Cultural Blinders Lead to Nintendo Fallacy

obchrisj writes "A week long, unscientific poll on FileFront found 61% agreeing with the notion that Nintendo will soon be "going the way of Sega." In an editorial on their website, they ask Nintendo reps and industry analysts what the future of Nintendo really is, taking a glance at the DS, GameCube, and Revolution consoles. Slashdot recently reported on poor sales performance for Nintendo's GameCube. From the editorial: 'According to O'Rourke, Nintendo's U.S. market position has conditioned North American gamers to believe the company's global fortunes are equally down. Such "Nintendo is dying!" hysteria is largely a product of this cultural tunnel vision.'"

Comments

Hype Machines

[clu76]

Nintendo got caught in the middle of two of the world's largest hype machines, Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo is big, but those companies are huge in comparison. They had the ability to come out and market their systems in ways not possible before. And if you still believe the cube is for kiddies, then you too fell for the hype.

That being said, I don't think Nintendo is going the way of Sega. They are still way to profitable, for that to happen.

Re:Hype Machines

[ayersrj]

I agree. It's really a lot about marketing, and also control on the retail level. Open up your Sunday ads in the paper today. Sure you may see a small corner hyping the Gamecube plus probably Resident Evil 4, and maybe another game or two.

Look across the page and you'll see half of a page dedicated to both the XBox and the PS2, hyping Halo 2, GTA, Mercenaries, and a lot of crappy drivel that gets released for both.

It's been like this for well over a year, but retail has shown a great deal of favortism to PS2 and XBox, long before Cube fell to a distant 3rd int he market. Same thing happened with Dreamcast as well. I wonder if video game companies pay for placement like consumer products do in grocery stores?

Marketing is a bit of a problem too...

[redivider]

Aside from a few games, namely Resident Evil 4, Metroid Prime 2, and that last Zelda game (4 swords or whatever), you don't see too much mainstream marketing for GameCube games. And even then, I think sometimes they miss the mark. The ads for MP2 were pretty lame. They focused on the fact that Samus is female and then showed like 5 seconds of actual gameplay. It's one thing to try to sell Extreme Beach Volleyball by playing up the naked chicks, but Metroid? Yeah she's a female, but its not really obvious in the gameplay and you never really see her in the game since its in first person perspective.

For the PS2 and Xbox, though, I see ads for even the most obscure games. That probably has a lot to do with the fact that those consoles have more third-party support. But as far as public perception goes, it just makes it seem like the GameCube isn't as good. Not to me, but I know a lot of people who just assume because they hardly see any commercials that there aren't any good games.

Everyone I know has a PS2. I know 2 people that have Xbox and (now) 2 people that have GameCube. After 2+ years or raving about Metroid Prime, Eternal Darkness, Zelda, and the Resident Evil games, I finally convinced one other person to get a GameCube. I think Resident Evil 4 was the one that did it. And deservedly so... It's an amazing game. But I can't blame Capcom for probably regretting the decision to go exclusive with the GameCube. You can safely assume that RE4 would sell twice as many copies on the PS2... which is why it's eventually coming out on Sony's console.

Even the game publishers/developers don't seem to have faith in the GameCube. And I'm not sure I do either. I have complete faith in Nintendos ability to make great games. I've consistently had all around better experiences with more GameCube games than anything else in the past couple years. But I'm really starting to agree that they're heading in the wrong direction and if they go too far, won't be able to come back.

The big Nintendo problem...

[CashCarSTAR]

The biggest problem that Nintendo has it this. In order to compete on Nintendo's system, you have to beat Nintendo itself. And that's hard. You have to beat Metriod Prime 1 and 2, you have to beat Smash Brothers, you have to beat Wind Waker, and so on. It's hard. So either you do a multi-platform series, just to make it a must-play, a big title.

But what the Gamecube is lacking is the big 3rd-party exclusives. But the ones that are there..well..they tend to be either big or small. Big games, like Resident Evil 4, or little games like Ikaragua seem to get the best return.

WTF is FileFront?

[JaseOne]

FileFront had a poll and produced a result and I am supposed to take it as gospel why exactly?

I've never heard of FileFront before and I'm quite the internet junkie so how in any way what so ever do they represent Nintendo's marketshare? Nintendo's target market isn't Slashdotters and the like and I'm sorry folks but we're in the minority, just think Pokemon.