Did Nintendo won the traditional console war?

Nintendo won?

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    233
LordOcidax

LordOcidax

Member
By Sony and Microsoft stepping aside from the traditional video game business model centric in their hardware sales…. Do you think that Nintendo won the console war?
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The traditional console war was over long before the warriors fighting it figured it out. It was over 5 years ago. What has been happening for the last 5 years is that hardware manufacturers have been succumbing to their own inability to keep their ecosystem alive with their first party output.

Xbox succumbed first. Their purchase of ABK wasn't a bid to save the Xbox console as some believed. They already knew that was over. It was a play for software revenue. They will continue to sell hardware as a vehicle for Game Pass, which is all their hardware is now.

PlayStation had a longer runway due to their cut of third party, but they would not be able to run PlayStation the way they do today without third party. I'm willing to bet that the reason they're pushing live service so hard is that it gives them a recurring first party software revenue stream that stabilizes them while it takes forever for their single player games to release. They must be able to rely on their own output for long term success, because if third party hits the toilet they're in trouble. So it makes sense they're going to want as wide of a first party sales pipeline as possible. They'll probably also stay cross gen for longer with PS6 because I'm thinking they're going to have a tough time hitting $499 for their next console unless they want to eat losses, so they'll need the PS5 install base for longer.

Nintendo is the only one of the three that has been able to survive mainly on their first party output. That's why they'll be the last to go with a multiplatform strategy. They do get third party revenue from their store, but they're also the only one that can sell 30+ million copies of a single first party title at full price for many years.
 
The last traditional console generation was WiiPS360. And as I recall, all 3 did actually pretty well. Wii sold a fuckton. Xbox 360 was popular and so was PS3 (after Sony unfucked themselves).
 
For me currently it Nintendo's gaming system is the only one that has the exclusives I care about....Playstation this gen just much more about 3rd party mutiplatform machine.
 
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You'd pretty much be missing out on everything that happens in the industry besides Nintendo mascot games if you only owned their consoles in the last 20 years. So, no.

2026 looks to have insane 3rd party output from Capcom to SEGA, yet most games will probably not see a Nintendo release for at least another generation. Nintendo owns their casual niche, but if you want more than that from gaming, they are highly insufficient.

And I say that as someone who has put tens of thousands of play hours into their games.
 
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Nintendo have dumbed down their games to the point that they're faceroll easy. And nintendo's last great console in my opinion was the gamecube because every console since then has been too gimmicky for my liking.
 
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They won the hybrid war. I know a few people that would not have purchased the Switch if it was a console only. To be fair, I know a few that would not have purchased it if it was handheld only.
 
Sebastian1295 said:
Nintendo have dumbed down their games to the point that they're faceroll easy. And nintendo's last great console in my opinion was the gamecube because every console since then has been too gimmicky for my liking.
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It's why my enjoyment faded with the latest Monkey Kong game. I know the post game content provides challenge, but by the end, I was praying for the game to end as most of the novelty had worn off. There was one (!) challenge room that actually provided a challenge up until I rolled the credits.
 
Yes , they give fans excellent exclusives and protects those games to be ported to other platform. That is true love for fans which in turn it is like printing money.
 
bender said:
It's why my enjoyment faded with the latest Monkey Kong game. I know the post game content provides challenge, but by the end, I was praying for the game to end as most of the novelty had worn off. There was one (!) challenge room that actually provided a challenge up until I rolled the credits.
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That's because you're a bot with all of your fancy alcohol fueled AI.
 
Most people are retarded, who cares what most people buy

Edit: With my gut reaction out of the way, let's do this right:

Winning means converting the next generation of players into customers, if you can't do that, you run out of customers as they die with age or lose interest in playing like DaciaJC did.

Gen Z was born between 1997 and 2012, so they are between 13 and 28 years old, with median age being 20.5 years old. When did you start buying games with your own money and not mommy's allowance? When you got a job. And when was that? Probably around the age of 18 to 22. So the median age of Gen Z at 20.5 years is entering the workforce this year and the next few years, or has already been working for a while. Their first pay check is probably not going to be spent on a game console.

It will take a few years still, to really see how Gen Z spends their own earned money on games. Right now companies are still targeting millennials with the endless remakes (Silent Hill, THPS, Final Fantasy 7, ...) and we know next to nothing about what console releases in the next years or what Gen Z will flock to.

