Top Five Reasons to Hate Nintendo

We've finally arrived at the last of the big three. It's Nintendo's turn to take a licking and keep on ticking. These relatively objective lists provide the reader with downsides to the business practices, philosophies, and et cetera of various companies. If you missed a previous list, you can find them here: Capcom, Microsoft, and Sony.

5) The 3DS's rushed launch

The Nintendo 3DS thus far has been an interesting experiment. At first Nintendo opened up their handheld to third parties who often whine that they get overshadowed by Nintendo's own games. What do they do? They put out (mostly) inferior products and wonder why they don't sell. Then instead of using the holidays to sell their games, they opt to push their games back and wait for the 3DS to get more of a user base. Besides third parties it seems that not even Nintendo knows what to do with the 3DS. Launching without must-have software, pricing the hardware way too high, enforcing a price cut not even a year into the 3DS's life, and adding an optional (so far) second analog stick attachment makes one wonder if Nintendo has a direction they want to go with the glasses-free portable. Everything just points to a rushed launch.

4) Their downloadable game prices are too much

Whether it's WiiWare, DSiWare, 3DS's eShop, or the Virtual Console, Nintendo's downloadable games services have prices that are near highway robbery. Now some prices are fair like the N64 games that are ten dollars that would otherwise cost double or triple the amount for the original cartridge. Most, however, aren't fair. NES games cost five bucks on the Virtual Console, SNES games cost eight, and fifteen dollars for a single-player WiiWare or DSiWare experience (where iOS games can be purchased for a dollar) is ridiculous. Nintendo needs to reassess their pricing strategies as they are quite horrible.

3) Mountains upon mountains of useless peripherals

How many of you in your homes have a pile of peripherals for Nintendo platforms that are now unused and take up shelf space? Many times Nintendo releases a new accessory for one or two games, and then it is retired. We've seen this with the Wii Zapper, the N64 Transfer Pak, the DK Bongo Drums, the e-Reader, Wii MotionPlus, the Wii Balance Board (to be fair, many games tried to incorporate this to varying degrees of success), among others. Who knows how many times the Nintendo 3DS's new second analog peripheral will be utilized?

2) Poor third party support

Not counting their handhelds, ever since the Nintendo 64 fans of Nintendo and owners of their consoles have had to deal with droughts. This is in part due to the fact that Nintendo isolated a lot of third parties under Yamaguchi's (former Nintendo president) reign. Since then, Satoru Iwata (current president of Nintendo) has been doing all he can to bring third parties back. It didn't help that the Wii, as popular as it is/was, is as underpowered compared to the HD consoles, so third parties mostly put their hand-me-downs onto the platform. It looks that history might repeat itself on the Wii U if the console isn't as powerful as the rumors suggest.

1) Over-utilized IPs

This is the problem that most haters (who are gonna hate regardless) cling to. Nintendo is known for continually using their favorite and popular franchises for big sales. This doesn't mean they're rehashes as each new entry usually introduces a new concept or idea and incorporates it greatly into the game or product. Mario, Zelda, Kirby, and others are used to heck and back, and when a new IP is created, it's barely marketed (I'm looking at you, Chibi Robo). For every new IP that is formed, two Mario games, two Kirby games, and a Metroid game is created.

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That does it for the hate-mongering. As first place Nintendo gets hated on a lot, and that really hasn't changed. Haters gonna hate and all that. I could have added that Nintendo tends to put out tons of revisions to their hardware, but let's consider Microsoft and Sony with their Xbox Elite, Slim, Pro, Arcade, PSP 1000, 2000, 3000, PSP Go, PSP with Wi-Fi, PSP without Wi-Fi, PS3 60 GB (and other gigabyte storage increases) and the Slim. They've both outdone Nintendo this gen. That's quite the accomplishment. Stay tuned later this week for my review of Resistance 3 (PlayStation 3) and much more. It's going to be a busy week.