Nintendo's DeclineAugust 3, 2012 by

When I read that New Super Mario Brothers 2 got an 8.5 my heart sank to the floor.  I couldn't believe it.  To me this signifies that Nintendo has been on the decline for a long time.  I'm sure a lot of you might say this is an overreaction, but it really is not.  We've all felt things have been getting worse for years, but, reviewers refused to acknowledge it.  Finally when this review came out, it's real.  This truly signifies Nintendo's decline, not that it's just beginning, but that it has been going on for a long time -- long enough for now even reviewers at IGN to confess.  When Nintendo's top franchise gets an 8.5 something is truly wrong.

Most of us have seen this decline happening since even before the DS and Wii.  Personally, I saw it begin when Nintendo started to repackage old games during the Gameboy Advance era using sneaky names that made them sound like new games.  It made me mad back then.  I thought Nintendo was being greedy and I couldn't understand there was something worse going on.  Many thought Nintendo was just being lazy, not trying hard enough.  Sadly that's not the case.  Nintendo has run out of resources and they don't know what to do.  Somewhere they lost their ability to reinvent themselves, to create something new out of the old that stands the test of time.  They've instead tried as hard as they could to hold on to their old successful formulas.  The Wii era saw releases of new games that reused those old formulas.  New Super Mario Brothers is a perfect example.

There is nothing new in New Super Mario Brothers.  The name is a lie.  What that franchise is is Nintendo's desperation to hang on the old.  Another way Nintendo would hang on to the old was by adding new styles of control or presentation to old game formulas -- throwing motion controls into the Wii/DS's Mario, Metroid, or Legend of Zelda titles and now with 3DS they're adding 3D to old formulas.  None of these motion controlled or 3D games had much new to offer other than the spectacle of the different controls and/or presentation.  Recycling these old formulas worked for a while too, at least to reviewers, but fans began to get bored.  "Where are the new IP's", everyone began screaming in capitols on message boards across the net.  Many Nintendo fans called those people trolls, and since reviewers kept giving those reused formulas decent scores, it sufficed.  But slowly this has begun to wear thin.  Articles began to get written by IGN editors that said they were worried about Nintendo's lack of new franchises... lack of, well, anything.  The Wii had a very sparse last couple years.

All of this reusing of old formulas is Nintendo hiding their nervousness.  They have run out of the sublime power they once had to reinvent themselves, revolutionize the industry and stay on top.  Not only this, but the times have changed and their old strategies are becoming obsolete.  Cost of game development has skyrocketed in the last couple decades.  It now takes millions and millions of dollars to create one great AAA game, and Nintendo will not go that route for all their games the way their competition does.  Halo 4 has virtually hundreds of the top programmers working day and night to assure it is a success.  Even third parties like Rockstar have hundreds of the top guns of the industries pouring their lives into Grand Theft Auto 5 right now.  Nintendo is not a company that will take this route and sadly within some years they will fall.

The WiiU is going to be just powerful enough to mingle with the competition for the rest of this generation, but it's supposed to be a next gen console.  Once Sony and Microsoft jump into the next gen the gap between WiiU and its competition will be even wider than it was with the Wii and once again 3rd party support will dwindle.  That gap is just going to get bigger and bigger until Nintendo won't be able to compete with the other consoles.  So, inevitably it will become a portable game company.  That is until Apple takes that over with its cheap mobile games that are even now proving to be more and more popular, original and fun.  Let me reiterate that idea:  I see people everyday now on the train totally immersed in their iPhone, iPod and iPad games.  Nintendo knows this, too, and that is why they've mimicked Apple so much lately.  The problem is, against giants like Apple and Microsoft, these efforts will be futile.  The competition is too big, rich and powerful.

Yes, Nintendo is on the decline, but the best thing we can do is hang on to what is left.  There will still be some years for us to cherish like the fizzling embers of a once bright fire.  They are the kings of the golden era of video games...  but the times are changing.  This is not the golden era of games anymore.  Grand Theft Auto 3, Halo and Apple brought about this new era we are in today and there is no turning back.

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