Are Nintendo Past It?

3rd May 2002. The day when a fallen giant was meant to come back to the big time. A day when the greatest game company in the world get back to their best and reclaim their place in the sun. The day millions of Nintendo fans had been waiting and praying for. The day Nintendo released their next-gen home console - the Nintendo Gamecube.

It was all set up - great launch games, a great future release schedule, a decent advertising campaign - what more could the public ask for? They wanted SOMETHING more, and everyone at Nintendo knows that, but what?

Console sales, as figures have shown, have been relatively poor, with Nintendo not reaching their projected targets and even slipping behind Microsoft's XBOX into 3rd place in the console race.

Even AAA games like Super Mario sunshine, The Legend of Zelda and Metroid Prime did little to raise console sales, and only a big price cut from major high street stores stimulated interest, which begs the question - Are Nintendo past it?

What worked for Nintendo in the 90’s is seemingly working against them in today's market, as the now grown up generation of gamers brought up on the SNES now believe Nintendo to be a Childs company with it’s colourful graphics and non-violent storylines, all points which are ‘uncool’ in gaming today..

This doesn’t answer the question though - the only question that answers is whether or not Nintendo are cool. What we want to know is whether the quality of Nintendo games are the same of that in the SNES’ heyday .

There is the fact that Nintendo’s heartbeat and driving force, Shiguru Miyamoto, is growing older and more eccentric, and it could be argued that he isn’t as focused as he once was on gaming, as his well documented interest in gardening shows.

The fact is that his games aren’t as well received in the media as the once was - neither Zelda nor Mario have lived up to the hype that was heaped on them, or been hailed as better than their predecessors , which could be used as a measure of their greatness

People do tend to look back at the past with rose tinted glasses - ask a gamer who spent a large chunk of the 90’s with their SNES’ or Megadrive’s and most will say that the 90’s generation of games are far superior to today’s.

In 5 years time we could well be looking back on how much fun we had with our Gamecube’s and PS2’s and conclude that we are, today, playing with the best consoles around.

So are Nintendo failing? In my opinion, no. Although the games may not seem as good as the SNES or the N64’s offerings, those games had the ‘shock of new’ to aid them in their quest for being heralded ‘the best game ever’. This generation has little to nothing. Please, throw away your rose-tinted glasses and see this generation for what it really is - class

Written by: Matthew Britton
Date: 22nd May 2003
Email: matthew.tribute@ntlworld.com