User:DeadPixel/sandbox/Nintendo (2020-present)

Nintendo Co., Ltd. (任天堂株式会社, Nintendō Kabushiki-gaisha) is a Japanese consumer electronics and video game company based in Minami-ku, Kyoto. Founded in 1889 as Nintendo Karuta which produced handmade hanafuda playing cards. In 1977, Nintendo manufactured the first game system, the Color TV-Game, which was succeeded by the Family Computer in Japan and the mh:awesomegames:Nintendo Entertainment System available in the rest of world. The company gained international recognition with the release of the 1981 arcade game mh:awesomegames:Donkey Kong and later with mh:awesomegames:Super Mario Bros., a platform video game released in 1985.

Due to the success of the NES, Nintendo started producing other consoles, with the most successful being the mh:awesomegames:Game Boy, the mh:awesomegames:Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the mh:awesomegames:Nintendo DS, the mh:awesomegames:Wii, and recently, the Nintendo Switch. The company is also notable for publishing video games of the Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, Kirby, Metroid, Fire Emblem, Animal Crossing, and Super Smash Bros. franchises.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Despite being known for the good quality of their games, and though a rare occurrence most of the time, they too have made and/or published several bad or average games, which came to the entire category on this wiki.
 * 2) Being one of the worst offenders for doing such, they have a habit of franchise milking:
 * 3) * They are mainly guilty for making Mario one of the most milked franchises of all time with more than three hundreds of games featuring Mario himself (and even more if you count the spin-off games that don't feature him) in a span of 40 years, which considering the amazing quality in most of the games, it's not that much of a problem. It even got to the point where there are 3 shows (4 if you count the Donkey Kong Country cartoon), tons of merchandise, an upcoming theme park expansion in Universal Studios Japan, two movies (with a third one on the way), and even a ton of book series with activities, which is amazing for a franchise like this. What does makes this a problem is that they released a fraction of games with Mario that have turned out to be bad or mediocre: the examples are Paper Mario: Sticker Star, Mario Pinball Land, Mario Sports Superstars, Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash, Mario Kart Tour, mh:awesomegames:Super Mario All-Stars for Wii to celebrate mh:awesomegames:Super Mario Bros. 25th Anniversary event and Super Mario 3D All-Stars (which was released to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Super Mario series; the presence of this game here will be discussed later), a few poor Mario Party entries, Dr. Mario World (which no longer exists), Hotel Mario (although it was only licensed by Nintendo), educational titles (apart from mh:awesomegames:Mario Paint and Mario Artist series for Nintendo 64DD).This became more apparent during the Wii U.
 * 4) * They've been milking Fire Emblem Awakening, Fates and, to some extent more recently, Shadow Dragon, ever since their releases. While it's understandable that they would give more attention to the most popular games in the series (the first game in Shadow Dragon's case), this sometimes goes to ridiculous lengths, like how in Fire Emblem Warriors there are only two characters who don't come from those games, or how in Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, what little there is of Fire Emblem representation is only seen through Awakening and Shadow Dragon characters.
 * 5) *They've also been kind of milking mh:awesomegames:Animal Crossing: New Horizons lately, though this was justified as that game didn’t have a lot of content when it was released.
 * 6) * Game Freak was milking the Pokémon series, resulting in bad/mediocre games like Sword and Shield or BDSP. Though they could have been forced to milk by Nintendo, so they can barely focus on their other games, and overall the series started improving recently.
 * 7) Arguably, the biggest problem with Nintendo is that they tend to get pretty anti-consumer.
 * 8) Unlike Sega, Nintendo has infamously taken a stance against fangames, even if they aren't monetized.
 * 9) Nintendo takes down sites that provide ROMs of their out of print games without officially releasing those games, which means there's no money for Nintendo to lose from those games being pirated.
 * 10) Speaking of which, Nintendo hasn't been so good at preserving older games, as they've been drip feeding older games through their online service, and some people have noted that Nintendo's emulators are inferior to unofficial emulators. They also got rid of the option to purchase their older games through a one time payment and have instead made them only available through their online subscription service.
 * 11) Nintendo has recommended buying their out of print games physically from resellers, but that method has it's problems, as this does not benefit Nintendo in any way and since Nintendo won't re-release those games, resellers will often sell those games at an outrageous price, even if the game is in bad condition.
