• calliope@retrolemmy.com
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    1 day ago

    Oh my god the child journalist can’t even get the successes of console generations right and I’m supposed to care about his analysis?

    Nintendo became much more experimental with its hardware—an approach that would eventually pay off with the Nintendo Switch.

    “Eventually”? It paid off handsomely with the Wii in 2006, a full decade before the Switch. Literally Nintendo’s first big experiment with console hardware since the Virtual Boy in 1995 was a runaway success.

    The Wii sold 101 million units, the Xbox 360 sold 84 million (and eventually copied the Wii with the Kinect) and the PS3 sold 87.4 million.

    It took me a whole minute to find this information and the journalist didn’t even bother.

    Also don’t just throw this out and not explain it.

    Granted, Valve’s first attempt at a home console was a bit of a blunder

    What? Do you mean Steam Link? Wasn’t really a console, was it? The Deck is closer to a console and it certainly hasn’t been a “blunder.” Oh, the earlier Steam Machine?!

    Do you know anything about what you’re writing?

    • Limerance@piefed.social
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      1 day ago

      Nintendo‘s experiments with novel features has paid off very often. The N64 brought an analog thumbstick and a new controller layout for 3D games. Wii was more radical with motion controls as the default input. The DS with dual screens, pen input, stereoscopic screen, wireless networking, was super innovative as well. All of these were super successful.

      The Wii U and GameCube were the only less successful consoles of the last 20 years for Nintendo.

      • calliope@retrolemmy.com
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        1 day ago

        Legitimately! It’s been Nintendo’s whole thing and they’ve been amazing at it.

        With handhelds especially, they have been wildly successful experimenting since the original Game Boy in 1989. Which makes the Switch’s “eventual” success mentioned in the article even more short-sighted.

        The interesting thing to me about the GameCube and Wii U is that they were followed up by incredibly successful hits. The less successful consoles had to walk so their more radical follow-ups (the Wii and Switch, respectively) could run.

    • Screen_Shatter@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Original steam machine came out in 2015. This is why big picture mode was introduced. People liked them but they werent a big seller, and was generally considered a flop. Apparently enough of a flop that some people don’t remember it.

      • ITGuyLevi@programming.dev
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        1 day ago

        A lot of people forget stuff easily. Remeber PSTV? While not a crazy or amazing device PSTV was pretty awesome (to me) before they nuked it, just another in a long line of forgotten tech.

        • Screen_Shatter@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Im surprised I never heard of that. Playstation was my console of choice for several generations before I switched to PC. I used to really pay attention to everything they did.

    • sbbq@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      Steam boxes never really got off the ground, pretty sure they were pre link.