Past events that may have been key to Nintendo's fall from grace.

CupheadtheCritic · Jan 23, 2023

I hate to say this but you read the title, Nintendo really is falling from grace. What was once a very creative company has fallen into a bitter company that feel like they farm their IPs.
But why? How did this corporate titan that started off with a love for creation become what we have now? I think I may have an answer.

The financial loss from the Year of Luigi: Don't get me wrong, the Year of Luigi was OK at best, but it was Nintendo's worst year, given that they lost millions of dollars hosting the event. I'm not surprised that it was a bad year for Nintendo, because the games they gave Luigi were on a console that was a commercial FLOP.

The failure of the Nintendo GameCube: Yeah, despite it's massive popularity NOW, the GameCube was a commercial and critical flop back in the day. It flopped so damn hard that Nintendo regretted ever manufacturing it. Hell, they even used the GCN's CORE and implemented it in the Wii so that people could forget that the GCN ever existed.

(I'm skipping the third one. I don't wanna remind people of what happened in 2015. I'm not a fucking degenerate.)

The Pandemic: Yeah... It was a very problematic time for the likes of Nintendo... Need I explain what went wrong? No, I don't. I bet I don't.

Broken Promises: Yeah, Nintendo has a lot of broken promises on their hands. From kicking Smash Bros players in the nuts 24/7 to punching Animal Crossing players in the face 24/7, it was clear that corporate greed was slowly getting the best of them.

The Bob Hoskins Mario Movie: It was that shitty, wasn't it...

Kioku · Jan 23, 2023

I'm actually really confused as to how Nintendo is finding success in offering less than they used to. Their ambition of the past died out, and they haven't shown any signs of bringing that back. Don't get me wrong, the Switch was (keyword) an exciting piece of hardware. We're 6 years in, the catalog on the system is meh at best. Some great first party titles, third party titles are better played elsewhere, and their retro catalog is just... Well, what the fuck even is it? A subscription (read: rental) service that honestly has no real value other than a quick fix that could be had elsewhere. I am also sad that the Gamecube didn't find the success it ultimately deserved. The Wii picked up where it slacked, but then Nintendo got really, really weird with the Wii U. I don't know what happened, but this isn't the Nintendo of the old. We'll probably never get that back.

elpapadelospollitos · Jan 23, 2023

Killing the F-Zero series

CupheadtheCritic · Jan 27, 2023

elpapadelospollitos said:
Killing the F-Zero series

EarthBound has it worse.

krakenx · Jan 27, 2023

Nintendo's old president was a gamer and a programmer. Their new president was an accountant. So now they make money more than games.

Pleng · Jan 28, 2023

CupheadtheCritic said:
The Pandemic: Yeah... It was a very problematic time for the likes of Nintendo... Need I explain what went wrong? No, I don't. I bet I don't

Yes, I kinda think you do need to explain what went wrong? As far as I'm aware the pandemic was extremely lucrative for Nintendo, with millions of people buying Switch and games to get them through the lockdowns.

tech3475 · Jan 28, 2023

What started it all IMO was the N64‘s relative failure and going against the Playstation, especially where they lost third party devs due to their use of carts over CDs and probably other factors e.g. Licensing fees.

Made worse is the fact that Nintendo essentially created their own enemy via the SNES CD.

smf · Jan 28, 2023

It all started when Nintendo made playing cards.

The gamecube outsold the saturn & dreamcast combined.

The Wii outsold the ps3 and xbox 360, the switch has now outsold the Wii & it's on the heals of the ps4.

Hell, they even used the GCN's CORE and implemented it in the Wii so that people could forget that the GCN ever existed.

Not exactly, it started out as a prototype controller. modchips and the realization that new controllers rarely achieve any level of market penetration means that a new console was inevitable.

JackTheHorse · Jan 28, 2023

Hadn't it been for pokémon, Nintendo would've suffered the same fate Sega did. You're right that the Game Cube was a flop, and everyone seems to forget that. The Nintendo 64 was a flop too. And not everyone who wasn't born back then knows how unnecessarily expensive SNES games because Nintendo made a console that was already obsolete after a year and they had to include extra beef inside the cartridges themselves.

The only consoles Nintendo had big hits for (minus the Wii) were the handhelds, but only because there was virtually no competition for them. And when there was, Pokémon saved their ass multiple times. Had they been a PSP exclusive, Nintendo wouldn't exist.

As I see it now, the Switch is nothing but a big "DRM" machine you have to get in order to play certain games. Exclusives are the only thing Nintendo has that don't make the Switch a kids' toy, with its plastic screen and increased bezels to not break like a normal handheld when it falls.

TL;DR Nintendo died a long time ago.

smf · Jan 28, 2023

JackTheHorse said:
TL;DR Nintendo died a long time ago.

It's your tastes that are changing, Nintendo are doing ok.

JackTheHorse · Jan 28, 2023

smf said:
It's your tastes that are changing, Nintendo are doing ok.

It amazes me how there are still people who don't feel like reading 3 tiny paragraphs but reply to one tiny section of the post thinking they know what they're talking about.

chrisrlink · Jan 28, 2023

i noticed their shitty attitude when Pokemon Uranium got C&D'd then doug came along and made this company a huge pile of Dogshit as you said OP smash tour Project M and for NoJ caving into the whims of china just to curb piracy in the country and Japan as a country oh boy you can get 5 years in a japanese prison for using even a n64 Gameshark now (which honestly japanese prisons are not as bad as US ones see https://www.quora.com/What-are-Japanese-jails-like

CupheadtheCritic · Jan 28, 2023

JackTheHorse said:
and everyone seems to forget that the Nintendo 64 was a flop too.

