Hello Malstrom,

Hope this doesn’t end up in your spam folder. I’m sure you are getting plenty of emails about Switch 2 sales. It sold 3.5 million in 4 days. I know we’re still in the Honeymoon phase, but there was something odd I noticed.

The same day, Nintendo announced a new Splatoon Spin-off on their Nintendo Today app. Even weirder is it doesn’t have a release date or even a release window. It’s mostly just a trailer. Why not show this during a Direct and why show it now? I’m wondering if maybe the reason Nintendo announced this game out of the blue alongside the announcement of their sales figures is that there may be something within the data that worries Nintendo. Perhaps Switch 2 sales were poor besides the bundle or they see people are already dropping Mario Kart (there have been a lot of disgruntled videos)

But I wanted to see what you think Malstrom. As the Nintendo whisperer, do you think the timing means anything? Any who, take care and good luck with your game!

What a nice email. Switch 2 sales are as I expected. I did say that the Switch 2 sales trajectory would be higher than Switch 1 when launch aligned. But that difference only means there is more momentum coming from Switch 1 userbase than Wii U userbase (talk about a difference! haha) and more stock at launch. I’m not sure if Switch 1 launched in as many regions as Switch 2 did. Nintendo always had a ‘rolling effect’ with their launches. I think Wii was the first time Nintendo launched in the major markets at the same time.

Killer app means a game that drives hardware sales. I’ve still seen no evidence that Mario Kart is that killer app. What I do see is evidence that Mario Kart has a very high attach rate. Mario Kart 8 is the same exact game on both Wii U and Switch. They both have high attach rates. And yet, Wii U sales were the Wii U sales. A true killer app would have broken that barrier.

People need to stop comparing the Switch 2 to home consoles. Switch 2 is a handheld. Wii U, including previous Nintendo home consoles, suffered from lack of real third party support. Switch 2 is going to behave more like Nintendo’s handheld sales. I’m thinking more a better launched 3DS than anything else. (Remember that Switch 1 didn’t have real third party support until a couple years in.)

3DS sold 4.5 million in its first year.

DS sold 2.3 million in its first year.

This is why you cannot rely on the initial launch numbers. Also, I do recall that Nintendo did not do a full global launch. They would get the major markets, but not the other ones. It is also my suspicion that Sony nails these non-aligned markets which causes a good increase to their total global sales count. For example, what are Nintendo console sales in China? In South America? In the Middle East? You get the picture.

Launch sales are the EASIEST sales to get. We won’t have an accurate picture of demand until early 2026. Fast sales at launch does not mean fast sales for five years. However, every analyst and console marketing company keep trying to flag that is the case when every generation cycle disproves it.

I think the Negative Youtubers just have egg on their face. The last time for a poor Nintendo release was the Wii U which was over a decade ago. Today, we know the Wii U was disastrous. But it was ‘known’ it was disastrous until a full year in. If these Youtubers had any life experience, they would have known this.

I did miss the Splatoon 3 Raiders announcement as I do not have Nintendo News App. It appears Nintendo is doing an experiment.

Back in the day, a genius move for NOA was to do Nintendo Power magazine. It was a direct line of Nintendo news and information to the consumer. One can cynically call it Nintendo propaganda, but if you look at the issues, you’ll find that the magazines were fighting disinterest. Information on how to PLAY the games and be GOOD at the games dominated the messaging. Also, comics and other fun maps and charts made the material entertaining in itself. Nintendo Power was a great companion piece to the 8-bit Era. It’s why you don’t see any of the old timers hate on it.

One thing the Nintendo Power and Nintendo Counselors did was receive invaluable feedback. Releasing information on the News app means Nintendo wants that direct line and wants that direct feedback. They do not want MY feedback for Splatoon Raiders.

I find that Nintendo Power was a work of art itself. An app is not the same.

Gamers made the mistake to think gamer magazines were designed to get news to them. That was not their purpose. Their purpose was to get gamers to the games. And this is what the news app is designed to do. It is to get the Nintendo News App user to the product.

I do not know how the demographics skew with the Nintendo News App. I’m old, so I don’t care about another app. But young people might feel differently.

Splatoon Raiders is in the very first step of its marketing. And the first target was Nintendo consumers. Since the spin-off is exclusive to Switch 2, it is Nintendo’s way to tell Splatoon fans that they need get ready to transition to Switch 2.

Reader, I need your help.

As you might know, I am making Super Awesome Fun Time Delicious RPG which, upon release, will be declared The Best Game Ever Made. It’s true! Long ago, I have given up on game companies to make games I want to play. Therefore, I will make my own games. It is my own insanity, but it is more productive than writing words on a blog.

