Why do you think Nintendo is so successful?

IlGialloMondadori said:
The graphics arguments are so, so dumb. Like Hades 2 and Silksong about to be two of the best games of the year, if not all time. Do you think they should be limited in score because they won't require a 5090 to run?

Just moronic. I have no idea how some people on here function day to day.
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I have a 5070 Ti and spent my summer playing Deus ex 2000, System shock 2 25th anniversary remaster, CTRL ALT EGO and Cruelty Squad and likely doing a run of Thief 1 and 2 soon after.



I don't give a shit about graphics, in fact in my library while I have games that demand high hardware like path tracing in cyberpunk 2077, they're really not a factor in which game I start playing.
 
Ar¢tos said:
They make good fun games, but they pull a lot of bs too.
You can't say they make quality products when the S2 screen is worse than the S1 and when they charged an astronomic amount for pieces of cardboard, among other things.
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Definitely interpret my post as software praise. Their hardware is pretty shit.
 
Ar¢tos said:
They make good fun games, but they pull a lot of bs too.
You can't say they make quality products when the S2 screen is worse than the S1 and when they charged an astronomic amount for pieces of cardboard, among other things.
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Only gaming forums care about this, most people only care about the actual games themselves and on that front Nintendo absolutely delivers.
 
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Guardian Monkey said:
"If your gonna rap don't spit out crap" - Me :messenger_tears_of_joy:
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mf doom rap GIF by Gunpowder & Sky
 
Buggy Loop said:
I have a 5070 Ti and spent my summer playing Deus ex 2000, System shock 2 25th anniversary remaster, CTRL ALT EGO and Cruelty Squad and likely doing a run of Thief 1 and 2 soon after.



I don't give a shit about graphics, in fact in my library while I have games that demand high hardware like path tracing in cyberpunk 2077, they're really not a factor in which game I start playing.
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Exactly. I mean, I think you know that is what i was saying. I hope so. That is what I was trying to say. The dude I was responding to was talking nonsense about graphics being ultra important.

Also, deus ex rules, and the soundtrack is one of the greatest of all time.
 
IlGialloMondadori said:
Exactly. I mean, I think you know that is what i was saying. I hope so. That is what I was trying to say. The dude I was responding to was talking nonsense about graphics being ultra important.

Also, deus ex rules, and the soundtrack is one of the greatest of all time.
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Yea I understood what you were saying, I was confirming you are right with examples even on PC gamer side
 
I recently finished the awesome LAD:Infinite Wealth on PS5 and have in the past week the luxurious problem of choosing my next game.
I have a Series X with GamePass and a load of good looking stuff such as Indiana Jones, Avowed, Oblivion Remastered, South of Midnight, Atomfall, a PS5 with a backlog of bought titles such as Rise of Ronin, Baldur's Gate 3, a Switch 2 so so many great games.
I dipped in and out quite a new but I can't stop playing Donkey Kong Bananza and tears of the Kingdom:Switch 2 Edition (first time, I've been waiting to play it fresh on Switch 2) because they just feel so good to play, Nintendo so often absolutely nails the controls and feel of a game in a way that few other do.
 
A lot of the market for toys and games is relatives buying presents for kids. Nintendo have products that are known as safe things to buy for kids both in quality and content.
 
For better or worse, they mostly ignore industry trends and make safe, fun, high quality games. And they have a stable of IPs that have a shitload of nostalgia behind them.
 
Geometric-Crusher said:
Man, if the press told the truth, no Nintendo game could achieve good ratings because their products are technologically outdated for example no nintendo game would exceed 8.0 cause Switch 2 in handheld mode is like a 2013 console and in TV mode it's a 2016 console, but the price of their games is like GTA 6.
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Great game is a great game, doesn't matter if its only available to play on a Dyson v15.
 
Cyberpunkd said:
They have carved an incredible niche that when it collapses it's going to be hard and fast. Their MO is doing the same thing over again - what was once innnovation is not nostalgia. It works great till it doesn't.
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Is that your hopes and dreams? For them to crumble?? Well I got news for you it doesn't look like it is happening anytime soon so prey harder.
 
Idleyes said:
It wouldn't be a trap if the games weren't good. Think of it like fishing, bad bait doesn't catch anything. When people use words like 'trap,' and even when I talk about it in terms of 'religion' or 'indoctrination,' I'm not saying the games themselves are bad. Nor am I automagically contributing malice to those that call it a 'trap'. The games have to be good for those descriptors to fit.

