Microsoft Ranks Sixth In Metacritic's Top Game Publishers Of 2020

I don’t play any games from the top 5
Of course number 6 with game pass.
And UBISOFT Assassins creed Valhalla
And Bethesda Doom eternal.
Daft list if you ask me, no reality there for me.

Nintendo is 9th !?!

This is surprising. I’ll start by saying I’m a major Xbox guy, but 1) I’m surprised how low Sony was ranked because they do make quality games and 2) I’m REALLY surprised how low Nintendo was ranked as they are the most creative when it comes to gameplay of anyone. They’re stuff might more often be for kids but their quality is nearly unmatched.

So as an Xbox guy who loves all things Xbox related, the logical side of me is confused. I do think Xbox deserves more credit for last year because of games like wasteland, Microsoft flight sim, Battletoads and dungeons. But I’m confused at the lower rating for Nintendo.

Note, Metacritic is not a valid and accurate representation of scores or overall rankings.

They hold different outlets in higher regard than others. For example, if there are 10 reviews for 10 outlets, one of which is say IGN. IGN’s review score will occupy 25% of the overall score rather than 10% and it filters down for there. IGN could have 25% and PureXbox/PushSquare 5% each.

Just don’t believe everything Metacritic pushes.

How is Microsoft above Nintendo lol and no Bethesda or ubisoft either but Activision? Good job not to take this list seriously

@mousieone Nintendo’s rank has to be related to their mobile games

@UltimateOtaku91 I’d put Flight Sim, Ori 2, and Wasteland above anything I played from Nintendo last year, but that might just be me. Worth mentioning, I couldn’t get into Animal Crossing.

Nintendo living off Nostalgia since 2001

@Hypnotoad107 don't get me wrong I didn't like animal crossing either but it still scored a 90, then again thinking back I don't think Nintendo actually releases a fat lot themselves last year as hyrule warriors was by omega force so I suppose that leaves the new paper mario which was pretty decent.

@mousieone A few games probably brought the overall average down like in Square Enix's case the extremely well received FFVII Remake will have been cancelled out by the poorly received Marvel's Avengers.

Nintendo for me do need a slapping down, their real in house studios have done next to nothing for a few years now. Even Nintendo Life fans say the same, where are the new AAA games from in house studios. Please remember most of their releases over the last few years are from 2nd party teams.
God forbid if Nintendo in house teams ever had to create a full 4K, HDR fully textured and detailed world, say like assassins creed Valhalla or Horizon Zero Dawn. They would never get a game out the door in ten years.

@StylesT well there games sell more than both playstations and xboxs combines so nostalgia sells

@UltimateOtaku91
When the switch released the first year was amazing from Nintendo in house studios.
Since then they have done nothing.
This is their real in house studios not 2nd party studios.
It’s like they are happy as they are, and being honest some how the Switch still sells like crazy so why bother with new AAA in house studio games.

@Dezzy70 don't forget the mountain of ports, don't get me the wrong I love my switch but I'm sick of the amount of ports and there's even more on the way with skyward sword and miitopia. Then when Nintendo do go 4K they will most likely do a lot of switch ports in 4K, don't get me wrong every "new" game they release is a banger but they are just too slow and their games are the only reason to get a switch due to lack of big third party support

@UltimateOtaku91
I totally agree. All I can think and someone at Nintendo life backed it up with numbers.
Their in house teams are tiny say compared to Ubisoft teams and some of Sony’s and Microsoft’s.
Never touch my switch now and feel a bit let down by Nintendo.

@Dezzy70 to be honest this year will be better for them with titles like monster hunter rise and stories 2, bravely default 2, pokemon snap, rune factory 5, disgaea 6, mario golf, bowser's fury and pokemon diamond and pearl remakes, but yeah still mainly not their own studios making these games, honestly think they have sank all their time and resources and staff into making breath of the wild 2 and the new Metroid

Totally off subject. My series s predictions are coming true in the UK.
It’s been over two full weeks and Game UK, Argos and Smiths Toys still have not sold their stock of Series S.
I don’t care what anyone says, this a new four month old console and also the Covid factor and the series s is sitting in stock rooms.
People want the top consoles Series x and PS5 they sell out in minutes. And even the Switch does as well at four years old.
I don’t like being right on this one. But the series s was a big Microsoft market analysis mistake.
And also a development mistake going forward a year or two.

@Grumblevolcano That makes a lot of sense. But it still bizarre to me. I can’t think of game they released last year that got Avenger level bad reviews.

@Luigi_Skywalker mobile? Oh? I thought most people were neutral about those. Interesting...

@UltimateOtaku91
Well if they have the whole team on breath of wild 2, let’s hope it’s worth the wait and not to much at the cost of other games.

