One rather hilarious trend I've seen in discussions about sales figures and financials is the comment that "Nintendo hardware sales have dropped continuously ever since the SNES came out." It conveniently ignores the Wii, which sold more than the Gamecube and N64 combined and is far ahead of the PS3 and 360 in sales. In a gaming community that will pick apart even the smallest numbers to prove a point, the way they ignore the Wii's higher hardware/software sales and profits is quite fascinating. It says a lot about just how emotionally invested people are in financial figures, and the way they'll twist and contort around stats they don't like to protect their world view.
They say that the higher sales don't count because it was a fad Grandmas picked up to play Wii Sports for a few years. That the 360 and PS3's numbers count more because they sell to "real gamers". They say that the WiiU somehow negates the success of the Wii because it's brand strength didn't carry over. Or they'll simply grasp at other statistics instead, like the completely wrong claim that it had a low attach rate because people only bought it for Wii Sports.
Let's flush all that bullshit down the drain, shall we?
This has absolutely nothing to do with the caveats people use to minimize the Wii's success. Rather, it has everything to do with the core's insecurity over Nintendo turning away from them after they ignored the Gamecube, and schadenfreude over the WiiU's faliures. Far too many people are convinced that the Wii selling better because of it's more casual bent is just wrong--wrong to the point that they refuse to acknowledge how successful it was. And it's pretty pathetic, frankly.
Whether it's Sony and MS fans who'd drifted away from Nintendo long ago, or Nintendo fans who felt abandoned by the likes of Wii Sports and Wii Fit, this whole issue is being driven more by hurt feelings and existensial angst than cogent analysis. The people making these claims sound like jilted lovers more than anything. I know that because we were hearing most of these claims way back in 2006 and 2007. And I find it especially ironic that this argument still has so much sway in a community that supposedly hates how safe and predictable the industry as a whole has become.
My PS3 wasn't any less enjoyable because Nintendo's console beat it in sales. Nor was it diminished by Sony's feeble attempt to latch onto it's success with the PSMove. Same with the Vita, which is being curbstomped by the 3DS--indeed, I'd be more than happy to own both, as they look to compliment each other nicely. If people are going to invest themselve so heavily into the market performance of video game consoles, they shouldn't be blatant hypocrites about it when the numbers don't shake out the way they like.
"Nintendo consoles in constant decline," my ass.
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