Someone didn't get to be an ambassador...
Bad jokes aside, me and the other Nintendo junkies just won't agree with you. I'm sorry, Jim, but the fact remains that even though it may not be the strongest console on the market, the entertainment value of such a console is high enough for me to like it without it having to be the next holy grail. What I'm saying is, it seems people seem to be more sour about the fact that it's doing badly economically rather than praising how entertaining it can be, which in bare bones, is what a videogame should be. FUN!

IkeGreil29:
Someone didn't get to be an ambassador...
Bad jokes aside, me and the other Nintendo junkies just won't agree with you. I'm sorry, Jim, but the fact remains that even though it may not be the strongest console on the market, the entertainment value of such a console is high enough for me to like it without it having to be the next holy grail. What I'm saying is, it seems people seem to be more sour about the fact that it's doing badly economically rather than praising how entertaining it can be, which in bare bones, is what a videogame should be. FUN!

I have to agree. I don't really care if they are in the lead or last place in the console/handheld race. All I care is that they're in it at all and keep trying, just like I root for the other two. If I'm having fun with one company's system over another's, I don't care if it is dead last and the other is in first. As long as they can support themselves and keep me entertained, then I'm good.

And while Jim does raise a good point about the Gamecube, let us also remember that despite the Gamecube's faults and lack of support like the PS2 had, the games that it did have were still good. Do I own less games for the Gamecube than any other system? Yes. But I own enough that I feel it just barely balances it out. And I still have fun with it from time to time. Just less so than my PS2.

A lot of people here seem to forget that he did say the system can become popular it's just that the price cut siginfies that they were expecting to sell this new hardware without any good software, he's not just bashing nintendo for grins.

Anyway, I'll buy a 3DS when Luigi's Mansion 2 comes out, and only if it's really #2 and not another port of the original.

On the subject of the cheap iphone games, it would be interesting to add up all the costs of things like data plans and subscriptions and what not to see how much those "free" games cost you.

Well after watching this I am still buying a 3ds and will buy a PSVITA when hell freezes over.

Wow, I had no idea Nintendo was faring so poorly. I heard about their plummeting stock at their announcement of the Wii II, but I thought that would just be a small speed bump.

I suppose they brought this on themselves. "The past is not the future" could very well apply to Nintendo itself, not just their fans.

I hope they can pull out of it though. Even though they acted like their games are licenses to print money for an entire console generation, hopefully these dips in revenue will be a nice humbling kick in the teeth and/or balls.

Let me just get on this soapbox for a second... Ahem.

As a loyal member of the Church of Nintendology, I have to say I agree with nearly everything Jim says here. It was a huge, HUGE misstep for Nintendo to release the 3DS with such a barren launch lineup, which, IMHO, is what the 3DS's main stumbling block is right now. All the people I know who would buy one but haven't all have the same reasoning- no games. I get that they wanted it out the door and making money so it'd look good on their end-of-financial-year reports and all that (at least, that's my assumed reason for its odd release) but Nintendo should have known better than to make that gamble. They made a bad call and are getting hit for it.

Now, as for smartphone/tablet gaming- maybe I'm just stuck in my old ways, but I don't see this eradicating handheld consoles (or, for that matter, mainstream gaming as a whole), in the same way that YouTube hasn't killed the film industry; small, bite-sized nuggets of entertainment aren't the same as a big, engaging experience. I love my iPhone, and enjoy the games I have on it, but I can't see myself getting lost in its worlds for hours at a time- they're games that kill 5 minutes while I wait for my next class. Knocking over a few pig castles isn't going to replace exploring the sweeping land of Hyrule.

And there's all I have to say at the moment.

Way to tell it like it is, Jim. That's STILL not going to stop me from getting a 3DS, though. I'm in the credits of a game FOR the 3DS, after all.

Yay! Jim once again uses logic to back up his statements. I whole heartedly agree throughout the episode. He makes up for being an arrogant cunt and actually makes him likable. I'm looking forward to future episodes.