The question posed is, why do you think Nintendo is so successful? Those kinds of descriptors, whether used in malice or, in my case, more tongue-in-cheek, make sense IMHO when you look at customer retention. It's not even unique to Nintendo. It's a universal feature of most industries. For example a household where the parents had elevated F50's are highly likely going to produce children driving around with elevated F150's or just pickup trucks in general. This kind of brand loyalty happens naturally, and I'm sure Nintendo is fully aware of it. But the trucks themselves still have to be solid, if they were constantly breaking down or disappointing, parents would move on to something else and kids would grow up with a different experience entirely.

What I see here is that some people have let their love for Nintendo morph into resentment for how Nintendo manages their ecosystem, how they gatekeep, how they leverage nostalgia, and how they're unapologetic about their business model. That doesn't mean the product isn't great; it just means the way they keep you hooked can feel manipulative, even if you're willingly eating the bait like I happily do every single god damn time hook line and sinker. :messenger_beaming:

Some of y'all just seem mad that I'm not scared of you enough to keep my opinion to myself.
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I want for Nintendo to make more new IPs
edit: it's a good thing that they emphasize on like Mario and Zelda, to keep their image going, because it benefits for new IPs
 
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Idleyes said:
Bruh… all my kids love Zelda, Mario, Metroid, because I've been buying those games for them their whole lives. Same with my brothers and sisters, and their kids too. Even my older cousins who grew up on Nintendo passed that down to their kids, who then passed it on to theirs. That's literally how it works.

So what are you even talking about? How the hell did you discover Nintendo? You telling me you never touched a Nintendo game until you were an adult? If that's true, congrats – you're the first person I've ever met online or in real life that can say that with a straight face.
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It depends on the game.

Its not impossible that there are adults who bought Ring Fit Adventure without growing up on Nintendo. Same for Animal Crossing New Horizons or Xenoblade 2 for example.
Geometric-Crusher said:
They didn't merge anything, they were just pushed out of the home console market due to the failure of the Wii U.
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The Switch still appeals to Nintendo's home console audience as well as its handheld audience, so they did combine the markets.
 
Nintendo is one of the few major video game companies active today that has been involved in the gaming industry since the 1970s, so they have built a big brand, recognised IP, they have good development continuity in the fact that many people involved in Nintendo today has worked there for decades (Which is pretty unique for the gaming industry). Avoiding mass layoffs also means you can retain more institutional knowledge and newer developers can learn from experienced developers with decades of knowledge of creating hit games.

Nintendo also has the benefit of being strong in most markets, unlike some franchises that are only big in the west or big in Japan, their IP are popular in places as diverse as the US, France, Japan to Korea and much more.
 
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Sooner said:
Nintendo is the most hit and miss of the big 3.

For every Wii, Switch or DS, they have a GameCube, Wii U or Virtual Boy.

Before the Switch was released, the question was "how long before Nintendo has to go third-party". It was the question prior to the Wii as well. During the Wii and Switch years everyone seemed to forget this and felt like Nintendo has been dominating the industry since the NES.
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Do you think they would actually go third party, if it's a necessity? I think they wouldn't but simply exit the gaming space, and continue to emphasize on their iconic figures like Mario elsewhere
 
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You only need to see what Sega did with Sonic to understand exactly everything you shouldn't do—unlike Nintendo. When you look at the horribly thrown-together characters that no one remembers the names of or even where they came from, it becomes clear that a franchise needs to be carefully developed, or it ends up meaningless. Nintendo, for their part, sadly left a bunch of franchises on the shelf and milked others maybe too much—but they did it well. It sold, they stuck to their niche, and it worked. Plus, we're in the age of kidults, so nostalgia is in full swing.
 
People like bright colours and familiar mascots, plus having such a young audience means you can keep releasing the same game over and over again because there's a good chance they weren't yet born when the previous iteration came out - it might not be anything new but it's new to them. Parents know exactly what they are getting for their kids because it's the same game they played when they were kids themselves.

In a sense, what Disney does now making huge money with relatively risk-free remakes, is just aping what Nintendo has been doing for years.
 
To answer your questions:

1- their games are build around the idea of delivering a fun experience and they refuse to compromise on that
2- allowing expiremenation in their already successful IPs and not remaking the same game over and over even if it works
3- their games simply have universal appeal, unless you are just a hater
 
PanzerCute said:
New IPs. Not new gimmicky concepts around already existing IPs, these are irrelevant imo, but ACTUAL new Ips. Apart from Splatoon, what have they created for the last 20 years?
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They in fact released a new IP during the Switch era that sold more than any Splatoon game, but most people online will say it doesn't count because it isn't a "real" game or something.

