Why Nintendo Will Always Be Okay, Regardless Of The Game Market Changes
I grew up with a NES. And man was it awesome. Mario 3, Final Fantasy, Snow Bros, Battletoads, Double Dragon 3, Mega Man, Punch-out, Zelda, Duck Tales. The list of games goes on and on. I spent hours playing it. I had the power glove (which I have to say did not work, you just flailed wildly and it didn't get you very far). I read issue after issue of the Nintendo Power magazine. I even had that running pad for the track and field game. It was the most exercise I got :p. This was what we used before dance dance came out. I have fond memories of the system and the characters. Which brings me to the first reason why Nintendo will always be able to survive as a company: Franchises.
Everyone recognizes Super Mario, he is as iconic as Mickey Mouse. He can be on a Nintendo console or a cell phone, his games will gather an audience. But Nintendo's licenses don't stop there. Do you remember that Pokémon Go craze (hey spell checker added the accent to the e) last summer? Nintendo owns Pikachu and the rest of them. One of the top selling games this year, Breath Of The Wild, that is part of the Zelda series, another huge franchise. It's on like Donkey Kong, yep, Nintendo. They even have an expression :p. Punch-out. Star Fox. I haven't played it but there is a lot of support for Splatoon. Animal Farm. Yoshi. Nintendo owns all of these and more. And this means that if you want to play any of them you have to own a Nintendo system or play their select games they are releasing on phones.
The second reason why Nintendo will hold as a company is they do there own thing and it works. Back in the day things started to look grim when the Gamecube was out. Third party games were kicking ass and they could not run on the Nintendo console. It just did not have the processing power. So what did Nintedo do? They released the Wii with motion controls. The system sold like crazy. It didn't matter if you couldn't play COD or Assassin Creed, you could play tennis with a wiimote. Then they released the Wii U, which had a screen on the controller and it didn't sell as well. But then you have the Switch. Back to selling like hot cakes. Nintendo knows they don't have to follow the rest of their market to make an impact. They can be different and successful.
The future of gaming is looking like esports and cloud gaming. Consoles might be on the decline. Sony and Microsoft might have to change there business models in the new future. But Nintendo. They will come out without another new to play games or release a catalogue of games that will require you to play on their system. And if that doesn't work, they always have nostalgia to keep us busy :p.
Did you have a favourite game? Let me know in the comments.
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I don't think e-sports and cloud gaming are the only direction in which games are going.
E-sports - yeah, but that will always be a pretty fringe group of the total number of gamers - the same way professional sports people are only a small part of the total number of people who do sports.
Cloud stuff - yes this will happen as well, but only to a certain degree, because only big studios will have the money to afford the servers.
What I see coming up in games a lot is the rise of hmm... what to call it... "mainstreamization" - i know it's not a word, but as time progresses - gaming will become more and more of a thing anyone can do, the same way other new technologies were in the past.
Yeah I agree with that as well. I forgot to add mobile, I guess that goes under mainstreamization. As a gamer though I do hope we have both casual and hardcore games and don't lose one to the other.
Mario will be around forever, but I am not sure Nintendo consoles will be around in 20 years. I guess we'll see.
I agree with this. I actually think they could make even better quality games if that was their sole focus and they got out of the hardware space.
It is definitely a possibility, with games be streamed we might lose all consoles. I just feel there is chance Nintendo will come out with something different every few years that might keep it in the hardware business. Play the new Mario, with holograms.