Heads up: Sorry for the weird format, I posted this on Reddit before posting here, so the text got a bit screwy.
Quick Disclaimer: I grew up with Nintendo and still play the games to this day. I'm a Switch owner with an extensive library of games and a few Amiibo. I don't condone hating on a company for illegitimate reasons or out of biased thinking. So please know, I seek to provide nothing but constructive criticism to Nintendo's brand and way of working their business. Now onto the rest...
Can we stop pretending like Nintendo is this godly company that revolutionizes everything and pushes out quality hit after quality hit? It's not productive towards anyone and all it's doing to giving Nintendo this false sense of accomplishment. They do the absolute minimum for their community of gamers, but we rave and celebrate over all of it, no matter how small or insignificant.
Nintendo could be so much more advanced for the price points they're pushing their consoles for, but we're eating it up and giving them no reason to branch out with their hardware or software. I'm going to proceed to state examples of how we're harming Nintnedo's development when it comes to games, software and hardware.
A. "Nintendo has never cared about hardware and performance" Is no excuse as to why their consoles are so weak and underdeveloped. Just because they never cared before doesn't mean they can't now. The amount of third party games that look and run hideously on Nintendo's consoles are STAGGERING.
You're paying $300.00 - $350.00 to play games at a lower and watered down quality than you would have if you just bought an Xbox One or Playstation 4, brand new and sealed for the same price off of Ebay! There is NO excuse, please stop defending Nintendo on this.
You could make the argument that they want to make the Switch affordable, or that they can't use better hardware without sacrificing battery life or good cooling. Nonsense. I've seen much more powerful handhelds that have x3 the power of the switch, around the same form factor and run perfectly fine.
If it costed more towards consumers, I doubt many people would mind being able to play both first party Nintendo games as well as third party games at great quality, both console and portable for around $500.00, just $150.00 more dollars than what you'd be spending on the OLED model.
Not only would this be a GENIUS move for Nintendo, bringing in more audiences and expanding their player base, further filling their wallets... but it would also be one of the best competitive moves they could ever make against Microsoft and Sony. But they just don't.
Come on, even the Eshop lags!
B. I don't feel like the HD ports are or ever have been as hype and impressive as people make them out to be. Think about it for a sec. You're paying full price for a game from over 10 years ago. A game that has simply been processed to 1080p when around the Wii's era, the PS3 and Xbox 360 were already able to do HD. The only reason this looks so graphically impressive is because the Wii maxed out at 480p without the use of an HDMI converter. What we're getting now is what we SHOULD have gotten back then, but hey look, Nintendo cheaping out with their hardware. Why are we getting all hyped and excited for overpriced glorified ports that add almost nothing new to the game other than increased quality and maybe a new control scheme? Yeah, you can now play these games again on "modern" official hardware... but is that really all that exciting?
C. This one is more of a controversial opinion, so I'll try to keep it brief and very respectful. Ignoring Joy Con drift for the longest time, the Slippi incident, attacking Splatoon players, limited release of 3D All-Stars, shoving character advertisement into Smash Bros. Ultimate, terrible severs, slow build up towards SNES and NES online, charging money for a quality of life mechanic in a game etc. Nintendo performs some very shady business practices, many times directly effecting their own consumers, yet we bounce back and act like all is good the moment they tickle our fancy just a little. They face little to no backlash or consequences for their actions because their player base is so quick to turn their heads to their wrongdoings, thus, they never grow.
This is my closing statement. It's all good to support a company you love and cherish. It's completely fine to forgive and forget when said company makes a mistake. But when they deliberately go out of their way to hurt and undersell their fans... Please. Don't act like everything is OK. There are many gaming companies out there who work tirelessly to bring out the content their fans deserve. Companies who do everything in their power to try new things and satisfy ALL of their players. Companies that know when to swallow their pride and admit when they've fallen short.
Nintendo does not feel like one of those companies right now. In my humble opinion, we should stop settling for less and ask for more. This is the thanks we've gotten for sticking with their brand for the past few decades. It's truly a shame.