@Dezzy70 I honestly think the naming and the price have thrown people off buying the S, for example a parent goes to buy a new xbox and then sees a £200 difference and a different name? And its nearly the same price as an xbox one X, they probably think its not the right console or something.

@UltimateOtaku91
Not sure what is going on, I mean currently it’s all on line. But as humans we all like the best possible and most powerful toy. And £200 more for that toy is not a lot more series x or PS5.
Perhaps it was easy for Microsoft to produce and toy with the idea, so they thought let’s give at go and see what happens.

@UltimateOtaku91
Its funny how a Nintendo hater always screams ports but yet they play the same "ports" on Xbox or PlayStation.

@TrueAssassin86x
I’m just playing assassins creed Valhalla
On series x. Noticed your profile pick.

@UltimateOtaku91
They should have a least put a disc drive in it and 1tb of ssd memory.
The poor series s just doesn’t have much going for it.

@TrueAssassin86x believe me I'm no Nintendo hater, I'm just pointing out they are relying on a lot of ports lately, yeah on playstation and xbox theres ports but from loads of different companies but on nintendo it's just them porting a tonne of their own games and charging full price. I'm pretty sure ports on playstation and xbox werent full price £50

@Dezzy70 yeah that would of been better and maybe charged £299 instead

@UltimateOtaku91
Maybe they should have followed the PS5 disc less approach. Has no disc but all the power of the top consoles for £360.

@Dezzy70 well two reasons for that come that model come to mind, they either wanted a console for those who just want to use gamepass or they already knew the pricing of the ps5 digital and wanted to undercut sony to draw in the neutrals and to do that they had to make sacrifices

@mousieone Nintendo released few titles, lots of ports, and a couple of smaller games that get lower scores (like the 101 board games thing)....not a good year for Nintendo overall, so it's not a surprise. Sega #1 should be a jaw dropping surprise to anyone that's played video games either in 1994 or today....

Cra...er....Capcom #3 is equally shocking, as is Sony, the supposedly critically acclaimed masterpiece art generation machine being below the above is also.

Aksys ranking above Nintendo is stunning....and how did Microsoft pull off #6? They basically released no games this year! Maybe they're counting Bethesda since technically all those Bethesda hits are now retroactively Microsoft hits as fo the date the list was released.

@UltimateOtaku91
Well maybe, but it certainly is not selling well in the UK for a four month old console no matter what the strategy was.
At this stage of its life and with Covid effect it should sold out very quickly. Like series x, PS5 and switch.
Does not seem right it’s not.

@NEStalgia it based sonys score out of 16 titles, I didn't even know they did 16 titles last year until I did some digging, there were some rubbish games on there like that predator hunting grounds one, if you just based it on ghost of tsushima, dreams, the last of us 2, spiderman morales and demon souls then sony would of been top but unfortunately other lesser titles dragged it down, same with Nintendo

@Dezzy70 Yeah, that's the thing, they still haven't mastered the art of HD games. Though I also sympathize with them. HD games at $60/70 exist for the same reason Switches are $300 and a new phone case is $10: Pseudo-slave labor in cesspits. Nintendo tends to have well paid, well treated in-house employees, and as a result they don't hire nearly as many of them. A few thousand tops, everything else outsourced, compare to Ubisoft with over 18,000 employees, many located in cesspits, PLUS the outsources. Making an HD game that takes thousands of staff with a few dozen to a few hundred tops isn't going to cut it. So they spend years and years on it by pulling all their other teams all in on the same project.

Switch year 1 was amazing because most of those games were in development for WiiU, and then they halted WiiU development 2 years prior and shifted it all to Swiitch. Luigi's Mansion 2, BotW, most likely Mario Odyssey (WiiU never had a 3D mario game other than World), all WiiU games that they held back for new hardware. Splatoon 2 was little more than Splatoon 1.5, if that, at launch. Basically 2017-18 was the best year of the WiiU, but you had to buy a Switch accessory to play it all.

I do think the next year will be a lot better, mostly due to second parties, depending on your interests. MHR, MHS2, SMT Nocture, SMT5, Rune Factory 5, and no doubt more that we don't know about. We know Nintendo itself is working on MP4, BOTW2, Bayo3 (2nd party), Splatoon 3, so some big hitters, but not nearly enough. They blame it on the pandemic, but I'm still betting that's a half- truth. I think they're still just stockpiling the vaults for new hardware. Either it was all supposed to release with "Switch Pro" as a second soft-launch of Switch with a bang, or it's coasting because it sells on 3rd party and they're just not going to release many more big Nintendo games until Switch 2 so they can send it off with a bang. Which sucks for Switch owners. And sucks especially for WiiU owners who got duped once so they can tide over to Switch, then duped again so they can tide over to Switch 2.

