When 2007 rolled around, we seemed to hear about the “woes” of Sony and Microsoft quite a bit while Nintendo sat back and enjoyed the spotlight with the Wii. GamesRadar has a fantastic piece on the Top 7 mistakes Nintendo has made. Now Nintendo gets to take a few hits and the first on the list at #7 is the Wii itself. The case brought up against the system is a good one and the hatred doesn’t stop there. Virtual Boy, the lack of network play on Nintendo systems, and even Nintendo 64 take a hit. My favorite quote?
“Customer’s don’t want online games.” – Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, 2004
“More than six million people are Xbox Live members.” – Microsoft press release, 2007
Numbers speak louder than words Iwata, so listen up! Be sure to read it from start to finish, as it just keeps getting better and better as you read on.
How the videogame giant became the world’s favorite underdog [GamesRadar]
hey wait aren’t you a sony fanboy?
wow… this being brought to my attention by Vince? I didn’t see this coming! Oh…and I’m sure this is just going to be a one time thing…
Clue #1: 6 million people out of an installed base of 34 million Xbox and Xbox 360 owners = 18%. i.e. even on the Xbox, 80% of people apparently don’t want online.
Clue #2: Of those 6 million Xbox Live account holders, how many actually game online regularly? It’s not 100%. I mean, I’ve gone online from two of my consoles, but not to play games–instead, to download updates and demos and cheats.
Clue #3: The kind of people who join Xbox live are probably not Nintendo’s target audience anyway. They’re hardcore FPS addicts, not the kind of people who are going to play Wii games.
So back in 2004, I expect Nintendo were 100% right about their customers not wanting online games. Even today, it’s probably the case that most of their customers don’t want online games.
And I say that as one of the ones who *does* want online games, or at least online Animal Crossing…
What? No gamecube bashing?
What kind of second rate anti-Nintendo article is this?
The game systems obviously have different demographics, I don’t understand why people insist on head to head comparisions.