You know what I really love about all of the articles extolling the virtue and genius of Nintendo? They’re by the same people who have spent the last seven or so years saying that Nintendo would never have another successful console, that portable gaming systems were dead, and they’d just do best to “focus on what they’re good at” which is, at least according to the press until very recently, making games with Nintendo characters in them and nothing else.
I’m not calling Rob out on that, but the gaming press in general is overwhelmingly guilty. There is almost never “normal” coverage of Nintendo. It’s either about how they’re just goddamned stonking brilliant, or it’s about how some thing or another is totally, definitely going to be it this time. I don’t even care that much about Nintendo, I’m just sick of the combination of near-worshipful praise and being absolutely certain that it’s all up for Nintendo definitely, for real this time! So far those predictions are tied with that of all of those evangelical doomsday prophets that keep claiming they forgot to carry a one when the day comes and goes without incident, so maybe the gaming press should just report on what is instead of clawing over each other to be the first one to make the same kinds of stupid baseless predictions that we make fun of 90’s gaming magazines for now. Seriously, in the last 15 years I’ve heard that the Gamecube, Wii, WiiU, DS, 3DS, and Switch were all going to be the thing that kills Nintendo. Four out of six of those things were commercial successes, and three of them were so massively successful that they basically printed money.
It’s not just Nintendo, the same kinds of short-sighted under-informed predictions have been applied to virtually everyone in the industry. The Xbox was a short, dark chapter in Microsoft’s history, the hubris of the PS3 launch will hurt sales of the PS4, nobody wants incrementally upgraded consoles, and PC gaming has been dead since the early 00’s, it just hasn’t stopped moving yet.
I realize that literally none of this really matters, but bad journalism is bad journalism regardless of what its reporting on and that irks me.