Declaring a winner is a pointless exercise of fleeting temporality.
 
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Nintendo forfeited in traditional console war from the time of og switch launch.
If u want me to admit nintendo won console war then first they gotta launch stationary console, and no 450$ switch2 with 120$ dock doesnt count as one unfortunately.
 
PeteBull said:
Nintendo forfeited in traditional console war from the time of og switch launch.
If u want me to admit nintendo won console war then first they gotta launch stationary console, and no 450$ switch2 with 120$ dock doesnt count as one unfortunately.
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Amazing to read the mental gymnastics some of you are doing to avoid giving the W to Nintendo 🤣.
 
If combining home and portable sales in one single product is winning, sure

Reality is a little different

Do you think Nintendo had more success in 2008 with Wii + DS or now with just the Switch?
 
During the ABK trial I believe Nintendo was excluded from the traditional console war.
No?
🤔

There was talk about highend consoles for PlayStation and Xbox. PlayStation won that war.

Either way, Nintendo will keep on being a dinosaur in many ways and I wouldn't celebrate them having all walls up, might turn out to bite them in the ass if things are moving fast.
 
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bender said:
It's why my enjoyment faded with the latest Monkey Kong game. I know the post game content provides challenge, but by the end, I was praying for the game to end as most of the novelty had worn off. There was one (!) challenge room that actually provided a challenge up until I rolled the credits.
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Ya I was playing it at a friend's and it's just too damn easy. I was smashing every enemy with ease and just collecting everything with no issues at all. I'm not asking for extreme difficulty, but I would like a sense of challenge on the level of nintendo's older games like mario sunshine, mario 64, donkey kong country on the snes, and the old school 2d Mario's. When a game is faceroll easy then it kills alot of the fun personally.
 
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They are running a profitable business. But this is not the question asked in OP. They stopped making traditional consoles with the release of the Switch, and one could argue they stopped even earlier with the Wii.
 
With the Switch, Nintendo showed the industry who is the real king in this game. It's an unstoppable juggernaut. Microsoft bowed out and now Sony is the doing the same. Nintendo made some incredibly smart business decisions by doubling down on their strengths, not getting caught up in a useless graphics race and ignoring their competitors and march to its own beat. MS and Sony can't compete with that. It's futile. They are done. Go home and be a family man.
 
MisterXDTV said:
If combining home and portable sales in one single product is winning, sure

Reality is a little different

Do you think Nintendo had more success in 2008 with Wii + DS or now with just the Switch?
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The Switch is far more successful than the Wii and DS put together. It never saw a price drop, the games are full price and even more expensive than the usual $60, and they got more 20M+ first-party sellers than ever in addition to nickel and diming people for shitty services.

Nintendo is in a better market position than it has ever been.
 
cireza said:
They are running a profitable business. But this is not the question asked in OP. They stopped making traditional consoles with the release of the Switch, and one could argue they stopped even earlier with the Wii.
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You are talking about the console form factor, the Switch still a traditional business model.
 
Of course they did! Stuck to their guns and they have shown that the traditional console market is FAR from dead. Fuck Microsoft and Sony for going that route. Maybe instead of spending upwards of $300 million for new games, they will look at spending less, making more games and making games that are actually fun to play...
 
LordOcidax said:
You are talking about the console form factor, the Switch still a traditional business model.
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Yes. But it is not a traditional console. So you are going to get mixed answers to your poll due to your vague question. I don't consider they won anything because of how far they stretched from the path of a proper console. When all big third party games are skipping your console because it is too weak, this is not a win for me. When pixel-art indy games run at 30fps on your console, that's not a win either.

If your question was "From a business perspective, did Nintendo win ?", I would have picked Yes for sure.
 
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cireza said:
Yes. But it is not a traditional console. So you are going to get mixed answers to your poll due to your vague question. I don't consider they won anything because of how far they stretched from the path of a proper console. When all big third party games are skipping your console because it is too weak, this is not a win for me. When pixel-art indy games run at 30fps on your console, that's not a win either.

If your question was "From a business perspective, did Nintendo win ?", I would have picked Yes for sure.
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LordOcidax said:
By Sony and Microsoft stepping aside from the traditional video game business model centric in their hardware sales…. Do you think that Nintendo won the console war?
578MFKwvVk6lF7IG.jpeg
Click to expand...
 
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