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DayLahs

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The top 7 Nintendo mistakes

http://www.gamesradar.com/us/wii/game/features/article.jsp?releaseId=20060308165433320026&articleId=2007040911262588028§ionId=1003&pageId=20070409112833629059

Anywhere you look in the world today, you'll see evidence of Sony's continuing downfall. It seems like every time someone from Sony opens his mouth, we want to twist our own heads off in disbelief. Can't that damn company go one day without embarrassing itself?

But if you think Sony's too cocky, arrogant and detached from the consumer base, you apparently weren't around for Nintendo's heyday. It was once just as influential, bossy and jerkish as Sony is today, and then some. Imagine a company with total control of an industry, where its word is law and no one can stand up against its decrees. Then imagine it falling from power so hard that companies practically lined up to walk on its back.

These are the mistakes that led to Nintendo's downfall. Sure, it's a lovely time for the company now, but if history repeats, Sony will fall, leaving someone else, possibly Nintendo, to get fat and lazy all over again. And by our reckoning, even its current console powerhouse is a possible misstep in the making.

7 - Creating the Wii

Can the same magic that made the DS an international phenomenon happen with a console? Nintendo's betting on it. Betting it all, really.

Because what do you do next? Five years from now, when the PS4 and NextBox show up, they're going to jump in hardware power again. And then Nintendo's left with a machine that looks two generations old instead of one. The motion controls, now considered somewhere in between "the best damn thing that's ever happened in the world" to "gimmicky stupid childish nonsense," will be super played out and exploited. Unless there's some other gameplay innovation on the horizon, Wii could be viewed as a fad, susceptible to the same fickle emotions that killed snap bracelets, pet rocks and Sega. And if Nintendo bites the bullet and gives the machine a visual kick in the pants, well there goes its whole mantra that graphics don't matter. There's just enough steam with this idea to last one generation, and none after that.

Today, the Wii is insanely popular with almost every audience. But if this wave of good vibes ever ends, Nintendo's gonna be stranded. Casuals will be tired of Wii Sports, with no interest in shelling out $50 for a Wii Sports 2, and the typical gamer will me more interested in playing something with a normal controller, one you don't have to clear the room for.

Sure we love Super Paper Mario and can't wait to see Super Smash Bros. Brawl, but do either of these games have anything to do with the Wii Remote's primary function? Nope. And most third party games that find their way onto the system have control setups that baffle even the most hardcore of gamers. Hold B while flicking up to swing a punch? Please. Nintendo better have some crazy unique ideas coming up or we'll have to start clutching our DS systems even closer.

6 - The Virtual Boy

"Eye Advisory: Virtual Boy is for players 7 years and older" - Virtual Boy box

No list of mistakes would be complete without mentioning the world's favorite piece-o-crap gaming device. Launched in 1995, just as the SNES was fading and a year before the N64 would arrive, this "portable" machine was stricken from memory the moment it hit the shelves. For some reason, Nintendo thought people would actually want to strap their heads into a clunky headset that only displayed red visuals on a black background (and caused incredible eye strain after moderate use). The faux-3D images looked like a Game Boy trapped in a crimson-laced Tron nightmare, never once offering the supposed "32-bit" processing power promised on the box.

It was ugly, It was heavy. It was uncomfortable. It was confusing. It was almost 200 damn dollars. Within a year you could find these things for $25, games for $10 and eager merchants desperately trying to get this abomination out of their stores. In a way, the Virtual Boy was the true beginning of the end for Nintendo's unquestioned dominance, the first bizarre misstep in a series of horrible mistakes. Some came before, sure, but they were obscured by the fact that Nintendo was the only game in town. In '95, Sega had chewed up half of the audience and Sony was ready for the rest - a product as ill-conceived as the Virtual Boy couldn't have struck at a worse time.

Virtual Boy's creator, the late Gunpei Yokoi, resigned from Nintendo following this disaster. It's a shame he left (or was forced to leave, as some surprise), as Yokoi is also the father of the gazillion-selling Game Boy. Who knows what other joys he could have brought to this world if he hadn't left the company?

