So sales are down for Nintendo, are they?

For the sake of Nintendo and all of it's fans, I hope you're right...

[quote name='TheDarkSeed' post='3796378' date='Jul 26 2011, 04:41 PM']For the sake of Nintendo and all of it's fans, I hope you're right...[/quote]
Isn't Nintendo's E3 proof enough?

I didn't mean that kids games and casual games shouldn't exist at all, only that Ninty needs to be more in balance with the general gaming public to include games that a veteran gamer like me could enjoy too, that teen and adult gamers can enjoy without having to wade through so much tripe to find. And those $1 cell phone games put a HUGE dent in what Ninty (and their 3rd's) has relied on primarily for the last few years; the casual market.

I never said that Ninty's (and it's 3rd party's) library of games were ALL garbage, just that the majority of them are. 20% of over 1000 games per region is still a lot of good games. But that other 80% is what people see rotting on shelves. That is why the Wii is suffering in sales right now. THAT is what's making gamers hesitate before buying a 3DS. It's not only the high price of the 3DS system or the weak specs of the Wii or the age of the DS that's hurting them, but the tendency for Nintendo (and their 3rd party's) to ignore mainstream gamers in favor of casual and non-gamers that has caused their slump in sales.

As far as the 3DS, this Christmas will truly dictate whether the 3DS is a failure or not. To be honest, with the amount of loyal Nintendo fans out there, the brainwashed sheep that seem to accept any old crap as worthy of purchase, and the over-protective parents who try to shield their kids by buying them cutesy shovelware games their kids don't actually want, I don't see how it could possibly be a complete failure. But if Ninty and their 3rd's don't change their strategy and start catering more to the mainstream gamers as opposed to the non gamers, casuals and trying to stick to that "family friendly" mantra too much, it will never reach the popularity the Wii and DS achieved. I think that just like the retro gaming fad of around a decade ago, the casual/non-gamer market is about tapped out. Ninty "says" they are going to focus on "core" gamers more this time around, but do they even know what a "core" gamer is anymore? Well, many of those "core" gamers are waiting to see if they do or not. They aren't just blindly slapping down the cash before they know for sure that there will be games they actually want to play getting released. Ninty has betrayed quite a few people's trust by mostly ignoring the "core" gamers with the Wii and DS. They won't be fooled again. That's why I said, "What'cha gonna do, Nintendo?"

Someone in this thread asked me what's wrong with RPG's. Nothing is wrong with them, it's just that not everyone wants to play (or has the time to play) an RPG ALL THE TIME. One genre can't and shouldn't carry a whole system. Most of what is considered the best games for the DS are RPG's. That cuts out a lot of people who don't care for them, or at least people who want more than just RPG after RPG to play. I burnt-out on RPG's about 25 years ago on the old Commodore 64, where I played almost all the ones ever made for that system. I just can't get into them anymore. I try, but I usually don't even get halfway into them before I lose interest. For example, the furthest I've ever gotten in a DS RPG was 27 hours into Infinite Space before I lost interest. I got up to 66% in Fighting Fantasy before losing interest in that. They just don't do it for me anymore. Simple as that. The DS needs more than just RPG's all the time is what I meant.

Some have asked what is shovelware.....if you don't know the answer to that, then you aren't what I'd call a true gamer. Over half the DS library is shovelware. Another 20% is just bad games. I thought I was being very generous to say that 20% of the library is actually good.

How about the sadly lacking fighting game genre on the DS? Most of the ones that do exist for the DS are based on anime cartoons, many of which I've never even heard of before a DS game came out bearing its name, and very few of them were actually any good. In fact, unless I'm mistaken, there was only ever one REAL fighting game made for the DS, that was Ultimate Mortal Kombat. No Street Fighter (not even the SFII stuff, which is all I really expected), no Tekken, no King of Fighters. No REAL fighting games (except for UMK) that a hardcore gamer has ever heard of before. If it wasn't for flashcarts and the NeoGeo emulator, I wouldn't have any decent arcade fighting games for the DS at all. I never really was a fan of the MK series of games myself. Tekken and SF were more my style.

