I awoke this morning to glorious news. This epic price drop literally woke me up and energized me for the entire day. You have always been right, the video game industry is some epic business theater.
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While $169 is tempting for me to want to own a handheld device, I am writing to indicate that I am going to continue to refuse the buy it. Had Nintendo originally released the device at that price point, I might have actually bought it. But now I am not buying purely on principle. This is a chance for revolution and I have to take it.
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Nintendo is on the verge of royally screwing itself. They invested so much in the 3DS. They invested so much in 3D. Never before have I experienced such a pivotal time in history. And I have realized that the 3DS cannot be allowed to recover for two reasons:
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If any of us want gaming to succeed, all of us gamers must stand united. And the only way to do that is to make it worse before it gets better. The “hardcore” are going to need to experience some pain. I’m sorry.
2.) We need correct software. The 3DS must not succeed because of all the crap Miyamoto, Sakamoto, Aonuma have been pushing on us lately. When their creative software doesn’t sell, there are no consequences, in fact, sequels are green lighted. But when Nintendo gets hit in their hardware… well then eventually the software developers are forced to make software we want. This is the lesson that I have learned over the years. Us customers causing software to fail does not lead to the correct software being made. But us customers causing hardware to fail, eventually does get a response. So therefore we must sacrifice the 3DS even if it corrects its direction. Killing hardware is the only way to get Nintendo’s attention.
Why? Why am I refusing to give it a chance if Nintendo is starting to admit that the 3DS is not currently appealing? Nintendo cannot be allowed to recover from their mistake because we need to get the company back to the humility they had with DS and Wii.
I am not, by nature, a hateful person, Nintendo. This is tough love. This is the only way you will learn. I want you to feel hated so that you will never go this direction again! Like a parent who watches their teenager break curfew and go out for a night of drinking, you must experience the hangover so you can learn to make better decisions next time.
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Nintendo, your most loyal customers aren’t the ones who bought this crappy device at day one. Your most loyal ones are the arcade ones, the one who bought the NES and restored you to glory through the Wii. You must cater to us or there will be consequences. Nintendo, we can help you “rise to heaven” or go “straight to hell”. Guess where your 3DS is going.
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I love how you began this email.
It is best people act as a customer for their interests. If you want to buy a 3DS now, go ahead. If you still don’t want a 3DS, don’t buy it.
There doesn’t need to be a ’cause’ or a ‘movement’. I have total faith in my fellow gamers.
Ever since the N64, I wandered into the nomadic land of PC gaming. I saw the N64 as disappointing and the Mario 64 as something that wasn’t Mario. But the gaming press, acting as a unified organ, declared how successful the N64 and Mario 64 were (and if the N64 was successful, the PlayStation was the MOST SUCCESSFUL THING SINCE SLICED BREAD!!!). Since I didn’t like this direction, I felt that gaming was no longer for me.
With the DS and Wii getting me back in, I’m far more informed on the gaming market than I was. And I realize that the unified game media chants, back then from ‘new’ websites like IGN, were a distortion of the actual market reception. And as the DS and Wii became ‘surprise successes’, I realized that my tastes in gaming were far more mainstream. I stopped feeling alone. 3DS not selling is another example that people like me are far more numerous.
If 3DS suddenly starts selling big, there will be a reason why (even if you or I do not see it, the reason is there). And it will be up to us to discover that reason should that occur. But this is a big ‘if’.
Emailer, you speak of a sort of ‘gaming backlash’. But I believe this ‘backlash’ has been going on in the gaming market since, at the earliest, the 16-bit generation. What Nintendo refers to as ‘disinterest’, I detect as ‘backlash’. It is not that Wind Waker had ‘disinterest’, there was outright backlash against it. The reason why Mario 64 didn’t sell like 2d Mario isn’t because of ‘disinterest’ but ‘backlash’. Even with something like the PS3, the reason why it didn’t sell like the analysts hoped was because of consumer backlash, not ‘disinterest’.
Difference with ‘disinterest’ and ‘backlash’ is simple. ‘Disinterest’ is why Mom won’t play a video game. ‘Backlash’ is when a customer gets angry and refuses to buy the product.
Customers like myself define the Nintendo experience as arcade-esque, as Atari (Nintendo games were on the Atari), NES, and SNES. But suddenly, Nintendo says, “The game experience shall be whatever Miyamoto says it is,” and then we get Virtual Boy, N64, and Gamecube. The drop of customers isn’t disinterest but actual backlash. We don’t want gaming to go that direction. And it also explains why the 2d Mario explodes hardware sales for the DS and Wii. It also explains why Mario Collection sold far better than it had any right to. The customers were trying to give Nintendo a message of where they want gaming to go.
Metroid: Other M (the ever useful example) so illustrates this. There wasn’t ‘disinterest’ in Other M. There was ‘backlash’ at Other M. This is not how we want Metroid to be. And Sakamoto’s opinion is irrelevant. The opinion of the paying customer is the only one that is relevant.
3DS is suffering a backlash. And I think gamers will continue it on their own.
