Nintendo Nintendo's worst mistakes.

[CastletonSnob]

Nintendo is a very successful business, and gaming wouldn't be the same without them. Unfortunately, they've had their share of missteps.

What do you consider the worst decisions Nintendo have ever made? My pick would be sticking with cartridges for the N64, causing them to lose third party support.

 

The reason I say sticking with cartridges is the worst mistake Nintendo made and not breaking the SNES CD add-on deal with Sony is because if Nintendo had chosen to use CDs for the N64, they likely would have kept more third parties and beaten the Playstation, or at least not have lost as badly.

[Fizzzzle]

I mean, I could say not going with discs, but the thing with Nintendo is that since the 90's their modus operandi is engineering experiences that you can ONLY get through Nintendo. Everyone else goes right, Nintendo goes left. That naturally means there's going to be some missteps and backfires when you're taking more risks on purpose.

 

I do think the WiiU would have been fine as a system, but the branding/marketing was atrocious. Shit, I *follow* gaming and even I didn't understand that it was a completely new console from the Wii until the thing was damn near released. I can't imagine how confusing it would be for regular consumers

 

[XxEvil AshxX]

Reflective LCD screens for the original GBA.

[crispy4000]

7 hours ago, Fizzzzle said:

I mean, I could say not going with discs, but the thing with Nintendo is that since the 90's their modus operandi is engineering experiences that you can ONLY get through Nintendo. Everyone else goes right, Nintendo goes left. That naturally means there's going to be some missteps and backfires when you're taking more risks on purpose.

 

More true than not, but I’ve also never thought Nintendo is that binary.  We’ve had two generations of Pro Controllers that concede to industry standards for instance.  They have a pulse on the industry, but selectively tune out the stuff they don’t want to hear.  Like feedback on their online services.

[GameDadGrant]

The DS, obviously.  

 

Serious answer? Uh, how can it be anything else but Virtual Boy? 

[Paperclyp]

Underestimating Sony multiple times 

 

Dog shit understanding of how to respect and sell their legacy content

 

Fearful, ancient online philosophies 

 

Everything about the Wii U 

 

Virtual Boy

 

are the ones that stand out to me 

[Keyser_Soze]

Changing every system since the wii and shutting down their respective shops and not letting your purchases migrate to a new system.

[Keyser_Soze]

 

[crispy4000]

2 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

Changing every system since the wii and shutting down their respective shops and not letting your purchases migrate to a new system.

 

Wii U could migrate purchases from Wii.  The Switch changed architecture too much for it to be straightforward.  Which became convenient excuse to sell remasters.

Not consumer friendly, but it's also not a big mistake.  Wiping the slate clean with Switch has mostly been a boon for them.

[gamer.tv]

I mean, there’s lots to choose, I’d go with not having an HDMI input for the Wii because, why not.

[Keyser_Soze]

1 hour ago, crispy4000 said:

 

Wii U could migrate purchases from Wii.  The Switch changed architecture too much for it to be straightforward.  Which became convenient excuse to sell remasters.

Not consumer friendly, but it's also not a big mistake.  Wiping the slate clean with Switch has mostly been a boon for them.

 

NBD for me anyway. All I had was Midnight Pool and Bitrip Runner. Sure would be rad to play Midnight Pool on my switch though.

[BloodyHell]

5 hours ago, crispy4000 said:

 

Wii U could migrate purchases from Wii.  The Switch changed architecture too much for it to be straightforward.  Which became convenient excuse to sell remasters.

Not consumer friendly, but it's also not a big mistake.  Wiping the slate clean with Switch has mostly been a boon for them.

It didn't change so much that 8 and 16 bit games wouldn't work.

It didn't change so much that accounts wouldn't work. Nothing about the architecture stopped them from abandoning godawful friend codes.

 

Im fine with thrm reselling switch/wiiu games. Im not ok with how they have handled content older than that. 

 

Oh, have we forgotten about Switch STILL having drift issues in joycons? I don't know if my OLED has the problem, ive barely used it so far, but my switch, my wifes switch, and her Switch Lite all had to have them repaired/replaced multiple times.