And that's really the crux of the issue, because being genuinely creative means doing things that no one else is doing and most people don't really want creativity, they want things they're familiar with under a new coat of paint (and don't get me wrong, Nintendo are good at that too).

I mean seriously can you imagine any other major dev/publisher releasing an exergame/turn based RPG/obstacle course platformer hybrid?

giphy.gif
 
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Cause they limit themselves to create great games, they're not in stupid politics controversies or fucking around customers by taking games from their libraries or misleading them with badly intentioned marketing, when they do something that might look like that they try to apologize and give a proper reason for delays or whatever.

They really test customers great, they just treat non-customers that they try take advantage of their business or brands really bad lol
 
I needed some salt for my salad. First page of this thread delivered plenty.

Truth be told, the haters are partially right with some of their reasoning. Nostalgia does definitely play a role in Nintendo's enduring success.
Still, there's some big elephants in the room to acknowledge when you say "lol it's them dumb Nintendo fans manchildren!"
I mean, Crash Bandicoot was huge and millions of people played the original games. 30 years later, where are those millions of people when a Crash game comes out?
Or look at Final Fantasy. The series is in shambles, yet they keep rereleasing the old games and those are still selling. Dumb fans? Or just people liking good games?

Nintendo delivers quality games. Get over yourselves already, haters.
 
Brakum said:
Okay here is my hot take.

The lack of third party support ended up benefitting nintendo in the long run.

Less option=more money to spend on nintendo games.

It helps that their games are usually good. But jist speaking from experience, people i know that have a nintendo, bought a lot of nintendo games. And a lot of those games arent games they eould even play anywhere else.

Which is kinda what happened now that they're all on PC in addition to having a switch. Now they buy mario karty, smash and zelda but not much else. They dont care about a new splatoon or a new pikmin or a new animal crossing amymore. Those aren't games they want to play when they have a lot more options now.

Basically i think the lack of third party massivelly inflated the value of nintendos own games.

This used to happen with other consoles to at the start of a new gen. I bought so many xbox games that i would never buy, but the gen was new, it didnt even have BC, and i wanted to play things. Games like battlefield, dead rising, assassins creed and others. I wouldnt have played those games in any other circumstance.
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Less third party games in their consoles only means less money spent on them lol, these days you can see how even with strong third party support their games same way beyond them
 
It's a mystery to me why Mario and Link didn't save the GameCube or Wii U. Aren't people ready to blindly buy everything related to them?

By the way it also means that 3d Sonic wouldn't have necessary saved Sega Saturn as some experts assume.
 
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Parazels said:
It's a mystery to me why Mario and Link didn't save the GameCube or Wii U. Aren't people ready to blindly buy everything related to them?
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Three reasons:

The best Mario and Zelda games on these systems didn't come out in a timely manner.
Both consoles were more of the same compared to the competition and didn't have GTA.
The Wii U was the height of greed: Mario 2D in 2012, Luigi 2D in mid-2013, 3ds Mario in Holiday 2013, and DK 2D in early 2014 :messenger_angry:
Parazels said:
By the way it also means that 3d Sonic wouldn't have necessary saved Sega Saturn as some experts assume.
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Saturn had no salvation, the mistake of being weaker and more expensive is the most stupid mistake of all, it's incredible to think that Microsoft did this in 2013.
 
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Kataploom said:
Less third party games in their consoles only means less money spent on them lol, these days you can see how even with strong third party support their games same way beyond them
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Sure but maybe it helped that people played games that they wouldnt otherwise and ended up enjoying them and be interested in the sequels now.
 
Woopah said:
It depends on the game.

Its not impossible that there are adults who bought Ring Fit Adventure without growing up on Nintendo. Same for Animal Crossing New Horizons or Xenoblade 2 for example.
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That got a chuckle out of me bruh bruh. :messenger_beaming: I saw what you did there and I agree when saying that yesterday's kids are today's adults, and now their kids are growing up on Nintendo because of them, so the cycle keeps going as those kids grow up and buy Nintendo games for themselves and/or the next generation.