The DS completely missed an opportunity to be more than JUST a game machine for adults. With the touchscreen, it could have had a whole genre of apps that adults could have used in everyday life that would have resulted in adults carrying around a DS too, like a calculator app, an appointment/address book app, etc. But no, homebrew developers had to fill that bill. All that got officially produced in that respect was a few cookbook programs and stuff like KORG.

Or how about no-brainer games like a 2D Metroid on DS? F-Zero? Gradius? Where are those? No, instead we get RPG number 2462, we get Imagine: Baby Diapers, we get My Petzz Animalzzz, dozens of pointless hidden-object games, endless copycat puzzle games, shovelware galore......and only the occasional game that someone actually wants to play that isn't just another RPG or just try to tolerate for lack of anything else to play. The balance is way off from what mainstream gamers actually want. THAT is why I ask Nintnedo, "What'cha gonna do?"

You may ask why I'm focusing on the DS so much? Well, because other than a GBA, a PC and the emulators I have on my PC, the DS is my only current gaming device. It's what I've been focusing on for the last 7 years and so it's the most fresh in my mind to rant about. I am not a Ninty fanboy (I was actually more of a Sega fanboy in the 16bit days), nor have I been brainwashed into thinking mediocre games are to be tolerated. That line in my sig isn't just some witticism I arbitrarily came up with, it's the truth from my perspective. I was a gamer before video games were mainstream, so I think I know at least a little something about what I rant about. Just my opinion though, feel free to think whatever you like. When you get to be my age and look back over the history of video games, you will see that what I say about video games is more correct than it may seem to you right now.

And no, I haven't had a drop of alcohol (or any other intoxicant) in over a week. I might be slightly nuts by some of you guys' perspective, but I'm 100% sober right now. I'm broke and I'm bored, so I rant. Don't take it personally. I'm just in a verbose mood and none of my real-life friends give a crap about this stuff, so I post it here, where there are people who do care about such things.

Keep ranting, I only hate Nintendo for what they've done to Nintendo Video for IP blocking regions out, we don't have a fricking Nintendo Of Asia...and for no flash browser etc etc.

Games games games...?? Maybe I'm just lucky lol, I had skipped over an year of good DS games. Like 999, Ghost Trick etc now I'm catching up, busy in those. On 3DS...well I'm playing LoZ MQ.

3DS rushed or not, idc. I only care of what an year will bring into 3DS. Because you know I love waiting. Patience is something in which I'm Level 99999.

PSV (Definitely will get).

Rayder maybe you should send your rants to Nintendo if you feel that strongly about it.

Rayder, your words have a lot of truth. However, what Nintendo is doing right now is being a greedy money whore, like all companies. Why work when you can remake and get the same amount of money? They're intoxicated with their success. The PSV, however, is gonna do good because Sony needs something to come out on top.

Nintendo will (eventually) realize this, and they'll churn out the good games as well. We just need Nintendo to snap out of it.

The number of good games had not decreased.
The number of bad games has increased.

If you ignore the bad games, the DS is on par with the other systems.

Are you saying that you aren't smart enough to decide what is a good game?


Anyway, back in the NES days, publishers were allowed to publish 7 games a year. Before they were published, nintendo (not ninty, you fuckwit) would review the game. If the game scored above 95, it was not counted as one of the 7 games published that year. A company could create as many games as they wanted, assuming the games were good.

This system was considered Draconian and over-bearing by publishers and consumers alike. What you want Nintendo to do is go back to the publishing system that alienated so many companies and was hated by all? That would be a terrible idea. They would lose more publishers than they would gain.

What Nintendo has now is an open(everything's relative) style of publishing.

the brainwashed sheep that seem to accept any old crap as worthy of purchase, and the over-protective parents who try to shield their kids by buying them cutesy shovelware games their kids don't actually want,

Click to expand...