 

Nintendo is a terrible company that just happens to make good games.

[Joe]

I enjoyed my Wii U.

[Bloodporne]

5 hours ago, gamer.tv said:

I mean, there’s lots to choose, I’d go with not having an HDMI input for the Wii because, why not.

This was baffling at the time. Also the Wii is the last Nintendo thing I ever bought.

[CastletonSnob]

The second reason I say that sticking with cartridges was Nintendo's worst mistake is because Final Fantasy VII was originally going to be on the N64, but because of Nintendo's decision to stick with cartridges, Square jumped ship to Sony, where FFVII became a killer app for the PS1.

[BloodyHell]

So point is, you agree breaking the deal with Sony was their biggest mistake. Then they would have had a disk system instead of N64, AND Final Fantasy.

[imthesoldier]

3 hours ago, Bloodporne said:

This was baffling at the time. Also the Wii is the last Nintendo thing I ever bought.

 

The Wii is an interesting case analysis on what Nintendo should've done differently, but hindsight is 20/20 of course.

 

The Wii could've been at least a 720p resolution console (hell, the original Xbox could output in 720p), plus with actual gyro sensors in the Wiimote at launch instead of the Wii Motion Plus a few years after the fact. By that point, it was too little too late. It probably would've raised the cost of the system to easily 300 dollars at the time instead of the launch 250, but with better motion controls, plus slightly better graphics to take advantage of a high resolution, I think the "fad" of motion controls would not have faded so quickly, and the overall success of the Wii possibly would have been heightened.

 

 

1 hour ago, CastletonSnob said:

The second reason I say that sticking with cartridges was Nintendo's worst mistake is because Final Fantasy VII was originally going to be on the N64, but because of Nintendo's decision to stick with cartridges, Square jumped ship to Sony, where FFVII became a killer app for the PS1.

 

It's interesting because we've kind of gone full circle. Cartridges, while limited in size, were much much faster compared to optical media, so loading data was quicker, and loading times were either non-existent, or greatly reduced. As optical media became common place in consoles, loading times increased, but so did game sizes because it was cheap. It kind of hit its peak during the PS4 era because of the use of Blu-Ray discs, plus spinning hardrives. Those long load times were quite honestly a pain.

 

But now? SSDs are finally hitting their stride in the console space, and loading screens are again, greatly reduced, or non-existent. We moved from media with no moving parts to media with moving parts, all the way back to media with no moving parts.

 

Was sticking with cartridges over CDs the worst mistake Nintendo made? Eh, I think even that is debatable to be honest, but you could easily write a book about Nintendo in the 1990s. Personally, I don't think there is that "one" thing Nintendo did in their history that undeniably is much much worse than everything else they've done.

 

Here's another example though; prior to the release of the SNES in NA, Nintendo was considering on adding the Super FX chip into every console. They decided against it for cost cutting reasons, and as a result, the chip was used in the cartridges instead, and also limited its appeal. It would've made the SNES one of the most powerful 16-bit consoles ever made (It could run freaking Doom for goodness sakes!). But alas, they did not.

 

No Super FX in SNES, Use of Cartridges during N64 era, Lack of HD for the Wii, and not Gyro at launch, plus bad naming/marketing for the Wii U. You could take all four of those scenarios (interestingly are all one after the other), and come up with compelling reasons why they were some of the worst.

[CastletonSnob]

1 hour ago, BloodyHell said:

So point is, you agree breaking the deal with Sony was their biggest mistake. Then they would have had a disk system instead of N64, AND Final Fantasy.

I'm saying that if Nintendo had used CDs for the N64, they would have had better third party support, and won the console gen, or at least not have lost as badly. Third parties would have had no reason to take a chance with a newcomer in Sony if the N64 used CDs, because Nintendo was still the market leader at the time.

 

An N64 with Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time AND FFVII sells WAY more than 32 million units.

 

Nintendo could have made a CD drive in-house.

