In recent years, the internal workings of Nintendo have been an enigma. The company would often make seemingly idiotic decisions that left fans worrying for the future of the company and, by extension, beloved pop culture icons such as Mario and Zelda. Nintendo’s past 15 years have seen unparallelled boom and bust cycles.

2002

The Nintendo Gamecube launched in Europe on 3 May 2002 to little fanfare. Once the king of the gaming world, Nintendo had two significant competitors by the early noughties. The Sony Playstation 2 (PS2) and Microsoft Xbox were poised to challenge Nintendo for the top spot in this emergent multi-billion dollar industry. By the end of the generation in 2005, the PS2 emerged as the victor with tens of millions more units sold than the Gamecube. What went wrong for Nintendo? A number of poor design and marketing choices doomed the Gamecube from the start.

The PS2 offered backwards compatibility with the extremely successful games of the PS1, whereas Nintendo’s decision to finally switch from cartridges to discs prevented access to the N64’s library. Nintendo offered more powerful hardware than Sony, but as the PS2 sold more and more units, developers increasingly thought it unwise to release a game on the losing platform. They needed to go where the market was. However, the biggest attraction of the PS2 was that it could play DVDs. This meant that consumers could buy one box to serve as their living room entertainment centre.

While the Gamecube certainly didn’t send Nintendo into bankruptcy, the seeds were sown for a future of disconnection with fans. For their next move, it seemed Nintendo needed to return to their roots and make a sensible, cheap, unremarkable console to attract third party developers. However, what came next was completely unexpected.

2006

For years, rumours circulated of a new console known internally as Project Revolution. In April 2006, Nintendo revealed the market name of their long awaited home console: the Wii. With this release, Nintendo’s fortunes would change.

The Wii was the first home console to utilise motion controls, an amazing concept at the time. Along with backwards compatibility for the Gamecube, appeal to the casual gamer, and an attractive asking price of $250, the Wii became the must-have gadget of 2006, even outside the games industry. A focus on multiplayer and bundling the console with Wii Sports allowed the Wii to market itself through word of mouth. People would try out a game of tennis or baseball at a friend’s house and find themselves running to buy a console the next day.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata unveils the Wii

The Wii went on to sell over 80 million units in its lifetime, making it the second bestselling console of all time after the PS2. Nintendo had caught lightning in a bottle. They had a formula that would appeal to a huge range of audiences and managed to execute it in an affordable, accessible way.

2012

So how do you follow one of your most successful products ever? It seemed that Nintendo themselves had trouble answering this question. The successor to the Wii would need to innovate again in order to have the same mass appeal. In January 2012, the Wii U was announced for release by the end of the year. It featured a tablet-like controller with a 6.2 inch screen built in. Nintendo boasted that this extra screen could be used to play games in a handheld mode, as well as function as a second screen for traditional gameplay.

The Wii U

The WiiU went on to be one of Nintendo’s biggest flops. This was primarily due to its disastrous marketing. Nintendo chose to keep the Wii name and logo, which confused consumers. Many of the casual gamers who made up the majority of the Wii user base thought that the Wii U was a tablet add-on for the original Wii, rather than a completely new system. Additionally, the console was underpowered, even when compared to the then five year old PlayStation 3. This meant that large third party publishers such as Ubisoft, Bethesda, EA and Activision saw little advantage in bringing their games to the Wii U. Lack of publishers’ interest led to a smaller library, which led to fewer sales of the system, continuing the spiral. The Wii U was also plagued with hardware and software issues. Nintendo lagged behind Microsoft and Sony in creating an online ecosystem, with only barebones online functionality in a few games. Users also complained about the tablet controller’s awful battery life and high repair costs.

All the while, Nintendo’s handheld consoles were beginning to waver as well. After releasing the 3DS in 2011, sales began to level off. Consumers were not keen on the console’s gimmick of stereoscopic 3D. Combined with a loss of interest in handhelds as a whole, thanks to the mobile market, Nintendo was now struggling to sell their products. In 2014, they reported their largest ever operating loss.

2017

Determined to show their hand early, Nintendo began commenting on their next home console, referring to it as the “NX”. By this point, many gaming pundits believed Nintendo was on its last legs. The NX would make or break their hardware business. Should it fail, Nintendo would likely go the way of Sega, dipping out of hardware to publish games on other platforms such as PlayStation and Xbox.

We got our first look at the NX last October, when Nintendo revealed its market name, the Switch. Some fans were disappointed to find that this console was yet another “gimmick” like the original Wii and 3DS. It was an entirely handheld device with detachable controllers that could also connect to a TV for living room play. Its main selling point was that home console games could be easily taken on the go and played anywhere. Gimmick or not, this idea seems to have thrilled many fans as the Switch is proving to be one of Nintendo’s most popular consoles to date. Some reports indicate that the system has sold over 5 million units since it launched six months ago.

The Switch

So what enabled this latest success story? One factor has to be the phenomenal first party support for Switch. Because this was such a crucial product launch, Nintendo were careful to assure fans that great titles were coming. In the short while the console has been available, titles like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Splatoon 2 and Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle have been released, with many more to come. Nintendo has certainly shown their commitment to the system. Secondly, Nintendo have made an ingenious business decision in unifying their handheld and home console markets into a larger library.  For example, the traditionally handheld only titles, Monster Hunter and Pokémon, both have upcoming iterations announced for Switch. This larger library will sell more systems, which will attract more developers and so on.

Nintendo’s history has been a roller coaster. As we reach the beginning of a new boom with Switch, the question to ask is “how long does it last?”. As a Nintendo fan, I hope the end remains out of sight for some time. You can be sure, however, that somewhere in a Kyoto office, the seeds of a new gaming gimmick are being sown.