I remember sitting on my gramma’s living room floor, the autumn colors of the carpeting beneath me, the a-frame ceiling above me, the stone fireplace to my right, and the wood enclosed behemoth of a television in front of me. My hands grasped the grey and black plastic of the NES controller. My thumbs sore from mashing buttons in the dim morning light, long before anyone in my family was awake. The disappointing yet somehow motivating message flashed on the screen: “I’m sorry but your princess is in another castle.”

One does not easily forget those words. They are etched in the mind every child of the eighties and nineties. It was our call, our battle cry if you will. The fight was not over yet, but there was hope in knowing that our princess was still out there, somewhere, waiting to be rescued by a plump, mustache-bearing, shroom-munching, midget plumber.

But here we are, some thirty years later, and I’m coming to a realization. Mario isn’t what he used to be. Well not necessarily Mario specifically but the organization he represents. Nintendo is falling behind. I know it hurt me even more to write that than it does for you to read it. I love Nintendo. They embody the very nostalgic innocence that brought us into the world of video games in the first place. But taking a step back and looking at Nintendo from a wider angle, I’m seeing a dismal future at best.

Let’s journey back to thanksgiving of 2006. The sci-fi console of the future was about to hit shelves. They called it the Nintendo Wii. The Wii, accomplished so much. It took gaming back from the nerds and opened it up to the family again. It’s motion controlled experience gave it an edge that gaming had needed for a long time: a relevance to the general public.

No one in my family except for my brother and me played video games. They were for kids, and more specifically they were for boy kids. The Wii changed all that. EVERYONE and their mother (literally) bought a Wii. And if you didn’t have one, your friend did. You could bet your sweet bippy, everyone would be over there playing together.

The Wii made gaming social again. Not in the sense like we think of social today (i.e. Facebook, Twitch.tv, or Twitter) I mean you would literally play, physically, together. It had never been done before. Needless to say, the Wii was a huge success.

It made such a huge impact that current consoles that had been out for at least a year or two were now scrambling to create peripherals that would mimic this type of gameplay. Thus the Kinect and PlayStation Move were implemented, both of which did not fair very well. Nintendo was on top for a good portion of the next five years. And it seemed that after a bleak season in Nintendo’s life (the Gamecube), they were back.

But, as time went on, Nintendo lost sight of what made them so welcome into the home. They thought people liked the gimmicks. When in reality, they liked the magic. People liked the fact that it didn’t feel like they were playing a video game. Still Nintendo suddenly went on a peripherals crusade. More and more extra “stuff” started coming out for the Wii (i.e. the Classic Controller, the microphone thingy that sat on top of your T.V., the Balance Board, as well as awful non-essential things like fake golf clubs, tennis rackets, and steering wheels that you snap onto your Wiimote. It got out of hand. And it was then that I lost my passion and love for the Wii.

Fast forward to thanksgiving of 2012 and we see the onset of the WiiU. 6 year old graphics, a battery sucking tablet-controller, a baffling amount of theoretical configurations of gameplay, and basically no games to play on it. It was doomed from the start. But I, being one to enjoy Nintendo, bought one shortly after Christmas that year. I bought one game in addition to the one that it came with. Since then, I have acquired only one more game for the system. And that’s not because I didn’t want to play it, It’s because a year later, there still aren’t any games for it!

The Xbox One, which released November of 2013 has almost just as many games for it as the WiiU. This is insane. But you can’t blame developers for avoiding this system like the plague. It’s a nightmare to develop for. Games that are made for other systems like PlayStation and XBOX have to be basically redesigned for the WiiU. They have to come up with some nifty way to incorporate the screen on the controller that doesn’t make you want to toss the thing against the wall when you use it. Every time I have to look down at that screen I get so disoriented I can hardly stand it.

The WiiU is a failure. That’s just the objective truth. There’s no beating around the bush with this one. It’s a terrible game system and whatever it tried to do with integrating Television control, XBOX One has done it better. It’s only a year old and it’s completely irrelevant.

Now, Nintendo is hinting at a new system!

“Oh yay! They’re going to fix this!”

A new system that is basically just WiiFit.

“SON OF A—”

*rips phone book in half*

This is a mistake. Nintendo still thinks it’s gimmicks are what sell it’s products. Once again allow me to say it’s not gimmicks, it’s magic. When I sit in front of my XBOX One and it instantly recognizes me and brings up my personalized home screen, that’s magical. It’s beyond my ability to comprehend how it works scientifically.

If Nintendo thinks that they will be able to stay in this game… of games… by making fitness equipment, they are gravely mistaken. But then again, maybe they’re not into the console war anymore. Maybe they feel that their portable line (which is doing very well) will carry them through. But if Nintendo as a game console company ceases to exist, I’ll admit that I will be very disappointed. I love a good Mario or Zelda game just as much as the next guy. If Nintendo continues down this route of fitness machines and niche gimmicks, I’m afraid that in ten years, our kids will laugh when we say that Nintendo was our favorite GAME system, just like we laugh at our grandparents who say Ronald Reagan was their favorite actor.

Nintendo did, however just recently hold 3rd quarter financial results meeting where they were very straight forward about the current state of the company and put forth a great many promises on how they plan to succeed and make a place for themselves specifically in the game CONSOLE market. You can find that article here.

The bottom line is that times change, and sometimes that sucks. And although my son will never have that nostalgic memory of my grandmother’s living room floor, he will have new memories, maybe with Nintendo and maybe without. Nevertheless, I do know for a fact that in ten years, Nintendo or not, I will inevitably be using the phrase, “When I was your age we didn’t have holograms!”