My Incredible RPG is following a similar pacing as, say, Final Fantasy 6. The beginning is a little linear in that you go to a town, do a dungeon, kill the boss, and move on. Of course, it isn’t as boring as that sounds. You won’t even know the dungeon is there! But the point is that the player is funneled at the beginning.

I am trying experiments. I actually took inspiration from Mega Man 2. I decided to have ten branches, all have to be completed, but of varying environments and surprises. It gives player some agency but it isn’t full blown open world. The open world will come later like in Final Fantasy 6.

Remember, I am using the Octopath Traveler battle system. I have to be careful with trash mobs because the Octopath battle system can destroy a game’s pacing. No one wants to spend half an hour on trash mobs.

My issue is concerning the game’s difficulty. How difficult should the game be?

Should you just be able to walk through the content? Or should there be places where you might want to grind or get better gear?

I do have some spots where the player is punished if they never upgraded their gear. I don’t want bosses to be HP sponges. I am actually leaning more towards the wacky use of Final Fantasy 4 type bosses. Exciting! Surprise! And wild takes on the dynamics.

I want to avoid Final Fantasy 4 DS difficulty. That is no fun! But I want to avoid the Final Fantasy 4 easy difficulty.

One reason why Vanilla WoW is fun is because the game’s world is dangerous, and you will get killed easily if you are not careful. I like that.

The goal is to have pacing go at a fun clip but to put enough friction in the difficulty so the player has to stay on his or her toes. How to do this? Examples?

I’m leaning on making the game more difficult than easy because it is easier to nerf than to raise up.

How difficult does The Reader want his or her RPG experience to be?

Master Malstrom,

Check out this video:

As predicted, the game is not as good as most people originally thought. Mario Kart Slop indeed!

No, no no. It isn’t ‘Mario Kart Slop’. It is Slop Kart World. Replace the word ‘Mario’ of any game with ‘slop’.

Slop: Breath of the Wild Part 3

Super Slop Brothers: Even more DLC!

Super Slop Odyssey 2!

Slop Prime 4

It’s important for the IPs to be the slop. It is because meh games will hurt the IPs.

Anyway, I have seen many of these videos. I don’t know if they are representative of the public. But word of mouth is word of mouth.

I don’t think Mario Kart is ever a ‘killer app’ type of game. It always seems to be the ‘secondary game’. Once you already get the console, you then buy Mario Kart. But you don’t buy the console to get to Mario Kart. Mario Kart has been on all Nintendo consoles (minus the NES and Gameboy). They are top sellers on each console, but I don’t think they were why people bought the hardware. Mario Kart 8, for its huge numbers on Switch, was released on the Wii U.

Zelda: Breath of the Wild was selling Wii Us even though Wii Us were discontinued by then. Just like with the original Switch, I think Zelda has a bigger potential of being a Switch 2 killer app. But can Aonuma deliver? Do people want more of Zelda after Tears of the Kingdom? Are they going to be willing to pay the hardware price to get to it?

We will see.

Next Zelda will take at least five years to make. So it has likely been in development for one year. I believe the Zelda Switch 2 game will make or break the system. If it has a tepid response, Switch 2 will be truly gone.

We’re going to have to wait until 2029. Are you patient, reader?

I’ve noticed in the past that you occasionally repeat factual errors about the 5th and 6th console generations (understandably, given that you, from what I recall, skipped those generations), but you also sometimes post falsehoods about the 4th gen. I’ve previously just ignored them, but with your talk about there being a difference between the “historical” and “nostalgic” versions of consoles, and being guilty of confusing the two yourself, and then on top of that apparently now your readers are making similar mistakes, I thought I might as well be that asshole and make some corrections.

For starters, the Genesis did not “topple the SNES in Europe”, where the sales of the two systems were 8 million vs. 8.15 million, in SNES’s favor.

Secondly, yes, the “console war” in America was close, but by “close” we’re talking 18.5 million to 22 million, or around 9 Genesis systems sold for every 11 SNES systems. That’s not “neck and neck” by any metric. Especially when you consider that Genesis had a 2 YEAR head start. The SNES also beat the Genesis during most months. The only times when Sega just outright kicked Nintendo’s ass were after the releases of Sonic the Hedgehog and Mortal Kombat. Outside of those games’ release windows, the typical month had SNES at #1 in sales and Genesis VERY close behind at #2. I think that last point might be where the misconception about how close this generation actually was comes from. If you look at a typical sales report from that era then it really does appear to have been “neck and neck” (as you put it), but the overall numbers really aren’t THAT close. You have also repeated on innumerable occasions the myth that SNES pulled ahead only at the end due to Donkey Kong Country, when the generation’s leader had already been decided by then. As for the sports game commercials being “when Genesis really ascended” before Sonic was out, that might depend on how you’re defining “ascended”. It took Sonic to put Genesis on top even briefly in sales. (I’ll also point out that Sonic didn’t really sell outside of America, a point that you’ve repeatedly, and correctly, brought up regarding Mario 64 and how it wasn’t as successful and the internet thinks it was.)

