Can we at least agree Nintendo is always the most interesting or exciting manufacturer?

You may not like them or whatever but they're always the ones who have me intrigued. From most to least interesting it is:

1. Nintendo

2. Microsoft

3. Sony

Sony always plays it safe and seldom treads in unknown territories except for the VR recently.

Microsoft came out swinging with the Xbox 360 and offered a plethora of new features and daring strategies. They did the same with the Xbox One but it didn't exactly work. Nonetheless seeing them try new things like Always Online, Games Sharing and other things was interesting.

Nintendo is always a wild card and you never know what kind of crazy thing they'll come up with. Wii was a weak POS with motion gaming. Wii U was a weak POS with a tablet attached to it. Switch will be a weak portable POS.

Yeah their consoles are always weak but let's agree we always all eagerly await to see what they'll deliver because it's always something that is a fair bit more outside of the box than Sony or Microsoft.

Thoughts?

Nintendo's execution often lacks. I've come to dread their hardware as much as I'm intrigued by it.

they're actually very predictable. since the wii, their consoles have had a core gimmick and weak hardware. and you can always guarantee nintendo's online support, account system, and distribution will be garbage.

In that they are the most out there and willing to go big on a gimmick? Sure.

But they are competing with who exactly for that? The other 2 are pretty conservative (and rightfully so) in terms of their hardware designs. I mean I guess Sony used to be pretty ballsy with the CPU for PS2 and PS3, but that was more misguided hubris than being daring.

post wii era, Nintendo definitely is the most interesting manufacturer, even if it doesnt always pan out

Well they never used the same gimmick twice.

i guess. the switch comes close though since it's basically an evolution of the wii u.

I really don't see what elevated the 360 above the PS3 in terms of your definition of "interesting and exciting". Big leap over previous gen, but not over the competition in "design risks". It did online better, but lacked other features and took a safer angle on hardware. IMO the OG X1 took more of a hard stance on "exciting" - but then it wound up getting whittled down and down into a X361.

I'd definitely agree with that, Nintendo's definitely had their ups and downs with some very high ups and very low downs. They've produced my favorite games of all time but lately have been making a lot of questionable game/hardware decisions (Federation Force, Color Splash, Wii U) so I'm hoping Switch will see them rise back up.

It came first. By the time the PS3 came out the 360 was been there done that except for Blu-Ray.

but none of those features were exciting. kinect is a dumb gimmick; digital only and a restriction on used games is something that consumers just do not want for console games. the backlash to the XB1 reveal was legendary and showed that microsoft wasn't being risky or innovative--they were just completely out of touch.

Not exciting but definitely interesting. A new take on how things would work.

@princeofshapeir: i don't think Juub is using "exciting" as necessarily "good" - just that it steps outside the mold a bit. The PS4 was kind of a step towards 360 design philosophy, while the X1 tried to go a different direction.... until it shifted back towards the 360 origin. Again, I'm not pushing the original design and ideas for the X1, just noting it did more "outside the mold" than the PS4

pc.

I will Nintendo one thing. They sure go out on a limb regularly.

Not at all, they are very predictable. Not sure if MS or Nintendo is more predictable tho.

I bet that their reveals of switch games will not feature as single kind unfriendly game from first party for example.

Compare that to Sony for example. What is Sucker Punch up to? What will the next From software collab be? Bloodborne 2 or new IP? etc etc

Prior to the Wii release... maybe. Now? Hell no.

I'm sure you predicted the Switch being portable, the Wii U main gimmick being a tablet and the Wii U being all about motion controls.

They created artificial hype for those Nintendo Directs. People would go into those hoping for footage of the next Zelda game and end up with info on Animal Crossing dlc, Amiibos, and free to play/microtransaction games on 3DS.

That said... I'm expecting to be blown away on Thursday. Can't wait

Well, yeah, they are by default. The other two are clones of each other and they themselves are just small box PC clones.

For better or worse, Nintendo is the only company whose hardware has even a tiny smidgen of intrigue. Thinking about this makes me really miss Sega. I wonder what their philosophy would be had they not left the hardware business with the Dreamcast. Would they go for the "high" spec box like the HD twins or would they offer something different? Since they often seemed to be chasing Nintendo but still valued hardware specs (Sega really pushed the envelope back in the golden age of arcades) I think they would have an HD-twin like box but with some twist of innovation. Man, if only I could peak into an alternate universe where this is happening.

lol no.... How can you be interested and excited for obvious disappointment gen after gen?

