Do YOU think Nintendo's next console will be their last?

[Sylentwulf]

Do YOU personally think Nintendo's next home console will be their last (Excluding handhelds obviously)

The situation smells VERY much like Sega to me.... The N64 didnt't do too well, but they try the gamecube, the gamecube isn't doing too well, but they already have another system in the works, so they might as well finish it up and release it, but do you think they will be working on a console past the next one?

To me, Sega went into the dreamcast market PLANNING on exiting the console race, hence the early pull and lack of advertising etc...

Do you think nintendo is going the same way?

[Moose]

Call me a hopeful, but I have faith that Nintendo can rebound. I would hate to see my favorite company give up.

[EnemyZero]

Hmm I think nintendo is going to pull a rabbit out of the hat on this one and stay alive.

[Captain Wrong]

No, and I'll tell you why. It's all about pride. The big N seems to think they invented this industry, and hell, for anyone who missed out on the pre-crash stuff, they might have well. They don't want to have to put their games on anyone else's console and they know that people are gonna keep buying their consoles even if the third parties leave them totally.

Plus, as long as they still have a monopoly on the handheld market, they can lose money on the consoles and still be ok.

Console after next, that may be a different story...

[Zaxxon]

If they were smart they wouldn't even bother releasing whatever console they say they have in the works. Let Sony and MS eat the loss on hardware and marketing it. Like Capatain Wrong said, I doubt they would do something that smart, they're too stubborn. Just like they refused to ever admit releasing the N64 as a cart based system was a stupid idea, they'll poop out another system that can't compete because they refuse to admit when they've lost.

[Sylentwulf]

I personally think the only reason they (and sega before them) are releasing another console is because it's already in the works, and it's been in the works before they realized gamecube was not going to do so well.

NO company can just bite the bullet and scrap all that hard work when they still have the available income (for the moment), even if they know it will most likely fail.

[mauigamer]

I agree with Sylent. I really love my gamecube and don't understand why its not doing well. It has so many fun games. If they are losing money making the consoles then I think they will just switch to making software. The next question is, if only microsoft and sony are left do you think microsoft stands any chance of beating sony. I personally dont think so. Microsofft would have to bring something new to the table like a system that was capable of playing both playstation3 and xbox2 software or something like that. The other possiblity is that nintendo is waiting to see how the xbox2 does before pulling out. If the xbox 2 bombs and microsoft decides not to make another system then that would leave nintendo more room for profits on there system after next.

[WiseSalesman]

No. From EGM:

"When we withdraw from the home game console [market], that's when we withdraw from the videogame business." - Nintendo President, Satoru Iwata

They may fade out, but they won't be another Sega. Nintendo's far too stubborn to ever let their first party characters become whores to whatever console happens to be in the lead.

[Zaxxon]

Why not? They started out as "whores". Their games and characters were all over the Coleco, Atari, Commodore, Apple and TI machines in the 80's before they had a system out here.

[YoshiM]

Difficult to see the future is....

Not counting PS2, which is so entrenched the Gamecube or the XBox don't stand a chance carving into its popularity and becoming #1, it's still a bit early to say yea or nay on the future of a new Nintendo console. I DO think, though, Nintendo has to change it's approach to the market if it wants to be more successful than it is. They have to realize that it isn't 1985 anymore and the tastes of the audience has changed. In order for Nintendo's next console to be successful, they have to loosen their restrictions on the type of games the deck's going to get (perhaps install a parental control feature?) and probably lower licensing fees to attract old and new developers. They could also design the next controller to be more universal like the controllers were in the past. I still can't see how one could comfortably play a fighting game on the Cube.

I think the remainder of this year will really show us how things will go. I'll reserve judgement till then

[Sylentwulf]

No. From EGM:

"When we withdraw from the home game console [market], that's when we withdraw from the videogame business." - Nintendo President, Satoru Iwata


That could VERY easily be taken as the "home game console SOFTWARE market" They didn't promise anything with that statement.

[bargora]

Also, isn't the GBA a home game console?

[ianoid]

I don't think Nintendo would release a Next-Gen console for another 5 or 6 years. At that point, there will be Xbox 2 and PS3 long established.

Gamecube is already the weakest of the 3 in market share. I see Nintendo dominating the handheld business indefinitely and going the way of Sega for consoles.

Frankly, I'm not very supportive of Game Cube, for no good reason. Perhaps I need to play Animal Crossing or something.

Sorry Nintendo fans! It's all small screens for you for the future.