Interestingly, the Genesis DID beat the SNES in ONE region: South America, where the former outsold the latter by a ratio of around 2-to-1. But outside of Europe, it wasn’t really “neck and neck” anywhere and worldwide numbers were massively lopsided in SNES’s favor (even if Japan was solely responsible for that last point).

These numbers are easily found in Google. I’m guessing you’ve been going on memory for a lot of this stuff and we both know how reliable that is.

Lastly, and unrelated to sales: I wish I could find it, but I saw an interview once with a guy who worked in one of the advertising firms that did the “extreme” style marketing in the 90s, and he explained that those types of ads weren’t meant to be seen as “cool” (even by teenagers), but merely to get people’s attention. As he described it, there was apparently a concept that was particularly en vogue in advertising circles at the time that they called “the ‘what the fuck?’ factor” (or “the ‘huh?’ factor” in polite company lol) where an ad would be so outrageous and weird and loud (both literally and figuratively) that you’d stop and take notice where you’d have otherwise changed the channel or skipped to the next page of the magazine. So it wasn’t about “buy our product/game because it’s cool”, it was just an advertising strategy to get people to more actively watch or read ads.

OK, let us go through this.

I wasn’t aware of Europe’s final sales numbers. Note how close that is. Wouldn’t it be correct that SNES caught up to Megadrive and passed it? After all, Megadrive was released first so it would have a head start.

I have to call you out for your comments on the marketing. Sega, as a direct competitor to Nintendo, wasn’t just in the marketing. It was in the company and in the developers. Sonic was designed to compete with Mario. One note that I forgot, which the video in the post below mentioned, was that Sonic deliberately had no text in it. I forgot how much text Super Mario World had. Paragraphs of bloated text such as when you hit a switch or kill a Koopa Kid.

For much of my information on this time period, I do not use Google or any of these shitty metrics that appear on the Internet. I am going with primary sources.

Some of it comes from Peter Main, the head of marketing at NOA at the time. I believe he is more accurate than what you see on the Internet today.

Here he is talking about the impact of Donkey Kong Country. He declares Donkey Kong Country was the death of the 16-bit Generation!!!

Fortunately, that bullet had Donkey Kong Country written on it. And when Nintendo pulled the trigger, it hit the market dead center.

He goes on:

In Japan that Christmas season, 3-D-O, Sony and Sega all sold between 300 and 400 thousand units, each platform generating between $110 million and $180 million dollars in revenue.

But in Japan, one little game, Donkey Kong Country, retailing at Less than $100 compared to those $400-plus systems, all by itself at retail generated over $200 million dollars.

Here in America, the impact was even greater. While the Sega add-ons quickly died, Donkey Kong Country sold two and a half million units in just 45 days, an all time record. And it turned the tide of the entire industry.

Donkey Kong also sold a lot of hardware.

So here, Emailer, is the executive vice president of NOA saying that Donkey Kong Country completely changed everything and definitely impacted SNES hardware numbers. He describes Donkey Kong Country as the ‘kill bullet’.

I am always open to challenges to my information. Just be very careful, reader. This site blazed in attention because of the ‘outrageous’ things that was being said. But all I was doing was quoting Nintendo executives. And once THAT was realized, then I got the entire Game Industry to declare the Nintendo executives didn’t know anything, that they were just making stuff up. And THEN the DS and Wii went to heaven. Never before had so many people had egg on their face.

I trusted Nintendo execs knew what they were saying because it matched my own market research and my own memories of the Atari and NES generations.

Let’s listen to Peter Main some more:

The 16-bit era…just like this generation…was no place for the hardware faint of heart. Monthly swings in system shares Between 30% and 70% were not…and are not…uncommon.

But Donkey Kong Country alone stabilized the market. Following the launch of that one breakthrough game, Hardware share rose steadily in Nintendo’s favor.

The SNES share of 16-bit system sales jumped 20 full percentage points in the period following Donkey Kong compared with the period proceeding.

The bold is my emphasis.

