Nintendo is definitely the undisputed king of exclusive content.
Pokemon is the highest grossing media franchise in the world, higher than Star Wars. Mario comes in at number five, putting it above the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Batman, and Call of Duty.
We'll see how things shake out, but I would bet money that Nintendo will still be selling Pokemon, Mario, and Zelda games thirty years from now. I have no faith that Sony will even be making video game consoles at that point.
I don't think they will. They keep making the same mistakes over and over, and they have paid for it.
-they keep making systems based on gimmicks which limit the ability to make games on them or fulfill customer needs: cartridge format, second tv screen, motion controls,docking capability, etc.
-they waste a lot of time on gimmicks as well. Labo is a big failure, but its just like the ecard reader, GBA connectivity, and even to an extent Amiibos.
-their systems are underpowered and make it extremely hard to be a not-Nintendo developer on them. The Switch in particular has a horrid 3 party library of underpowered indie games you paid half as much for on other systems.
-They cannot embrace online
-their eshop is the most frustrating out of the three.
-Their exclusives are very hit or miss. Wii Fit died, Brain age died, Starfox is dead, Nintendogs is dead, Metroid is virtually dead, Advance Wars died, etc. ARMS seems to have died too. They are coasting on the strength of three core properties: mario, zelda, and pokemon.
Its pretty worrisome. They also didn't do themselves any favors by sunsetting the DS line, their portables insured against the failures of the home consoles. The portables also were good experimental platforms. If anything there may be a good risk they pull a Sega and just develop on others hardware.
Well, for starters, Nintendo has a lot of money at the moment. It was reported in 2017 that they were sitting on 946 Billion Yen in cash reserves [1], which is about 8.5 Billion dollars.
Assuming that money is earning no interest and there is no inflation (just to make the calculation easier), they could lose over 250 million dollars a year for the next thirty years before they run out of money.
> they keep making systems based on gimmicks which limit the ability to make games on them or fulfill customer needs: cartridge format, second tv screen, motion controls,docking capability, etc.
The second and fifth best selling video game consoles of all time are the Wii and the DS, both of which are based on gimmicks (motion control and touch screen, respectively). The cartridge format is also more or less a necessity for a mobile console.
> they waste a lot of time on gimmicks as well. Labo is a big failure, but its just like the ecard reader, GBA connectivity, and even to an extent Amiibos.
If selling 39 million Amiibos [2] counts as kind of a waste, I'm not sure what would be considered a success. Nintendo does have their fair share of failures but any company does.
> their systems are underpowered and make it extremely hard to be a not-Nintendo developer on them. The Switch in particular has a horrid 3 party library of underpowered indie games you paid half as much for on other systems.
Doom 2016 is on the Switch, Skyrim is on the Switch, Dragonball Fighter Z is coming soon, Wolfenstein 2 is coming, Fornite is already there. The Switch has easily the best 3rd party lineup of any Nintendo console since the Gamecube. Not to mention the fact that the indie games you speak of are also insanely popular.
> They cannot embrace online
This one I agree with, although I don't think it's a problem. Nintendo doesn't need great online to be a successful company, unlike Microsoft or Sony.
> Their exclusives are very hit or miss. Wii Fit died, Brain age died, Starfox is dead, Nintendogs is dead, Metroid is virtually dead, Advance Wars died, etc. ARMS seems to have died too. They are coasting on the strength of three core properties: mario, zelda, and pokemon.
They are hit or miss, but they have far more hits than any other company. Splatoon is insanely popular. They just released a Star Fox game in 2016 for the Wii U so I'm not sure why you'd say it's dead. We also know that Metroid Prime 4 is in development and they literally just released two Metroid games for the 3DS in 2016 and 2017. ARMS sold over a million copies so I wouldn't declare it dead yet, although I don't think it did as well as Nintendo wanted it to.
> Its pretty worrisome. They also didn't do themselves any favors by sunsetting the DS line
They haven't sunset the 3DS line yet. They plan on supporting it at least through 2018 into 2019. They've been selling in a pretty consistent manner since 2016 - around 6 million units a year, I think.
As a fairly on-and-off gamer, I can't really name any exclusive IPs from Sony.
I know Microsoft has Halo, and Nintendo has enough exclusives to make Smash Bros.
I vaguely recall Sony making their own Smash Bros a few years back, but none of the IPs featured in it have had any recent entries, nor are really that prominent.
While none of them are as popular as Nintendo's main series, Sony does have rather a lot of notable exclusive IP. LittleBigPlanet, Bloodborne, Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank, Horizon: Zero Dawn, God of War, The Last of Us, Gravity Rush, PaRappa the Rapper, etc.
Halo is popular, but Sony has a much larger portfolio of exclusive IP than Microsoft does right now.
Pokemon is the highest grossing media franchise in the world, higher than Star Wars. Mario comes in at number five, putting it above the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Batman, and Call of Duty.
We'll see how things shake out, but I would bet money that Nintendo will still be selling Pokemon, Mario, and Zelda games thirty years from now. I have no faith that Sony will even be making video game consoles at that point.