 * 12) Similar to the infamous Disney Vault, there have been times where Nintendo has re-released older games for a limited time only, with the excuse being that these re-releases were for celebrating anniversaries. The obvious reason for this is to spread fear of missing out among their consumers so that they can make as much money from this practice as possible.
 * 13) When the closure of the Wii U and 3DS eShops were announced, Nintendo released an FAQ page that stated that they have no plans to offer classic content in other ways. They later removed this part of the FAQ page, showing that they know this is a problem that they won't address.
 * 14) They even took down a Super Mario 64 game guide that has been out of print for decades.
 * 15) They take down unofficial uploads of their music while also rarely providing an official way to listen to it, apart from GameFreak releasing the Pokémon soundtrack on iTunes.
 * 16) At the very least, Nintendo could monetize the unofficial YouTube uploads, since it's something that YouTube allows copyright holders to do.
 * 17) Since the Nintendo 64, Nintendo has been behind on technological advancements.
 * 18) Although the N64 was the most powerful console of it's generation, it was held back by the company's decision to have the console use cartridges when CD-ROM was becoming a popular way to store games, as they were cheaper to produce and could hold way more data. This made the system less developer friendly and caused it to have less third par ty support.
 * 19) The GameCube had a similar problem. Due to piracy concerns, the GameCube used mini-DVD's, which had only 31% of the capacity of a normal DVD.
 * 20) Because of this, the GameCube lacked a DVD player, unlike the PS2 and Xbox. There was a DVD player and GameCube combo called the Panasonic Q, but it was an overpriced commercial failure that only released in Japan.
 * 21) Since the seventh generation, Nintendo's consoles have been underpowered compared to their competitors.
 * 22) When NOA got hit with a union busting allegation in 2022, some employees talked about how the equipment and software in their facility is outdated, with software that looks like it's running on Windows XP and a database dating back to the 90's.
 * 23) Until only a few years before this happened, it was still possible to find bins of old VHS tapes.
 * 24) Their online multiplayer service still runs on peer-to-peer connections rather than dedicated servers.
 * 25) In addition to that, their consoles are also lacking a ton of features that their competitor's consoles have such as optical audio ports, achievement systems, replaceable hard drives, and, most notably, the ability to play DVD and Blu-Ray movies (not counting the previously mentioned Panasonic Q, which was a flop).
 * 26) There are also times where Nintendo is pretty late to add features that other consoles have had for years. They never gave their consoles built in ethernet ports until the release of the OLED Switch in 2021 and they never added Bluetooth audio support until a September 2021 update for the Switch. They still have yet to add an achievement system, though the closest to such is a thing called "Missions and Rewards" that function in a similar way to achievements, but unlike achievements, they give you Platinum Points, which you can also redeem on some icons to make your own profile picture. The latter was added to NSO in February 2022, but if you don't have a subscription, it also works with a "My Nintendo" account, but sadly, it's only compatible with NSO NES/SNES/N64/Genesis and games with an online functionality.
 * 27) Like Activision, Nintendo hasn't been giving price drops to their older games.
 * 28) They even release ports of older games at full price, with the worst offenders being:
 * 29) Super Mario 3D All-Stars: A game compilation containing no more than 3 emulated 3D games unlike other collections and their respective soundtracks and also having emulation problems at launch.
 * 30) The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD: The original game only costed $50 at launch and even included a soundtrack CD, unlike this port.
 * 31) To make matters worse, the original version is available on the Wii U eShop for only $20.
 * 32) Not helping is the fact that the ability to fast travel from any spot is locked behind a $25 dollar amiibo figure, add that alongside the game's price and it'll round up to $85 dollars.
 * 33) Like Apple, Nintendo often tends to get away with overpriced products due their brand recognition.
 * 34) As mentioned in BQ #4.1.3, NOA received a union busting allegation in April 2022, leading to some former employees sharing their bad experiences working at the company.
 * 35) When former NOA president Regie Fils-Aime heard about this, he claimed that "this isn't the Nintendo [he] left", but some of the stories about Nintendo's working conditions date back to when he was still in charge of the company.
 * 36) Like Sony, they copied Microsoft's practice of charging for online multiplayer and save data backup clouds. While the base plan is a lot cheaper than Xbox Live Gold and PS Plus (especially on the annual plan), the Expansion Pack is $50 a year and is a bit barebones compared to the two aforementioned services, which are only 10 extra dollars.

Good Qualities
Before 2020, they were a great company, and are still to this day, even now Nintendo makes well-acclaimed consoles and games. Click here to see their good qualities.