 

If the N64 used CDs and Nintendo kept all the third parties, the Playstation might very well have just been another also-ran in the console market.

[BloodyHell]

2 minutes ago, CastletonSnob said:

I'm saying that if Nintendo had used CDs for the N64, they would have had better third party support, and won the console gen, or at least not have lost as badly. Third parties would have had no reason to take a chance with a newcomer in Sony if the N64 used CDs, because Nintendo was still the market leader at the time.

 

An N64 with Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time AND FFVII sells WAY more than 32 million units.

 

Nintendo could have made a CD drive in-house.

Newcomer like sony? I think you're forgetting, or not old enough to remember, Sony's place as a market leader in electronics throughout the 80's and 90's. The idea that sony couldn't attract 3rd parties is laughable. Sony was the most trusted hardware manufacturer of the time. So much so that older generations still believe in the Sony quality that no longer actually exists. Nintendo didn't have that reputation.  Sony was in every home, and owned multiple iterations of the 80's and 90's most popular home entertainment formats. They sold 186m Walkman Casette players alone. They were never a "newcomer" to home electronics.

[CastletonSnob]

3 minutes ago, BloodyHell said:

Newcomer like sony? I think you're forgetting, or not old enough to remember, Sony's place as a market leader in electronics throughout the 80's and 90's. The idea that sony couldn't attract 3rd parties is laughable. Sony was the most trusted hardware manufacturer of the time. So much so that older generations still believe in the Sony quality that no longer actually exists. Nintendo didn't have that reputation.  Sony was in every home, and owned multiple iterations of the 80's and 90's most popular home entertainment formats. They sold 186m Walkman Casette players alone. They were never a "newcomer" to home electronics.

They were a newcomer to home consoles.

 

Panasonic, Apple and Phillips were successful home electronics companies, too. Didn't help them much in the console market.

[gamer.tv]

On this topic, I remember actively not playing my PS1 because it used to take forever to actually play a game, with the endless splash screens and old screens. OoT however was quick N64 screen, title screen, a few presses and then you’re in.

[imthesoldier]

33 minutes ago, CastletonSnob said:

They were a newcomer to home consoles.

 

Panasonic, Apple and Phillips were successful home electronics companies, too. Didn't help them much in the console market.

 

In the case of Pansonic with the 3DO, that was DOA practically due to its staggeringly high price of $699...in 1993. Same with Apple with the Pippin, which was $599 in 1996 (3x the price of the N64 mind you). And the Phillips CD-i, while co-developed with Sony, just could not garner that market, and also had a very high price of like a grand. 

 

By contrast, Sony needed a device that was their version of the Sony Walkman, but for gaming in a sense. Price competitiveness was likely a huge factor. Had the PSX been 400-500 dollars, even with CD-Rom, it's possible its success would not have been as high. We'll never know of course, but what we do know is the PSX was cheap compared to others ($299 was a big factor for sure) on top of Sony's own marketing department.

[Brian]

No Switch Pro.  

[Zaku3]

23 minutes ago, ManUtdRedDevils said:

No Switch Pro.  

 

Atleast we will eventually have a solution for 15FPS Xenoblade Chronicles 3. (Either BC or emulation)

[imthesoldier]

16 minutes ago, Zaku3 said:

 

Atleast we will eventually have a solution for 15FPS Xenoblade Chronicles 3. (Either BC or emulation)

 

At least Homebrew exists, so you can max out the clocks for a more stable experience. I hear it works quite well for XC2.

[crispy4000]

7 hours ago, BloodyHell said:

It didn't change so much that 8 and 16 bit games wouldn't work.

It didn't change so much that accounts wouldn't work. Nothing about the architecture stopped them from abandoning godawful friend codes.

 

Im fine with thrm reselling switch/wiiu games. Im not ok with how they have handled content older than that. 

 

The switch from an AMD to Nvidia chipset is what I was referring to.  Because of that, they couldn’t take the easy way out to keep backwards compatibility with the prior gen, as they had a pattern of.

Emulation of older hardware is another matter.  The Switch’s N64 Emulator being worse than prior gens is ludicrous.

