think they should do. People are always basing what they think Nintendo should do on the current climate, when Nintendo is usually ahead of the curve by a full decade at least.

They were trying to connect the regular NES to the internet back in 1988
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famicom_Modem

You keep saying this but I think you're a bit bias and caught up with past glories. Most of their ideas actually never came to fruition

 

[notPsychosiz]

You keep saying this but I think you're a bit bias and caught up with past glories. Most of their ideas actually never came to fruition

Actually, they are using that technology in the Wii U right now.
It wasn't past glory or glory of any sort because most people don't know they even created that. But if anything its the future I'm concerned with, not the past.
I just think its remarkable that things like the Occulus Rift or Xbox Live that are considered cutting edge this era were envisioned far ahead of the technology needed to do them properly.
You don't think thats fascinating?

I don't even own a Wii U. But Nintendo is a tastemaker. So staying up to date with what they are doing has proven to be like a mirror into the future. Its been like that for literally over 100 years.
I just think thats remarkable. Thats all.

And someone specifically was asking about patents and technologies that they didn't release, thats why I posted that.
It isn't bias, its perspective. There are games like Last of Us that are certainly great games, but they are still just games. The entire scope of what Nintendo is doing has always been bigger than games.

You should look up the story of the Power Glove and how that was developed without video games in mind at all.
It only got used to play video games as an afterthought.

I wouldn't be surprised if the first flying cars say Nintendo on the hood.
My interest in them is barely games related at all. I study other companies like Disney as well. The foresight to build all of Disneyworld on the second floor so that the employees could manuever the park using the first floor as a tunnel for example. Or the fact that each of the castles for the parks is actually a different castle corresponding to the different films. Disneyworld is Cinderella's castle, if I recall.

Yeah, man... Don't be afraid to appreciate greatness because you own a different game system. You'll miss out on wonders happening before your very eyes.

 

[Dominic Brehetto]

People have been having the same conversations abput Nintendo forever.



Nintendo does what they want and I love them for it.


Why would you want three identical systems? Thats boring.


Ill keep buying every system they drop because they always try different things and their games are always among the industries best.