There you have it. This ‘knowledge’ is from a primary source, Peter Main. Now, decades later, you can declare the vice president of NOA had no idea what the 16-bit market was, what happened to it, or what the sales were. But I would wager money that he has more accurate information than you or on modern Internet today.

I looked for and couldn’t find the direct quote of where I got about Genesis taking away the sports games. In time, I could probably find it. Wii Sports wasn’t made about that. But it was hoped for by Nintendo that they could pull back the market of sports games because of the Wii-mote. And in many ways, that did happen such as with Tiger Woods Golf selling so very well. EA had a ball with the Wii.

One reason why the NES sold was because of its sports games. And if you look back, you will see many early NES games being sports games. And sports games sell everywhere. So none of this is a surprise.

But in the 16-bit Era, SNES didn’t have much of the sports games. The Genesis was popping them out. The reason why is because EA had backwards engineered the Genesis and demanded they be given favorable rates or else they would release the games anyway. Sega agreed. (This is a famous story and can be verified anywhere.)

Sega Genesis having these ‘sports games’ helped it tremendously in competition against the SNES. In the commercials of the 16-bit Era, even before Sonic, you see sports games heavily promoted. Genesis had them. SNES didn’t.

Hardcore gamers usually weren’t the customers of sports games. This is why retro game stores are filled with sports games. No one wants to play them. SNES launch games catered heavily to the experienced NES gamer with sequels to famous IPs. But if you wanted a football video game? You’d get EA’s Joe Montana Football and the Sega Genesis. Losing those sports games did not help Nintendo and definitely helped Sega.

Note the absence of sports games in the N64 and Gamecube library. They returned with a vengeance for Wii though.

I found this video to be informative. I never truly understood why the Sega consoles, made in Japan, never sold well in Japan. Strangely enough, the Saturn sold well in Japan.

Sega is a Red Ocean Company at the start. Every console it put out they rushed it and was aimed at straight up competition starting with their first consoles. The problem with rushing it is that the launch software ended up being terrible. The Megadrive performed so badly in Japan because its launch software was so terrible and gave the console a bad reputation. Megadrive launched also during Super Mario Brother 3’s launch as well which didn’t help.

So when the Megadrive came to the West, the West was introduced to better software on it which helped its reputation. Since the hardware was older at that time, it could be sold for cheaper than the SNES. The SNES hardware was better than Megadrive on every level except processing power. So Sega’s marketing focused entirely on the processing power!

It also explains why Sega IPs were so mismanaged by Sega for so long. Sonic didn’t have the cultural impact in Japan as it did in the West, so Sega of Japan didn’t fully understand it. Sega’s top games didn’t have cultural relevance to Japan, so Sega didn’t fully get it.

Some interesting information about THE MOST INTERESTING CONSOLE: PC-Engine is also included. PC-Engine seems like Japan’s Xbox in so many ways. If it weren’t for SNES RPGs and select games (Contra 3, Zelda: LTTP, Super Metroid, etc.), PC-Engine would be my definitive favorite 16-bit console.

I’d considered asking about this before, and mentioning the success of Sonic as part of the Sega vs Nintendo thing made me decide to actually ask.

While I agree that by and large, ‘Furries’ are cringe, I do have to wonder about what on at least the surface appear to be rare exceptions that seem to escape the stigma and at least appear to work.

Sonic the Hedgehog would clearly be the lead example, in part because you yourself mentioning Sonic’s success. While there was a period when humans were a clear, widespread part of Sonic’s in-game universe, Dr. “Eggman” Robotnik has always been there as the human arch-nemesis, and the live action movies have very clearly established Sonic and his slowly growing lineup of furry friends as living on a human-centric Earth (where you have a human couple that are officially his adopted parents in what is strangely one of the more wholesome depictions of family to come of out a major Hollywood production in recent years); Sonic himself is a ‘Furry’ and pretty much all the core characters outside of Dr. Robotnik are likewise some form of ‘Furry’.

Yet despite Sonic and his core cast being clear ‘furries’, Sonic has done a reasonable job at maintaining a reasonable level of relevance. Whatever ‘cringe’ there is with Sonic the Hedgehog can credited more to the worst fans of the franchise rather than Sonic himself. Sonic is certainly a weird franchise, but somehow it’s a very weird franchise that manages to make something work.

So does Sonics ‘cool’ override any furry cringe? Is it that Sonic and friends come off more as aliens? Is it nostalgia from kids who grew up with him? Is there enough distinction between the animal Sonic characters and humans (including Dr. Robotnik being there since the beginning as a comparison character and framing Sonic as being somewhere between ‘true animals’ and humans)?

