10 Huge Mistakes Nintendo Made

Nintendo has made some pretty big mistakes over the years.

[DarkOcelet]

I am so glad that Nintendo refused to partner with Sony, that is their best and worst decision in the history at the same time.

Playstation is such a beastly brand right now.

[Griever]

You can say that again. I have a long history with Playstation. Because of Playstation I was finally free of gathering 1ups/continues, finding bonus stages and reaching high scores in all my games. Seriously, most of the games in the early 90s were just platformers and even those that werent followed that formula. I was so sick of them that I probably would have quit gaming after Sega Genesis. However, once I saw Tekken 2 running in an arcade, I had to find out what is this "Playstation." Saw the logo at the begining but didnt knew what it was and later found out it was a new console. Lol

Finally, my games grew up and out of anthropomorphic animals, cartoony mascots and cartridges. I got to play Metal Gear Solid, Tekken 2/3, Xenogears, Final Fantasy 7/8/9, Vagrant Story, Resident Evil 1/2/3, Legend of Dragoon, Dino Crisis 1/2 Parasite Eve 1/2 and so many more. My eyes were opened to what gaming could be! There were tales of political conspiracies, science ficiton, corporate corruption, human experiments, revenge/betrayal, fantasy/sorcery and mind blowing plot twists. There was no more mind-numbing platforming, terrible monotone music and the sound of highscores or 1ups! Damn, that era is like a bad memory for me! I understand many people love those kind of games but to me they were a nightmare from hell after playing them for 2 whole gens as a kid. The last platformer I played was Aladdin on Genesis. I couldnt take it anymore but Playstation saved me and I have stuck with it since then.

[Ck1x]

Nice to see you don't know what actually happened back then, but it's nice to remember things this way! Playstation probably would have existed anyway in some form or another. Especially as other electronic manufacturers started taking over the segment...

[barb_wire]

Calling it 'Wii U', hurt them a lot. They should've called it something else and maybe Nintendo would be in a different place sales wise, instead of just 4.5mil units sold in the US.

[superchiller]

The name is certainly awful, but the actual hardware design is why it failed. The console was way underpowered, and lacking in the most basic features that have been common for many years in many other consoles. All of this was to accommodate the expensive gamepad gimmick; Nintendo really made that feature the central point of the package, leaving the base console unable to handle current generation games.

[sk8ofmnd]

I believe there are far worse things thats lead to the demise of the wiiu, with the name being the least on the list. We all know the major points. Heres hopping the nx can get a fresh start.

[TheCommentator]

Cartridges for N64
Gamecube discs that were too small
Lack of 3rd party support
Denying certain M rated games on Gamecube
Lack of online infrastructure
Giving up on traditional gamers with the Wii
Making the Wii underpowered and overpriced
Making the WiiU underpowered and overpriced
Not realizing that the Wii sold mostly to people who liked simple, and coming up with that gamepad
Making the NX something other than a traditional console, judging by the patents

@ aizen

Yeah, it's not the list from the website, but that's the way I see it. I hope I'm wrong about the NX though but I don't have much faith left...

[AizenSosuke]

Thank you good sir.

[shaw98]

Actually, Wii was not overpriced. The part reason why it sold so well was because it was so cheap compared to the competition. You can debate where Nintendo is now, but without the wii, Nintendo would not have the billions they have now. That and wii had great game so it was far from a mistake. Trying to carry that over to the wii u was a mistake.

[TheCommentator]

Actually, it was. See post 6.1.

[zep]

REGION LOCK

[STK026]

To claim that the Wii was a "huge mistake" for Nintendo is pretty ridiculous. Not every one liked it, but it sold extremely well and, most of all, allowed Nintendo to make a lot of cash. I wouldn't be surprised if the Wii were one of the most profitable consoles from any manufacturer. It didn't get the install base of the PS2, and didn't have the high attach rate of other consoles, but the manufacturing costs were low enough for Nintendo to make money on every units sold from day one; a rarity in the console market.

