Nintendo dashes hopes of an N64 Classic

[Pixelboy]

Nintendo did the minis about as right as it gets. The SNES was 100% for me...other than the game selections, but but were great. PS Mini had a lot to live up to and Sony never gave it a chance to be what the Nintendo minis were. Sony botched the games selection... had it not, it would be in the same sold-out scenario as the NES Mini a couple years ago. Sony can blame themselves but chances are they will just let it go away after initial sales fade.

I have to disagree on this. Sony is not Nintendo. They never had franchises like Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Kirby, etc. The closest they had to that was Crash Bandicoot, but that character is now lost in copyright red tape.

 

So in the end, it's really a case of comparing apples to oranges. To have mass-market appeal, the PS Mini (or any similar mini console, really) needs to stick to a final price tag of 100$, or preferably less. Nintendo could do it because they have enough good first-party titles to get the hype machine into overdrive, with no licensing involved. The extra games Nintendo got from the likes of Konami and Capcom are just icing on an already delicious cake. Sony has no such backlog of first-party PlayStation titles, back in the day they relied heavily on third-party developers/publishers, and no matter how you look at it, getting such landmark games as Tomb Raider or Wipeout is going to involve licensing deals that will push the price tag of the PS Mini well over the 100$ line.

 

In my opinion, Sony did the best they could with the games they could get their hands on within the given target price tag. I wouldn't just point fingers at Sony and call them lazy. Would you purchase this PS Mini if it was 200$? Most people probably wouldn't. What I would say instead is that their PS Mini product was doomed from the start, because they were never going to be able to deliver the games consumers wanted in the PS Mini at an affordable price.

[youxia]

I agree ^^, maybe apart from the "doomed" bit - unless you mean doomed for being badmouthed, that's a default setting for anything that's not Sega or Ninetndo There's no way in hell you could re-license eg Gran Tourismo cars. Other factor may again be performance: perhaps not all the famous games would perform in acceptable manner on this emu+board combo.

 

About sales figures, well, that's something to be discussed in January.

[HoshiChiri]

Well of course they aren't doing an N64 Mini yet... we need whatever-the-sucessor-to-the-virtual-console-is to hit switch first, then when it starts petering out, MAYBE we'll get that mini!

 

I mean seriously, how many times has you been able to buy Mario 64 and Ocarina of time? 3, 4ish? We gotta get up to 6-7 first!

[mbd30]

Nintendo did the minis about as right as it gets. The SNES was 100% for me...other than the game selections, but but were great. PS Mini had a lot to live up to and Sony never gave it a chance to be what the Nintendo minis were. Sony botched the games selection...had it not, it would be in the same sold-out scenario as the NES Mini a couple years ago. Sony can blame themselves but chances are they will just let it go away after initial sales fade.

 

And some of the best games on it are hurt by Sony's choice of controller. Who wants to play MGS and RRT4 without the Dual Shock? No way would I pay $100 for this.

[Tanooki]

That and sorry but Pixelboy is wrong, that was not the best they could do. it only takes a fast glance at a first party made (or published) PS1 list, let alone the potential better game choices by the 3rd parties who did contribute to see it could have been a dramatically better list even without the likes of Crash, Spyro, Ape Escape, and others stuck with red tape or no analog control.

 

I think the dialed in comment while being a slight, is a fair one, as they really didn't try and fish for better stuff on their own, let alone from those who did kick them some games. I see no reason to repeat the earlier post I had with game game swap out choices which would have pleased people better from the 4 primary 3rd parties who backed it. it's just sad how it ended up and there's no sugar coating it with passive submissive apologetics about it.