Confessions of a Nintendo Fangirl

I've been a Nintendo Fangirl since birth... Not a Nintendo Gamer, a Nintendo Fangirl. The obnoxious brat type who would say that Nintendo would top at gaming because they focus in experiences rather than graphics, technology, and the sorts.

I'm not quite that Fangirl anymore, as it pains to admit it, I feel that Nintendo has disappointed me more times than rewarded me, and that has began to take its toll on me.

I hadn't even confessed it to myself, deep down I have a love for Nintendo that I believe it will be difficult to beat, but there are at least 5 things that I have to admit are going against Nintendo and are opening my mind to other alternatives:

No Space for Competition

If a third party developer, big or small, ventures to develop in Nintendo waters, they are faced with a brutal and unfair competition against... Nintendo... And I mean, who can compete against that? It sure leaves the rest in a disadvantage. 

The strategy that most of the Third Party developers and publishers have armed themselves with is to try and not compete directly with Nintendo, by publishing titles of genres that Nintendo has no plans to develop in the foreseeable future, and even so, they lose in sales. For instance Ubisoft's ZombiU, widely advertised and only sold 740.000 physical copies, while New Super Mario Bors. U, released almost simultaneously, sold 4.320.000 physical copies. I know that ZombiU is not the best game ever and marketing can only do so much, but everything worsens when you take a look at who you are competing with, even if it is in a totally different genre. A game that can be considered direct competition, or almost direct, is Epic Mickey 2: The Power of 2, who sold 160.000 physical copies, vs Super Mario 3D World, which sold 2.390.000 physical copies.

Even more, what space do Indie developers have, compared to other friendlier platforms such as Steam or Sony?

It's always the same game, over and over again

Yes, I know, Mario is Nintendo's iconic character and the games are tons of fun and yes, I can't wait to get my hands on the new Zelda Game for Wii U. But it's always the same games, with the same IP's, over and over again.

The Latest published new IP that Nintendo presented us with is The Wonderful 101, and it didn't receive as much attention from the people of Nintendo as, say, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for 3DS (a porting of an old game!!) So, even if there are new IPs out there, Nintendo doesn't want to share the spotlight of their previous classics.

Even more, in one of the latest Nintendo Direct, the biggest news was: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask for 3DS, another port! I mean, it is a great game and all that, but they should share the spotlight with new content instead of focusing on remakes of old games, no matter how great they were.

The Best-Sellers cost almost the same 2 years later

There are no significant sales for Nintendo. New Super Mario Bros. U, who saw the light 2 years ago, cost 60 USD back then, now it can be bought in the Nintendo eshop for 60 USD! And in Amazon for 47 USD,,, To make a comparison, Biosohck Infnite was released late March 2013 and back then it cost 60 USD in Steam, right now it costs 22.5 USD, this makes it very easy for non-early adopters to play a wide variety of games.

...And they have paid DLCs

Paid DLCs are not new and not Nintendo exclusive, but they make sense when the game price drops quickly and the player can afford to buy both the game and the DLC, they also make sense when a reasonably long period of time has passed since the game was released, so the early adopter player can complete the game before the DLC coming out, normally this time is enough for the original price to drop. 

6 months after Mario Kart 8 was released, 2 DLCs came out simultaneously, each one of them costing 8 USD, this doesn't make any sense to me for a 60 USD game, who still cost 60 USD 6 months after its release (even so, I still bought the 2 packs... shame on me)

They seem to take advantage of their fans

All in all, they play with the loyalty and nostalgia of their fans, knowing that they will buy the Wii U even though it doesn't have enough games for a release (and it didn't have enough games 6 months after the release), who will buy the same games over and over again with hope in their eyes, who will buy the DLCs in pre sales, just because it is Nintendo and boy, they do produce good games. 

So everyday I'm less of a Nintendo Fangirl, I bought everything over an over again, early adopter and all, but I'm not so proud of it.

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