PROLOGUE: If you think everyone should share your view of reality, or if you become enraged when encountering a difference of opinion, I advise you to skip this post. In other words, hang on, Nintendo fans. This is gonna hurt:

Nintendo is expected to pull a Netflix and and pile on even more crap numbers this Thursday, adding to the already crappy quarterlies they’ve posted over the last year.

In the comment thread of the above article, one observer reacted as follows: “3DS will $99 soon and likely discontinued.”

I wouldn’t go quite that far. But I could see 3DS being discontinued prematurely. Whether that’s “soon” or not remains to be seen. But there’s no other way to put it: This thing is a sinking ship. Not Titanic fast or Virtual Boy fast. But fast enough to search the deck for life boats.

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Nintendo has a rich history of innovative and gameplay contributing hardware. You know: new hardware twists that improve the way we interactive with games. Having played all of the company’s systems since 1986, here’s how I’d rank ‘em in terms of most gameplay enabling to least gameplay enabling:

1. Nintendo DS. Whose to blame for the ongoing touch gaming revolution? This little guy. Not only that, the DS lends itself better to virtually every genre ever created. Talk about adaptive hardware. Consequently, it’s the best-selling video game system ever (console or handheld, whether made by Nintendo or not). Talk about well received.
2. Nintendo Entertainment System. Directional pads and face buttons might not have existed if it weren’t for this gray box. Joysticks are retro-chic and all, but they’re horribly imprecise when compared to gamepads that the NES pioneered. In fact, some of the best Wii and iOS games mimic the NES joypad (Wiimote turned sideways or on screen d-pad and two face buttons).
3. Wii. The only thing that keeps this from being higher on my list is the limited number of genres that benefit from motion control. Obviously, Wii works great for a lot of games, including apparatus sports (tennis, golf, bowling, etc), arcade shooters, and puzzlers, but other popular genres like platformers, first and third-person games, and others are better served overall with a gamepad. The current gaming landscape is a testament to that.  (more…)

Like many of you, I awoke to news yesterday that Nintendo had cut the price of the 3DS by an unprecedented 32% in one fell swoop. Wired Magazine called it a “fire sale.”

More unprecedented was how quickly it happened; only four months after the 3DS launch. (NOTE: Nintendo’s other slow selling systems, N64 and GameCube, saw 25% price drops six months after launch. Virtual Boy was pulled after less than a year.)

Said Nintendo President Satoru Iwata following the shocking news, “While it has happened in the past that a game system would be reduced in price in order to increase sales, it has never happened in Nintendo’s history that a console would be reduced in price so drastically and after less than six months.”

What does this all mean? I’d say it’s one of the following: (more…)

We play for the games, that’s for sure. But it’s hard not to hold a soft spot for the last thing you see before escaping.  (more…)

You know, like with a handheld or smartphone…

(Thanks, ghettoska)