There's a lot of fun to be had with the machine, it's just that there isn't much from Nintendo itself.

@StylesT Nintendo's been living off nostalgia since 1993.

@NEStalgia Sega publishes Persona and Yakuza. That's how they got their #1.

Nintendo did have a rough 2020 in terms of first party releases. The only big game they released was Animal Crossing.

@NEStalgia MS has three big highly rated games, Ori 2, Tell Me Why, and Flight Sim. They all reviewed insanely well.

Sega had P5 Royal, Yakuza Like a Dragon, Two Point Hospital, and 13 Sentinels.

I don’t think Sega released a bad game last year- Miku and the two Sonic games weren’t bad either.

@NEStalgia
Well the switch sells out all the time and the sales are crazy, so I guess they don’t have to put hard work into their in house studios to get games like Mario Ods 2, BOTW2 or a new AAA IP out the door anytime soon.
Has just made me disgruntled with Nintendo as my Switch gathers dust really now.

@Dezzy70 @UltimateOtaku91 Series S will sell. The kind of person that buys the cut-down budget version of a console is not the same kind of person that buys a console year 1. Optically it looks better if they both live together than releasing the budget "Lite" years later (unless you're Nintendo), but the early adopter market is never, ever, going to be the launch market. It think declaring the death of S based on launch year is like the people on NL that insisted, passionately, that Switch Lite and no purpose and would fail at that price because it loses the Switch's main attraction of docking.

Series S won't matter in sales until Holiday 21' at the earliest, and even that will be a soft-ish launch. But Halo will be the first thing that really motivates that market at all. And Bethesda exclusives.

Sony....yeah it sounds like they published stuff that wasn't really their stuff. Then again....if they're going to publish trash like that, why not just keep Japan Studio?

@mousieone Oh, yeah, I wasn't thinking about Flight Sim since I think of that as 2021 since that's the console launch. Tactics also did well enough, critically. Tell Me Why....I forgot that as well. Not my kind of game and fell off my radar. It reminds me too much of Life is Strange. All of them feel like Portland hipster fodder. But I guess critics include a lot of Portland hipsters.

Sega had an unusually good year. By unusual, I mean it's the first truly great year Sega's had since I bought Ecco the Dolphin, Toejam & Earl, and a Game Gear.

@Dezzy70 Yeah, My bet is they only use the games to lure buyers to the console. "Nintendo is just a box to play Mario on" (-Hiroshi Yamauchi) etc. etc. So they're probably holding the games back to push Switch 2. Really kind of sucks. BUT, ultimately what they did do was make their console a viable actual console with a bunch of games they don't make driving it....just like Xbox and Playstation....so in that sense it's redeemed them from a rut they've been in since the N64 where only Nintendo games matter on Nintendo. In the long term that's a good thing for everyone, even if I'm also not terribly happy with where Switch is. But OTOH an exclusive + PC MH game, an exclusive SMT, exclusive RPGs, etc....it's doing pretty well as a healthy ecosystem rather than an ailing Mario box. Those are games we would never get from Nintendo itself but still need a Nintendo to play (or a PC....) There's good and bad to this result. I'm also not happy with it right now unless they turn it around. But, OTOH, if we ignore the bleak wasteland of 2020, and include that Switch games means not just in-house games, it's not a terrible system at all. (As we say on the eve of MHR. Even if you're not a big MH fan, that's still a big release, and isn't Nintendo in house.) So it's a mixed bag. If you like JRPG,s the next 8 months will be fantastic on Switch. If you don't like JRPGs....not so much. But anything is better than Switch 2020 and that incredulous Animal Crossing game t hat the world can't get enough of and I still can't figure out why such a huge downgrade in a series gets so much love. It's like watching Halo 5 print money.....just....WHY!?

I'm absolutely stoked that Devolver Digital also picked up a spot in the top 10. All very fair. Sony had a cracking year with Ghost of Tsushima and others (Last of Us is still highly overrated).
Microsoft beat Nintendo! Considering there's plenty more from Microsoft to come in the next few years I genuinely expect Microsoft to get Number 1 (at least top 3) by 2023.

@NEStalgia
Hope you right about series s. But I’m still backing my own thoughts. It’s not a seller of a console and never will be without a good price reduction, which might only create a temporary boost.
It’s like an amateur boxer trying to fight the top dogs, with critical talents missing.
Might get the odd lucky blow in, but it’s going down.

Series X just came up in stock at Smiths toys UK
for Xbox access orders only.
If you quick you might get one.

@Dezzy70
Series X and PS5 buyers right now are gaming enthusiasts that want the latest high-end tech.
The type of gamers the Series S is aimed at are casuals that will continue to game on last gen consoles until the likes of COD, FIFA, Madden etc are all next-gen only.
That's why Phil Spencer stated himself in the past that he expects Series X to be the top seller for them at launch, but that he expects Series S to win in lifetime sales.