5 - An ongoing battle against online gaming

"Customer's don't want online games." - Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, 2004

"More than six million people are Xbox Live members." - Microsoft press release, 2007

While this quote from Japan Economic Foundation may sound inaccurate today, what with Nintendo's Wi-Fi Connection and all, but three years ago the company couldn't have been more anti-online. While Sega Saturn offered a modem, Nintendo never even approached the idea with the N64. A few years later, Dreamcast had a modem built in, the Xbox shipped with broadband support and PS2 rolled out its own way to take the system online. What did GameCube provide? A half-assed broadband adaptor that supported Phantasy Star Online games with zero first-party backing. If you wanted to game online, you did not play with Nintendo.

The rationale, for the time, wasn't without reason - most Japanese players got online in public places, not their homes. Even though the rest of the gaming world goes the other way, Nintendo was more concerned with its homeland than appealing to any other audience. Fair enough, but this led to Microsoft dominating the market with the attractive and easy-to-use Xbox Live.

And once Nintendo finally embraced online gaming, what did we get? Horrendous 16-digit Friend Codes that must be traded before you can play another person. Oh, and these codes aren't system specific - there are different codes for every game you buy. Who needs clever, easy to remember Gamertags when you've got a string of forgettable numbers to trade with each new title? Maybe they're safe for kids; maybe they're total pains in the ass too.

Even with the Wi-Fi Connection going strong on DS, there's still very little effort being put into Wii's online presence. When was the last time you sent a message to someone? Why do we have to wait six months before playing one damn Wii game online in the US (and when we do, it'll be Pokemon Battle Revolution )? If Nintendo had just embraced online gaming when it was in its infancy, it could be the one monopolizing the internet gamer community. As it is, that crowd belongs entirely to Microsoft, and with PS3's Home on the way, we need more than some cutesy Mii people running around to convince us of Nintendo's commitment to one of the fastest growing aspects of modern gaming.

4 - Censorship and the unshakable "kiddy" image

If you're trying to sell video games to kids in the '80s, the last thing you want to be seen as is "uncool." But for a while there it seemed like Nintendo was going out of its way to look and act like a parent desperately trying to protect his children from the outside world yet also appear hip and "with it." Initial censorship, like removing overt religious icons or scenarios from Japanese games, made sense. Scantily clad women would often receive a few extra strands of clothing, that's nothing too crazy either. But the constant badgering of third parties to remove references to Hitler or words such as "devil," "death" or "hell," had to be grating. Even more so when Nintendo's main rival, Sega, didn't seem to really mind a lot of the same content. Sega also left the precious blood in the first home port of Mortal Kombat - Nintendo saw fit to force publisher Acclaim to replace the blood with sweat.

With this one act, the thought that Nintendo was a little too family friendly came out into the open for all the playgrounds and college dorms to see. We can't rip off someone's head in the Super NES Mortal Kombat? Fine. See you at Matt's house. He has a Genesis.

Once Mortal Kombat II came to the SNES, the blood was a go, due to the verbal and sales thrashing Nintendo received. But this problem isn't about lost sales, it's about perception. After this point, it wasn't "cool" to like Nintendo anymore. All the fanatics of the '80s were ga-ga over Sonic the Hedgehog, and all the mushroom-eating plumbers in the world couldn't make the company seem as edgy as Sega. To top it all off, once the videogame violence topic hit congress, Nintendo brought its own version of MK to prove how "safe" its version was compared to Sega's uncensored Kombat. Essentially, Nintendo was tattling on Sega. If there's a better way to simultaneously look like an asshat and make the other guy appear cool as hell, we'd love to hear it.

Nintendo, once the epitome of cool, was surpassed by Sega, then by Sony and astonishingly fast by Microsoft (the Xbox went from non-issue to major player in about a month). And whenever it tried to cover this image up with the "in your face" ads of the "Play It Loud" era, kids across the country were smart enough to tell the difference between real cool and real stupid.

