Current Events > Has this been Nintendo's best console generation ever?

(+) Yeah! (+)

According to this site (https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/hard_soft/), the Nintendo Switch has sold almost 130 million Switch units and has sold over one billion games. It's outsold the Game Boy and every single other home console, though the Nintendo DS did sell 154 million units. Next to the DS and the PS2, the Switch is the third best-selling games console of all time.

Personally, I've really enjoyed the Switch years. The Wii U/3DS years just felt kind of weird. The Wii/DS years are probably the height of Nintendo's success overall, but then you have people complaining about waggle and underpowered hardware. The GameCube years were tainted by people being pissy about Mario Sunshine and Wind Waker, and for all its great, groundbreaking games, the N64 was kinda outdated on launch because they sacrificed storage space for power. For every Mario 64 or Banjo Kazooie, there was a Tetrisphere. At least as far as market share and brand recognition go, the NES and SNES were probably some of the best years of Nintendo's life, especially back-to-back.

Like for me, it's probably a combined NES/SNES, then the Switch, then the Wii/DS. Every generation has had great games, but early Nintendo was unstoppable, the Wii era printed money ass over tit for Nintendo and the Switch is probably the best mix of the two.

Can't wait for something new, and I'm confident it'll at least be revealed in 2024, but man I've enjoyed this gen.

no

I feel like the N64 was their best era.

I'd have to still go with SNES

But of course that's personal bias as that is where I really got into gaming

I think so personally yeah. It just has a shit ton of good games and I overall love the look and feel of the system. It felt like the portable device I had always wanted when I bought the PSP and Vita.

So many Switch games are the best-selling instalments of their franchises. Like the Wii U version of Mario Kart 8 shifted close to 10 million copies, but the Switch version sold over 50 million. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is in the top 20 best selling video games of all time at 42.79 million sales. Smash Ultimate is the best-selling fighting game of all time at 31 million units. Breath of the Wild has sold less than Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, but it's still sold over 30 million units in 6 and a half years, and Tears of the Kingdom - which came out in JUNE - has already sold 18 million copies.

Nintendo's online being ass (why is friend codes still a thing in 2023? Ah well, at least they finally got a ethernet port on their console/console hybrid by default with the OLED switch in 2021. Yay) despite every other console+the PC having the basic blueprint down for damn near 2 decades at this point (no but really, whats the point to add a cart on the eshop but you cannot actually like, add multiple games to it? Game purchases has to be one at a time) and them still doing just nitendo-like decisions when it comes to various things sours me a bit on them as a company.

(Wanna' play smash ultimate online with a local friend? Yeah, you can do that......but you cannot make a create a room and it has to be quickplay only...don't want 2 pals bullying others in created rooms or something after all. Hey check it out, you can play play as these yoshies and nabbit in super mario wonder...pretty neat right? Well these are the designated newbie characters that will make our sort of easy game even easier since they cannot take damage and collect power ups. Yoshi will at least be able to flutter jump and do his thing with eating enemies....nabbit is just.....there I guess. Why not have a designated beginner mode as a toggle instead of forcing it on certain characters? Because we said so thats why. Also we are making fire emblem 1 NES and super mario 3D all-stars limited time purchases because artificial scarcity=prestige for these titles. Better get it now or you are ass-out).

I still have a switch to play my fire emblems and my donkey kongses and my mario kartses and smashes, but god damn do they still annoy me with what I said previously.

SNES era is peak nintendo for me.

Mad-Dogg posted...

Also we are making fire emblem 1 NES and super mario 3D all-stars limited time purchases because artificial scarcity=prestige for these titles. Better get it now or you are ass-out

I'll give you this, I'm pretty fucked off about the timed exclusivity. I've got a friend who grew up loving Mario Galaxy, and he should be able to pick up a copy of 3D All-Stars if he wants to play it again on Switch. With that, the Fire Emblem game you mentioned and Mario 35 going back in the vault, at least they haven't tried it again - but honestly, yeah. Fair point.

Internet is another point of contention, though at least with friend codes, you can friend local players with a more streamlined system. But yeah, friend codes are pretty hefty. I also thought it was bullshit when online play was free for one and a half years, only for them to start charging in September 2018. I will at least say that at least they only made it $20 USD (thirty bucks for me), because frankly I wouldn't have paid the $100+ PS+ or Xbox Gold if I had those consoles and I'm sure as shit not buying a $700 console just to pay over a hundred bucks a year to play online. My current plan is to get a PC by the end of next year. But the charge was completely arbitrary and it was a stupid, shitty move.