You know, I love Nintendo and their games in general. It's been this way since I first played Super Mario Bros. on the NES and my love of gaming skyrocketed. But why do people & fans keep making excuses for them and their bone-headed business practices?
One of the big ones I always hear is about "Nintendo's warchest" or the magical amounts of money they have. As if that means that they will continue with business as usual and that nothing is wrong. To me, that's burying your head in the sand and not seeing the reality of the situation. Nintendo is a publicly traded company. They have shareholders. While the company has a ton of money in the bank, the fact is their profits and market share have been sharply declining with each successive generation of consoles, the Wii being the only exception.
NES: 62 million systems sold worldwide
SNES: 49 million systems sold worldwide
N64: 33 million systems sold worldwide
Gamecube: <22 million systems sold worldwide
Wii: 101 + million systems sold worldwide
Wii U: 10 million systems sold worldwide and the slowest & lowest selling Nintendo system to date
Their handheld business is taking a hit as well due to increased competition from cheap tablet and smartphone titles.
GameBoy (including Pocket & Color variations): 119 million systems sold worldwide
GameBoy Advance (including SP): 81.5 million systems sold worldwide
Nintendo DS (including DS Lite, DSi and XL variations): 154 million systems sold worldwide
Nintendo 3DS (including variations): 53.1 million systems sold worldwide (note: this is when cell & tablet games became more prolific)
Aside from the bumps in the Wii and DS lines, Nintendo's business has been on a downhill slide. Shareholders are not happy. Many developers are not happy. And many gamers are not happy as well. Unlike Sony or Microsoft, Nintendo is not invested in other markets. For them, video games are about it. And they continue to screw it up, even when they found a way to print money.
Amiibos! The biggest thing in the video game market right now, and Nintendo has their head stuck up their collective asses with them. They themselves are basically screwing gamers and themselves over with the boneheaded ways they shortchange these figures, make store exclusives and just about everything about how they are marketed. If people want your product, make the damn things! Gamers are happy, sales go up, revenues go up and shareholders are happy. But no....that's not the Nintendo way. I can understand gauging demand wrong with the first series. Ok, so they didn't know everyone would want the Wii Fit Trainer, Marth or the Villager. Guess what? MAKE ANOTHER F'N RUN OF THEM!!!! There is no excuse for the way they have been handled.
On top of that, bone-headed naming conventions for their systems and everything else, Nintendo would rather hide game like Fatal Frame and Devil's Third instead of showing them off to get some attention. In today's market, the Wii U is relegated to a little space on the retailers shelves. Gamestop has these huge walls of PlayStation and Xbox stuff...and one wee rack of Wii U games. You would think they would want as many games as possible out there to entice people to buy their stuff. But no...again, it's not the "Nintendo way."
I'm not going to apologize for them. I'm not going to sit here and act like everything is fine & dandy. And I sure as hell ain't going to say that their daddy Warbuck's pot 'o gold in the bank will keep them going for years to come. Nintendo needs to change. I don't know how, but they need to do something. And free-to-play or whatever the hell they want to call it mobile games isn't going to do it. The completely bizarre handling of the Amiibo releases isn't helping either. And pretending that a bunch of money in the bank is going to keep shareholders, developers and fans happy when every generation your market share shrinks is just delusional thinking.