There’s also Disney, where even before they went off the deep end a large portion of their media empire was built off what could be considered ‘Furries’. Disney was launched off Mickey Mouse (though maybe it was just Mickey Mouse benefitted from being the subject of the right material, because I’ve seen Steamboat Willie – I can understand how it would have been considered a technical achievement, but as an actual cartoon Steamboat Willie really doesn’t hold up), some of their biggest movies feature ‘furries’, and if it’s considered cringe for an adult to be a fan of Disney properties featuring ‘Furries’ it probably has more to do with either the fan being cringe or the Disney itself has gone full cringe. You even have movies like Zootopia which go full furry and yet the cringe really isn’t there (at least if you look at the movie itself and don’t look at some of the worst fans). Is it because it’s seen as being explicitly being for children since Disney is traditionally a family company?

Similarly the Looney Tunes, though maybe they don’t hold up since if “Day the Earth Blew Up” is any indication they really don’t have a cultural footprint most people care about anymore (which is a shame, I saw the movie and it was really entertaining). Still, they did have Space Jam (admittedly multiple decades old now), which was a hit when it launched and is still remembered fondly (maybe that’s the ‘alien factor’ and explicitly stating they’re Toons next to the human Michael Jordan?), and for a time they were the legitimate ‘edgy rivals’ to Mickey Mouse and friends (or in other terms, if Mickey Mouse was Disney’s Mario, then Looney Tunes were Warner Brother’s Sonic).

Likewise, Rodger Rabbit, which even without the very adult Jessica Rabbit is still a movie where you have a ‘Furry’ front and center but it’s still a movie that has a serious film noir angle attached more traditional associated with adult media – ‘Cringe’ isn’t something people typically think of when they think ‘Rodger Rabbit’.

So are what would seem to be the exception examples that actually fit into the categories you mentioned before (magic spell or ‘space alien’ or such)? Is there something else going on? Or is it just a matter of my perception being off?

— Longtime Reader

You’re mentioning cartoon characters in a whimsical world. There’s a difference between Looney Tunes characters and say, the world of Breaking Bad.

I don’t see why this is so hard to see.

Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi was ruined by the Ewoks. These are furry creatures. The problem is that they clashed so much with the ‘universe’ of Star Wars. Bugs Bunny cannot appear in Battlestar Galactica.

Star Fox’s fatal flaw is suffering from this same issue. Star Fox is, essentially, Star Wars. But now they have Ewoks piloting the ships. It’s terrible character design. You might as well have Yoshis be piloting the Arwings.

I’m not the smartest person in the world. Why can I see this but others cannot? What is preventing them from coming to this conclusion.

I think it comes down to the stupid Game God worship thing. Whoever designed these Star Fox characters, be it Shigeru Miyamoto or someone else, didn’t know what they were doing. You don’t put Ewoks into the cockpits of fighter planes especially after The Return of the Jedi.

I think the vast majority of ‘og game developers’ have First Mover Advantage but are no genius. People confuse decades at a craft to be ‘genius’. But as the craft of game development becomes more and more common, opinions are going to change on this matter.

Hi Sean, I’m attaching a video of this guy doing a teardown of Switch 2 Joycon sticks. I don’t know if you have seen this video or not but I think it will be good information for your readers. On the attached video start at 4:09. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t61wgZ6GtM . The interesting part is when he is comparing the Joycon 2 stick to the original Switch Joycon sticks. As he says in the video the Joycon 2 stick design is very similar to the Joycon 1. The only real difference is the wipers or pad on Joycon 2 are narrower. He also says that dirt can still get into Switch 2 Joycons. So, there is potential of stick drift rearing its ugly head again. He also opines that the reason Nintendo did not use Hall Effect sticks is because of the magnets being used for connecting the Joycons to the Switch 2 tablet could interfere with the hall effect magnets. Now imagine after paying $500 plus tax for a Switch 2 with the Mario Kart World Bundle that after playing for a month or more the Joycon sticks start to drift! I think if drift is going to happen again then there are going to be a lot of pissed off Switch 2 consumers. I heard some people are already regretting their purchase. Greed is such a big part of Nintendo’s decision making. During the Switch era Nintendo never addressed drift or bother to improve Joycon drift for new iterations like the OLED console release. I believe the reason Nintendo is not addressing drift is because many people when experiencing Joycon drift just go out and buy new Joycons. So, Nintendo is making money from this situation, and as a result they have not motivation to fix the underlying issue.  I’m guessing the new pro controller that costs $80 or $90 likely might have drift issues as well, although I’m not sure on that. If the pro controller had hall effect sticks Nintendo would be advertising, it. Given the higher price I would expect Nintendo to not cheap out and include hall effect sticks, but I really cannot trust Nintendo for much these days. 

