I’ve heard people make the argument that “Nintendo shouldn’t make a powerful console to directly compete with Sony and Microsoft, since the N64 and GameCube, both powerful consoles, failed!”
Here’s the thing: The N64 and GameCube didn’t fail because they were trying to compete against Sony and Microsoft, they failed because Nintendo made stupid decisions with those consoles, like sticking with cartridges and using mini-DVDs. A Nintendo console on par with the PS5 and Xbox Series X would most likely do very well. Imagine a Nintendo console with amazing first party AND third party games, and having Mario and Zelda in 4k and 60 FPS.
I don’t know anyone who thinks the N64 failed. It is still ranked as one of the best consoles of all time by various “best” lists and reviews, and it sold quite well. It didn’t outsell the Playstation 1, its main competitor, but Nintendo regularly was not moving as many consoles as Sony in that era. I believe primarily due to the actual title lineup on the comparative systems, Sony was getting a lot of exclusives on JRPGs, which were very popular in Japan (and to some extent the United States), and Sony was getting a ton of shooter and sports franchises that Nintendo wasn’t getting. These sort of games appeal to a broader base of people than some of Nintendo’s core products which have usually been (and especially back in the mid-1990s) associated with under-18s.
But still, N64 was not seen as a failure by any reckoning I’ve ever heard. It was seen to have sold a good amount, outselling Sega but not beating Sony.
The GameCube is more commonly cited as a “miss”, but I don’t think it’s commonly cited as a “powerful console.” The GameCube was arguably underpowered for the era in which it released. The GameCube primarily competed against the PlayStation 2 and the initial Microsoft Xbox.
The GC on performance benchmarks edged out the PS2, but both were edged out by the Xbox in most benchmarks aside from a few, because the Xbox was using very close to off the shelf gaming PC hardware. I say very close because the GPU was technically custom from NVidia but was very similar to a GeForce 3, for this reason certain optimizations that were made with the proprietary Sony/Toshiba chip and Nintendo’s chipset enabled them to wring more performance out of their systems “dollar for dollar” than Microsoft did. But Microsoft was just throwing a lot of the money at the industry to break into consoles–Xbox was notoriously expensive to manufacture and sold at a fairly steep loss per unit with the understanding they were operating that way to get into the already well-developed console gaming market.
I don’t really know that the GameCube’s troubles were ever laid at the feet of its being “a powerful hardware system”, I think it suffered from some of the same game lineup issues the N64 had, but exacerbated even more as many major publishers chose not to write games for the platform, and it had very limited online features in an era where the PS2 and Xbox were branching more into online play.
Every family I know in my peer group (White, middle to upper middle class, young kids) has a Switch. Nintendo probably believes that they can maintain a middle ground of quality, easy to use, and family friendly. Competing with PC’s has it’s own issues.
My sense is that it costs an enormous amount of money to develop a powerful new console and it requires ridiculously advanced chip designs, which requires working with someone like Nvidia. Plus the development takes years. And at this point, don’t Sony and Microsoft have many game studios in house or contracted as exclusive? So would Nintendo even have any really compelling games to go with the hypothetical new console?
I feel like Gamecube, Xbox, and PS2 were the only time all three big companies released equally strengthed machines. I am sure that isn’t the case on a technical level, but I’ve played a lot of games on Gamecube and PS2 and saw no real difference. Perhaps Xbox was way better, but most videos I’ve seen from it looked about the same as PS2 and Gamecube.
The Wii U was a failure, but it is a pretty incredible machine. Can you believe Breath of the Wild ran on that thing and actually didn’t have insane load times? Still blows my mind.
The Wii was a massive hit, wasn’t it? I would also point out that the Switch is both and is a big hit. They do make apparently really great portables(GB, GBA, DS, 3DS).
But the Wii was massive and the Switch, I think, has beaten it.
Googling, the Switch was released in 2017. By that year, it was obvious that the competition wasn’t just other home consoles, but gaming on smartphones (iPhones, Android phones). It may have been the right product for the time.
