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Comment by dermatthias | Hacker News Reader

Irrelevance?

They really did something new with the Wii controls, landed a huge hit and Sony/Microsoft are only recently getting back with similar controls (Kinect, Move). I think they deserve a point here.

The Wii is still the best selling console and the DS the best selling handheld(by far!). Perhaps it's irrelevant from a HN pov, but certainly not from a familiy/kids/recreational gaming pov.

And the major games from Nintendo itself (Mario Galaxy, Zelda....) are rock solid, high quality games.

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I can't really disagree with your points there, because they are not irrelevant yet, certainly not to consumers. If you are a producer of third party software, they are rapidly becoming irrelevant despite the huge install base. Perhaps they can continue to succeed once they've lost all third party support (other than the shovelware), but that's not a bet I would make as an investor. If it weren't for their success in the handheld market, they probably would have folded in the early 00s, and now they have very fierce competition in the handheld market.

There's nothing to indicate that 3rd party developers aren't happy and profitable. With as large an audience as Nintendo's it seems unlikely that studios with the capital to enter that market would walk away. While I totally relate to the indie dev perspective (being an indie dev who'd love to make something for the DS), their Hollywood high barriers to entry do protect consoles from some of the ridiculousness that goes on in the mobile app stores. That said, consoles are definitely missing out on many small and wonderful things that are handcrafted by small teams.

http://www.destructoid.com/nintendo-admits-third-party-wii-s...

Unfortunately the source for that article is buried behind a registration wall.

If you are pushing out shovelware, I'm sure that's profitable, anything else, not so much. Sega in particular has had some really bad luck on the platform.

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