Secondly, I heard a lot about how Switch 2 battery life is pretty abysmal. Many users are getting around two hours of battery life playing Mario Kart World. But there also a lot of user’s barley making it to the hour and half mark. It seems that when in sleep mode or idle there is a significant amount drainage going on. This could be fixed with a software update but it’s not evident yet. Finally, I would like to talk about tariffs. So, I recently visited some car dealerships, particularly Toyota. I spoke with salesman and I asked him how tariffs were impacting the prices. He said that tariffs are a non-issue because some of Toyota’s vehicles are made in America and Toyota at the top is absorbing any others tariffs for vehicles not made in America. If tariffs are a significant issue than Nintendo would have very different prices in America than in Europe or in Asia. But aside from Japan the console prices are same in regional currency equivalent. If a business is booming in certain industry, then it is in the interest of the manufacture and the middle men in the supply chain to absorb the tariffs through cost efficiencies. If tariffs were passed down to customers, it slows the business down significantly. I believe Nintendo is using tariffs as an excuse to fear monger. Nintendo’s console prices are generally the same region to region, however it’s possible that the prices of accessories are different across regions. Tariffs are a more stable one-time things it’s not volatile going up and down. The more important issues is runaway inflation. The Fed has no mandate to fight inflation, if it did rates would be much higher. I’m not talking about a mere 200 bps but significantly higher like we had in the 70s and early 80s with Paul Volker was in charge of the Fed. The US government statistics like cpi do a piss poor job of telling what the real inflation rate is. Same with the unemployment ratio, because if people can not find a job before their unemployment insurance ends, they are considered not part of the work force. The Labor participation rate is much better indicator of unemployment. Anyways I’m sorry about long email. 

Nintendo’s Doug Bowser has already denied tariffs had anything to do with the pricing and initial launch issues. Tariffs only have to do with the stuff made in China which is some accessories. The Vietnam production is shipped to America for the Switch hardware.

About the joycons and everything else, you guys keep talking with the assumption that Nintendo is a gaming company. Is it?

Nintendo’s actions is of a company that is minimally doing what was done before so they can pursue their non-gaming enterprises. Nintendo is no longer interested in gaming outside of their status quo product line.

Nintendo is more interested in making a new movie or theme park than they are in making a new video game.

That is a funny commercial.  It’s clearly based on the monster truck commercials from that era including the “Sunday Sunday Sunday!” stuff.

Speaking of which, did you know that the advertisers back during this era took the time to secretly mock the very style they had created?

It’s true!

The videos you guys send me are blocked by the uploader. You have to go to Youtube directly to view them.

Hey sean! Your furry reader here again (just kidding! ;)

Anyway, that SNES analogy you mentioned for the snes was eye-opening. Like many gamers of my age, who witnessed the 16-bit war on first line as  teenagers, we all always saw the snes as a huge success. I was an annoying Sega fanboy in the mid-90s but like many here in Mexico, we played lots of NES and SNES. In that order.

I never truly realized that the SNES wasn’t that big hit until you mentioned the sales and reception in one of your posts. SNES sold almost half of NES sales. NES lasted 2 thirds of the SNES useful life (it was discontinued in America in 1995 and the N64 was released a year later!). NES is known by everybody regardless of age but not many can talk about the SNES. SNES games are good but lack energy overall. We all loved them as teen gamers but for the masses, it was a big meh. You could see dads playing super mario bros and grandmas playing tetris on gameboy. You would rarely if ever seen dads and grandmas playing SNES.

It’s funny how nostalgia can really warp our reality, right?

I mentioned that to some gamer friends and they were mad. They were like “no! it was a hit” but then I said what I told you and they were in denial. Keep in mind that 2 of my pals think the Game cube is the best console ever.

I think Switch 2 having the same fate as the SNES is the best-case scenario. It may not have another competitor but Switch 1 may be its own competitor for a loong time. I really doubt Nintendo would discontinue the Switch just like that. That would be suicidal. But this is modern Nintendo so who knows.

Anyway, thanks for the realization. I still like SNES but yeah, the truth is more interesting. 

There are two SNESes. There is the historical SNES and the nostalgic SNES. The historic SNES was probably the console launch that best delivered on its hype. It had a strong launch. Then the console struggled (especially in America). Note how most of the SNES software early on was sequels to beloved NES series. Gradius 3, Super Castlevania 4, Super Mario World, Super Ghouls and Ghosts, Final Fantasy 4 (2), Contra 3, and so on. I think the SNES launch really delivered if you were a fan of the series of games on the NES.

