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An Open Letter To Nintendo

Nintendo this is what you should be doing! An open letter by Ryan Chua.

Dear Nintendo,

First off, thank you for all the wonderful memories I now hold dear as an adult.  I remember being awoken from my nap to cheers of victory as my mom and aunt defeated Bowser for the final time in the first Mario Bros.  I also remember the endless hours of Goldeneye 64 played during Summer.  We clearly wouldn’t be where we are in gaming today if it wasn’t for you, and for that I am extremely grateful.

However, I think it is time for you to take a step back and look at your strengths and weaknesses as a company today.  You are a company that continually pushes the envelope, coming up with innovative ideas in both the handheld and home console markets.  You also have very memorable franchises that both kids and adults can relate to, giving your consoles guaranteed sales from loyal fans.

Where you really lack and falter though are your home consoles.  You can point to your Wii sales all day but the fact of the matter is that most gamers would be ecstatic if they could use Wii peripherals on an Xbox 360, PS3, or even PC.  Going back all the way to the N64, all of your consoles have been significantly underpowered and used technology that was several years old at time of release.  While this may be great price-wise for the consumer, it seriously slows down the development of new games.  Game companies that want to cater to the Nintendo console owner must now spend money on dumbing down their games (technology wise) instead of spending that money on actually developing the game they want.

Your online services are also years beyond what both Microsoft and Sony offer.  It really doesn’t seem like you really care all that much about online gaming, so if you’re not going to go all in on it, then why bother even spending a dime on creating a half-assed infrastructure for it?

I think that after the Wii U comes out and falls flat on its face you will need to take a good look at your company’s future.  It was something that Sega had to do years ago and something that is right around the corner for you.  Quite simply put, you can’t compete with Microsoft and Sony in the home console market.  I think that in the future, you will need to develop peripherals for Microsoft and Sony consoles.  This would actually not only benefit you, but also benefit consumers.  Gamers wouldn’t need to own a Nintendo console to play Nintendo quality games, and you would make record profit margins in peripheral sales.  This benefits everyone.

About the author

Ryan Chua

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  • I totally agree completely with this letter! While the Wii U has great features an new technologies it does not appeal to the new generation of gamers.

  • That is not true. The xboxone and ps4 may be stronger consoles but it all depends on develaperes. The reasone the wii u is doing great in sales still ( at november 2014 the wii u beat the xboxone in sales ) is because of all of its great exclusives such as Mario, Zelda, Kirby, Star Fox and many others are the top games. Nintendo will always win regarding the games library. And since it backwords compatiable with wii games it makes it the top dog in its games library. And after all we buy these things mainly for the games.