Is this the end for Nintendo?
Yesterday Nintendo released their 'Digital event' detailing the next year for Nintendo.
The last few years have been a bit of a roller coaster ride for Nintendo. The Wii represented a second golden age, but since then the casual market has moved away from them. It’s been tough. Last year, Nintendo managed to stave off their expiration with a stack of their crowd pleasers: Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros and Pokemon all got dragged out last year at Nintendo’s E3 ‘Digital Event’ which gave them little to show this year.
If you haven’t seen Nintendo’s ‘Digital Event’ here it is:
The running theme of the event was supposably ‘changes’ but it came off more as just plain weird. There was a running segment starring the three presenters as puppets introducing each new game release, which could have been charming, but just seemed to fall a little flat. Throughout the entire presentation there were only a handful of new releases and so we were treated to a variety of filler segments from long winded explanations to uninteresting ‘developer stories’.
In Nintendo’s defence, they did manage to pull out a few more items for the fans, a new Starfox game and an two Animal Crossing games are sure to sell. The new games looked rushed, with low quality texturing and design. That looks embarrassing when compared to some of the games Sony where flashing in their conference. It’s really quite difficult to see how Nintendo can compete in the current market as they are beginning to look quite dated.
The final nail in the coffin wasn’t game quality though, around the midpoint of the event Nintendo released a new partnership with Skylanders. Frankly, The move reeks of desperation. The Skylanders cross-over introduces a line of Skylanders characters that can also behave as amibos and so mean that both fans have to buy them to have all their game content.
The amibos have sold well because of their quality and game integration but across the entire presentation amibos were everywhere, trying to entice fans into buying more and more, to unlock aspects of games that should already be playable.
Nintendo are circling the drain and no Italian plumber will be able to save them this time.