But Genesis kept gobbling up marketshare. NOA had to pivot. They not only changed their marketing (to the awful 1990s ‘extreme’ marketing style), but they had to push games that we, savvy gamers, do not like. These would be SPORTS GAMES, or LICENSED GAMES, or ‘casual games’ such as game shows, card games, etc. They knew the SNES could not succeed as a pure ‘hardcore gamer’ centric machine.

While people keep pointing to Sonic as Genesis gobbling up marketshare, a bigger reason was its sports games especially from EA. So burned by this that Nintendo focused on nailing down the sports games with the Wii. From Nintendo’s perspective, the NES originally sold because of its sports games. It’s true!

People think NES sold because of Super Mario Brothers. That is because you grew up with the console or listened to someone who did. If you look at the Black Box games or the earlier NES titles, you’ll see many sports games and other simpler games. These got the NES into many people’s homes. (Wii Sports would recreate these games. Wii Sports golf stages are taken from NES Golf!) I remember the original RBI Baseball game being big on the NES. People loved that shit. I think there were around 30 baseball games alone on the NES. NES software had a problem that the later era NES software was getting too complicated for the mass market. While Super Mario Brothers 3 is definitely mainstream, it was WAY more complicated than the original Super Mario Brothers.

The success of Sonic went beyond the character of Sonic. NOA extensively studied this because they were floored. Mario reigned supreme during the glut of the 2d platformer clones of the 8-bit Era. So why were people loving Sonic? It wasn’t just ‘speed’. There was something more.

The NOA people would argue with their market testers. They would say, “But Super Mario World has Mario doing more moves.”

“That is true,” the testers would admit. “However, Sonic is played with only one button. I like that.”

In Super Mario World, the 2d Mario was getting convoluted. You not only had to manage the jump button, you had to hold the ‘run’ button and jump as well (which likely harms accessibility to 2d Mario to this day). But Super Mario World adds in ‘spin jump’. WTF is that? Then they add in Yoshi whose playstyle is different. And if you get a cape, that has its own mechanics for flying. Add in that the stages have secret exits. Super Mario World was becoming a complicated mess. This allowed Sonic with its streamlined controls approach to come in.

No one ‘hated’ the SNES. It just wasn’t ‘top dog’ anymore. SNES wasn’t as ‘cool’ as Genesis in many ways.

The NOSTALGIC SNES has become an imaginary console who has an equally imaginary trajectory of its own. With Historic SNES, I remember renting games and thinking I wanted to rent every SNES game I saw. They all appealed to me. But after Nintendo pivoted, most of the SNES games were games I didn’t even want to touch.

As Nintendo later learned from Sony, you never know where your next hit game will come from. So it makes sense for a console to have as many games as possible on it. While SNES never truly opened the floodgates, so much garbage software was being released.

With NOSTALGIC SNES, the memory of all these shitty games fly away into the ether. With NOSTALTIC SNES, you only see classic games being released with some ‘unknown gems’.

NOSTALGIC SNES is the most advanced last 2d game console. Going forward in time, 2d gaming became a greater and greater Blue Ocean with NOSTALGIC SNES dominating.

NOSTALGIC SNES has become the market benchmark for modern 2d gaming. Every Metroidvania will be compared to Super Metroid. Every 2d platformer (including Nintendo’s 2d Mario) will be compared to Super Mario World. Every turn based JRPG will be compared to Final Fantasy 4, 6, or Chrono Trigger. Every action based RPG will be compared to Secret of Mana. Every run and gun shooter will be compared to Contra 3 or Turrican. Even Switch 2’s commercials and marketing are borrowing heavily from SNES. Mario Kart World deliberately imitated the opening of SNES Super Mario Kart in its trailer. They even bring back SNES Commercial actors to do Switch 2 commercials.

NOSTALGIC SNES is more important today than HISTORIC SNES because of these benchmarks. As gaming all went 3d, 2d gaming became more Blue Ocean. And people point to the peak 2d gaming experience to be the SNES.

This doesn’t take away from Genesis though with its classic games. The issue is that HISTORIC GENESIS is different from NOSTALGIC GENESIS. Sports games matter a great deal in HISTORIC GENESIS, but no one cares about sports games in NOSTALGIC GENESIS (outside a few). The SNES controller is more accessible from the future since it is closer to the Dual Shock design than the more odd three button Genesis controller.

Sega and Nintendo have taken different approaches to its retro library. Sega has ported them to everything under the sun. Nintendo takes a more Godiva Chocolate approach to it. Nintendo is likely more able to do this due to it performing better in the Nostalgic Imagination of people. Since the Nintendo consoles all share a lineage while the Sega consoles get cut off at the Dreamcast, you have modern Nintendo gamers going back into history.

