Nintendo and It's Staggering Position

So over the last couple of years, Nintendo has been on very shaky ground with gamers, and has been sort of losing its touch.  This article is going to go through everything from the minor setbacks to the complete devastations that Nintendo has been going through lately in chronological order.

Nintendo Wii

Don't get me wrong, the Nintendo Wii did insanely well financially.  In fact, it was Nintendo's 3rd best selling console of all time, Nintendo's best selling home console of all time and the 5th best selling games console of all time.  

Nintendo Wii

However, what makes this console an unqualified blunder on the part of Nintendo is that the Wii was the console that truly took Nintendo out of the serious gaming market.  With it's motion sensing technology, Nintendo claimed that the Nintendo Wii was the future of gaming.  However, the Wii spun off in a completely different direction and was found to be more functional and entertaining as a casual games medium.  

This led to Nintendo's attempts to try to bring their techniques that they learned in the serious gamer medium to the casual gamer medium, which didn't work out that well.  This was truly one of Nintendo's highest moments financially, but it was the turning point of the company, and where the company turned to was a place that no one knew what to do.

Nintendo 3DS

Whilst this console is one of the most powerful handheld consoles to date, many consumers felt that the console was very confusing.  At this point, Nintendo had a very large amount of casual gaming consumers due to their success with the Wii, so coming out with such an innovative piece of technology would fly over most of the consumer's heads.  

Nintendo 3DS

Case and point is that most of the consumers of the Nintendo 3DS did not know that you could turn the 3D on the console off, which you could do via a slider on the side of the top screen.  This caused frustration with the consumers due to the fact that in many cases, constant 3D gave consumers headaches and nausea.  This turned many consumers off to the console, despite the answer being literally right in front of them.

Nintendo 2DS

The 2DS was the answer to this problem, however, this caused many more problems for Nintendo.  First off, the console didn't sell nearly as well as Nintendo thought it would, due to the fact that it had been publicly known that the 3D could be turned off at this point and there was no need for a console that simply took the 3D out.  

Nintendo 2DS

In fact, the most recent sales numbers I could find concerning this system were dated about a year ago and those numbers stated that the 2DS had only sold about 2.4 million worldwide, which is less than the N-Gage that was released in 2003 (if any of you even know what that system is), and also effectively making the 2DS the second worst selling handheld video game console and the 5th or 6th worst selling video game console of all time, hanging out in numbers next to the likes of the Phillips CD-i, Intellivision, and the Magnavox Odyssey.  

This was definitely a financial blunder as well as a technical one, and probably one of the most unnecessary consoles in gaming history.

Nintendo WiiU

The WiiU was basically built as a successor to the Wii, however, due to how the WiiU was marketed, as well as the outstanding similarities between the two consoles, many consumers thought that the WiiU was simply an add-on to the Wii.  It was because of this that the WiiU struggled to take off in sales in its first year.  

Nintendo WiiU

When it was made clear that it was its own separate console, however, the WiiU began to pick up a little bit of speed.  However, it was at this point that many consumers realized that what they had thought of as a tablet at that time was very different than what the WiiU tablet was.  The average consumer thought that the WiiU tablet was capable of playing WiiU games on the go, however, it served as a component to the WiiU console itself.  

In essence, the WiiU successfully confused consumers and made them think that the console was a bunch of different things that it wasn't.  As of late, Nintendo has been attempting to innovate incredibly, and while that is a good thing in some respects, in the field that Nintendo has landed itself in, it can be devastating.  Casual gamers don't want change, they want something familiar and easy which Nintendo hasn't been giving them.

So Why is Nintendo On the Fall?

One of the most outstanding reasons that Nintendo is on the wrong end of the gaming industry is it's failure to judge its target market.  They know that they are marketing toward young adults and children, however, they do not realize that their systems are more friendly to the casual gamer, and by mixing up their systems in the way they are doing, they are confusing those gamers and making their systems fail as a result.  

What Nintendo needs to do is either capitalize on the huge market that they have, or change their market entirely by making a system that can compete with the PS4 and Xbox One, and that may be exactly what they are doing.  With the Nintendo NX, we may be getting a leap back into the serious gaming market along the likes of Sony and Microsoft.  Only time will tell if this new console can drag Nintendo out of their rut and put them back on track.

Thanks for reading!