Why Nintendo Isn’t Dead Yet

Awhile back, Nintendo reported their loss of $457 million over their last fiscal year. The Wii U is Nintendo’s biggest problem as it has only sold 6.17 million units over its lifespan.    (At the time of these reports) The 3DS has sold 43.33 million during the product’s lifetime, but fell short of Nintendo’s expectations. The 3DS is selling extremely well, Nintendo’s expectations, or should I say hopes, were to just a little bit too high.  While $457 million is a lot of money, the old dog isn’t dead yet.

This year at E3, Nintendo was throwing games and information out left and right. We got games like Zelda Wii U (working title) Xenoblade Chronicles, Splatoon, Mario Maker, Star Fox, and more. While the Wii U has been a bit dry since its release, it clearly has stuff coming for it. Quite a few of the games announced are not being released until 2015, however 2014 is completely bare. Super Smash Bros, Hyrule Warriors, Bayonetta 2, and Captain Toad are just to name a few.

Believe or not, but the multiplayer games that Nintendo creates have pretty huge followings. Games like Super Smash Bros, Pokémon, and Mario Kart have huge communities that tend to be extremely die hard for their respective game. If Nintendo pays a little more attention to the fans of its competitive games, I see them raking in the dough. I believe they’re working on their interaction with the competitive community. Mario Kart 8 got support in the way of custom races, Mario Kart TV, and the ability to upload straight to YouTube. A crazy amount of Smash Bros fans tuned into a tournament that Nintendo set up featuring various pro players from the smash community.  Pokémon has actually already gotten some competitive support in the form of EV training within Pokémon X and Y, making it easier to train pokemon to battle competitively.

Nintendo has a certain quality that the other companies just don’t have. Nintendo repeatedly puts out games that are not only a higher quality experience when it comes to gameplay, but they are also a higher quality in game design on a technical level.  While the PS4 and Xbox One have more power under the hood, Nintendo makes their games with an attention to detail. Very few Nintendo games require extreme patches or fixes to get rid of bugs, glitches, or other game breaking effects. Overall, they are just well made.

While the Wii U is underpowered in comparison to the other consoles, Nintendo knows how to work with the power that it has given itself. In fact, very rarely does Nintendo go for a extremely realistic art style, so their games don’t need the most powerful technology in their console. Mario Kart 8 is a beautiful game running at 60 frames per second. It honestly looks better than some games I’ve seen on the more powerful systems. Super Smash Bros. is also shaping up to be a beautiful looking game. But Nintendo is proving it’s not about how much technical power you have, it’s about what you do with what you’re given. Even further than that, it’s not always about the graphics, it’s about the games that come out for the console. (Shovel Knight anyone?)

Quite honestly, Nintendo cannot die off. The gaming industry needs them. The Microsoft, Sony, and PC have the dark, serious game, Nintendo offers something unique and special n the end, The lack of titles is just a road bump. You can even see that the big N actually isn’t alone in the matter. Sony and Microsoft’s new systems are quite barren right now as well.