Sure, Nintendo also has merch, advertising, a theme park, and all that, but I'd still wager that a big chunk of their customer base comes from people who were raised on Nintendo in the first place. It's the perpetually homegrown nostalgia that drives people to the merch and theme park and even the Mario movie. Not those lack luster Nintendo Directs. 🤮 They've built their whole brand around being family-friendly for a reason and it works because their games are great and so are their consoles.

A lot of adults who don't even have kids but still buy into Nintendo were hooked when they were young.

When Nintendo first broke into the gaming industry, their main target was young niggas hanging out in arcades. Those kids turned around and begged their parents (most of whom didn't care about video games at all, I know mine didn't) to get that little gray box because "all my friends have one!" What started as a snowball back then has turned into a whole mountain now. lol
 
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They make games anyone can recognize and pick up and play. Their games probably also don't cost anywhere near what it would cost to make a Spiderman, Last of Us, Hellblade, Halo, etc. type of game.
 
Brakum said:
Sure but maybe it helped that people played games that they wouldnt otherwise and ended up enjoying them and be interested in the sequels now.
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Maybe, but far from contributing too much to their success, if anything piracy has contributed way more since many of their franchises were very successful back in the day when piracy was very rampant and people (including myself) only has access to them via piracy, then those pirates could finally afford the games and got Nintendo
 
There is a bit of "luck" involved in it too...for example the Gameboy was underpowered for years, yet it still wiped the floor with the competition throughout the 90s...the N64 was sticking with cartridges even though the format of the moment was compact discs, yet despite that it still did better than the Saturn, and it helped that Sega's console was a complete mishap of a console which put paid to it's success...Nintendo weren't convinced by the merits of Xbox Live when it first launched and held back yet it did no harm to their success not having an equivalent network...they could have ended up like Atari, or even Sega, but they played their cards right hence why they are strong as ever more than 40 years on...
 
Geometric-Crusher said:
Three reasons:

The best Mario and Zelda games on these systems didn't come out in a timely manner.
Both consoles were more of the same compared to the competition and didn't have GTA.
The Wii U was the height of greed: Mario 2D in 2012, Luigi 2D in mid-2013, 3ds Mario in Holiday 2013, and DK 2D in early 2014 :messenger_angry:

Saturn had no salvation, the mistake of being weaker and more expensive is the most stupid mistake of all, it's incredible to think that Microsoft did this in 2013.
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You legitimately have no idea what you're talking about. What does a game being 2D have anything to do with greed?

You keep spouting this graphics nonsense and insinuating that reviewers are bought when the same company you stan for milks Sonic for all its worth.

Except that Sonic games are so mediocre and can barely hit 5 million in sales despite being available on every major platform.

The best part about Sega is Atlus, and it's not like their games are pushing graphics either.
 
Exclusives, take any existing switch2 exclusives and any hope that handheld console gonna get any(aka only games for it gonna be multiplats avaiable on pc or big stationary consoles) and total sales will be not divided by 2, sales would be divided by 5 at the least.
 
PeteBull said:
Exclusives, take any existing switch2 exclusives and any hope that handheld console gonna get any(aka only games for it gonna be multiplats avaiable on pc or big stationary consoles) and total sales will be not divided by 2, sales would be divided by 5 at the least.
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I've no idea what this means.
 
I think there are four main keys to their success.

1. Having established and maintaining ownership of a lot of the oldest, most well known and well regarded (and frankly, legendary) IP in the industry. The funny thing is they don't even mine a lot of their stuff near enough. If they announced a new F-zero or Kid Icarus- IP not heard from in decades people would go nuts. Heck, they could announce a modern revival of "Urban Champions" and the intrigue would be off the charts.

2. Having a reputation for making games in these IP that are almost always good to great, resulting in dedicated fans that buy their stuff like clockwork, making new releases "event-like".

3. Remaining independent- creating and selling their own hardware made for their games and keeping everything exclusive. You want Nintendo games- you only buy them on Nintendo hardware.

4. Never caving on price or undervaluing their product- If you want a Nintendo game, you buy it at its price- which will still be the same a year from now, so don't bother waiting for a price drop (other than maybe very brief promotions where they knock 10-20% off of something.
 
Simple:

  • Nintendo understands their value proposition better than any of their competitors and doesn't let the industry trends dictate their next move.

  • Nintendo doesn't dilute its IP, its gameplay experiences are exclusively available on their proprietary machines.

  • Nintendo is modest, and although it's a premium brand much like Apple, it understands their target market and prices their products to be affordable.

  • Also, they flex their legal team.
 
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