The SNES, Genesis, and PC-Engine were all great consoles then and even in Nostalgia Land. I love them all.

But in terms of real life history, it was very competitive for the SNES. They don’t call it the ‘Great 16-bit War’ for nothing. Sega’s marketing was so effective that SNES players became ashamed of their own console!

What do you see in this commercial? Sports games. A Michael Jackson game. And Columns.

Do you want to play these games today? No. Historical Genesis performed better than Nostalgic Genesis. No one wants to play old sports games. Or Tetris clones.

This marked the point when Genesis really ascended. Note that Sonic wasn’t out yet.

“Why can’t he be like that nice boy, Mario?”

I didn’t like the vibe of this marketing. It was tailored to teenagers. But it worked.

These commercials still remain hilarious, but they were so effective. I think the direct comparison is illegal to do today. Sega deserves their success. Note how the Genesis was cheaper than the SNES as well. Sega knew how to DROP THE PRICE.

I don’t think Sega’s marketing was as effective with the Game Gear though.

Here is one I really remember.

Here is another:

Super Mario Land 2 is shown here so it is pretty late of this era. The marketing is now attacking the Nintendo gamer as if they are retarded. This is a no no in marketing.

Nintendo had to respond with its own commercials.

Above: Miyamoto was unavailable to comment when he told Reggie Fils’Aime that ‘Nintendo doesn’t give away its software!’.

The idea that everyone loved the SNES back then wasn’t there. Early 1990s were extremely competitive. You were not allowed to be a multi-console gamer. You were either Nintendo or Sega (ignore that odd Turbographix 16 fan in the back).

Console gaming was becoming tribalized. This worked as even the same games were very different on each console. The Aladdin on SNES is different from the Aladdin on Genesis. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game is different on Genesis than it is on SNES. The market was very divided.

I have to laugh at how they marketed some of these older games. So in their ass was this ’90s extreme!’ that this Super Mario Kart commercial is hilarious today.

Above: Mario Kart World will never top this.

Master Malstrom,

Here is an interesting video by Business Insider about why Nintendo is so expensive:

The video offers a fairly accurate history of Nintendo (although it glosses over the company’s many mistakes). It tries to argue that the increase in prices is justified, saying that game development today is more expensive and that games today are actually cheaper when adjusted for inflation (Super Mario 64 cost $60 back in 1996). Therefore, it claims Nintendo is justified in raising its prices.

The problem with this is that, as you’ve said in the past, game development costs today are far more expensive than they need to be. Also, the profit margins on games are so high that a $60 price still allows Nintendo to often make hundreds of millions of dollars in profits on a single game. Given this, is a price increase really necessary? Wouldn’t it be more profitable in the long run to grow the market than to try to squeeze every last dollar out of each customer?

Nintendo is taking an enormous risk with this strategy. I think they will regret it.

This is Game Industry Propaganda masquerading as a ‘business article’. The ‘rise in costs’ was absorbed by DLC and micro-transactions. There is no reason why software prices need to rise. (And is why games like Clair Obscura is a huge threat by succeeding at $50 price point.) Nintendo did the smart thing in not lowering prices but KEEPING THEM there. Only high quality software can stay at its higher level. But this isn’t enough for Nintendo.

Mario Kart World is not a home console game, it is a handheld game. It is absurd that a handheld game costs the same as a home console game. It is doubly absurd for a handheld game to cost MORE than a home console game.

The Switch’s greatest innovation was getting people to buy handheld games priced at home console levels. Switch 2 now wants to go beyond that.

Oh, and you will still have to pay for online, pay for DLC, and pay for microtransactions.

The best way to push back against Nintendo is not to complain about the $80 price tag, but to illustrate how low quality the Nintendo software is. Mario Kart 8 was a ‘next gen’ Mario Kart because Wii U was a home console. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was simply the port of that game to a handheld. Mario Kart World is a native handheld game, not a home console game. Mario Kart World is not a Next Gen game.

Notice how no one is using the phrase ‘next gen’ with Nintendo at all? This is deliberate.

When the public realizes how low quality the First Party Nintendo software is, then they will rebel against the price points.

I think Nintendo first party titles sound better when you replace the IP with the word ‘slop’:

Slop Kart World.

Sloppy Air Riders

Slop: Tears of the Kingdom Upgrade Patch.

Nintendo Slop: Welcome Tour

Slop Crossing

Super Slop Brothers

Go buy your slop, reader!