|
I personally really like Nintendo. However, I recently went to a talk on the recent sales figures in the games industry, (by a woman from Sega, in fact!) and it's looking pretty bleak in the console wars, at least.
I don't think Nintendo is going anywhere, they're too big and they're smart enough that they didn't stake everything on their console. But Sony is seriously winning the console wars, they have the majority of the market share and MS and Nintendo are splitting the difference. Many people believe Sony will continue their dominance in the next round, too, with the PS3, which could really do serious damage to Nintendo. Also, GTAIII was a huge boost to Sony, of course. a single hit like that would certainly turn Nintendo's fortunes around.
As a Nintendo fan, I hope they pull out, soon. I really like the bouncy, colorful "childish" feel of lots of Nintendo games... I have a PC to play dark gritty stuff on, but for colorful platformers, I want a console. Plus, Miyamoto is a genius, and a lot of Nintendo's game designs are original and innovative.
To do so, I think they need two things: First, the Sega data revealed that most people think a GameCube costs the same as the other consoles... So while Nintendo is trying to fight a price war, they're not getting the message out that their console is a lot cheaper than anyone else's. I think this would do a lot for sales.
The other has been mentioned a lot on here, which is getting rid of the "childish" image they've got. Personally, I'm not sure about this one, Nintendo's reputation was built on their code for video games, which ensured that they were family-friendly. Changing that image might do more harm than good if videogame-violence debates kick up once more. It would be like Disney shedding their image and producing gore-fests. They might sell well with a particular market, but ultimately they would do Disney's fluffy image more harm than the revenue could fix. However, Nintendo has already broken that barrier, since they have things like Resident Evil and Soul Calibur 2, but they obviously haven't gotten that message out. Really, they're in the worst position possible: They can't claim to be fluffy and free of sharp edges, but no one knows their dark and bloody side.
As a funny side note, the number-one difference GameCube owners gave to Sega that their platform was different from the other consoles, was the cute little discs that the games came on.
Bingle
|