Specially Cork wrote:Matisfaction wrote:I think people need to realise that (western) 3rd party support has gone, it isn't likely to come back and there's not really much that Nintendo can really do about it either.
Then I'll never buy another Nintendo console within its lifespan again.
Doesn't matter how good their games are; making a console exclusively for your own games and little else is a dick move that benefits nobody but Nintendo themselves. Can you imagine if we had to a buy a separate console for every developer? I'm not going to give Nintendo a free pass. If they can't gather a respectable level of third party support then they have no business still making consoles.
It's a shame, because if they did have that third party support I'd bin off Playstation in an instant. A Nintendo console with a full selection of games would be my dream choice.
Alternatively they could just become a third party developer...that would work too. Seems very unlikely though.
I've felt a similar frustration. They seem to be trapped in a loop of letting things deteriorate to the point of near hopelessness, then forging some strong partnerships that help the next system, then forgetting the lesson and letting it happen all over again. And the industry has reached a point where that may not be enough any more; there are too many other competing technologies, from the Xbox and PlayStation to near-ubiquitous Android and iOS devices. If Nintendo's next system isn't a hit from the start, I don't see how they can keep making systems. There's no more room for error. And frankly, maybe that's a good thing overall--over the last generation and a half, console makers seem to have more or less forgotten why people choose dedicated consoles over PCs, and consoles have picked up many of PC gaming's annoyances without gaining any of its advantages. Perhaps it's time for game consoles and the concept of the proprietary platform to die.
The only problem is that of the AAA titles, Nintendo's are about the only ones I find myself consistently drawn to. Of the systems that are currently supported, we have a PS3, a PS4, a Wii U, and two 3DSes.
In its twilight, the PS3 has become more of a set-top box than a game system for us. We've mostly used it for DVD/Blu-Ray playback and Netflix (though not the latter any more, since our new TV has a Netflix app built in). It's been over a year since I played a game on it, and Eva has spent a total of maybe 30 or 40 hours gaming on it in that time. I liked the PS3, but I don't really find too many of its games to be the kind that I replay again and again. Honestly, as it becomes more of a vintage system, I'll probably spend more time with the PS2 than the PS3.
Eva got the PS4 for her birthday, but we've barely touched it. The games we've actually put time into this year were either PC indies (Undertale, NecroDancer, Pillars, Titan Souls, Freedom Planet, etc.) or Nintendo titles. Smash Bros. and MarioKart are still staples of game nights with friends, and those titles have recently been joined by Runbow. Eva bought and spent a month playing through EarthBound. We recently finished a long-running coop game of Mario 3D World, and blew through the new Kirby and Yoshi titles. And while Nintendo has had a serious release schedule issue with the Wii U, and it has definitely been frustrating, that's still the system we've spent the most time using, by far.
I don't know whether they'd still hold themselves to this, but Nintendo officials stated during an interview at the end of the GameCube era that "the day Nintendo stops making its own systems is the day Nintendo stops making video games." So, kinda stuck.
