Opinion
What is Nintendo Doing Right?
Every Nintendo console, while inferior by performance, sells to way more people.
Nintendo, in the eighties and nineties, was the biggest, and most popular video game company. Nintendo dominated the market at the time, releasing many pig title games, and later in the nineties, making the first 64 bit graphics.
Since then, X-Boxes and Playstations have trounced Nintendo’s consoles indefinitely in graphics and gameplay. Yet, Nintendo still seems to remain popular.
Both Microsoft and Sony are missing the vital part to consoles, the part that Nintendo has nailed every time: Multiplayer. I am not talking about WAN multiplayer here, I am talking about multiplayer that is played with strictly the people in the room. All of the Nintendo consoles have been made with the local multiplayer theme in mind.
Since computers have been good enough to run games, there is zero reason to play a game on a console; unless there is price involved, consoles are much cheaper than that of a computer of comparable performance. Computers are much easier to handle, can run a ton of other programs, like a music player or a web browser, and has the ability for modifications. No, consoles today must be made for local multiplayer; and Nintendo has been getting it spot-on every time.
Take the Wii. The Wii came with a remote, and a game. The remote was built to be easily utilized for arcade games, with its plethora of different button types, and its single-hand grip. The game, Wii Sports, was built almost exclusively for multiple players; hardly ever was there a game made by Nintendo that could not be played with two players, or a game not made by Nintendo for their consoles.
Nintendo, on March First, released a game system called the Nintendo Switch. Nintendo has built the Switch for local multiplayer, but has also built it for single player, and has done so knowing exactly the reasons for the two: People want a cheap, portable console, but also want local multiplayer gameplay.