@blinx01
Lots of opinions on here which is great.
Being honest I hope you are right and I'm wrong.
But I’m sticking to my opinion, series s won’t sell that great. And if it out sells the series x then there is something wrong. As the series x needs to compete with PS5 and there is no way the series s will out sell the PS5, hell will freeze over first.
So basically Phil is saying the series x will sell the least, followed by the series s, then the PS5 and even switch depends what generation you put it in.
Microsoft got that all wrong again then.

Nintendo 9th lol.

I can see why I’ve not played on my switch for at least 6 months. When was the last truly outstanding Nintendo game released on switch? There’s so much shovel-ware on there it’s unbelievable.

LMAO, Nintendo! As of late, all I hear coming from the big N are overpriced ports, theme parks and the New Super Switch 64 XL.

@Dezzy70 Apple is the #1 skinny phone in the us because it has mass marketing power and the herd wants to buy what everyone else buys. That's playstation. If you can afford it, you buy it because it's the "best brand", if you don't actually know what you want.

So yeah playstation will win (though maybe not in the us. Sony gets false victory metrics by selling units in countries ms doesn't even sell in. We'd need metrics per market.)

But....The mass market of consumers aren't the enthusiasts. Remember the people that bought x360 elite after x1 was out? Ps3 super slim after ps4 was out? X1x is discontinued. X1s probably will be soon. Ps4 pro is discontinued. Base ps4 is still selling. See, Microsoft isn't competing with ps5 head on with series s. They're competing with ps4..... There's a lot of people out there that world be buying a ps4 now that might like paying a little more to get a current green machine instead of last gen.

Noooww, it makes sense, right?

@gingataisen And the depressing thing is thats the hottest selling thing on the market....

@Fenbops I thought everybody thought acnh was the single greatest game ever made?

@NEStalgia
It helps that the Switch is the sole handheld option and everybody else has trouble meeting demand for their own hardware. I'm surprised Nintendo gamers are so affluent, though.

Persona 5 Royal - best rated metacritic game of 2020 = SEGA success.

Not sure why there is so much debate over the Series S. As an owner I can confidently say it is the best valued peice of technology I've ever purchased. Hopefully there will be more marketing later in the year to reach the wider mass audience (outside of this echo chamber).

@Dezzy70 I think the price point could make the Series S an appealing option for kiddos with 1080p TVs in their rooms. If that’s the case, it would sell better at the holidays. It might also become a second console for some gamers, but that won’t really pick up until MS starts dropping all of these first party games. I do agree that the demand for the S isn’t anywhere as big as the X or PS5, but I think that’s because we’re in the early adopter phase, still. And early adopters typically want the best on offer. I could be completely wrong. If Christmas comes around and the store shelves are still stocked full of them, then I’ll be definitively wrong.

@gingataisen Yeah, I've always seen nintendo targeting a budget conscious demographic. This time they're there most expensive overall. I'd have pegged ps as the toys for rich boys crowd other than pc. If the rumors of switch pro being more expensive than series s are true...I don't think they are, not I wouldn't put it past ninty in their current state doing it, pheew...

That said, I've also clearly lost track of who the Nintendo demographic is. By sales new horizons and smash are the absolute biggest things they have.... And I figured both of them for minor players, honestly. I'm obviously in a very very different headspace then their current customers. So different I can't even understand the thinking of their current market

@Hypnotoad107 Heck, even on Push Square where xbox is teh devulz there were a surprising amount of people in the bethesda exclusivity article basically saying "well, looks like I'll be getting an xbox too this gen", and I'm betting that means an s as a second or third console in many of those cases.

@NEStalgia spot on with PlayStation and the best brand thing I’ve been saying the same for ages. PlayStation is trendy and that alone takes it a long way, like you say it’s the go to console for people who don’t really know what they want and fair play to Sony creating that. Then you have the massive cult like following it has with their superiority complex who would buy a turd from Sony if it had a PlayStation logo stamped into it and tell us it’s the best thing ever.

I can’t see Microsoft catching up to that anytime soon with the Xbox series X and S, even combined I think PlayStation will lead, but they might just start closing the gap this gen.

@NEStalgia I agree with your Nintendo comment. I’ve been a big Nintendo fan my entire life (my sons are named after Link from Zelda and Locke from FF6). I have a Switch and it’s a nice little handheld, but it is, by far, my least played of the three consoles. I give Nintendo lots of credit for always releasing polished games and not relying on patching, but I really don’t understand the absolute blind loyalty they get. The only two must plays on the system, to me, are Odyssey and BotW, and I actually think both of them are a little overrated. Kart and Smash are fun to play with friends, but they aren’t the types of games I’ll drop a ton of hours into. I’ll play them with my sons on occasion. And Nintendo’s practice of releasing old games with little in the way of upgrades at full price is frustrating, especially after experiencing XBox’s back compat program.