3 - Pissing off the third parties from day one

There's no denying that Nintendo brought the videogame industry back from the brink of disaster. You also can't deny how much it used this leverage to lord over anyone who wanted to use the insanely successful NES to make money. If you could get a game published on the first Nintendo system, you had it made. But first you had to jump through whatever hoops Nintendo laid out for you. And you did it with a big fake smile on your face.

First you had to place an order for Nintendo-made cartridges - minimum of 10,000 - and Nintendo makes money off of each sold cart. Then you had to submit your game and all its related aspects (commercials, artwork, all of it) to Nintendo for approval. If it wanted to, Nintendo could censor whatever it liked.

The best part is the strict limit Nintendo placed upon its software rivals. No matter how many games you'd like to sell, you could only produce five games per year on the system. The thought was, if you can only make five per year, they're bound to be good, right? Not a bad idea... unless you're trying to make back the costs of buying all those blasted NES carts. Oh, and you couldn't release the game on any other platform for two effing years. That kinda stung too.

As game prices rose in the mid-'90s, Nintendo was able to put out its own games at reasonable cost - meanwhile, third parties, still paying cartridge royalties, had to bump their prices up to break even, causing another rift between the money Publisher X gobbled up versus the vast riches Nintendo usurped. With a near-90% stranglehold on the videogame marketplace, anything the company wanted, it got. Until congress got wind of this, that is.

After a hailstorm of bad press and allegations of monopolistic practices, Nintendo was more or less forced to ease up on its restrictions. Publishers could freely put their games on rival platforms (ensuring the Genesis' success) and could also finally control their gaming orders and inventory. But the point is, it took the actions of Washington to make it happen, and once it did, software publishers were all too ready to hand out their once-exclusive titles to someone else.

Cut to today, when Nintendo's allegedly not giving third parties access to its all-important Mii code, or info on how to take a Wii game online. The past two Nintendo platforms, N64 and GameCube, started strong with third parties, then fell flat after the first two years. Will the Wii be any different?

2 - Pretty much everything involving the Nintendo 64

Remember those pricy cartridges we mentioned earlier? Imagine having to continue paying for them in a time when Sega and Sony both went to CD, an immensely cheaper medium that also allowed much greater storage capacity. That's what publishers had to deal with during the entire run of the N64 (1996 through 2001). As the rest of the gaming world switched to an established format, Nintendo stuck to its proprietary-formatted guns, ensuring slightly higher prices for games and lesser quality sound for an entire generation. Count how many memorable soundtracks there were on the PlayStation. Then look at the N64. Pretty grim, eh?

But it wasn't about sound, obviously. Developers wanted to use these fancy new 3D graphics to tell stories, to show players worlds that just weren't possible on the Genesis and SNES. The N64's power was fine, but the limited storage space and high price of an N64 cart prevented games like Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy VII from even being possible on the system. Squaresoft was once an all-Nintendo publisher, giving the company its valued Final Fantasy series exclusively. Once Square jumped ship and ran to Sony and its lovely CD format, the console war was already over. Hello cutscenes, hello CD-quality music, hello beautiful presentation.

But before the war had even begun, Nintendo was pissing people off. Instead of courting as many third party developers as possible, it tried to focus on a small number of hand-picked developers to keep its system afloat. Nintendo actually had the balls to call it a "dream team," basically saying to everyone else, "if you you're not part of our clique, oh well." As a result, the bountiful support Nintendo enjoyed on the SNES was drying up, and its own titles were trickling out too slow to pick up the slack.

We're still not done. The N64's controller was the most ghastly thing the world had seen since the Virtual Boy. Yeah, the analog stick was revolutionary, but did you look at the rest of this beast? Did you ever see a non-gamer or even a casual player try to hold it after playing a PlayStation game? It was painful. Hell, even us seasoned gamers couldn't get over the plastic trident, clearly designed to work with Mario and Zelda alone. Third parties had a constant battle to map controls that made sense onto the controller. It was especially unfriendly to fighting games, so no Tekken, Street Fighter or Soul Edge for us. Even more titles lost to Sony.