[mauigamer]

I thought that the xbox was in last place in sales in the US. I don't understand why people celebrate the thought of Nintendo not making anymore consoles. That is so short sighted. And as far as the argument that nintendo needs to change its ways, it already has. Resident evil, bmx xxx etc are available on nintendo. These are M rated games what else do you want?

[hydr0x]

mauigamer is right, i just don't know y you people think the gc is doing bad??? of course, it's only at third place in the us, but it's far better doing than the xbox in japan, and in europe it's even. in europe this will change during this year, as the blockbusters are not yet released here, so the gc will be on 2nd place (it already is, actually) worldwide

[Sylentwulf]

Noone's "celebrating" the fact, it's just that it IS a fact :) Xbox has the pure adult/sports/online category. PS2 has the platform/RPG/a little of everything else market, and gamecube...

Well, they OBVIOUSLY have NO interest in online. Their controller makes fighting and sports games USELESS, and their overcharging of third party liscensing makes developers say "you're in third place, and you want us to pay YOU to make a game for your failing console?"

They're cocky, conceited, and refuse to bend to anything, not a very good business plan. Also, RPG's reign supreme in japan, and I don't think any N64 or gamecube RPG's have ever come out, lol. Sports reign in USA, and gamecube is sorely lacking in that category again.

[Mr-E_MaN]

I can't see nintendo ever dropping out. There are a lot of loyal Nintendo fans that buy the system for mario, zelda, and other games that only nintendo puts out.

[Raedon]

They may not be #1 but Nintendo isn't showing losses. They are making a profit.. Who would you stop doing what you do if you are making a profit?? Think you guys are confusing being #1 with making money.

[NvrMore]

Raedon hit the nail right on the head. Nintendo may not be the #1 home console manufacturer, but they're still turning a healthy profit and are making out very well from their first party titles (remember they don't have to pay royalties to develop for a console like all the other developers, so what they make is all theirs).
Another notoworthy point is that unlike the other consoles, Nintendo aren't currently taking any losses on their hardware, granted it's not a huge profit ($10 - $20) but they're still making money. Further to the point the GC was designed around not only performance, but also cost effectiveness. It's components are very cheap and will become considerablty less costly to produce, thus meaning that the GC becomes more financially beneficial as time goes on.

[kainemaxwell]

Heck even if the GC does somehow fail or their next console, Nintendo is large and in charge in the handheld dept.

[qaotik]

Well I sure hope that it will be their last. Their pricing policy towards europe has beens ridicilous for several years and i really hate them for that. If they continue to market their next console to 6 year olds again its sure to go boink. I dont know how much goes into the rd for those next-gen consoles from the ground up but it sure aint cheap. Even though the cube has been rumoured to be manufactured much cheaper than xbox. And all this is coming from a euro cube owner who only bought their console because of prime.

Thank god wind braker is the last cel shaded zelda and i do hope the next one looks much like this http://www.dailyrush.dk/features/galleries/520/ *drool*.

[MankeyMan]

Gamecube is already the weakest of the 3 in market share. I see Nintendo dominating the handheld business indefinitely and going the way of Sega for consoles.

No, the next one won't be nintendo's last console. Nintendo are making a profit on the Gamecube hardware, they did on the N64 as well, despite it not looking as successful as the PS. They also make money on their first-party software, because everyone buys their games. I defy you to find me a person that has a Gamecube and no Nintendo first party software. Compare this to Sega, who made huge loss on the Saturn, never really dominated the market to the extent Nintendo did with the NES and SNES, and made the biggest cock-up with the Dreamcast launch they could have, making another huge loss.


Thank god wind braker is the last cel shaded zelda and i do hope the next one looks much like this http://www.dailyrush.dk/features/galleries/520/ *drool*.

Come on, if nintendo tried to make all thier games look as realistic as possible then we would have nowhere near the innovation in games we have today. Almost every genre has been defined by a Nintendo game. Mario 64 set the standard for 3D platformers and Zelda 64 had the best camera/action system ever used in a game. If they had gone out with a view to making Mario look like a proper plumber, or Link to look like a real elf nobody would have touched it.

However, this doesn't mean Nintendo doesn't need to buck up its ideas. The gamecube has fortunately seen more strident steps to improve things, with nintendo working closely with Sega, Namco, Capcom and even Square, to bring a lot more 3rd party titles to the system. This never happened during the N64 days, and shows they are trying to grab a bigger slice of the pie. Their marketing needs improving though, whilst there is no way a 6 year old would stand a chance of getting past the first level in Mario, there is also a very slim chance of anyone aged between 14-25 picking it up due to its looks. They need to change their image quickly, but not by changing their most famous characters, by making more of them.
Their rubbish licencing policy needs to change as well. Developers will stay away from the system if they don't think that THEY (not nintendo) will make a profit on it. Nintendo need to think about helping others onto the platform, which can only benefit them in the log run.
Don't forget that Nintendo are also, without a doubt, the best games developers in the world, and as long as they keep making games, people will keep buying their consoles. It's about how many concessions Nintendo will make to not only improve their situation, but the industries as a whole.