Quick Disclaimer: I grew up with Nintendo and still play the games to this day. I'm a Switch owner with an extensive library of games and a few Amiibo. I don't condone hating on a company for illegitimate reasons or out of biased thinking. So please know, I seek to provide nothing but constructive criticism to Nintendo's brand and way of working their business. Now onto the rest...
Can we stop pretending like Nintendo is this godly company that revolutionizes everything and pushes out quality hit after quality hit? It's not productive towards anyone and all it's doing to giving Nintendo this false sense of accomplishment. They do the absolute minimum for their community of gamers, but we rave and celebrate over all of it, no matter how small or insignificant.
Nintendo could be so much more advanced for the price points they're pushing their consoles for, but we're eating it up and giving them no reason to branch out with their hardware or software. I'm going to proceed to state examples of how we're harming Nintnedo's development when it comes to games, software and hardware.
A. "Nintendo has never cared about hardware and performance" Is no excuse as to why their consoles are so weak and underdeveloped. Just because they never cared before doesn't mean they can't now. The amount of third party games that look and run hideously on Nintendo's consoles are STAGGERING.
You're paying $300.00 - $350.00 to play games at a lower and watered down quality than you would have if you just bought an Xbox One or Playstation 4, brand new and sealed for the same price off of Ebay! There is NO excuse, please stop defending Nintendo on this.
You could make the argument that they want to make the Switch affordable, or that they can't use better hardware without sacrificing battery life or good cooling. Nonsense. I've seen much more powerful handhelds that have x3 the power of the switch, around the same form factor and run perfectly fine.
If it costed more towards consumers, I doubt many people would mind being able to play both first party Nintendo games as well as third party games at great quality, both console and portable for around $500.00, just $150.00 more dollars than what you'd be spending on the OLED model.
Not only would this be a GENIUS move for Nintendo, bringing in more audiences and expanding their player base, further filling their wallets... but it would also be one of the best competitive moves they could ever make against Microsoft and Sony. But they just don't.
Come on, even the Eshop lags!
B. I don't feel like the HD ports are or ever have been as hype and impressive as people make them out to be. Think about it for a sec. You're paying full price for a game from over 10 years ago. A game that has simply been processed to 1080p when around the Wii's era, the PS3 and Xbox 360 were already able to do HD. The only reason this looks so graphically impressive is because the Wii maxed out at 480p without the use of an HDMI converter. What we're getting now is what we SHOULD have gotten back then, but hey look, Nintendo cheaping out with their hardware. Why are we getting all hyped and excited for overpriced glorified ports that add almost nothing new to the game other than increased quality and maybe a new control scheme? Yeah, you can now play these games again on "modern" official hardware... but is that really all that exciting?
C. This one is more of a controversial opinion, so I'll try to keep it brief and very respectful. Ignoring Joy Con drift for the longest time, the Slippi incident, attacking Splatoon players, limited release of 3D All-Stars, shoving character advertisement into Smash Bros. Ultimate, terrible severs, slow build up towards SNES and NES online, charging money for a quality of life mechanic in a game etc. Nintendo performs some very shady business practices, many times directly effecting their own consumers, yet we bounce back and act like all is good the moment they tickle our fancy just a little. They face little to no backlash or consequences for their actions because their player base is so quick to turn their heads to their wrongdoings, thus, they never grow.
This is my closing statement. It's all good to support a company you love and cherish. It's completely fine to forgive and forget when said company makes a mistake. But when they deliberately go out of their way to hurt and undersell their fans... Please. Don't act like everything is OK. There are many gaming companies out there who work tirelessly to bring out the content their fans deserve. Companies who do everything in their power to try new things and satisfy ALL of their players. Companies that know when to swallow their pride and admit when they've fallen short.
Nintendo does not feel like one of those companies right now. In my humble opinion, we should stop settling for less and ask for more. This is the thanks we've gotten for sticking with their brand for the past few decades. It's truly a shame.