@Hypnotoad107 @Fenbops I figure, gaming has always been sort of a "nerdy" activity, until very recently, where it's blown up into mainstream. But, as it became mainstream, traditional "nerd" gamers have been kind of cast aside. Both Sony and Nintendo are now chasing the mass market, which has very different tastes from the traditional "nerdiness" of gaming, almost exclusively. And its working for them. It's somewhat fitting that Microsoft could fill that void and cater to "nerdy"/PC type gamers, which is a smaller market, but with a higher margin per customer by far. The mass market isn't necessarily more desirable, but they're safer. With the immense cost of games, companies need to minimize risk, and the easiest way to do that is to appeal to the broadest possible market with the most homogeneous possible content, so that even a relative failure still sees huge sales across a huge marketplace. Nintendo is leaning hard into what they learned from Wii & DS, combining it with what they know from mobile success, especially in Japan, and Switch resembles an Android Wii in the end. Sony's leaning hard into their mass market film and TV know-how (now EVERY game gets a movie, too!) They're both kind of leaning away from gaming progression and drawing from non-gaming fields to reach the previously non-gaming market.

OTOH, we might be niche, but we're also a very high margin market. Timex sells a lot more watches than Movado, but Movado customers are a lot more desirable as a group. But we represent risk. A small market with specific tastes can lose money. Investors don't want to see risk. They want guarantees. A new mass market easy pick up and play Mario Kart; a new game that's like the movie about the game based on the movie about the game set in a modern city from Sony with a $143M budget? ....Mass appeal, low risk, investment loves it. A new hack and slash turn based tactical rpg about demons invading a bookshelf in a world of underwater elves with a $50M budget? Risk, risk, risk....

But with Game Pass spreading the funding around, they may have stumbled upon the way to keep that high risk content from actually presenting financial risk. The content's value is now based on adding diversity, eyeballs, and attention rather than recovering costs. That makes it a viable home for spending more on "nerdy" content (potentially.)

But it's confusing watching the rapid transformation of Nintendo and Sony into what they're becoming. I understand to a degree why they're doing it, and what they're doing, but I never saw it coming, and certainly not at the speed it did.

Of course MS is the deep underdog that can give away the store to get loyalty in the short-term....so they come away smelling more rosier than they'd rather be in practice. I'm just hoping they can maintain that niche. MS is pretty good at doing niches, so there's solid hope as long as management remains grounded to reality unlike the Matrick/Balmer era.

(Tagging @Ryu_Niiyama for the above since this plugs into a conversation we were having way back about "aging out of gaming" and "not recognizing the market" - and I remain more convinced than ever that age has nothing to do with it and the above shift from "nerd content" to "mainstream for the masses" content is the real change. Games are more adult-oriented than they've ever been, but they're targeting people that watch Netflix and HBO and play Candy Crush, not people that played Skies of Arcadia and Morrowind. Except MS....who bought Morrowind.... and maybe will buy Skies of Arcadia.... )

@NEStalgia is it really rapid though for Nintendo?

I mean the Wii was more mass market than the Switch ...

@mousieone Wii was an anomaly. Or so it seemed. A weird experiment that was supposed to be more core oriented...vr before vr. But they quickly pivoted to chase the magic wii sports crowd. It was a short term success that then left them high and dry after the fad. Iwata himself admitted "it was, perhaps, a mistake to focus on the casual market [at the expense of the core market]".

But! They had ds and then 3ds that was continuing a strong focus on core. So casuals had nintendo console and core players had handhelds focused on them.

With switch, they cut the first party games to almost exclusively the casual console games.. that was sudden. That's furukawa. Of course golf story was his favorite game when he took over, so that's the market through his own bias, as well. Plus japanese gamers are all about casual board games on phones today, so they're pandering to the new local trend, too.

@Hypnotoad107
I'm glad you went with Locke instead of Sabin. Or Kefka. -_-

@NEStalgia
"But with Game Pass spreading the funding around, they may have stumbled upon the way to keep that high risk content from actually presenting financial risk."

This is almost word for word what Dinga Bakaba from Arkane Lyon said. I think we might be getting another Dishonored. 😍

@gingataisen Kefka would be awesome. Unfortunately, my wife ISN’T a gamer, and doesn’t appreciate great game characters like I do.