Anyways, they are supposed to create interesting products, they are supposed to get you excited. And I dont think they do a great job, they do a decent ok job in creating hype/selling their games/system.... for a short period of time.

Nintendo always surprises me. That Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze is a masterpiece. Most innovative 2D platformer i have ever played in my life. Also hardest yet most enjoyable one too.

How the hell can you say Sony plays it safe when Microsoft is just Gears/Halo/Forza at this point? Sony takes way more risks than Microsoft. Sony stuck with TLG all the way through, Microsoft couldn't even see through Scalebound.

Nintendo is the most "interesting" in how they can continue to make such dumb and totally avoidable bad decisions every gen since the N64.

What is interesting these "bad" decisions did not force Nintendo out of the home console business. If Sony or Microsoft makes these same bad decisions, they will ruin these companies.

Interesting? Easily. Exciting? Um more like I get a weird queezy feeling whenever they get ready for a new system. You really never know with these people. (It is fun like getting drunk, but the next day you may or may not regret it and end up with an STD). It is kinda like that :)

@Juub1990: Of course they are. The front page of IGN was plastered with a announcement about an announcement regarding the NX's real name etc. This never happens with PC, which claims that it is the superior platform. In reality, there's never anything to say about PC, and PlayStations are mere iterations of the console before them.

Switch is the last mistake Nintendo can make on the hardware side before being forced to go third party. Yes, I understand they have a shit ton of money, but you can't come out with another console after two consecutive failures. Nintendo will be in Sega territory in terms of reputation if the Switch fails to impress.

srsly IGN and you think mass hype is a way to say which platform is superior ? don't forget Nintendo Switch is powered by Tegra X1 , a processor made by Nvidia which is one of many computer hardware manufacturers out there

No, not at all... When I first saw the wii, it was not what I wanted... When I saw the wiiu it was even worse.

Switch is exciting though. First console since the GameCube that has my interest.

*disclaimer - I purchased GameCube on day 1. Sold it within the first year because it had no games outside of eternal darkness, rogue squadron and ssb (which is meh) I waited a good six months for the res evil remake... Bought it and decided I was done. Kind of got that lingering feeling, while my friends were playing combat evolved and gta, that i was gonna be playing the waiting game, so I ditched it.

Um...nope. Sony gave birth to Kinect and the Wii with the EyeToy. Sony had CD-ROM and DVD as well as Blu-Ray first and Sony has more unique games with stuff like twisted Metal, Parappa The Rapper, Hotshots, LBP, Heavy Rain, Ico, Shadow Colossus and The Last Guardian. Not to mention all the EyeToy games that Nintendo and MS copied from last generation.

Noooo way , what the hell you talking about :) Its exactly the opposite , at least for me. Both in software and hardware speaking.

Can't agree with on this one mah friend. I've found "N" to be the least interesting for quite a while now. :(

Still hope to be pleasantly surprised by Switch tho.

Nintendo isn't going "let's do the exact same thing again, but have better graphics" every gen, so yeah, I agree.

Nintendo through their handheld and home console are really the only company I can say are still console makers.. To me Xbox and PlayStation are glorified closed system pc's with absolutely no distinction with pc's any more, outside of their closed system.. They are both losing their exclusives as time goes on, and genres and franchises once seen as console only are flooding over the pc.. 10 years back there was a pretty clear distinction between the console and pc market that had very little intermingling.. Now its pretty much become the norm with all these multiplats. Nintendo seems to be the only one that hasn't fallen to this yet.

Yeah.... I tend to ignore Nintendo hardware as it's usually some nonsense. I like games, not gimmicks. It's all good though. New Zelda.

@Juub1990: "Can we agree on--" Internet: "--Nope. **** off. Idiot."

Or something completely different because Sega/Atari territory is suicide. Besides, why would cows/lems/herms want to revisit who they dubbed the "fascists of the industry"?

I mean in terms of hardware, people would still be interested in Nintendo games as long as the quality was still high. I still don't understand why you think the quality of games would go down if Nintendo left the hardware business. If anything Nintendo's hardware holds back their software from their true potential. Having more power on tap wouldn't be a bad thing. Its not like Nintendo would be forced to change their art style/gameplay if they went third party.