[TheCommentator]

When the original Xbox was selling at $129.99 the Wii was selling at $199.99. Xbox was roughly as powerful as a Wii, had a built in HDD, and could play DVD's too. Of course Nintendo made money. That was their main concern.

The reason it was a huge mistake, in spite of being a cash cow, it that it left 3rd party publishers out in the cold with very few successful franchises and a lot of gimmicky knockoffs of Nintendo's own software. Ultimately, the Wii had less 3rd party support than in the Gamecube generation. The Wii couldn't play traditional game types very well at all either so gamers were left waving their arms around like those inflatable advertisements outside the car dealerships.

[Ck1x]

Sense people are spouting of nonsense here I'm going to say going after pirated software and Amiibos! Lol

[Dragonopolis]

Nintendo had all they needed with the Gamecube but they dumped it quickly when they decided they did not want to cater the the adult crowd and go Wii... N64 had some incredible games that both adults and children could play....Resident Evil 4 while not perfect was an incredible looking game on Gamecube back in the day (there where other great looking games as well)..... Gamecube had the ability to do online (Lot of People loved FF Crystal Chronicles) but then online play was pulled (probably because Nintendo hadn't built control mechanisms in). Nintendo has a history of squeezing the life out of ancient games...... Its Nintendo's obsession with controlling the studios who create the games and controlling how gamers should entertain themselves. It works to some extent (you always find a few people who are followers).

For me.... I like to choose what I want to play and support giving Developers the freedom to be innovative and creative and Nintendo has definitely gone in the opposite direction of that which is why 3rd and even 2nd party support is not as good as it should be....... Sony and MS are no angels in this area, but I feel, do listen to devs and gamers much better than Nintendo has over the years....

Wii was successful because it was positioned perfectly at the time and was still riding on the success of their past series. However, Smartphones have grown in GPU/CPU power quickly over the years and most of Wii's gamer base (who like simple)... have gravitated towards Smart Phones for Portable gaming and Notebooks and PCs are quite capable of having games played on it that are at the level of fun and graphic capability that Nintendo has pushed out with their consoles.

Part of the success of Sony and MS is their consoles are capable of delivering a "Near" PC experience at a fraction of the cost but are still capable of delivering games at graphic levels that match anything Nintendo has created.

Storytelling is Not dependent on Hardware and not the responsibility of the Manufacturer (whoever they may be). Can some Developer produce a Cute world with lovable characters on different hardware created by someone other than Nintendo.... Yes Developers can..... but sadly hasn't happen as successfully or intergrated into the system social stucture as well as Nintendo has done... Unfortunately I believe this to be a crutch for Nintendo and will be its continual downfall.....

NX to me is Nintendo's last ditch effort to squash the inevitable take over of mobile gaming

[benji101]

Ps4 and xbox are successful because of the huge amounts of money they spent on advertising and marketing.
Money spent on third party exclusive content.

Nintendo does not care about mobile gaming they have become part of it. Smart phones have barely had any affect on consoles themselves. Mobile games are mainly damaging third party content on PS4. Bandai namco, Square Enix and sega are all investing more and more in Mobile gaming. These studios mostly supported the ps3.
The idea that Wii gamers moved to mobile has no concrete evidence. The wii was a success because it was an interesting concept that any one could understand. Those same people did not just become casual mobile gamers! The majority of wii customers were not gamers of any kind. They did not move to smart phones, smart phones are just phones. If any company has lost customers to smart Phones it is sony. The Vita supports this.
NX is a totally unknown factor.

[RPGrinder]

All companies do. this is stupid

[benji101]

Ten Mistakes Nintendo made.

1. not paying for a dvd player to be in the game cube.
2. Not including a dvd player in the wii
3. Not including a blue ray player in the wii u.
4. Not including a larger hard drive in the wii u.
5. Not showing Bullshots and games with no release date at e3
6. Not spending more on marketing than game development.
7. Not using off the shelf junk cpus and using a custom cpu.
8. Not charging for internet.
9. Amiibo festival.
10. Bad advertising in the US when they had good advertising in Japan.

[sknygy]

What a ridiculous article!