 

[imthesoldier]

6 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

 

The switch from an AMD to Nvidia chipset is what I was referring to.  Because of that, they couldn’t take the easy way out to keep backwards compatibility with the prior gen, as they had a pattern of.

Emulation of older hardware is another matter.  The Switch’s N64 Emulator being worse than prior gens is ludicrous.

 

 

What I'm hoping is Nintendo stays with nVidia for the forseeable future, and as such maintains BC for future systems so we don't have to keep rebuying all their fucking games every generation. My thought is if they stick specifically with the ARM Cortex CPU (the newer Tegra Orin uses Cortex btw), then it should be easier to do so.

[TwinIon]

As far as mistakes that actually cost Nintendo, the Sony partnership and every decision made with the Wii U have to be up there.

 

Then there are the mistakes that it's not clear to me have really cost them, like their terrible strategy with online. It's plausible to me that they could have sunk a ton of money into building a first class online platform and that it wouldn't really have helped their bottom line at all. Then again, it's also plausible to me that their failure to invest could have long term implications and end up costing them more in the end. Same for how they've treated their back catalog. They've made a ton of money re-selling their games again and again, but it is possible that strategy will cost them long term fans.

 

Lastly, there are the decisions that I wish they'd made differently but obviously haven't cost them. Chiefly among them, not waiting longer to launch the Switch and putting in a more powerful chip in there. I'd also argue that the overall design of the DS line is up there. Even though I owned many versions of the DS and the success of the various DS platforms is hard to argue with, I think those systems succeeded in spite of the dual screen gimmick. So few games actually made any kind of interesting use of the second screen, and I really think they could have made a better, more traditional handheld without it. I also think the success of the DS systems lead to the development of the Wii U, which amplified all the problems with the DS to the point they couldn't be overlooked anymore.

[imthesoldier]

18 hours ago, TwinIon said:

As far as mistakes that actually cost Nintendo, the Sony partnership and every decision made with the Wii U have to be up there.

 

Then there are the mistakes that it's not clear to me have really cost them, like their terrible strategy with online. It's plausible to me that they could have sunk a ton of money into building a first class online platform and that it wouldn't really have helped their bottom line at all. Then again, it's also plausible to me that their failure to invest could have long term implications and end up costing them more in the end. Same for how they've treated their back catalog. They've made a ton of money re-selling their games again and again, but it is possible that strategy will cost them long term fans.

 

Lastly, there are the decisions that I wish they'd made differently but obviously haven't cost them. Chiefly among them, not waiting longer to launch the Switch and putting in a more powerful chip in there. I'd also argue that the overall design of the DS line is up there. Even though I owned many versions of the DS and the success of the various DS platforms is hard to argue with, I think those systems succeeded in spite of the dual screen gimmick. So few games actually made any kind of interesting use of the second screen, and I really think they could have made a better, more traditional handheld without it. I also think the success of the DS systems lead to the development of the Wii U, which amplified all the problems with the DS to the point they couldn't be overlooked anymore.

 

What's perplexing is Nintendo back in the 90s was trying all sorts of new things with regards to online capabilities. The freaking Super Famicom had online for christ's sake. I was watching that DF Retro video about F-Zero, and it astounded me that Nintendo had LIVE F-Zero races that real players would compete in that you could watch on your TV; with commentators, like you were watching an F1 Race. Consoles even today don't do that, and Nintendo was doing this in the early 90s?

[BloodyHell]

22 hours ago, CastletonSnob said:

They were a newcomer to home consoles.

 

Panasonic, Apple and Phillips were successful home electronics companies, too. Didn't help them much in the console market.

Those are not 1:1 comparisons, they were terribly priced abominations that looked like cash grabs. Playstation came across as a high end gaming machine. FF7 was a major grt, but it certainly didn't "Save" Playstation. It didn't need saving. 

 

Again, you don't seem to understand how big Sony's reputation for making high quality, long lasting hardware was. People flocked yo it immediately, as did publishers. They didn't wait to see what Nintendo was doing.

