They swooped in after the video game crash and used their position to strong arm retailers into price fixing schemes. Competition was kept off the shelf on threat of being cut off from Nintendo supply chains.
They got caught twice, once in the 80's and once in the early 2000's.
That, and an army of fanboys willing to pay "evergreen" prices, exacerbated by artificial scarcity.
I suspect there's some insider shenanigans behind the scalpers getting product at triple or more price hikes. Either they have deals set up with retailers, or are retailers themselves posing as third parties.
__________________ What CDTM believes;
Never let anyone else define you. Don't be a jerk just to be a jerk, but if you are expressing your true inner feelings and beliefs, or at least trying to express that inner child, and everyone gets pissed off about it, never NEVER apologize for it. Let them think what they want, let them define you in their narrow little minds while they suppress every last piece of them just to keep a friend that never liked them for themselves in the first place.
Easy...they're IP is probably the best in the biz in terms of instant sales.
Even if some of the games are lazy and uninspired.
It even allows them to get away with things that other companies cant...like Animal Crossing and the inability to have multiple islands per game....hell..multiple islands per console.
The Wii U wasn't really hated so much as it was just not marketed at all.
Japan was the slowest to embracing online gaming (they're more social locally than a lot of us Westerners), and Nintendo's the most Japanese of the big game companies which is why they've been behind the times with online compared to everyone else. Even their home nation is finally getting impatient with them now far as that though, so I don't think it can be as bad as it has forever. Like a lot of things with them though, it'll be baby step improvements. I like what Nintendo puts out here and there, but they're run by out of touch draconian old men.
They have some of the most popular and important franchises in video game history. They succeed because of their IP's, and because sometimes they innovate in the hardware sector with a good idea that catches on, lik the Wii or the Switch.
Popular, yes. But only because they had the capital to bring their IP front and center first after the Atari 2600 crash.. Any other IP would have been so revered, like if Sonic came first.
They took their dirty Yakuza money and strong arm tactics and won initiative, and kept it by equally dirty tactics.
__________________ What CDTM believes;
Never let anyone else define you. Don't be a jerk just to be a jerk, but if you are expressing your true inner feelings and beliefs, or at least trying to express that inner child, and everyone gets pissed off about it, never NEVER apologize for it. Let them think what they want, let them define you in their narrow little minds while they suppress every last piece of them just to keep a friend that never liked them for themselves in the first place.
This is utter bull shit. They're popular because they are good. The NES Mario games blow the original Sonic games away. Metroid and Zelda were also some very high quality games for the time and both franchises would be improved dramatically on the SNES.
I still play my Nintendo from time to time. The original Super Mario Brothers and Zelda was not better than many alternatives. Especially on home computers, but there was plenty of comparable experiences.
Nintendo hasn't innovated from their initial formula much at all. Even Metroid Prime, Mario 64, and OOT rehash the same formula from a different perspective.
But with nostalgia goggles, they don't need to.
__________________ What CDTM believes;
Never let anyone else define you. Don't be a jerk just to be a jerk, but if you are expressing your true inner feelings and beliefs, or at least trying to express that inner child, and everyone gets pissed off about it, never NEVER apologize for it. Let them think what they want, let them define you in their narrow little minds while they suppress every last piece of them just to keep a friend that never liked them for themselves in the first place.
I would somewhat agree that their big titles usually follow tied and true formula....which doesn't necessarily mean a bad thing....but just makes things a bit tired.
Occasionally, they come out with something unique like Breath of the Wild but I find the Mario titles very samey...and needing a huge makover.
Nintendo is super popular among gamers among the whole world. I played nintendo in past a lot but latest time I got interest in e sport games like LOl, dota, csgo and overwatch. Yesterday checked lol live https://tips.gg/lol/matches/ and supported the games of favourite teams.
Nintendo used to be very good. But as someone who was brought up on their content in the 80s, I find their newer stuff to be utterly lacking in taste. For one, the gameplay hasn't gotten better than competitors, the appearance of their games has remained cartoony and childish (or in the case of LoZ, strayed into that territory and never returned), and their gimmicky consoles and controllers were more offputting than even Xbox's Duke. If I can say anything positive it's that Nintendo almost never puts out an un-optimized game, so their titles tend to have really high standards and polish and that I really appreciate.
When I hit my teens, the 64 was still cool, but the Playstation was better. It had a larger library because they didn't throttle third party developers, more mature content, and a reasonable controller. Nintendo's also stupid about keeping their game prices high all the time, which makes people with limited funds reconsider their games in lieu of something that'll actually be marked down for a sale at some point. When I started working jobs in high school and wanting to buy more games, it was easier to buy cheap used PS games than 64 ones. I bought a Gamecube, but mostly for Resident Evil exclusives and Smash Bros. and little else. By the time the Wii came around, I was done with Nintendo until the 3DS came out.
As for Mario being better than Sonic, I guess? I mean, that's not comparing like with like. Sonic came out for the Genesis, which came out well into the NES/Famicom's reign and after the Master System, and definitely had a hardware bump over NES Mario trilogy. But considering the NES Marios were just old school ratchet scrolling platformers, they hadn't aged well when Sonic really hit its stride. And to be frank, all of the Mario games post-64 were just garbage for kids.
Zelda, in my opinion, hit its peak with SNES, and then reinvented itself with Ocarina of Time. OoT was a good game, and I enjoyed it, but it felt a bit cartoony compared to Link's Awakening of Adventure of Link. By the time Majora's Mask dropped, I was losing interest, and didn't pick one up again until Breath of the Wild. Which, while a much better game, still didn't make me want to play it for more than a few sessions at most. And this is because it just retreads gameplay mechanics which were cool years beforehand.
Lastly, Super Metroid was amazeballs, but Metroid Zero was not.
Metal Gear Solid >>>>>>>>>> Mario 64 and Zelda combined.
__________________ What CDTM believes;
Never let anyone else define you. Don't be a jerk just to be a jerk, but if you are expressing your true inner feelings and beliefs, or at least trying to express that inner child, and everyone gets pissed off about it, never NEVER apologize for it. Let them think what they want, let them define you in their narrow little minds while they suppress every last piece of them just to keep a friend that never liked them for themselves in the first place.
The only time I've ever ran into a bug in a Nintendo game was Metroid Prime. I guess I jumped on a crate the wrong way, and Samus got caught in a loop where she'd fall through the crate and come out the ceiling over and over again.
Console-wise, I've never had a problem. I actually abused some of my Nintendo consoles pretty hard, and they worked fine years later. My Sony and Microsoft consoles had issues despite me taking very good care of them though.
The original Nintendo and Gameboy are well documented as cheaply made. Being "sturdy" does not equate to being more sophisticated, your clunky old brick cell phone could survive a drop out the window onto concrete while your modern phone cracks sitting in your pocket.
__________________ What CDTM believes;
Never let anyone else define you. Don't be a jerk just to be a jerk, but if you are expressing your true inner feelings and beliefs, or at least trying to express that inner child, and everyone gets pissed off about it, never NEVER apologize for it. Let them think what they want, let them define you in their narrow little minds while they suppress every last piece of them just to keep a friend that never liked them for themselves in the first place.