Then there's the 64DD, a laughable add-on that answered a question nobody ever asked. The re-writable discs were yet another Nintendo-owned property it could charge for, and its key titles were... wait a second, there were no key titles. Let's just move on. It's like Nintendo didn't watch add-ons kill Sega a few years earlier.

The N64 may have spawned some of the best games ever made, but honestly, how many systems can make the same claim? Sure we adore Ocarina of Time, Goldeneye 007 and Super Mario 64, but most of the other titles are crap. This entire console generation was like watching a king get quartered in front of the entire village. And you know what? Our number one mistake explains why it's all Nintendo's fault.

1 - Opening the doors to PlayStation

If there's one moment in time that forever changed the videogame world, it's the day Nintendo stabbed Sony in the back in front of the whole world.

Multimedia isn't much of a buzzword these days, but back in the early '90s, it was everything. Entire libraries could fit on a disc, symphonies could finally sound crystal clear and even educational games could be played all off of one disc. CD-ROM supporters wanted this medium in as many hands as possible, and Nintendo was the best possible way to get it there.

Electronics superstar Philips decided to ally itself with Nintendo and bring a CD attachment to the Super NES. With Nintendo's clout, Philips' CD tech could reach millions in record time. It seemed like a mutually beneficial setup - except for the fact that Nintendo had already signed a contract with Sony in 1988 for pretty much the exact same thing.

This contract had Sony creating a "Play Station" that would feature an SNES cartridge port and a CD slot for new, enhanced games. Problem was, this contract gave Sony complete control over any CD-based games that touched the system, Mario included. Once Nintendo's president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, realized that he would not have the final say on something with Nintendo's name on it, he demanded a solution that put Nintendo back in the saddle. The result was announcing the new partnership with Phillips during the 1991 CES trade show, despite the fact that Sony had just announced the Nintendo-powered Play Station the night before.

This slap in the face was unheard of for several reasons. First, a Japanese company ditching another for a foreign rival was unspeakable. Second, such blatant disregard for contracts made the company appear like a power-hungry monster, always trying to get its way regardless of who it has to humiliate or crush. Third, how the hell did Yamauchi's signature get on that Sony contract in the first place? Nintendo had made its vast fortune on licensing games, so hearing that it gave Sony the rights to any and all future CD titles was appalling.

The three giant companies did finally work out a crazy ménage a trios agreement, but wouldn't you know it, the whole deal fell apart. Nintendo went its own way, Philips carried on with its terrible CD-I system and Sony, while briefly considering abandoning the venture altogether, decided to make the Play Station a standalone system that played Sony-branded games. Thus, the PlayStation was born. Nintendo effectively created its own worst enemy.

Sony's CD resources led to the defection of Square, countless exclusives that Nintendo never saw and for the first time ever, a sound beating at retail. Sega's own inept ability to provide gamers with quality products essentially left the whole industry open to Sony's powerful charge. After a bit of back-and-forth in 1995 and 1996, the PlayStation jumped ahead in 1997 and has been on top ever since. It's crushing blitz forever buried Sega and put Nintendo on perpetual defense, a position it never once had to consider.

So now, the publishers and developers of the world had a viable alternative to consider. No more expensive cartridges, no more Sega bumbling its tacky add-ons, no more insane restrictions. Games became part of pop culture, and the PlayStation went on to become one of the best-selling objects in electronics history. If Nintendo had merely tried to rework that original Sony contract (something Sony probably wouldn't have gone for anyway), things could have been much different.

But, after all the ludicrous profits of the '80s, the slow and steady downfall of the '90s, and the gradual regaining of trust and cool factor going on today, the company is poised to be back on top again. The DS, a seemingly mental design decision, turned out to be the clear winner of the current systems. And Wii, well, if the momentum lasts, Nintendo's got nothing to worry about. Let's just hope it remembers its own history and steers clear of any more jerkholish moves.