@gingataisen It's a series that really would fit the xbox image, isn't it? Classic Looking Glass Immersive Sim genre... Classic nerdy... High risk.... It certainly looks a lot more appealing on a sub than $60-70 from an engagement/sales perspective. Especially if they get the same guy to present the gameplay demo they did for the Dishonored 2 E3 presentation, 😂

@NEStalgia Oh no you don’t. We’ve had these convos for ages. Please don’t do this to me. I’m doing really well with not text walling now. Besides, I have a more neutral view on the whole thing and I’m not gonna wave the “hardcore” flag. Especially since I technically don’t fit the mold. You know I loathe marketing terms.

@Ryu_Niiyama lol text walls are a force of nature. They can't be avoided

Eh, I don't know about neutral, really. I know the last time you felt your decreasing attachment to major games was age demographics related. But having seen the past year and ps5 launch, I'm simply certain it's about mainstream/mass market pivots from red and blue team and our relative detachment from what they're offering if due to the nerd factor. The only age related aspect is that when the older gamers started gaming, all gaming was far removed from mainstream tastes. It's why we nerds liked it. Now that it's been changed to appeal to the same mass market we gamed because we weren't part of.... Were kicked side as a result... Just like all the other mass market things, and gaming was a "nerd safe space" from that.

It's depressing thinking about it though. One more niche crushed by the herd stampede.

I'm just hoping ms finds it's home with niches for a long time. If they make TES dumbed down and with a tie in movie I will totally nerdrage.

Also, I usually use "hardcore" in quotes or alternate with "enthusiast" to segment it from mainstream/mass market.

Acnh is practically the watch word for this effect. Tlou as well. Did you ever play your spiderman btw? I remember you were hyped for it.....I "like" it but it's another example of this effect. Insomniac never gets a "meh. .I mean it's pretty decent..." From me... But they kind of did there. It's an interactive movie with an empty open world. There's fun in it.... But it's a playable movie. Insomniac usually impresses with gameplay. For nerds.

@NEStalgia I hate you so much right now. Sigh. I’m trying to sleep!

Ok, so I still stand by my argument that gaming focuses on age demographics and that I have aged out of the sweet spot. Where I am neutral is that I accept that. The game dev rockstars of my childhood have moved on, are nearing retirement or function in a decreased capacity. And that’s ok, otherwise I will be shaking my fist at a cloud forever.

Besides I don’t see it as a bad thing. New blood and new focus means new ideas or at least new voices being heard. Protags aren’t all Japanese males or Caucasian males with the occasional half naked female from either group any more. Women have been in development since the beginning but now we helm projects and write game scenarios. I can play an animal crossing with my skin color now!

I have always said more games for everyone and I will die on that hill. I don’t like the fake divide gamers create to gatekeep and validate play, which is something we do from childhood on. Of course that means that there are casualties. Games I want don’t get made but at the same time games I didn’t know I needed are getting made. Indies pick up the torches defunct devs dropped, AAA devs gain new inspiration... and they cling to the same tropes as well. The old games weren’t perfect and the new ones shouldn’t be vilified because they are new. We have adults in the workforce that never played chrono trigger or mario 3 or any of the “formative games” but that is ok. You are older than me. I’ve never even seen an atari anything in person, yet we have been debating games for the better part of 5 years now. (Longer? Ugh...)

I don’t get fortnite or minecraft but minecraft gave me dragon quest builders which I love. I’ve never been the target demographic in games besides my age. So to me gaming is how you react to it. I love the blue ocean strategy; my mom is nearly 70 and she has been gaming for 40 years. I want her to keep playing. I want to play when I am her age. Me losing interest just means I find new devs to follow (we just talked about that) not that it’s bad that gaming evolves. Because the more it changes the more there will be some other group to rise up to fill a void. Games too easy? Ninja gaiden xbox started the modern Nintendo hard movement. Now we get a souls game after a sneeze.

@NEStalgia also I disagree. I have a big problem with groups trying to pretend they are somehow totally removed from groupthink. You can mitigate it by having less exposure to popular culture but then you are at the mercy of your subculture which is just as much of a herd.

Gamers love to gatekeep. We’ve discussed this at length; it’s just now that even grandpa plays games that now everyone wants to cry foul and a return to focus on “hardcore” (as always, whatever the heck that is) when games have always been for everyone. Played a edutainment game as a kid? You’re gaming. Text based adventure, match 3, life sim, fight game, board game game? You are still gaming and many of those types of games weave in and out of popular culture.

There has always been this attempt to act like gamers were just the digital version of D&D players when that was never the case. Look at the NES library. There is something for everyone. The jock, the nerd, the parent, the child. The issue is we grew up but the way we relate to games didn’t (for most people). People go why aren’t the games focused on me... when they weren’t aside from the japanese/caucasian male thing (but that isn’t a monolith...it just means male gaze, male power fantasy and very few Black people). They always focused on what was popular and what was the focus group for a usually male set of age demographics.