Honestly? Do you read this drivel after you're finished writing it?
Mario Kart 3DS is crap. SMB 3DS is crap? Steel diver is crap? Innovation is crap? Your ideas are crap and that's all.
Uhh, Kids don't want pokemon? They hate LOZ? They don't want to play NSMB?

Somebody should tell the kids to stop enjoying these games. If they kids shouldn't enjoy them, they should not be allowed to.

In fact, I think you (Raydar) should become a vigilante game thief. You should start running around bus stations and should and rip the portables from childrens hands screaming "Stop have fun, you motherf**king sheep! Don't you realize that I find your games sub par? Do you not also realize that I cannot conceive of a viewpoint other than my own?"

do you have 20+ thousand dollars to buy the sdk and a couple of experienced programmers to help you develop something you don't consider "shovelware"?

@paul1991returns, I feel sorry for you, you apparently didn't understand a word I wrote. I'm very sorry if my blog is above your comprehension level and you misunderstood everything I said.

It's one thing to disagree with any points I've made and present reasonable counter-points, it's a entirely different thing to twist my words, call me names and use utterly ridiculous game examples as your argument.

The games you mentioned are NOT the games rotting on store shelves, nor were they in any way the games I was calling shovelware. I'm pretty sure that EVERYONE else that has read and/or replied to this blog understands that, except you evidently. You should be ashamed of yourself, you have only managed to embarrass yourself in front of the GBAtemp community with your hateful and (quite honestly) ignorant reply.

It's pretty obvious that you are trolling and I won't bother to argue any further with someone who resorts to personal attacks and has no clue what the actual point of my blog was.

Rayder, don't pay mind to him, I'm actually still surprised that he's still here (He has two accounts...)

I still partly disagree. Feel you are being a little harsh.

I don't think Rayder is being all that harsh. I just see it as observation with interpretation. I agree with it a lot too. Don't feel like picking out specific things I do agree with, but I will say the majority falls in line with what I've seen, know, and believe.

Post is after this one below. Made a mistake lol

[quote name='Rayder' post='3796220' date='Jul 26 2011, 03:32 PM']snip[/quote]
I love your quote and I agree. Now the only thing we can do is wait. It's funny to see how Nintendo announced the price cut and the ambassadors program VERY EARLY (In my time slot) out of nowhere.
Now, I will happily play the waiting game caue things will definetely start to be interesting. Will things turn out to be better or will it go down in a similar manner to the virtual boy?

[quote name='Slyakin' post='3796302' date='Jul 26 2011, 04:03 PM']The main problem right now is that the 3DS is having a bad first year. This is almost never a good thing for initial sales, but people will begin to get more interested in the 3DS after mid 2012. At that point, 3DS sales should rise significantly compared to what they are now and Nintendo won't have to worry.

And the 3DS itself doesn't have any shovelware yet; Let's hope it stays that way.

Nintendo is having a bad 2011. They'll have a great 2012.[/quote]
It's funny you say that because 2011 must be the worst year ever in the video game industry. Not only Nintendo is affected, but Sony is as well. I'm not sure for Microsoft though.

Well....now we know the answer to the question, "What'cha gonna do Nintendo?" Let's hope it pans out for them. I think it's huge step in the right direction at any rate. The $250 price point was kinda prohibitive for what will inevitably be considered a toy that parents buy for their children (generally speaking). Now if they can only manage to keep the shovelware to a minimum, they will be fine.

Heh, I can't help but entertain the idea that my blog influenced their decision to drop the price like that. Of course I KNOW IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH MY BLOG whatsoever, but I can entertain the idea anyway, can't I? It would really be something if it did infuence their decision to drop the price, but the price drop announcement happened too quick after I made this blog to not have already been in the works.

EDIT: My whole point is made more clear:

http://news.yahoo.com/nintendo-shares-hit-...-012030237.html