George

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i came into this thread hoping to see the snes CD / sony thing at #1
and it was so i am happy =)
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Ha it's true, I'm glad I've decided not to get a Wii, I'll hold for a PS3 to drop in price.
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MattyF

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They are going into assumptions with the Wii controller. The system isn't even 6 months old so its hard to call it a fad yet. The DS was seen as a fad for the first yr and looked how that turned out. I wouldn't call the Wii one of Nintendo's biggest mistakes.

r50

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Yeah, I was expecting this article to comment on the widely accepted past mistakes Nintendo made. That was thrown out the window the moment the guy put the Wii on the list.

Eh, this article came off more as Nintendo bashing than informing.
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extremesonic

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N64 unfriendly for fighters!? It was the only controller(exception genesis/saturn) with 6 face buttons, the perfect button setup for fighting games.

Yeah the way the guy seem to talk about these things, made him seem very nintendo bashy.
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BuzzJive

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pfft. fanboys.

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FryGuy

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Still, Nintendo did create its own worst enemy...like some cheesy sci-fi B movie on Lifetime or something.
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Deacon

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r50
Yeah, I was expecting this article to comment on the widely accepted past mistakes Nintendo made. That was thrown out the window the moment the guy put the Wii on the list.

Eh, this article came off more as Nintendo bashing than informing.

Maybe you didn't realize that predicting the Wii's failure is the new chic (because predicting the PS3's failure isn't controversial anymore).

Weird that they don't have a spell checker or editor over at Games Radar.

Matt_M

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This basically reads like an article from 3-5 years ago, with the addition of Wii-bashing. Good job, Games Radar, you certainly have opened my eyes.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2000/07/03

I want to see Sony's top 7 mistakes- are there enough to fill the list? (and no, you can't count the E3 riiiidge racer historical crab battle massive damage weak point as multiple entries)

Formless

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I didn't think the N64 controller was that bad, there was a bit of Nintendo bashing but overall a good read.
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Joe_Strife

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and if the wii doesnt fail then theyll look reaaaaaally stupid.

Because what do you do next? Five years from now, when the PS4 and NextBox show up, they're going to jump in hardware power again. And then Nintendo's left with a machine that looks two generations old instead of one. The motion controls, now considered somewhere in between "the best damn thing that's ever happened in the world" to "gimmicky stupid childish nonsense," will be super played out and exploited. Unless there's some other gameplay innovation on the horizon, Wii could be viewed as a fad, susceptible to the same fickle emotions that killed snap bracelets, pet rocks and Sega. And if Nintendo bites the bullet and gives the machine a visual kick in the pants, well there goes its whole mantra that graphics don't matter. There's just enough steam with this idea to last one generation, and none after that.

So basically the wii will not upgrade their hardware anymore while the PS4(hahahaha we´ll see) and the nextbox come out. NOW that the games are starting to come out, youll see more and more potential, i mean what is it that you ppl want, Graphics only ALL the time, most of the most enjoyable games i remember didnt have the best graphics. And like nintendo isnt gonna do something about that next gen. Thats assuming one thing nintendo does good is learning from their mistakes, one step at the time. If you graphics whores need graphics to play sooner or later nintendo will give you your damn graphics(thats up to the developers too you know)
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Formless
I didn't think the N64 controller was that bad, there was a bit of Nintendo bashing but overall a good read.

Yeah I liked the N64 controller too. Apart from the nasty, weird dust that collected around the base of the analogue stick Disgust
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A big WTF
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DayLahs

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its funny how you guys ONLY see the wii bashing. The rest of this thing was on point to the mistakes nintendo has made.

Robjomak

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Nintendo doesn't make mistakes, DayLahs.

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FryGuy

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They didn't bring Fire Emblem to America until the 7th game. That's enough for me. Wink

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extremesonic
N64 unfriendly for fighters!? It was the only controller(exception genesis/saturn) with 6 face buttons, the perfect button setup for fighting games.