Don’t get me wrong... I have my sacred cows like everyone else but if I am spending more time complaining about games than playing them... something is very wrong here.

I love to discuss business decisions and marketing focus, but for personal gaming I find what speaks to me instead of lambasting a dev for leaving me behind... except Virtua Fighter. I’ll cuss SEGA out all day long over that one.

To your Spiderman question I started it trying to beat it before Miles Morales came out but then work got “super dynamic business time” on my arse and I have not gone back. Which is gonna suck because I don’t have good muscle memory for sony controllers. And I don’t give them a pass but a) spidey is my second favorite superhero although he has gotten really whiny imo so he is slipping without nostalgia goggles and I am liking Miles more currently. B) nobody is ever gonna make a Storm (I’ll take Nubia as a runner up or Shuri/Black Panther) stand alone game in my lifetime so I take what I can get c) It’s not LEGO. Hylia be praised. D) it’s not batman. (You wanna talk sacred cow? Arkham Series) E) I love NYC.

I’m so mad at you. I’ll clean this up later when I am awake. Also if you wanna discuss Nintendo and this ranking hit me up on NL.

@NEStalgia I’m not so sure the split with Wii and DS was really casual vs core. The DS had larger library of titles that catered to everyone as well. I mean the Princess Maker games come to mind. Let’s not forget AC and Story of Seasons thrived on the DS. It was, in all honesty, buttons vs motion controls.

The truth is Nintendo, in my opinion, is still doing what Nintendo always does. I mean this last year alone they release Jump Rope Challenge and Stretchers. So they still do experimental stuff they just don’t do Big budget games more than one a year. The WiiU’s lack of third party support forced them to ramp up. Yeah the launch of the Switch and next few years were insane but I think those were WiiU projects held back.

I think since the birth of the WiiU a system like the Switch which combined their markets (Handheld and Console) was always “end game”. The WiiU can be played in the toilet too..

My point is Nintendo really hasn’t altered their approach except, like MS and the XB1, making the WiiU too “Media friendly”.

@Ryu_Niiyama haha, well.. I'll try to break the text wall cycle and try to keep it shorter... Because I still owe you 3 text walls on ubisoft, alone!

But, I don't disagree with your neutrality on the age thing, but I still think that's a separate debate. That's more about more minor shifts in game design, tropes, etc. And I don't disagree about core vs casual....but....I think that stands aside from the real sense of detachment from the industry, and I still don't believe for a second that has a single thing to do with age. Step away from nintendo and look at Sony. Their big thing is interactive movies, and that's basically all they make now (and now make real movies about the interactive movies, all starting Tom Holland. ). But that's not exactly a "kids" demographic. Nor is it necessarily a "casual" demographic. It's.... non nerd mass market homogenous wide appeal market. The tv and movie market that gamers generally weren't attracted to and thus gamed instead. Now games are geared toward them because they're a bigger, rather, safer market for investment. The media industry doing what the media industry always did. But gaming was exempt from "media industry"before. It was it's own corner of the world. Now it's just another wing of "media". It's not age. Those Sony games are aimed at mostly an adult audience. How is a "dad story", so is tlou1...... It's it at best an appeal to old guys.

Nintendo went the other way. I'd say "casual"... But maybe the wii/mobile demographic.

But that's still not age based. It's market width. And the mass market tastes will always outnumber the conventional gamer. To a degree that becomes age based only because once they started killing the support of that demographic only gamers of certain ages will remember when it existed. But it's not the cause, that's a symptom.

And now mousie gets a text wall later too

@mousieone Ds had "casual" fame absolutely. But for nintendo's own output it was very clear at the time that Wii fairly exclusively had "casual" or "toylike" games save for a few notable exceptions. But the output on ds contained most of their more typical experiences. Ds felt like the snes successor, while wii felt like an experimental product for a new market. And it was. They more or less said that with the "blue ocean" strategy.

Same for 3ds in the late cycle. Wii was still the console, for the wide market. 3ds was a gaming system. That included "casual" but was still games rather than toys. Wii u tried terribly to become an xbox.... And that just wasn't going to go anywhere.

Their experimental stuff, though, barely goes beyond a mobile game. Or arcade game. I don't think that's a fair substitute for what they did just a generation ago on 3ds. I don't think expecting them to maintain the level of output they had on 3ds ps asking too much while they have 50% less platforms to support. It's bleak when Capcom is the first reason to boot the machine in a year.

