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« on: November 12, 2005, 06:04:18 PM »
Unfortunately Ian's argument basis the nature of niche on sales, not the actual games, allowing the process to work only against Nintendo. If niche games only apply to small markets, then surely Jungle Beat and FZero are both niche games. Likewise, Killer 7 is a niche game. Likewise, any game that becomes a hit is not a niche game, regardless of whether or not it is. Is a game like Pikmin not a niche game? Because it is a hit, that doesn't mean it isn't a niche game. But this is the beauty of the argument.
The other troubling thing about Ian's present stance is that he is arguing against his other stances. His main argument against Nintendo is that they are not doing enough to win back the market share. First, let's assume Nintendo's resources are not infinite, which is true. Second, let's also assume Nintendo's influence is not infinite, which is also true. Lastly, let's assume it is not possible to totally regain lost market share within on generation, which history so far supports. Therefore, if one wishes to regain market position they will try and fix what hurts the most. Nintendo has done some of this with third parties, mature titles, disc medium, etc. It has failed on some other areas like system design and image. I'll neglect online because Nintendo's stance is no different than Sony's, Nintendo just chose not to lie to consumers (looking out for consumers has actually hurt them more than helped).
Now they're at fault for not getting niche developers? Ridiculous. There is a rather large fallacy here, basically a double standard. It assumes that there are, let's say, five types of games. We'll call them types A, B, C, D and E. Ian's rants assume that you need all give types to succeed. If you lack type B you fail. If you lack type E you fail. Therefore any lack of any type means Nintendo has failed. It means they have not done enough this generation. The reason this is a fallacy is because no system in the past two generations has had all five. This is because of one reason only: Nintendo is a first party. The only company that can possible offer all five types is Nintendo. Sony and Microsoft cannot. Howso? They cannot offer Nintendo. Nintendo has sold 18 million GameCubes based over half on the fact that their games will be on the system. No other company in history has been able to do this. Sega went out of business trying. Would Sony survive if they had the N64's third party support? Not likely. Would Microsoft have done well this round with the GameCube's third party support? Not likely. Yet Nintendo has sold almost as much as Microsoft with half the third party support.
How is this a double standard? Because niche games don't affect market share. If you are trying to regain support you must choose to regain it in the most useful places first: the hits. Resident Evil is far more important to gain than Metal Slug. The only reason to say Nintendo has failed is if you require all five (the real number being much higher) types of games before success is acheived. But like I have said, that standard is disproven by the success of Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo cannot do everything at once, they chose the most visible and successful pathways to make headway on. Niche games are not a valid criticism. Ian's entire m.o. is that Nintendo should win back the market share, going after niche games with finite resources is counter productive. The criticism only becomes valid if all five types are necessary, and equally so. They are not, as Sony and Microsoft prove. Thus Ian's argument is neither correct nor valid.
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