You raise some good points. It's true, the gaming climate has certainly changed since 2004, though personally I don't really imagine the smartphones and tablets offering the same kind of rich experiences the gaming-dedicated handhelds are capable of. Not in their current form, anyways. They're all games you can 'beat' in 20 minutes, and usually have the same sort of gameplay that you would have seen in an arcade 25 years ago. That's not a bad thing, but the difference is still worth pointing out.

What I imagine as the pinnacle of handheld gaming's evolution is to essentially have console-esque experiences that you can take with you on the crapper on the go. I have heard naysayers to this, some have said that they DON'T want console experiences on a handheld, that they prefer to play those on a TV. That's fine and all, but what the hell was the point of having the handheld industry evolve past the Gameboy Color, then? I love taking my games with me when I leave the house, being able to play games I once never thought I would see portable is a huge plus.

That said, Nintendo has mismanaged the 3DS. The hardware itself is fantastic, battery issues aside. But the online still feels ten years outdated, the friends list is almost pointless, the eShop is unorganized and overpriced, and the launch lineup was about as exciting as my grandparent's sex life. Which brings me to my next point:

While the current handheld industry is indeed different, that doesn't mean we should disregard the past all together. It's why we're taught history to begin with, so we can be sure we don't remake past mistakes. The world is vastly different from what it was 70 years ago, but that doesn't mean we should forget about WWII and ignore everything we learned from it. The same goes with gaming handhelds. The DS had almost as bad a launch-line up as the 3DS (The only 'killer ap' was Super Mario 64 DS...a remake of an N64 game. Sound familiar?), and was an empty husk of a system for about a full year. Does that guarantee success for the 3DS? Of course not, like you said, that line of thinking is pretty idiotic. The thing is Jim, as a regular reader of Destructoid, I saw you dismissing the 3DS a mere month into its cycle based off the launch line up alone- waaaaaaaay to early to be crying wolf. Few systems prove themselves in even their first year, let alone the first six months of its international release. It's not just the DS that can be used as a reference point either. For example, I thought the PS3 was an overpriced, gimmicky piece of crap that had no games for like the first two years, and I still stand by my claim. But now they've brought the price down, SixAxis is rarely used anymore, BluRay has become the leading format (I NEVER saw that coming during the HDDVD-BluRay wars) and most importantly: there are tons of great games. The N64 used a format that was outdated by 1996, and some of the games were ludicrously overpriced, even by today's standards. (A new copy of Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire cost $80 at the time, and this was 1996!) But by the time the N64 died, there were enough great games that it's now something of a cult-favorite.

Yes the 3DS has been mismanaged, yes Nintendo relied too much on an already-tired gimmick to sell the system, yes it has been suffering from a lack of quality games, yes the pricing on both the system and its games have been way too high, but history shows that this is no guarantee of failure, therefore we really shouldn't ignore history just because the industry has changed. The industry is ALWAYS changing, new systems ALWAYS have obstacles to overcome that their predecessors never even dreamed about. Let's not forget about the future, either. By the end of this year alone (A mere three months from the time of this writing), the 3DS will have Super Mario, Mario Kart, Sonic Generations, and Kid Icarus. And next year we'll get Metal Gear, Kingdom Hearts, Rune Factory, Animal Crossing, Luigi's Mansion, Professor Layton, and maybe even the Layton/Wright crossover. Just TRY to tell me the 3DS is absolutely 100% destined to fail. (Jim didn't say it was, but I see plenty of commenters here saying it)

Interestingly, Jim's reasons for why the 3DS is doing badly seem to also be the reasons that many PC gamers don't buy consoles.

To paraphrase the two arguments:

"What's the point in buying a 3DS when my phone can do everything it does and more?"

"What's the point in buying a console when my desktop PC can do everything it does and more?"

Wait, Pumpkins vs. Monsters? That sounds suspiciously similar to Plants vs. Zombies... Only reversed. Instead of a variety of plants and only one kind of monster, there's one kind of plant and a variety of monsters... Right? Hell, I'd play that!

Not sure if this is relevant since it's from last month but http://www.computerandvideogames.com/325860/3ds-set-to-surpass-ds-in-first-year-sales/ . People also believe there was a "great gaming crash" in the 80's.