Double-Edged Sword Part 2: Nintendo, Now You’re Playing With Power

Then there were four…

Enter the GameCube Nintendo’s 6^th gen home console that was a small wonder packed to the gills with big & efficient tech. What also came into the mix were Sony’s Playstation 2, Sega’s Dreamcast and eventually Microsoft’s Xbox. Yes, another challenger Microsoft entered the fray shortly after the shameful end of one of one the console gaming giants Sega. I shall cover Sega later on a possibly new article if I’m driven to do such. This time around Ninty came out swinging with their tiny bite sized powerhouse only to be slightly dwarfed by Microsoft’s machine the Xbox. Though, Nintendo being the quirky uncle always with interesting stories to tell threw caution to the wind and created a new mini-disk that would be their storage medium of choice. The small stature of this system was not to be scoffed at when games were to be concerned. Big titles and new IP’s were shelled out with this tiny soldier while it seemed that the power and the  games were there it seemed the monkey that was on Nintendo’s back from the previous gen was still there. The developers just seemed like they didn’t want to be there coming up with reasons like the disk was hard to work with and couldn’t maintain like the DVD’s the competitor’s. Until games like Capcom Resident evil zero, the acclaimed Resident evil 4 have shown the graphical ability and optical media of choice clearly wasn’t in the way. Even so Nintendo along with the likes of silicone knight developed a game of such surreal mental thriller which was also a mature title of many to release on the platform. It seemed that they just couldn’t find their footing even when the bow out of Sega as a console maker and demoting itself to a 3^rd party developer was imminent.

Microsoft’s Xbox came out of the shadows of the Dreamcast demise they were to become the 1^st home console that took some PC features like Hard Drives, Ethernet port for broadband internet and most importantly the Xbox Live service. Taking their mother platform the windows OS will be the seeds to be sown for MS later. Sony Playstation 2 was the weakest system of that generation due to the popularity of its last iteration and the ability to watch DVD’s amongst the intense marketing of the console Sony had the industry by the balls and took the world by storm. I wasn’t impressed by what most PS2 had but, I did have the Dreamcast, GameCube and the Xbox plenty of my peers swore by this machine. I could see Nintendo was in dire straits and actually was starting to feel the pinch especially when Xbox started to gain ground with the rise of the Halo franchise along with the online culture starting to take hold in the home console market. Gamecube by the way of just not being able to recapture what they lost from a generation past was vastly underperforming. Though, Profits were still large simply because the company in its entirety still has money flowing into their vaults like a golden waterfall in Scrooge Mcduck’s gold chamber. Nintendo continued to garner more sales by creating such tech as the Gameboy player to tie in the portable market into their home console possibly to help the sales. At the end of it all regardless of countless deals brought together by collaborations and time exclusive deals it seemed while the Gamecube wasn’t a commercial success it also was not a complete failure. Much was learned in this generation and graphical ability and mature audiences wasn’t the bane to Nintendo’s dominance. It was much more to be learned but, some seeds were sown in Nintendo’s field like wireless controls. I believe if Nintendo had developed a better relationship with Nintendo the Gamecube would’ve succeeded much more so than it did. Nintendo came to the end of its second straight generation where it has lost more market share in the console market while remaining the king of the portable market remaining a financially solvent company.

  Here Wii goooo! Like good old Mario would say the big N went in and had fun with this outing and that’s exactly what happened when the vastly underpowered Nintendo Wii was released for the 7^th console generation. Arriving late to the party alongside the Sony PS3 after the year early released Xbox 360 Nintendo came out swinging with their Wii sports IP which helped the consumers to fully understand what Nintendo was out to do this time around. Fun was to be had with the new motion controllers with its wiimote and nun chuck and that is what happened. So, much the Wii actually brought in new types of gamers from the 6 years olds to the geriatric of gamers. Nintendo when creating this console decided to go their route from here on out though, spending big investments on cutting edge technologies wasn’t prudent on their financial ends. Microsoft and Sony have experienced losses producing their consoles in the hopes of making a long-term profit on software sales; Nintendo reportedly optimized production costs to obtain a significant profit margin with each Wii unit sold. So, they just added an extension of their previous hardware’s architecture and added revolutionary controls that are to change the game from here on out. Though it could not compete graphically with the two other consoles the sheer numbers of units sold rip the competition a new one so much so that they had to emulate some things that this little train that could brought to the table like motion controls. There were HD systems abroad brought to us by the Xbox360 and the Playstation 3 and the Wii was simply critically acclaimed games like the Mario Galaxy series, Wii sports, Wii party along with the extensive back catalog of Nintendo and other 8 to 16 third party developers for Nintendo’s own virtual console service. Kept this console off of the self because everyone had to have this new way of video gaming for 2 years it was very hard to acquire this title in North America. Through the world it broke records though as this generation was crazy long the limited power the Wii had started to putter due to the HD visuals and graphical powerhouses sold much more games and gained in population. The Wii still was the winner of Gen 7 and brought in so many new gamers into the market they also alienated their hardcore audiences the same ones that has been with them since the NES days.

Throughout this generation the Wii gave developers the chance to create new unknown experiences not used before which brought games exclusive to this console. It was amazing to see how in the mix of HD powerhouse a small tike like the Wii could out box them in providing the gaming community with unique pleasurable moments. We are in the 8^th generation now it has just begun with the year early release of the Wii U in 2012 with PS4 and Xbox One releasing holiday 2013. The competition is steep and the Big N is still evolving their company in many ways why remaining profitable. While Sony and Microsoft’s consoles seemingly catching up on a full year of low sales from Nintendo. I believe it will be their newly enriched relationship with the independent developers that will make the Wii U future shine bright when its present might look bleak.

Thanks for staying with me I hope you enjoyed your stay.