Actually I have a degree in business management.
No, no, no. No one "abandoned" Sega.
Not one of you guys have taken a business class, huh? Learn to read balance sheets and do case studies.
Sega did a lot right when it came to appeasing its audience, both developers and gamers....as you pointed out...so your last paragraph doesn't even align with Sega's story. Sega failed due to mismanaged business practices, pure and simple. The Dreamcast was well received, sold well, and had a bright future. McDonalds can have as many sales per day as people in the United States, but bad business and financial decisions can put anyone out of business. Never had an uncle that had a decent amount of cash flow and somehow managed to lose it all?
For the rest of you who think its "weird" that Nintendo is still around...yeah, they're still around...with 18 Billion USD on hand and 0 debt. Sony's entire net worth is 17.7 billion (including their electronics, entertainment, and various other divisions). Nintendo isn't exactly the underdog when it comes to resources on hand.
Nintendo's "problem" is that they play it safe, and truly, LEARNED from Sega's mistake. Nintendo takes very careful, calculated decisions, putting out consoles and games that will turn them a profit even *if* they don't sell in the multi-millions. Why would they go appeasing gamers and developers if all of their employees go home with raises and bonuses year after year? They're not catering to *you*....but they're stable, and they're not going anywhere. Will they relive their past glory of golden age gaming? Doubt it. That kind of magic won't return as Miyamoto gets older, softer, and more out of touch with western tastes.
Sony is bending over backwards, deciding to continue to sell hardware at losses, gambling with game sales to reap profits...they're making the risky ventures. Exciting...and possibly could lead to their downfall. We've seen this exact scenario before, and oh how quickly people forget.
.but Gamecube a beast?
Their decision making process is too archaic for today's standards. They're too closed and really don't listen to industry trends at all.
Sure. More power than a PS2 and did somethings better than the Xbox that was like twice the size.
To call it a power house is a stretch. I am not even going to touch that PS2 thing, I could tell you're a big Nintendo fan!
I guess you could call me a Gamecube fan, I picked one up at the end of its life (like when it went for $99 with a game) and ended up really liking it.
And I know it wasn't quite the Xbox, but it certainly had more power than the PS2.
Sure. More power than a PS2 and did somethings better than the Xbox that was like twice the size.
And yet if they had a real Zelda game and a Mario (kart) game ready to launch with the Wii U we are probably singing a different song today.
Nintendo's problem isn't that their model doesn't match some Western achievement driven rat race, the problem is that they are failing THEIR OWN MODEL. Nintendo's bread and butter is a mix of new IP and traditional IP. Their problem is that they have been slow getting out games with the old IP, and the new IP they created during the Wii era (Sports, Fit, etc.) are pretty much worthless today.
I don't want them to try to move up to the scale of the PS4 and Xbone for that reason- it is obvious that they have problems using all the power of the Wii U in first party titles! They will never make a game with the scale of the hundred million dollar Grand Theft Autos, they can't. And that is fine as long as the games we do get are great.
Do like Capcom did with Mega Man 9, or Square did with FF4 The After Years! Give us a badass side-scrolling Super Mario 4 on a $100 console. I would sign up for that. And it wouldn't compete directly with the Wii U.
Nope, it doesn't matter what you have at launch or whatever. See...there is no third party support. Look at the games over the last couple years and you'll see that most of the big ones aren't exclusives at all and that most of them never appear on Nintendo hardware.
If Nintendo released a very slightly upgraded ps4 spec from amd in 2017 and gave reference systems to developers with industry standard licensing agreements, they would have tons of 3rd party titles at launch. It would be trivially easy to port to it because it would only be slightly different from the ps4 and Xbox1Xbox1. If it's faster, then a direct port would require less effort than porting to Xbox.
Yeah it probably won't happen, but it would be their best move.
Regarding voice chat, that's for their own internal IP. they wouldn't block 3rd parties, given that they included cod.
It's still something that they need to get their head out of their ass with. It's expected that voice chat is standard in a multiplayer game and their reason for keeping it out is not convincing.