[Paperclyp]

43 minutes ago, BloodyHell said:

Those are not 1:1 comparisons, they were terribly priced abominations that looked like cash grabs. Playstation came across as a high end gaming machine. FF7 was a major grt, but it certainly didn't "Save" Playstation. It didn't need saving. 

 

Again, you don't seem to understand how big Sony's reputation for making high quality, long lasting hardware was. People flocked yo it immediately, as did publishers. They didn't wait to see what Nintendo was doing.

Wait I think you’re rewriting history if you  are trying to make it seem like it was a sure bet for the PS1 to succeed. 
 

You could apply a style of your same logic to many analogous companies that tried to enter the gaming space and it often goes poorly for them. The Xbox in particular had everything it needed sans maybe the hardware rep, and it was clear upon release that that thing was by far and away the best hardware of that gen and the most forward thinking machine, and they still had to brute force that fuckin thing into existence and move on to their second attempt asap. 
 

The general vibe before the PS1 released wasn’t “oh this thing is def gonna succeed because they make good CD players.” 
 

The PS1 was masterfully marketed and had a great library and some things with competitors fell just the right way for them, don’t get me wrong, but I think you are way overstating their rep. I remember it being way more like wait a sec the Walkman people are making a console?? Psh. And then that slowly shifting as they won hearts and minds. 

[Spork3245]

Virtual Boy /thread

[ort]

The reason CDs were such an advantage over cartridges wasn't just that they had more storage. It was because they were cheaper to produce. It was so much more expensive and slow to generate cartridges. Companies would have to estimate sales ahead of time for their initial run of games... if their calculations were off it was catastrophic. Guess too high and they would be left with a ton of super expensive extra stock they couldn't move... guess too low and they were losing sales and profit and by the time it would take to get a second pressing in the world would have moved on.

 

With CDs you could just make as many as you want for like 1/10th the cost and it was way less of a big deal. One bad cartridge release could complete screw up the financials of a 3rd party company living on the edge. CDs made the gamble way easier.

 

As for the Wii, I know it was a huge success for the company, but man, that is easily my least favorite Nintendo product of all time. I hated that console. I hated everything about it. I used to be a MASSIVE Nintendo fanboy, but that Wii... ugh... don't get me started.

[CastletonSnob]

3 hours ago, BloodyHell said:

Those are not 1:1 comparisons, they were terribly priced abominations that looked like cash grabs. Playstation came across as a high end gaming machine. FF7 was a major grt, but it certainly didn't "Save" Playstation. It didn't need saving. 

 

Again, you don't seem to understand how big Sony's reputation for making high quality, long lasting hardware was. People flocked yo it immediately, as did publishers. They didn't wait to see what Nintendo was doing.

I never said that FFVII "saved" Playstation, or that Playstation "needed saving". Please don't put words in my mouth. 

And people and publishers didn't immediately flock to the Playstation. The PS1's launch lineup kind of sucked. I just looked at the PS1's launch lineup, and I'd say only Rayman holds up today.

[BloodyHell]

2 hours ago, CastletonSnob said:

I never said that FFVII "saved" Playstation, or that Playstation "needed saving". Please don't put words in my mouth. 

And people and publishers didn't immediately flock to the Playstation. The PS1's launch lineup kind of sucked. I just looked at the PS1's launch lineup, and I'd say only Rayman holds up today.

In the first year they had Rayman, Tekken 3, Twisted Metal 2, Tomb Raider, Crash, Resident Evil, so no, there was no problem with its launch. By the time N64 came, Playstation was already leading the market. And they then went into probably one of the best years ever in gaming, and Nintendo could just never catch up. 3rd party publishers were happy to develop for Sony (and make more money doing so) from day 1. Anyone cotluld develop for it, royalties were lower, anyone pretending PSX didn't have a strong start is being disengenous.

 

Also, it doesn't matter if games hold up today, What matters is how they were enjoyed when they were new. Games "holding up" is terrible metric. It doesn't matter how we feel today.