Looking back (I'm literally looking at my Wii now), Wii's success was not about games, as we gamer think. It is the hardware itself. For the great majority of customers, they only know 3 games: Wii Party, Wii Sport & Wii Fit. It is the unique control that sell Wii, not the games.
So the question for Switch now is: can the unique control of Switch be turned into sales?
Just downloaded & start playing last night. The 1st half hour feel ...... generic. The Division had an exciting start. I pull you right in for the starting 2 to 3 hours. The Ghost Recon feel too low key, too constrain for its own good. My be the deeper I play it will get more exciting. Also looking for Co-Op with my friends.
This IS the GAME that make me regrade that I don't have a PS4!!!!!
While Sony is getting better & better on the exclusive front (I really want to play Horizon Zero Dawn!!!), MS is always better at the OS & network side: USB HD support, backward compatibility, & now the Game Pass.
Even with other great games, the Knight of the Old Republic is still the greatest BioWare RPG + the greatest US RPG + the greatest Star War Game of all time. Period.
Learnt from your Commander-in-Chief, I think?
Shenmue Killer may be a better comparison. I think Yakuza series fulfill the original promises of Shenmue.
There is always something to learn from your competitor. I think the most important lesson Polyphony (any other Japanese developers in general) must learn is: how to keep your development time within a reasonable length. It seems to me that Polyphony is more interest in making GT, instead of making a selling GT.
All the Japanese AAA titles take almost 6-10 years to be developed. I wander how do they recap their development cost.
When Sony made the PS3 mistake, they changed course ASAP. So is MS on the XBox1. But Nintendo just stick its head in the sand & pretend that the last 20 years of MS/ Sony competition didn't happen.
That was the time when Nintendo WAS THE WHOLE Game Industry!
When NES came out in the US, Atari was already dead.
No, I think Nintendo is believing in too much of itself & their loyal fan base.
"That is, you want exactly what the other companies are offering... but you also want awesome original games."
What's wrong with this?
It is revealing that after 20 years, the same conflict of "Not enough power" from 3rd party vs "Uniqueness" from Nintendo still exist.
I think the issue is the 5-year-and-no-end-in-sight development length. Western publishers, like MS, will not accept a 10 year development length.
This is a crush between how Japanese developer & Western publisher on the length of game development. It seems that it take Japanese developers longer & longer to develop a AAA console title. I think for MS (or any Western publisher) 5 years & more is too long for a single game.
"The problem for Nintendo from a marketing perspective, at least for people like the one's on this site, is that clearly nobody in this group is capable of thinking of this thing in its own unique segment as a hybrid."
We, the non-believer, is exactly the one that Nintendo need to win over. Why should I buy this hybrid? What can Switch can offer me over my XBox/ phone/ tablet/ set top box?
Also, on the game side. Developers are either going up-power (Sony/ MS consoles) or Free-to-play (phone/ tablet). Nintendo put himself right in the middle of the cross road.
Yes & No, if MS can show a major performance boot on both hardware & software. MS must justify the extra time (& extra purchase on customers) on any new exclusives, like Crackdown 3, Froza 7, etc.