Not really. The N64 only flopped in Japan because nobody gives a shit about Sonic there and Mario felt more like a poster boy for ad promos in Japan at that point in time.

It was second place worldwide because the Saturd sucked ass.
It couldn't outsell the PSX because it relied on cartridges instead of Disks, meaning that it couldn't support FMV, which was a trend that slowly died because of how it was abused by SEGA constantly.

What really kicked the bucket for the N64 was Nintendo's marketing style, which was putting "64" at the end of everything up until 1998, when Banjo Kazooie became the first 90s N64 game without "64" at the end.

JackTheHorse · Jan 28, 2023

CupheadtheCritic said:
Not really.

Yes really. The Nintendo 64 sold 33 million units worldwide, compared to almost 50 million SNES units. That's almost half. The Playstation 1 sold 100+ million units worldwide. Even the Genesis sold more consoles than the Nintendo 64. And the Nintendo 64 had that big issue with cartridge sizes and an absolute shit video output in Europe, other than the lack of games on day-one. The only good thing about the console was the 4-player multiplayer out of the box, rather than a separate add-on.

CupheadtheCritic · Jan 28, 2023

an absolute shit video output in Europe, other than the lack of games on day-one.

... Nobody told me that.
I've been doing video game history and this is the only time someone mentions this to someone who has no fucking clue about what the nineties were like aside from the media and the crack pandemic.

JackTheHorse · Jan 28, 2023

CupheadtheCritic said:
an absolute shit video output in Europe, other than the lack of games on day-one.

... Nobody told me that.
I've been doing video game history and this is the only time someone mentions this to someone who has no fucking clue about what the nineties were like aside from the media and the crack pandemic.

In North America all you had was Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings. In Japan they had a Shogi game. In Europe, ALMOST A YEAR LATER, the day-one titles were those (minus Shogi), Star Wars and Turok.

Also, composite. Composite sucks.

Taleweaver · Jan 28, 2023

Pleng said:
Yes, I kinda think you do need to explain what went wrong? As far as I'm aware the pandemic was extremely lucrative for Nintendo, with millions of people buying Switch and games to get them through the lockdowns.

Thanks. I was thinking exactly that.

Aside that one, the op neatly cherry picks from years or even decades ago (year of Luigi was 2013, the Gamecube 20 years ago and that first mario movie from 1993). Not the strongest case to say that Nintendo is falling from grace NOW.

tech3475 · Jan 28, 2023

CupheadtheCritic said:
Not really. The N64 only flopped in Japan because nobody gives a shit about Sonic there and Mario felt more like a poster boy for ad promos in Japan at that point in time.

It was second place worldwide because the Saturd sucked ass.
It couldn't outsell the PSX because it relied on cartridges instead of Disks, meaning that it couldn't support FMV, which was a trend that slowly died because of how it was abused by SEGA constantly.

What really kicked the bucket for the N64 was Nintendo's marketing style, which was putting "64" at the end of everything up until 1998, when Banjo Kazooie became the first 90s N64 game without "64" at the end.

Actually there was more to CDs than just FMVs, for starters they were cheaper and quicker to produce in comparison to carts, which was attractive to publishers.

This was also around the time that CDs were starting to better take advantage of the format, but even if it was just because of FMVs.....FF VII was still one of the PS1's best selling games.

Had they adopted CDs, they might have still had support from companies such as Square.

Speaking of marketing, one thing to consider, the PS1 was also marketed towards adults and multiple games which were popular at the time but not available on the N64 such as Tomb Raider. IIRC they also had PS1s in places such as the Ministry of Sound nightclub.

I also heard that in Japan on launch, because of Sony's pricing strategy which gave retailers a larger cut, they were actually pushing PS1s because it was more profitable for them.

Overall I think there were multiple factors which contributed to the PS1s relative success compared to the N64.

CupheadtheCritic said:
an absolute shit video output in Europe, other than the lack of games on day-one.

... Nobody told me that.
I've been doing video game history and this is the only time someone mentions this to someone who has no fucking clue about what the nineties were like aside from the media and the crack pandemic.

It's on the Wikipedia article:

It was launched with just two games in the United States, Pilotwings 64 and Super Mario 64; Cruis'n USA was pulled from the line-up less than a month before launch because it did not meet Nintendo's quality standards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64#Release

smf · Jan 28, 2023

JackTheHorse said:
It amazes me how there are still people who don't feel like reading 3 tiny paragraphs but reply to one tiny section of the post thinking they know what they're talking about.

It amazes me that you assume someone could just not disagree with what you were saying after reading your entire post.

Nintendo have behaved similarly since the NES was first introduced. Sometimes people want what they are doing, sometimes they do not. If they died a long time ago, it was when they started making video games in the first place.

Post automatically merged: Jan 28, 2023

JackTheHorse said:
The Playstation 1 sold 100+ million units worldwide.

Partly due to Sony being able to cost reduce the hell out of it and sell it over 12 years. The N64 only sold for 6 years.

But the shovel ware CD games on the PlayStation weren't exactly great. It was like visiting a dead eyed prostitute in the final years.

CompassNorth · Jan 28, 2023

I don't really get this.
A fall from grace that was started with the Mario Movie in 1993? That's a long time.
Nintendo seems fine to me.

The Switch is a success
Animal Crossing is popular than ever
Nintendo has a better understanding of a community and most if not all their releases are released worldwide

There are things they need to improve on for sure, but they've definitely improved

Past events that may have been key to Nintendo's fall from grace.

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