[Zaxxon]

Think what would happen if the console makers abandoned their current business model of selling the hardware at cost or at a loss and trying to make up the money on software sales and went back to the original Atari model of selling the hardware at a profit and not having any developer licencing fees? I think they would be better off. Seeing games that all cost $50 each is more of a turnoff to me than seeing a console that costs $50 more. If developers didn't have to pay those huge fees they could sell games a lot cheaper. If Nintendo, Sony, MS were making $50 a pop off each console sale I don't think they would be unhappy. I read the average console owner now only ever buys a few games, like 5 or less, they borrow and rent the others. It's not like the console companies would be making much more than $50 in royalties because most console owners don't buy that many games, especially at $50 a game.

[MankeyMan]

It would be great. You may be interested in this:

http://www.fairplaycampaign.co.uk

Shame it didn;t work.

[Zaxxon]

Yeah, I think I read that before but didn't agree with it exactly IIRC. Their idea was that they should sell the games cheaper just because they can't afford them and that they would sell more if they were cheaper. Yes that's true but the developers are still getting jacked for a ridiculous amount of money for the licensing fee for every copy of every game made. If you eliminate the license fee then yeah, it'll work.
What were developers supposed to do, sell a new PSX game for $20 when $9 of that is going straight to Sony, that leaves them with $11, take out advertising costs, cost of manufacturing, shipping, that doesn't leave them with any money to pay the developers.

[Raedon]

Yes that's true but the developers are still getting jacked for a ridiculous amount of money for the licensing fee for every copy of every game made.



Yea, that's why the employee's of RockStar games, Id and Maxis all drive around in Ferrari's.. :roll:

Game developers are the new music industry, prices are waaay to high right now.

[Zaxxon]

Rockstar, Id and Maxis all have games that have sold in the millions of copies. What percentage of games released are able to do that? Id knows they're going to sell a ton of DOOM 3 when it's released so they're not worried about any of that. You're trying to compare these 3 companies to the hundreds of smaller developers with a handfull of employees, very small budgets that go out of business if even one game is not a success.

[geelw]

lol. i was posting a topic about this last week, but it took me so long to compose that i hit submit, and well, it went into the ether. here's something to consider, folks:

according to intersect magazine, in 1994, nintendo at one time held about 80% of the console market (i think this was a worldwide avg.). less than 10 years later, it's around 40% the snes outsold both the N64, and did better than the game cube is doing at the moment.

nintendo's main gaming revenue seems to be coming from the millions of game boy systems and titles it sells, and that's all good- but why can't they market a home console? it's not that the system lacks in software, as there are a few dozen good-excellent titles for it. part of the issue is their slowness at competing with sony. nintendo lost out on the CD-ROM format "race", thus losing out on final fantasy. there were no good fighting games on the N64 (well, nothing that would make you run out and buy a system), some good driving games (but it was all over once gran turismo came out), and so forth and so on.

nintendo also suffers from it's perceived "kiddie" image here, and they're not really doing much to lure new older consumers. sure, resident evil, eternal darkness, bloodrayne, and other M-rated titles have been released, but nintendo refuses to market them more thoroughly. capcom produced its own commercial for resident evil from what i understand, and the one nintendo spot that targets older consumers (with the guy strapped to the bed) only shows games up to a Teen rating! but this goes back to conker's bad fur day, a game nintendo wouldn't even place ads for in its own magazine! sure, they have a huge family-oriented user base, but there are ways to get the message out that they're not all mario.

one thing that will help cube sales is the gb player, as folks will be intrigued enough to possibly pick the thing up. but what does that say to the consumer who has little faith in the game cube as a viable system? "aha! they can't sell me a game cube game, but they can sell me a unit that will play gba games on it, so maybe i'll buy one", for one thing (as crazy as it sounds- i heard that in a toys-r-us a few weeks ago). also, consider this: konami just announced a new castlevania for the PS2, but the only way to play a new castlevania on a nintendo system is to buy a game boy advance.


