Nintendo dishing out consoles.

Skyuser

I never saw a company like Nintendo before. They just keep dishing out consoles left, right and centre.
After the GB came GBA, months later GBA SP. Then DS, months later GB micro.
The bigger consoles was 64, Gamecube and soon Revolution. All of these will still have games for sale, none will be discontinued.

They're mad.

tman

yore mad!

they've been releasing their main consoles at the same rate as sony (N64 -> PS1, GC -> PS2, Rev -> PS3)
and have really only released 1 new type of handheld console since the GBA; the DS.
GB Micro, GBA SP and DS lite are all just newer versions of older consoles, with the same compatability with games.

sony are just as bad tbh, they've released 2 versions of their past 2 consoles (PSone and whatever they called the smaller ps2)

Skyuser

But they were still called PS1 and PS2. Point is, if I want a Sony, I choose from a PS2 or a PSP. If I want a Nintendo I have loads to choose from.

Blub2k4

Skyuser wrote:

If I want a Nintendo I have loads to choose from.

Why would you want a nintendo as a PS fanboy?

steviec

He does have a point, sort of. Sony switched to PSone and PStwo long after the original consoles had come out when it was much easier for them to manufacture smaller, cheaper versions of the console and it made sense to do so.

Nintendo churn out a revision of the Gameboy every year to boost sales, the DS is barely out a year and it's already outdated. I know people who own DS's and are considering the lite because its so much smaller, I can't help wondering if they couldn't have released the original console that size a year ago but they were holding out to keep interest up with a new version. Same goes for the GBA micro, sales were getting low so they've decided to try turning it into a fashion accessory.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, Nintendo are doing what they can to maximise their profit just like Sony and Microsoft. Some people seem to think Nintendo are above such things.

segadreamcast

Thought of this myself... to be honest, Nintendo just aren't very good at branding things at all - and I think there is a genuine amount of consumer confusion (outside of you specialists, of course) around the various Game Boy's on the market.

Sony - as much as I dislike them - know how to brand things, how to market things, and how to distinguish their products nice and clearly. SP? DS? These things don't mean anything to people - PSOne and PSTwo instantly let you know where they are in the succession/hierarchy of consoles, which is a powerful marketing tool. Even as a Sega fanboy (Saturn - wtf?), I can praise Sony for that.

Morrigan

NoelRock wrote:

Thought of this myself... to be honest, Nintendo just aren't very good at branding things at all - and I think there is a genuine amount of consumer confusion (outside of you specialists, of course) around the various Game Boy's on the market.

Sony - as much as I dislike them - know how to brand things, how to market things, and how to distinguish their products nice and clearly. SP? DS? These things don't mean anything to people - PSOne and PSTwo instantly let you know where they are in the succession/hierarchy of consoles, which is a powerful marketing tool. Even as a Sega fanboy (Saturn - wtf?), I can praise Sony for that.

I concur. Nintendo are still a very "Japanese" company. They stick with the "Invent a product, throw it out there and see what happens" method of marketing. They hope the product will sell on it's own merits, rather than needing the full force of a marketing/branding campaign behind it. On the other hand Sony (and Microsoft) throw wads and wads of cash behind their marketing strategies and saturate the media with competitions, sponsorship, advertising, product placement etc. When was the last time you saw an ad for Nintendo?
(Actually the DS is sponsoring comedy shows on channel 4. Strange move, methinks.)

Retr0gamer

If you go to America and Japan there is loads of nintendo marketing and they pay quite a bit for shelf and advertising space. They don't really give two tosses still about the European market. Some of the ads that come out in america are fantastic but we rarely see them over here and then only at obscure times on satellite. Still I much prefer the Metroid Prime ad to any of those terrible third place adverts. I don't think anybody has bought a console because of those adverts, imo the worst adverts ever. At least MS and Nintendo have the decency to show the bloody games in action.

Mokong

Retr0gamer wrote:

If you go to America and Japan there is loads of nintendo marketing and they pay quite a bit for shelf and advertising space. They don't really give two tosses still about the European market.

It's not totally that they don't give a toss about Europe its more that Nintendo of Europe have the worst marketing department ever, i bet they do next to nothing, they hardly ever put together any good ad campaignes and they sure as hell don't make their own ads. Any ads you see here in Europe were made by Nintendo of America for their market... but yeah you'd think Nintendo Japan would be more conserned by this

Skyuser

I never even knew they were bringing out a Nintendo DS Lite. Such a pile of junk, it only has a tiny difference in it. If they had proper designers in the first place, they could of had released this design first. I now rest my case!

Blub2k4

Skyuser wrote:

I now rest my case!

good, good, it was flimsey and badly constructed at best anyway, only one step away from "nintendo are teh suX0r!!!"

Cake Fiend

Skyuser wrote:

If I want a Nintendo I have loads to choose from.

Er... isn't that a good thing?

monument

Skyuser wrote:

I never even knew they were bringing out a Nintendo DS Lite. Such a pile of junk, it only has a tiny difference in it. If they had proper designers in the first place, they could of had released this design first. I now rest my case!

Proper? So the DS Lite is proper, but the DS isn’t? And the PS2 is but the slimline PS2 isnt?

tman wrote:

(PSone and whatever they called the smaller ps2)

I think they just called it the 'slimline PS2'

It's the slimline PS2 with a disc drive that stops reading CDs after a few months. So it's wrong to revise handheld hardware but it's fine to re-release consoles that are no more durable than the previous versions?