Archive link: https://archive.ph/NF2r0
At some point, getting Nintendo would be a career moment and I honestly believe a good move for both companies. It’s just taking a long time for Nintendo to see that their future exists off of their own hardware. A long time… :-)
As much as I like Microsoft, I don’t want them to touch Nintendo. I have no faith that they would continue doing what Nintendo does well.
An Xbox branded portable with a soc taken from an Android tablet released 8 years ago would tank badly
Nintendo is successful because of their games, not because their hardware is the best
That and some of their hardware concepts. When they work, they really work.
If that hardware was the first handheld gaming device capable of playing some small selection of 3D current gen games? It absolutely would have been successful.
Being Nintendo didn’t make the Wii U successful, because it was the worst piece of shit anyone’s ever made. The switch was successful because it was a good handheld.
Nah, the Wii U wasn’t a bad system at all. It failed for lack of advertising and game support. There was nothing to play and people didn’t understand it wasn’t just a Wii accessory. The name certainly didn’t help either.
I agree. The Wii U was great fun. The second screen was great for off-TV play and for local multiplayer.
Not only was it terribly marketed, but Nintendo had trouble getting the 3DS to sell and put all their energy into saving that. This left the Wii U with a lack of games at launch.
Combine that with EA dropping Nintendo because they refused to adopt Origin as their online platform, and it was doomed from the start, whether the hardware was good or not.
Edit: and the gamepad was more comfortable to hold than the Switch, ironically.
I mean that the nvidia shield tablet, which was released 3 years earlier, had almost exactly the same cpu/gpu of the nintendo switch for $100 cheaper, but it was a flop.
the secret it’s in making a console that It’s not able to run real current gen games (even in 2017), but it’s able to run highly optimized games that look like current gen (especially 1st party games where they don’t aim for visual realism)
i think for pure raw power the wiiu had a stronger cpu than the switch, but then the software didn’t take advantage of
You can’t compare a console to an Android tablet. They didn’t give developers any reason to target the shield tablet; of course there weren’t going to be any games. And the built in controllers to make it a handheld were what made the switch the switch anyways.
Switch games never at any point looked current gen. They could support some games with current gen mechanics, in a handheld form factor. The switch had no path to success if it wasn’t a handheld. There are some people who only use it docked, but nowhere near enough that it was remotely possible to build enough momentum for third party support.
Microsoft has their own strengths. If they had made the Switch, there would have been less compelling first party games, but there would have been a lot more early third party buy in and it would have been a wash. Ultimately the fact that it was a viable handheld capable of some meaningful 3D worlds would have sold it.
What are you talking about? One of the first games they brought out on the system was Doom 2016, a VERY good looking game at the time. The fact that a handheld could run it was mind-blowing, even at half the framerate.
Doom looked awful on the switch. It took an extremely heavy dose of adaptive resolution, with a bunch of effects rendered at 360p, and heavy motion blur just to get the game to function at 30FPS.
And it’s a game that uses very careful design to run extremely well on very old PC hardware.
Honestly WiiU was sick as hell for MH3U cuz I could have all my UI on the other screen so it was super cool for immersion.
I agree, their first party games are usually extremely polished and accessible for everyone in the family. their concepts overall for consoles are typically really good though. just about every console since the Wii (except WiiU) has felt great to use, even if they all have some kind of gimmick. But I think the gimmicks help in their favor, it makes them stand out from PS and Xbox
They tried to be the best in hardware too but that failed so they stick with software
lol just saw the timeline, imagine spending years of r&d for the best game console on the market, then microsoft beats you by 3 days
Twice actually. If they used CD instead of cartridges N64 would beat the first PS.
I still think the N64’s overall technical superiority over the PS1 is very visible. Notice how much more closed in most PS1 games’ environments are. Spyro is the main exception, but that needed a lot of special tricks where N64 just does that. I say this as someone who doesn’t really like the N64 library.
Yeah, many games originally planned for n64 got scrapped due to cartridge format. FF7 is a notable example. All that processing power gone to waste because space constraint. They learned nothing of this and still used the alien mini dvd format in Gamecube.
Microsoft is a good underdog because they have infinite money. And a really bad market leader, I bet worse than Sony. It would’ve been way better for the industry to not let them acquire the big boys they have.
Microsoft is not only a bad market leader.
It is a bad loser too. Remember the Nokia purchase? They sunk billions into the company too boost their worse mobile OS, and when it failed they shut down the whole company.
Imagine they would to something similar to Nintendo.
It’ll never happen. Nintendo would laugh them off if they even suggested it.
Microsoft tried buying Nintendo a few years before the first Xbox came out, and Nintendo execs laughed to their face.
Source: Dean Takahashi’s Inside Xbox, very interesting book.
Lol that’s great
Nintendo is a publicly traded company. It can happen against their wishes. This is known as a hostile takeover.
Japan’s first successful hostile takeover only happened in June 2019
Many companies in Japan have keiretsu style cross shareholding,
These cross shareholding systems create a resistance towards hostile takeover, which have both its up and down sides, but at least it has resisted the likes of corporate raiders, e.g. Carl Icahn, where they acquire companies for asset stripping. Corporate raiders don’t create values for society, it’s to fatten payouts.
Sorry for the long reply, it’s just for other users to get a glimpse on why hostile takeover is extremely rare in Japan, and probably doubly so when it comes to foreign hostile takeover.
Don’t apologise, this is great insight. Thank you for your comment.
Very interesting, thank yoi
While that’s true successful hostile takeovers by foreigners are rare in Japan. Japanese companies often implement a poison pill to thwart a takeover.
What exactly does that mean?
Basically the company board has approved a policy where the company will issue new shares if one owner reaches a certain percentage of current shares. Those shares can be then purchased by the existing shareholders (excluding the one(s) that already owns more than the percentage) with a discount.
So Nintendo could have such a policy in place that if one shareholder goes over 20%, new shares will be issued to other shareholders, lowering the value of each share, and effectively also the relative amount of shares (percentage) owned by that one shareholder. That basically leaves only one option, the buyer attempting the takeover would have to negotiate with the board directly. And in the case of Microsoft, the board would laugh at their face.
Maybe they could achieve the takeover via shell shareholders remaining under the percentage each, and get them to vote in a new board that would revoke the policy, but that’s way more difficult to pull off.
They implement measures to make it very difficult for a single shareholder to gain a majority stake in the company. It’s called a poison pill because it will fuck over every shareholder. Like when a company creates new shares but never put those on sale and thus dilute the shares of all shareholders. Of course the company can only do that if the shareholders voted for such a policy.
Yeah, Nintendo have enough funds to just sit there and do nothing for decades. We also have seen plenty that they chose to go their own way instead of chasing whatever is popular right now for a quick buck.
As long as they have leaders following the Nintendo philosophy, they’re just going to truck on, at their own pace for better and worse.