don't get me wrong, i love my gba, but nintendo simply cannot ignore the fact that they need to make the game cube sell before the even consider a new console. numbers don't lie, and what makes anyone think that another console will suddenly do better when the last two tanked (partly because of the "we have billions, so we can afford to experiment" mentality). it's a given: we all KNOW the game boy is going to sell even if nintendo stops making consoles altogether (which probably won't happen anytime soon). nintendo just needs to think of what will happen if it didn't. of couse, all comers have fallen by the wayside, and the n-gage is still a toss up (although i can see some sort of ban on the nokia in some public places, thanks to the anti-cellphone lobby, lol)

nintendo seems to be adopting parts of the same half-assed strategy that sent sega spiraling down the toilet as a console maker, and just having whatever vice-president of the week step down isn't going to help all that much. but a little humility is good for the cojones in the long run. failure also forced sega to make some damn good games to shut up the critics. not too many people i can think of say "sega sucks", unless they're talking about the old days.

nintendo has the damn good games (and yes, they're mostly first party, which is yet another issue), they just have to get some coffee (in the form of a quarterly loss or two) splashed in their eyes to see the light... :hmm:

[MankeyMan]

Yeah, I think I read that before but didn't agree with it exactly IIRC. Their idea was that they should sell the games cheaper just because they can't afford them and that they would sell more if they were cheaper. Yes that's true but the developers are still getting jacked for a ridiculous amount of money for the licensing fee for every copy of every game made. If you eliminate the license fee then yeah, it'll work.
What were developers supposed to do, sell a new PSX game for $20 when $9 of that is going straight to Sony, that leaves them with $11, take out advertising costs, cost of manufacturing, shipping, that doesn't leave them with any money to pay the developers.

They had a detailed scheme for how stuff works. Basically, Sony, Nintendo etc.. charge a %, rather than a flat out fee for releasing game on their consoles. So say 20%. Then that would take out 15% for manufacturing costs, 20% for retail profit and say 15% for advertising. That leaves 30% pure profit, and if they release their games at say $20 a go then the public are going to be more likely to buy those than the $40 games, which would increase profits.
Then, as everyones prices drops, with all games at $20 or so, people are far more likely to go out and randomly buy a game, like they would a CD, this ability to randomly go into a store, pick up something you know nothing about and buy it without worrying that you are wasting a lot of money on what *could* be rubbish, would also start bringing more people into buying games, who were originally scared of the high pricing.
Then everyone benefits. But that's only a theory, who knows what would happen in reality. No harm in giving it a go though.

[Zaxxon]

I think it would definately work. I've gone and spent $300 on games in one store visit because I was scooping up games that were marked down to $10-$20. I would never have spent that much $ at once if they were still selling for $50-$65 each. I wouldn't have bought any games at that price. It's better to get people to spend some money than none at all.

[udisi]

I agree with that...look at DVD sales since they've become cheaper, VHS is nearly extinct....As for Nintendo, they'll be fine as long as pokemon and the GBA keep holding on...If it wasn't for pokemon, the N64 would have died even sooner. I have to diagree with some people here and say that sony is beatable...1)Atari was unbeatable---crash of 84, atari gone enter Nintendo 2) nintendo is unbeatable 85-96---pisses off sony and decides to stick with cartriges amongst other stupid moves...sony enters on their own and detrowns the king. It can be done...people complain that MS hasn't made any really good 1st party games....sony's been making 1st party games since 96(7-8 years) and while they've had some moderate success, none have really been big hits... right now it's a battle over 3rd party developers. Give MS a few years maybe they'll get some good in house development and start pumping out Nintendo quality 1st party games, maybe MS will buy the world, Konami, Sega, or some other big name. Right now it's sony's game to lose, but Nintendo can float for a while longer, and maybe get back in there, but really I think MS may blind side some people.

[Nature Boy]

Console gaming is like printers. They give the printer away and make all their money on the ink cartridges. The same goes for consoles - they might not take a loss on a console necessarily, but they certainly make all their big money selling software.

And first party software makes a hell of a lot more money than 3rd party software ever does. You get more of the pie! Why would Nintendo want to give part of their massive, massive pie away? They might make less money perhaps, but others are profiting off their work this way. I certainly wouldn't want that.

[EnemyZero]

Well all I have to say is screw sony and microsoft, bring back sega and let them and nintendo compete for the belt like it used to be in the early 90's late 80's, when video gaming was at its best *in my eyes*. I can see microsoft being in the business for a long time because bill gates has the money, but thats the only reason, personally i think the system blows except for a few ( like 4) decent games on the system. I dont see the big N giving without a fight for a long time.