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Michael Pachter predicts doom for Nintendo... Again.
Comments
Pokemon is still a huge merchandising juggernaut, Mario and Zelda are quite nostalgic for most of the kids born in the 80's and beyond. These three franchises tend to have wide appeal to boot. The whole bit about them being of consistently high quality doesn't hurt either.
More kids know who Mario is than Mickey Mouse now.
One of Nintendo's strength actually is its mascots, which gives them recognizable brand identity.
I guess MS sort of has one with Master Chief but what is Sony's?
Lessee here... they had Crash and Spyro, but those got nabbed. I guess either Jak or Ratchet, but mostly Ratchet, considering they still make games for that series outside of PSP spin-offs.
^Doesn't precisely count, since those have been relegated to Japan for years.(well, before Street Fighter X Tekken, that is.)
Crash Bandicoot? I think they were trying to use it as their mascot for a while.
ninja'd
^^ Haven't ever heard of them.
^ they got lawyered away? How?
Apparently, a falling out with Vivendi Universal caused them to regrab the rights from Sony.
This guy is such a bore.
Well, I think they tried with Crash who is multi-platform now, but I don't think Ratchet & Clank have a strong enough presence to be the mascot.
If anything, it seemed as if Nathan Drake was going to become one, but after the stinking piece of shit that is U3, I don't see it happening.
Somewhat related, I'm curious what people think of the idea that dedicated game consoles are going to become obsolete. IMO, people who think the next generation of consoles will be hurt by that significantly are overestimating the speed of the change, but I think the generation after that might be in trouble.
^
Oh yeah forgot about that. The Wii is still a dedicated games console right?
re:Neptunia; I really want to play this game. And yet, I don't have a PS3...
As for dedicated video game consoles becoming obsolete... I sure hope that happens soon. With any luck, that would lead to fewer games exclusive to one platform, meaning a better chance of actually being able to play games I want to play.
The Gamecube had critical success for a large amount of what it did release, but it also marked when most of Nintendo's second and third party support packed up and went to Sony and Microsoft. So yes, it was a smaller-than-usual success and lost a good deal of what made it a juggernaut in previous generations.
As for dedicated games consoles becoming obsolete, not bloody likely. Sure they'll be able to do more non-game stuff, but ultimately being able to develop for and purchase games for a very specific and much cheaper platform with requirements you can count on not to change, have to upgrade constantly, or have compatibility issues with is an exceedingly powerful thing.
Who's Michael Pachter?
Also: One of the hotels my family stays in in Georgia has some hotel N64 system or something attached. The one I stayed in in Madison last week was more advanced: it had a GameCube.
It's very accessible, has well-designed mechanics for the most part, the gameplay is fairly interesting, and it carries a lot of nostalgia for kids in the 90's.
^^ I've seen that before. Some hotels have a game system emulator coded into their TV network so that they can offer you games to play for a time-dependent fee.