Gimmicks aren't all that exciting me.

its a great game but its not doing anything that DKC hasnt done since 1994....in fact i dont think it introduced any new features or mechanics since DKC Returns on the Wii.

i would say indie games have done more innovation and taken more risks in the 2d platformer department

yup. sometimes they do something and its just genius. other times its sheer frustration. but it aint boring. the wiimote and nunchuck really got the imagination going nuts. even smaller things like the original control scheme for metroid prime. on paper it sounds stupid. when playing initially it feels odd. 2 hours in....makes absolutley perfect sense and is a very clever way to get around the weaknesses of controller in a FPS. everyone wants realistic zelda....toon zelda it is. sequal to mario 64....give him a water pump and put him on cleaning duty. they reuse a lot of IF but within that they tinker and toy around a lot....unless its starfox. poor starfox :(.
they do things by the book....but its their book and they sometimes lose pages :P.

i would rank sony over MS. i have been very critical of sonys hardware approach up to the PS4 (which they absolutley got spot on....though i dont know why the PRO exists). the PS1 was great but, from a hardware and development standpoint, the PS2 and 3 were rubbish and the pay off was never there. the approach was wrong. but they were interesting from an academic standpoint. to this day you could still argue which was more powerful between the 360 and PS3 and both sides could raise valid arguments. this gen that argument was setteled in about 2 days (MS fans thought the 32MB of EDram gave the X1 an advantage for a while.....yeeeeeno).

with MS and sony you basically know what you are geting though. itll be a standard issues console thats linear advancement over the last one with a standard controller and the usual games in the usual way.

No they wouldn't. Not when the people who jumped ship from Nintendo found their replacements very quickly and view Nintendo's games as an inferior product even then. And, to repeat (don't care how idiotic or crazy I get called, not like I think aliens have polluted our minds): game like Breath of the Wild (or any Zelda game) would be bashed compared to whatever Bethesda (Elder Scrolls, Fallout circa 3) threw out. Smash, which is already a highly despised series in the fighting game community, would be slammed next to the traditional fighters. Same deal with Pokemon. And Mario would be thrown under a bus more so than CoD.

If they felt that desperate, they so would change art style/gameplay.

Maybe you werent there out of the gate on Nov 22 2005, but the 360 had a ton of features at launch not yet seen in a gaming console due to its robust os, ui, and online features. Many features baked in from day one would never even end up on the ps3.

@wolverine4262: I was there - I didn't say it wasn't enormously innovative over the previous gen. I said WITHIN the gen there were some features on PS3 that it lacked, and its hardware design took fewer risks than the PS3's. This is why I think it wasn't much of a standout WITHIN its gen as being daring and risky. I didn't take the thread to not be "who started the gen first and therefore even if the other consoles do same stuff it's the one that gets the credit". I took the thread to be "who consistently delivers more unusual (and therefore "exciting") products AGAINST its competitors WITHIN a gen". This, to me, I don't believe the 360 was any shining example. It was the safe, simple, smart, powerful console last gen. As I already noted in my earlier post - the PS4 is more like the 360 of this gen than the OG X1 was

@xantufrog: unique hardware configuration is not a pro by any means so I dunno why that's a stipulation for you. But the 360 was unique in its triple core multithreaded processor and unified shader architecture.

Again though there a plenty of features that the 360 not only did first but also did best and a handful the competition never saw for the whole of the generation.

The blade ui design was risky as all hell and it paid off in spades and set the course for how console users interact with their systems to this day.

It's not. Re-read the earlier discussions in the thread, AND my comments above. The thread isn't "who makes the BEST hardware", it's who steps outside the box more than the competition. I don't think Juub is fanboying Nintendo. Clearly they DON'T make the most powerful and safe hardware (360). He's saying (correct me if I'm wrong, Juub) "hey, at least they surprise us with they steps they make while the others play it safe"

I didn't make the thread. I'm not saying PS3 is better than 360.

@xantufrog: so what exactly was sony stepping outside the box with on the ps3 other than its piss poor design?

@wolverine4262: you're twisting my words around to have a stupid PS3 vs 360 fight. I say "360 didn't step outside the box more than Ps3" and you want me to make some list about what makes the PS3 more innovative. I'm not playing that game. It's a deflection. I can't tell if it's intentional or not, but I think you're the first person I've encountered who, in his efforts to champion the 360, is actually making the case that the PS3 didn't have as many risky design choices. You seem to want to make the argument that all the stuff it had that was different from 360 was "shit" and not "risky" and therefore doesn't count and therefore the 360 had at least as many risky design choices?

@xantufrog: excuse me for asking you to defend your argument. This used to be a debate forum.

I don't claim consoles are superior, the OP and I claim that they're always more interesting. Or, if you can provide us an example of where a PC component held the headlines for a significant time, we might be able to concede something.