One of the major problems with producing an advanced console is you have to get developers to play along. Playstation since the PS2 has been notoriously difficult to develop for due to the complexity of the system. Nintendo consoles, OTOH, have a reputation for being easy to work with. Pretty sure that’s intentional, in both cases.
Neither of those consoles failed. You’re arguing against a flawed premise. The Gamecube sold almost as well as the original Xbox. The N64 did better than everything of its era except the PSx.
Nintendo knows exactly what it’s doing. Why should it compete for “high powered” market share when it can release its ‘family-friendly’ consoles and handhelds and absolutely dominate its niche?
Nintendo occupies three of the top five spaces, and five out of the top 10. It has successfully cornered the handheld market* and has successfully cornered the ‘family friendly’ market. Why on earth should they change? Nobody at Nintendo is looking at their money-printing machine and going, “hmmm, all of this easy money is nice, but maybe we should spend a whole bunch of it to shoulder into a market already dominated by two enormous corporations.”
*we’ll see if the Steam Deck changes the equation.
The Switch has sold more than 100 million copies, and Nintendo recently predicted that sales will only slow by 10% next year. It doesn’t have to be on par with those other consoles. It does different things, and it does those things very, very, very well.
You’re basically arguing that McDonald’s should change its business model to compete with high-end burger places. Why not? They already make burgers - why not make better burgers? The answer is because McDonald’s made 23 billion dollars last year and has absolutely no reason to compete for customers who are after a different product.
Nintendo has adjusted to the Japanese Market where handhold is king, Smartphone or tablet gaming gets the money . And the tech has advanced enough for their profit properties. They make money from In-house owned Intellectual Properties, Mario(full world), Pokemon, Zelda and a few others primarily . And they are cartoonish, low(relatively) demand games that work well on handheld on modern consoles. High resource demand games are ported after a generation, and with lower quality. What would be the difference in a Switch with 4k anyway?
that and there’s a lot of game companies that’s just reached the point of forgiveness for how they were treated by Nintendo in the 80s and 90s its why there’s so much shovelware on the n64 gc and wii systems
one reason some circles considered the N64 a failure was that almost no one wanted to make games for them and most of the licensed stuff you could get on the PSX and with the GC the ps2 and 360 where they were better quality and all the hardcore gamers wrote them off as the “kiddy game makers”
But Nintendo’s answer to the op is pretty much " we did make one … the N64 but no one was really interested except the die-hards who bought it for usual franchises and sold them afterward so why bother? i mean people will buy the franchises on almost any system they make
The only standouts that people remember are Mario kart and the rare games super smash brothers perfect dark and goldeneye and StarWars and the best port of OG doom ever made on and harvest moon 64
and for the GC a couple of pokemon offshoots Metroid getting rebooted animal crossing … the wiis gimmick and the exercise craze sold that
the WII u was too soon and under powdered to be the switch they wanted it to be …
My prediciton for the Switch was that it’ll follow a similar path for the game boy and DS. backward compatiability right the way through the life cycle together with additional features that newer games can make use of.
Processing power is likely to be one such feature and I’'ll be expecting a “pro” version that’ll run 4k 60fps (either via docked acceleration or even when handheld) and the same cartridge will run lower spec on the original machine.
No need for a wholly different console, the switch has flown off the shelves and will likely continue to do so.
We have two switches in our house and if the pro did arrive I’d probably get one (I play mostly docked) but as the kids go off to uni we’ll likely buy another standard switch as well. It is still selling very well.
I think I’m right that Nintendo has continued to make a profit on the hardware for the Switch. I know some manufacturers have use the console itself as something of a loss leader and I believe that is true of the current generation except for the Switch.
I mean, how hard is it to just make a good, powerful console on par with the PS5 and Xbox Series X with no stupid hardware decisions like cartridges for the N64 or mini-discs for the GameCube?
If I can figure this out, why can’t a multi-billion dollar company like Nintendo?
Portability and the merging of their home console and mobile console product line should be a priority. I didn’t think too much of it when Switch came out, but I’ve now had one 11 months and I am surprised how often I take it with me and enjoy full-console quality games on a mobile device. It’s really a great feature.
I really don’t care if PS5,Xbox(whatever the new one is called), and Switch last a long time as the current generation.