Yeah the way the guy seem to talk about these things, made him seem very nintendo bashy.

The button setup was perfect, yes, but the d-pad was also absolute garbage. Anyone who says play with analog will be slapped.

Other than that, yeah in general, I have the same worries/conclusions.

rubaiyat

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Deacon
Maybe you didn't realize that predicting the Wii's failure is the new chic (because predicting the PS3's failure isn't controversial anymore).

Weird that they don't have a spell checker or editor over at Games Radar.

Yeah, I didn't get the informing part of the article. Like yeah, Nintendo limited companies to five games a year...heavy handed to be sure but the glut of bad games in the Atari era was what put videogames on its knees in the first place.

Maybe if a companies interests rested on a few games they'd put better quality out there...though we'd also get fewer risk taking endeavors.

EDIT - Daylahs, some points were spot on, infact, most, but others were poorly thought out spin with little historical context.

LinKami Deschain

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that was slightly depressing Frown

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Xavius

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He's on target for the most part, but missed having a purple baby cube as a console design.

"BUT IT ALSO CAME IN BLACK!"

lol

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^I think the Cube actually looked better than the PS2, and on par with the Xbox. The handle was a bit unnecessary though...
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DayLahs

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hence the comments of it being a lunch box or a man purse

Deacon

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DayLahs
its funny how you guys ONLY see the wii bashing. The rest of this thing was on point to the mistakes nintendo has made.

Maybe because it was pretty much the only part of the article that hasn't been said a million times before and accepted as fact by now. Were we supposed to react to the assertion that the Virtual Boy was a mistake? YOU DON'T SAY, GAMES RADAR.

Imp

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Ha it's true, I'm glad I've decided not to get a Wii, I'll hold for a PS3 to drop in price.

Good thing Gamesradar validated my purchasing choices in a poorly written article or my life would be a complete blunder!
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Knight of Cydonia
^I think the Cube actually looked better than the PS2, and on par with the Xbox. The handle was a bit unnecessary though...

Whenever I move the cube from TV to TV, it does help. But I wish you could take it off, that way it would fit better into some spaces and such.

Advance

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I disagree with the critique of the N64 controller, but other than that I've only heard everything else in the article 1000 times or more. Even #7. Welcome to 2005, GamesRadar.
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Gorosaurus

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And ditching the Sony tie was the smartest move in the situation they foolishly got themselves in.

Going with Phillips after that, though, was dumb.

Also it's interesting that they couldn't figure out the difference between surprise and surmise. A good, yet pretty predictable list. What kind of number is 7, though?

MisterHero-DX

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But if you think Sony's too cocky, arrogant and detached from the consumer base, you apparently weren't around for Nintendo's heyday.

I was. But what really pisses me off is that people want Nintendo to be "#1 like the good ol' days like the NES and SNES", but back then, they were "tyrranical" and because of what they are doing today with the Wii and what happened with the GameCube "they fell, what a shame, Wii isn't as cool as stuff they used to make". Which was it?

Bullshit, I say.

Essentially, Nintendo was tattling on Sega. If there's a better way to simultaneously look like an asshat and make the other guy appear cool as hell, we'd love to hear it.

Genesis does what Nintendon't?

Like yeah, Nintendo limited companies to five games a year...heavy handed to be sure but the glut of bad games in the Atari era was what put videogames on its knees in the first place.

That didn't stop companies like Konami (who had secondary divisions, for ex: Ultra Games, made games for NES, like TMNT). There was a whole lot of things that was said about Nintendo that wasn't as terrible as people make it out to be today (like when Nintendo was crapped on for MK sweat but Sega, who even had their own ratings board, had censored their game as well).

And yeah, Nintendo didn't want their product to end up as badly as Atari did. Yamauchi for the most part seems like a really terrible person but despite all the 'good things' the industry puts out today, Nintendo and every other company has to stay concerned with the bottom line and that they are a business.