@ryu_niiyama sorry! One other thought:. I don't know that I can agree with the idea of not segmenting different parts of the game market. Clash of clans and candy crush players are a very different market, with different wants, habits, tastes than console & pc gaming. It's a mistake to try to jumble everything into one cohesive "gaming" market I think. The industry tries to do that too. It's like trying to combine the entire "food industry" by jumbling McDonald's, Con Agra, M&M Mars, Pepsico, French Laundry, and the local diner all into a single market. A McDonald's consumer likely has little in common with the French Laundry client list, and while Pepsico and M&M Mars will feature crossover, they're otherwise entirely separate markets with separate wants.

Imo that mass market reorienting of the market is trying to do exactly what you're suggesting by homogenizing it all into "the games category". I just don't think that's a positive for anyone but investors.

@NEStalgia I don’t think I’d make that distinction. I mean the “Casual” one you are using. (I do truly believe Iwata meant motion controlled games vs buttons.) Yes the Wii had a lot of Wii motion titles but how is that any different than Labo? Ring Fit Adventure? The Mario Racing game with actual toy cars? Or to go classic Virtual Boy? The track pad for the NES? Nintendo always has toy like elements to their lineup.

I can see the Wii feeling experimental but so did the 3DS. I mean eventually people stop wanting that 3D experience Sun and Moon didn’t even use the slider. For that matter the entire N64 controller was an “experiment”. That’s just Nintendo.

I really don’t think they’ve changed at all, I just think it’s more obvious this day and age due to Social Media. Without which a lot of people would probably never know that Mario All Stars is emulated. Or TMS is censored in Japan as well now. It’s just we take it for granted.

@mousieone 3ds had a gimmick but the console wasn't experimental, it was iterative on ds. And sun moon didn't stop the 3d because people didn't want it, though they're were many that didn't. They did it because their engine was incapable of half decent frame rates, and double rendering for 3d would have crippled it. And then bulk of the Pokemon audience was going to be on a 2ds anyway. X/y didn't use it either, and that was early in 3ds life.

But as Phil shows, the leadership even say giant organizations really does matter and change everything three company does. Ms was... Well, ms
But with Phil running gaming it's a much different company. At nintendo, yamauchi followed basically the kids market into the teenage market. Iwata took out blue ocean, but being a gamer and dev himself never lost focus of what matters to that audience. He lost the script on wii, bit never on ds and 3ds.

Enter the new management and a mainstream focus. Same at Sony. A little matrick lives in both now.

Reminds me of the mh rise thread on nl today. People afraid world, which didn't feel like mh, that changed things for mainstream appeal would be the norm. Thankfully capcom hadn't get forgotten the series roots, and rise of a return to form bit that's the kind of thing I'm taking about. Removing the nerdy for the mass appeal. You end up with a genetic blob.... Which outsells the niche stuff 10:1. The masses love generic. Hate unique. So unique always gets replaced with genetic to sell to that mass market.... Unfortunately.

@NEStalgia I’m pretty sure x/y did use it in combat...

The 3DS may have been iterative of the DS, but you can’t yell me the Wii wasn’t either. The Wii basically had GameCube in it, so it’s definitely iterative if it. Heck, Wii and GC both ran on PowerPC, and had similar insides. From a hardware standpoint they weren’t that different at all. I think your getting hung up on the Motion Controls. But that’s the Wii’s “gimmick”.

Anyway I stand by Nintendo hasn’t changed. They do Nintendo, and either works great or bombs. They don’t have an “in between”.

@mousieone Ahh, yeah, it did, do 3D in the battles. I forgot about that. But it ran deplorably. I remember that now.

The Wii hardware was derivative in terms of being "2 game cubes stuck together" But with a completely different input device, it changed the way you interact with it and the software you run on it. If you change the input device of your PC to be ONLY a touch screen, everything about the device would need to be different including all the software you use on it, despite it being the same x86 hardware inside. Same for Wii, because the input method changed, it changed not just how you interact with it but the content itself that was available on it. That started the ball rolling, but then once the audience changed (and that was intentional due to the GCN failure), it became a totally different platform for a totally different market.

Switch isn't quite that bad, but mostly only due to third parties (MHR is genuinely peeling me away from XSX and PS5, amazingly!) but Nintendo's own output, when it actually exists, has been retooled heavily to resemble mobile games. Just look at ACNH and tell me that's not a mobile game ported to a console? And that's their biggest seller!!

Agreed about it working great or bombing....but the issue is they've shifted more to a very different audience that provides the "works great" part. And that audience isn't the same type of player that primarily bought 3DS (or SNES.) I ignore N64 and GCN...both of them were kind of failures, one more than the other, and neither had impressive libraries, though each had several classics.) 3rd party? Sure we have MH, SMT, even Falcom's games now. So there's 3rd party support justifying the console purchase.

They may return to form, but probably not until next hardware.

@NEStalgia this is cruel and unusual punishment ~.~ I refuse.