I'm glad Nintendo keeps voice chat out of their games. My kids can play Nintendo games and I don't have to worry about what they're hearing. If I want voice chat I'll play on my PC or PS3. They're right, there's a lot of negative and disrespectful people that you have deal with when voice chat is involved. I'm certainly smart enough to mute people I don't want to hear, but a lot of us don't want to deal with that in the first place, especially those of us with kids. I'm not sure how that argument isn't convincing, it makes perfect sense.
For some reason this thread has turned into people arguing that a Nintendo console should be just like an XBOX or Playstation. I'm happy to have an alternative and I hope they don't change. Do you really need a third console to play COD on?
I find this line of conversation interesting. The same ones blasting Nintendo for the way they are doing things are the ones that gave MS and Sony all the leeway in the way they were doing things. I'm sorry, but Sony and MS have really dropped the ball this gen too. It was all about rushing out the consoles, with very little content. It really surprises me that they've sold as well as they have. Most people I know with any of the 3 are gathering dust while they play PC. (or they still play 360/PS3). It would do them all well to slow down, and not announce games until further along in development.
I guess there is the indie stuff coming to the stores, but that is really about it. Overall there is much less 3rd party support on any of them, and even less first party. 3DS is the same way. When half of your catalog is re-releases/half-@assed HD re-releases for the 4th time of the same game, it's time to re-evaluate what you are trying to accomplish. Sadly, most people STILL buy this stuff over and over.
I simply refuse to continuously rebuy the same games over and over on new consoles. I'll pirate the old versions and play on an emulator if I feel I just have to play something again, but I'm not giving any more dimes to the same re-releases....you know..like that new megaman collection coming out that is less games than the LAST time it was released 10 years ago (and we are expected to be excited about it?)
You know what you do? Don't connect the headset or force it to mute all. That's obviously too hard for people, or Nintendo thinks everyone is 8 years old. The demographic that spends the most money on games will use voice chat and all that. Keeping it out because someone may hear a word they don't like is a pathetic excuse.
It's not like everyone wants CoD on a 3rd system (4th if you count PC). It's that they want a reason to care about the system at all. At least it's that way for me. Without 3rd party support, without a solid network, without voice chat it's always going to sit on the shelf in the store rather than be hooked up to my TV. I don't even think I could buy a WiiU for Zelda...that's only one game that I'll probably finish in a couple weeks and never touch the console again.
Agreed. Nintendo isn't getting a huge installed base on a traditional home console ever again. Just look at the Dreamcast. Look at all the lessons Sega learned from the Saturn. With the Dreamcast they made a powerful system, made it cost effective, easy to program. Hell they bent over backwards so crazy for developers they even partnered with Microsoft for some Windows tools on the thing. Right out the gate they came blasting with Soul Calibur and Sonic Adventure, what Xtreme should have been. And in the brief two years the system existed it just kept hammering out quality titles one after the other like crazy.
And.no.fucks.were.given.
if you piss off developers and gamers long enough, eventually they'll abandon you for good. I think that's more or less what Nintendo has done. And somehow I highly doubt they're even truly ready to learn from all their mistakes like Sega was.
No, it's not a pathetic excuse, it's a valid reason, you just don't like it. If a game uses voice chat and you choose not to then you are at a distinct disadvantage, if the game doesn't use voice chat at all then it's a level playing field. That much should be obvious. It doesn't mean that Nintendo doesn't know what they're doing or that they think you're too stupid to mute someone, it's a conscious decision.
There's a bunch of great games on the WiiU right now, but it sounds like you don't like most of them. That's fine, it just means the WiiU isn't the right system for you. You already have a PC, XBOX, and Playstation that does everything that you want. You're not going to buy a Nintendo console unless it does everything that those 3 systems do as well, we get it.
There's no disadvantage to mute players if you don't wanna talk. That's an excuse. I've played Battlefield many times with no voice chat enabled, also CoD before, Halo, Destiny.
The disadvantage he's trying to articulate is that you are muted while the other team has the advantage of voice chat. I personally don't take video games serious enough to ever wear a headset, so my team is always at a disadvantage because they have a member who isn't receiving or transmitting voice commands. All other things being equal, if my team doesn't use voice chat and the other team does, the team using voice chat is going to win.
Not necessarily. I never felt a difference because when I did use a headset we talked about stuff unrelated to the game anyhow.