Nintendo's business isn't backed up by high-selling games and legendary 1st-party support because they obviously hated the industry. The bastards.

its funny how you guys ONLY see the wii bashing. The rest of this thing was on point to the mistakes nintendo has made.

Everything Nintendo ever did and anything even successful that came out of their mistakes was crapped on in that article [yes, I'm alleging that the article contradicts itself], as far as I'm concerned.
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Cool article.

It seems that Nintendo and Sony both got/are getting drunk with the success of their previous consoles and acted/act like they can still talk and act like the leader when they are not.

Deacon

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It doesn't behoove a company with stockholders to hold press conferences and say "The competition is putting out some really quality products, we probably won't be top dog for long!!" It's not so much bragging as bluffing.

Bucket

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I was into Wii bashing before it was cool.

ALIAS_FAN

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Good article. Although the N64 wasn't that bad...

And he's right on the Wii 2's uncertain future. There's a good chance that the Wii 2 won't be nearly half as much powerful than the 360...hell maybe not even as powerful as the PSP2. Nintendo will claim that graphics do not matter still and we will all complain and bitch once more with feeling.
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Deacon

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I must be getting old. I'm amazed I posted here and it wasn't

CELDA CELDA #1 MISTAKE SERIOUSLY FUCK THAT GAME I HATE YOU NINTENDO

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FryGuy

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It's funny though. I remember specifically when a group of kids I knew were bitching about how much Wind Waker was gonna suck, and later on, how the game would've been so much better had it had realistic graphics. They orgasmed over Twilight Princess until they played it, to which they were like..."I wish it had been more like WW, even in the graphical style."

Oh, hypocritical fanboys, you entertain me.
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JohnTitor

Skeeter

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Join Date: Jan 2007

Interesting article, thanks
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Nin10do

Smooth Criminal

Posts: 5,563

Join Date: Sep 2002

Location: Boogie Down Bronx

The article is nothing new and far from informative. Any company with a 25 year history in a constantly changing industry is bound to make mistakes. Kudos to Nintendo for outlasting Atari, Sega, NEC, 3D0, SNK, and other console/handheld makers.

I don't agree that everything listed was a mistake but they can be debated. But the fucking Wii??? How can a 6 month old, incredibly successful and innovative console be considered a mistake? The Wii has yet to fail so to list it as a mistake is GameRadar trying to get the shock value out of gamers. Losers.
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HNB

Dead Finks Don't Talk

Posts: 9,997

Join Date: May 2002

Location: Hamsterdam

Pretty accurate list for the most part, but I think putting the Wii on there is really premature. Right now the system is selling like mad crazy, much more than anyone thought it would, and when that happens good games get made. And as long as that happens, it's going to be a solid system. They make some valid points about it, but I would say so far the Wii has been anything but a "mistake" by Nintendo.

Dinzy

Bullet Bill

Posts: 920

Join Date: Sep 2005

Location: San Jose, CA

There was nothing wrong with the N64 controller. It was certainly better than the GC controller in terms of how innovative it was at the time. FFS Sony releases a 3d system w/o an analog controller and only updated it after the N64 came out. Yes the dual analog system was better than the N64's for most 3d games, but Nintendo's controller was far better than the original PS one, and people didn't need to buy new controllers to play games if they bought their system during the first 2+ years that it was out.

Listing the Wii as a failure because they will have to update it dramatically in 5 years to compete with the next next gen is simply retarded. The Wii is an experiment and so far it seems to be a sucessful one. The GC sold only 22million units and the Wii has sold nearly 1/3 of that already and has a few million sellers.
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FunkMasterGeneral

Lakitu

Posts: 8,920

Join Date: Oct 2002

Location: Keene,NH

Dinzy
There was nothing wrong with the N64 controller. It was certainly better than the GC controller in terms of how innovative it was at the time. FFS Sony releases a 3d system w/o an analog controller and only updated it after the N64 came out. Yes the dual analog system was better than the N64's for most 3d games, but Nintendo's controller was far better than the original PS one, and people didn't need to buy new controllers to play games if they bought their system during the first 2+ years that it was out.

