@The_Gaming_Baby Nintendo is currently standing on top of the success of the Wii, DS and 3DS, so I'm sure they have a lot of room for error. There's no chance of them going the way of Sega, at least not for a few more console generations (and that's if they fail miserably the entire way)
If I were to compare MMOs to boxing, WoW would be the undisputed champ Muhammad Ali. Regardless of whether or not people will acknowledge it, by revenue and cultural impact, WoW is the greatest MMO of all time. If it didn't knock out its competition right off the bat, it would win by decision.
WoW's greatest challenger was Star Wars: The Old Republic. I would compare SWTOR to George Foreman: younger, stronger and had such momentum that nobody gave WoW a chance of defeating it. SWTOR swung hard and hurt WoW, but in the end, it wore itself out from overreaching, and WoW against all odds, rode it out and knocks SWTOR out cold.
Guild Wars 2 was another strong contender whom I would related to Joe Frazier. He lost to Ali before, then came back stronger and more determined than ever to finish what he started. GW2 was relentless and pushed WoW to its breaking point, but by sheer willpower, WoW stood its ground and punished GW2.
The next great contender is Elder Scrolls Online, which I'll compare to Larry Holmes. At this point in the game, WoW best years are behind them and the wars it had finally takes its toll on its aging body. I actually believe ESO will be the game to dethrone WoW, but it will be a hollow victory.
@DukeMagnum I remember it quite well actually (I'm 27 lol). I could be a little off, but I do remember that after SM64, Mario Kart and Shadows of the Empire, N64 didn't have much to offer in its first year.
Overall, what killed Sega was bad decisions. The Saturn, despite being more powerful than the PS and N64, was MUCH harder to develop for due to its software coding. Also, Sega's path of defeat was already paved due to the failures of many of their older consoles (Sega CD, Sega Nomad, Game Gear, etc.)PS2's juggernaut marketing was simply the final nail in the coffin.
@gourmet_house Like I said, 3rd party support is a problem stemming from EA's beef with Nintendo. EA is arguably the largest third party publisher in the world and holds considerable say on what goes where.
That said, Nintendo is the current leader of the previous gen consoles. The Wii alone left its competitors in the dust; throw in the DS and Nintendo totally eclipsed the sales of Sony and Microsoft, so they have a lot of room for error. I'll seriously bet $1000 that when Nintendo announces its next big Mario or Zelda game, people will completely forget about the Wii U's sluggish launch and Nintendo will pick up steam again.
N64 and Gamecube also had rough launches. Its just history repeating itself. Nintendo would rather take their time and perfect games instead of releasing it half assed and requiring patches. To Sega, Techland, Activision and EA: I HOPE YOU READ THAT LAST LINE BECAUSE IT MEANS SOMETHING.
Nintendo has the highest revenue of all the video game developers in the world (market value is $85 billion), surpassing Activision Blizzard and the evil EA. Even if Wii U completely flopped and sold absolutely NO units in 2013, Nintendo would still have enough money to last them for over 54 years, and that's if they CONSISTENTLY made no money at all in that period of time. This is due to
1. The success of their consoles in the past, whether minor (Gamecube) or major (Wii) 2. Good management of their resources, which Sony failed to do (they've sold a lot of buildings while Nintendo is actually buying them out) 3. Excellent games, whether or not the "hardcore" gaming community (read: Sony/Microsoft fanboys) refuses to acknowledge them due to over-saturation of certain genres *cough cough FPS cough*
One must also keep in mind the bad relationship EA has with Nintendo, which resulted in the lack of publicity for the console. Microsoft is likely capitalizing on that with their marketing machine while Sony is still licking their wounds from the bad launch of the PS3.
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