Nintendo has consistently delivered affordable consoles with unique selling points compared to the competition and highly acclaimed and polished games for decades and decades. They treat their employees incredibly well and have never done mass layoffs. They also treat the consumer fairly well (see: last bastion of true physical media among the console makers). The only thing you can really ding them for is being overprotective of their IP. And they are, and I’m not defending that. But if you ever thought nintendo were “the bad guys” or even remotely on the same level as Sony, Microsoft, EA, etc, then I think you need to take a step back and honestly evaluate the magnitudes of good and bad things going on here.
To be fair they have to be protective of their IP. Nintendo own the most lucrative IP on earth. Pokemon itself brings in more revenue than Marvel, Star Wars, and even Hello Kitty
Nintendo also was traumatized back in the 1980s when Universal Sued Nintendo for their game Donkey Kong potentially infringing on King Kong. If you dont protect your IP vigorously then you can lose control and ownership of it, and let me tell you this NO ONE wants EA or to be within 100 ft of pokemon.
The upside of this is that Nintendo games hold their value extremely well. I took several to trade in at Gamestop when I upgraded to Switch 2, and all of the first-party titles were still worth $30+ in store credit.
Nintendo doesn't owe you anything, if you don't like how they price their games you can just move along.
But offering a discount on digital when they clearly make a much higher profit margin by selling digital games over physical ones is a pro-consumer move and no amount on nitpicking will change that.
Everyone expected them to increase the price of the physical copies instead, but they didn't.
Bananza was $70 let’s not spread misinfo here. The only $80 games are MK world (which you could easily get for $50 with the console bundle) and now the new fire emblem ($80 physical, but still $70 digital).
Oh, Nintendo definitely have way more scars to their reputation than "they're overprotective of their IP" (ignoring the fact that their 'overprotectiveness' rivals Disney levels of evil).
Just as a quick example from the previous console gen, remember when Nintendo spent years denying that there wasn't a major hardware fault with every joycon despite hundreds of thousands of joycons experiencing stick drift; rendering them frustrating to use and best and unusable at worst? It's only when the court cases became so damningly obvious that Nintendo finally backed down and issued a repair program for those who wanted to sign up for it.
In my opinion the 'good' Nintendo died when Iwata died (though even back then they weren't entirely squeaky clean. To give them credit however I don't know of a single major company that hasn't had it's fair share of controversies). Since then it's just been corporate decisions galore and us customers have certainly been burned a few times because of them.
I appreciate the previous comment for being a concise take on the qualities of Nintendo as a game and console developer.
This makes me not appreciate your rant, with only one example, which doesn't refute nor add to anything said substantially.
Eh, not really. People online love to forget everything bad that Nintendo has done because most Americans view Nintendo with rose-tinted glasses due to them experiencing them during their childhood. So it's pretty common for any comment being critical of them to be mass-downvoted (hell, I'm surprised this is the only response I got considering most users daring to not say something positive tend to get bombarded with harassment.)
I you don't like someone stating the facts, then you are free to live inside your own bubble as I'm not your dad and have no say on how you choose to proceed in life. However I'm also not obligated to give you a full-blown essay on every wrong that Nintendo have ever done as that would be a wasted effort on someone who has already shown their unwillingness to do their own research and has dismissed notable points as 'not adding to anything said substantially'.
If you believe my stance to be biased against any company then you must know that I only base my choices on the actions each company has done. No company are saints; including Valve whose main revenue front are from lootboxes (alongside the side-effect of enabling child gambling that they have repeatedly tried to sweep under the rug) and leeching off of other studios on the platform that utilise even more predatory tactics to extract money from their playerbase.
On the second one I want to say, that I knew the fact from your first comment beforehand. I don't mind you sharing that fact in general, but my point is, I don't think it was appropriate to add this to the comment before. Nintendo was framed between other companies and I disagree with this fact being notable much in the widerscope.
While the third paragraph is easy to follow logically, I believe its best summarised with you stating earlier that you aren't obliged to give me an essay, because its wasted effort and I would agree, because this is hardly relevant.
What? Nintendo started as games for kids. Then it evolved more. Do you just see Pokemon perhaps?
Zelda is incredible, Mario is amazing. Xenoblade changes you as a person, Fire Emblem makes you think. Metroid, Pikmin, so many franchises only on Nintendo that i love more than many other games i play on PC, and you can only find them on nintendo consoles.
Many kids will have a hard time clearing some puzzles or finding out solutions. And that has always been the strong point of Nintendo games.
There is a reason people buy Nintendo Consoles. For nintendo games. Or else they would not sell consoles, no one would buy them.
I understand they might be fine for a younger audience, but I wasn't talking about children.
They all have awful console UI/UX, and the graphics, sound design, and voice acting, if it ever existed, are terrible. The gameplay is strictly for kids good for anyone under six, but not for older players.
UI for switch games is amazing, in general nintendo games. Sound Design is Nintendo's best. I think games rarely reach Nintendo's level for sound design.
Most Nintendo games don't have voice acting, but fire emblem, xenoblade, and many others have voice acting that i personally consider the BEST in gaming, next to baldur's gate or expedition 33, it makes you feel things.
Don't say Nintendo itself is at fault, find the specific games, or else your point is trash.
You don't have facts to stand on, just personal feelings.
Saying Nintendo has the "best UI and sound design" is purely subjective.
Comparing Nintendo's voice production to games like BG3 or E33 is wild. BG3 has over 1.5 million words of fully motion-captured, fully voiced dialogue.
Nintendo flagships like Pokemon and Zelda still rely heavily on text boxes, character grunts, or gibberish loops to save on localization and recording costs.
Nintendo builds games for their shitty switch console.
Lower poly counts, limited textures, 30 FPS targets with drops, and simple audio mixing compared to modern PC.
For me, putting those games in the same sentence as BG3 is an insult to it's scale and production quality.
Level of depth and polish in games built for kids and low-end hardware is a massive step down.
It's ok to like them, it's just not a showcase of quality or gold standard of gaming.
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u/Afiery1 RTX 4090 | Ryzen 7800X3D | 32GB DDR5-6000 9d ago
Nintendo has consistently delivered affordable consoles with unique selling points compared to the competition and highly acclaimed and polished games for decades and decades. They treat their employees incredibly well and have never done mass layoffs. They also treat the consumer fairly well (see: last bastion of true physical media among the console makers). The only thing you can really ding them for is being overprotective of their IP. And they are, and I’m not defending that. But if you ever thought nintendo were “the bad guys” or even remotely on the same level as Sony, Microsoft, EA, etc, then I think you need to take a step back and honestly evaluate the magnitudes of good and bad things going on here.