So Nintendo recently posted massive, ridiculous, ludicrous losses for the past quarter. Of course they know the reasons behind it: from the ho-hum 3DS support to the absolute avoidance of anything Wii-related. But if I were holding Nintendo stock, I would be absolutely pissed. And not because I lost money, but because Nintendo seemed ready to take the hit without any sort of fight. There was no effort whatsoever to expand the lifeline of the Wii and no major changes to the 3DS during the period to try to boost sales. So what should they have done you ask? Do what they do best: link to the past.
Did you know that the 25th anniversary of Metroid happened not too long ago? Of course not, because Nintendo didn’t do much of anything to celebrate it—along with Zelda and Mario. Mario got a half-assed collection of games that was essentially a port of a SNES game (I wrote about this back in 2011), Zelda got a few Virtual Console games and Skyward Sword, but no collection whatsoever. And Metroid, they got next to absolutely nothing despite having two of among the greatest video games of all-time (Super Metroid and Metroid Prime). Naysayers will mention the Metroid Prime Trilogy, but the darn game was out of stock by the time the anniversary even occurred. Why didn’t you re-release it at a lower price?
And while we are on the subject, why not make other collections to increase the interest of the Wii? While my Wii has been collecting dust, I can guarantee you I would clean it if it means replaying Super Metroid and Metroid II on the big screen. Kirby is getting a collection anthology for the Wii---but we see nothing for other franchises like Zelda, Metroid, Earthbound, F-Zero, Mario (100+ games, he can do another collection), Pokemon, etc. The Wii may not be strong, but it can handle 90s games. Just saying.
Collection games have become all the rage in recent times with Prince of Persia, God of War, Splinter Cell, and others getting their HD versions on the Xbox and Playstation. Nintendo has not participated at all with the exception of Kirby, which is one that we never really asked for to be honest (Kirby Dream Land 2 and Kirby Super Star are arguably their only truly great games). And you can’t argue it’s to preserve the Virtual Console, since that ship has sailed a long time ago. Nintendo has so much rich history that remains untapped in this current millennium, we can only wonder how much longer it will be before it gets fully forgotten.
Bottom Line: Stop making new games and IPs for the Wii? Fine, but at least dig into the past, create some specials, create collections, and at least throw us a few final options for the Wii. And for the 3DS, dig into the handheld past and do a better job providing us with the classics that shaped the success of the Game Boy, the Color, and the Advance. It isn’t that hard, the first-party games are all in the same freakin’ company. How about you stop toying with the owners of the systems with long droughts without games and at least tap into the library of 1,000 Nintendo games waiting for a second life.
The dropping revenue can partially be blamed on the shift in handheld gaming towards mobile phones and tablets. But the rest of the blame can definitely be attributed towards Nintendo just not simply trying hard enough, instead waiting for the holiday season. We can wait for improvement for only so long. Just ask Sega.
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