Listing the Wii as a failure because they will have to update it dramatically in 5 years to compete with the next next gen is simply retarded. The Wii is an experiment and so far it seems to be a sucessful one. The GC sold only 22million units and the Wii has sold nearly 1/3 of that already and has a few million sellers.

i didnt realize PS1 controllers originally looked like this. When did they switch to the analog sticks?
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Paul Weller

Lakitu

Posts: 11,584

Join Date: Sep 2002

really?

a few years after ps1 was out they released the dual analog. Like 1998

I loved the n64 controller
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CJ Thunder

Whycan'tIleavethisblank?

Posts: 10,400

Join Date: Dec 2001

Location: SoCal

CENSORSHIP IS A LIE BMXXX on GC had boobies and PS didn't.

PLUS the VB kicks ass has one of the best platform games ever made.

Formless

Underboss

Posts: 2,579

Join Date: Dec 2005

Location: Way Down the Hole

Ya the original playstation controller blew ass.
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octorok and roll

has a very loud thumb

Posts: 19,509

Join Date: Oct 2002

Location: Austin, Texas

I agree with all except #7, and I'm really tired of hearing that one. I know it's still a little early to tell, but holy crap they've already sold 6.5 million of these things, they're manufacturing 1 million+ systems per month and you still can't find the damn thing anywhere. Sure a lot of people wanted a powerhouse system from Nintendo, and we'll never really know for sure, but I'd wager that Nintendo would be doing pretty sh*tty right now if they had chosen to go all HD on us... mostly because MS and Sony would've done it far better... so because of that, the Wii was the correct choice for Nintendo. Now the thing is hotter than sh*t on lava.
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Posts: 14,141

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FunkMasterGeneral

i didnt realize PS1 controllers originally looked like this. When did they switch to the analog sticks?

When the N64 came out? Hence Sony's rep for always stealing things.

Cursive

Lost And Safe

Posts: 2,943

Join Date: Jan 2003

Location: England

octorok and roll
I agree with all except #7, and I'm really tired of hearing that one. I know it's still a little early to tell, but holy crap they've already sold 6.5 million of these things, they're manufacturing 1 million+ systems per month and you still can't find the damn thing anywhere. Sure a lot of people wanted a powerhouse system from Nintendo, and we'll never really know for sure, but I'd wager that Nintendo would be doing pretty sh*tty right now if they had chosen to go all HD on us... mostly because MS and Sony would've done it far better... so because of that, the Wii was the correct choice for Nintendo. Now the thing is hotter than sh*t on lava.

Yeah it's hard to believe how well the Wii is actually doing.
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pbdestiny

FlyGuy

Posts: 471

Join Date: Dec 2006

Location: Ontario, Canada

I dont think its hard to believe how well the wii is doing, I just think no one really predicted it would do this well.

Its funny though, it really fell below everyones expectations for revolutionary and new gameplay experiences, but yet surpassed the predictions of successfulness by all. I dont think Nintendo even predicted the wii would sell this good at this rate.

-PB
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8 BIT ORGY

Pompon Flower

Posts: 385

Join Date: Jun 2004

Awesome editorial. Though number three should be number one. The Playstation thing was because Nintendo had a contract with the cartridge makers and had NO CHOICE but to make the N64 cartridge.

Pandas_UNITE

Positive Panda

Posts: 18,424

Join Date: Oct 2002

Location: I live in your heart ;)

this is all crap iv read years and years and years ago.

someone seriously wasted their time paraphrasing old shit.

and to contribute. gamecube made ninty some dollars, and the wii is making ninty mad dollars. retailers are pissed they've got xbox 360 forts built up, and no one wants to buy one.
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8 BIT ORGY

Pompon Flower

Posts: 385

Join Date: Jun 2004

Yeah this is the kind of stuff I always posted. Wink

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