Last edited Mon Jan 20, 2014, 10:32 AM - Edit history (1)
.. Nintendo failed to meet their sales projections for the 3DS by almost a third. That's a huge gap, and it's why their shares just nose-dived by almost 20%.
You're welcome to enjoy the Wiii U just as you're welcome to enjoy the Dreamcast. As I said, the Dreamcast had some strengths. In the end it was still a failed console and marked the end of Sega's console presence.
The reality is that Nintendo is in cascade failure.
They failed to recognize that the console market was moving to a unified hardware architecture with PC that allows developers to code for consoles and PC simultaneously. This alienates them from 3rd party developers now that Xbox One and PS4 are in the market, especially with dozens of Steam-boxes hitting the market this year which developers can easily adopt to from Steam, Xbox, or Playstation.
They failed to respect their consumers and, instead, implemented an antiquated and anti-customer region locking system that resulted in millions of loyal customers getting locked out of their favorite titles for absolutely no reason.
They have consistently failed across multiple systems to create a working account based online platform. This alienates them from both developers and gamers. It especially alienates them from loyal Nintendo fans who lose tons of money on virtual purchases when they experience a hardware failure or move to a new system.
They have failed and continue to fail in exercising even the most elementary of marketing concepts by insisting on pushing all of their marketing efforts through a channel that is only being consumed by a small fraction of their most loyal fans. This destroys their relations with the general market as well as pisses off game industry journalism channels.
What you see as a "setback" is being (correctly) recognized as a long string of failures finally reaching a critical mass that prevents long term (and possibly medium term) success. Nintendo could turn their sinking ship around by fixing these problems, but each of these problems represents a foundational pillar of Nintendo that will require a profound culture shift to fix.
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