is Nintendo going to outlive Sony and Microsoft?

i've been thinking lately but based on the recent gen in my opinion disappointments of consoles for this generation (except the switch which i hear is really good) does anyone think in 20 years down the road or heck even 50 nintendo will still be in the gaming market and not sony and microsoft. or do you have a different opinion? let me hear your guy's opinions.

I don't see why not because its been around for 130 years as it is. Granted not always the gaming market as we know it now but its been gamming in some form since it started.

Nintendo has been around since the 1800s, so? It's already been around far longer than both those companies. Anything is possible. Although, I don't think any of them will "outlive" the other. They all make a lot of money. For one to outlive the other, one would have to go bankrupt or something.

This is an interesting question! My thoughts are that Nintendo will outlive Sony, but not Microsoft. But it's very difficult to gauge, and honestly I wouldn't like to place any money on it.

First of all, the current success of the Switch in no way reflects possible future success. The Wii did amazingly well...but anyone remember the Wii U? The 3DS has lifetime sales of about half of the original DS, and the Gameboy Advance is quite a bit behind the Gameboy and Gameboy Color. Whilst their handhed devices have always done very well, in the home console market Sony have almost-always performed better than Nintendo, with the sole exception to this being the Playstation 3, which is behind the Wii in terms of lifetime sales. Nintendo are a difficult company to gauge because they have no historical trend of success: some of their consoles perform poorly, and others perform brilliantly. Microsoft are in the same boat, being the youngest of the three, but I think they have other advantanges that Nintendo don't have which sets them up for a more promising future.

Microsoft have potentially far more staying power thanks to their computer hardware and software. Microsoft have more symmetry with the PC gaming market than either Nintendo or Sony and that's a HUGE advantage, because PC gaming has been growing in popularity over the years. Microsoft have already capitalised on this to some extent with the Game Pass, and with the Xbox Series X being more of a multimedia machine than a dedicated games console, they're setting themselves up for the long-term. Dedicated games consoles aren't going to be around forever, and when they are no longer profitable Microsoft are going to have been in a position for years where they've been creating systems that integrate other features. Nintendo and Sony will not have been...Nintendo especially, because their more recent devices ONLY play video games. This will need to change if they hope to outlast their competitors, because it's just not going to be enough. There's nothing to say that this won't be ironed out in the future - we're already getting Nintendo games on smartphones, and a willingness to work with Microsoft in terms of cross-play compatibility - but Microsoft are going to have the head start and the advantage if things go this way. Honestly, if they'd just go all-in and make an easily upgradable and affordable Xbox PC they would probably dominate the industry in terms of sales.

Nintendo have always done things their own way, and whilst this can work in their favour, it can also work against them. In terms of video games and industry practices, they seem to be willing to let their competitors take all the risks before jumping on the bandwagon themselves: we've only recently (comparatively speaking) started getting DLC and paid services in their products, and they've been around for much, much longer elsewhere. They've become the accepted thing to do now, so Nintendo haven't had to weather any backlash...although they bloody well should have with crap like Mario Kart Tour and Sword and Shield's expansion pass. But I digress. Nintendo doing things their own way makes them frustratingly archaic by comparison - the Switch uses CARTRIDGES, for crying out loud! The console UI is an absolute mess. The hardware is painfully outdated. The quality of the product build is also something that has attracted a lot of heat, and that's unusual for Nintendo, who have made handhelds that can survive bomb explosions. Also, they just will not capitalise on their assets: Nintendo are practically deaf to their fans, and whilst this might be a minority viewpoint, the fact remains that they are sitting on a HUGE library of classic games that they could make some very easy money from and they're doing nothing with it other than asserting their right to do nothing with it. The best way to fight the emulation scene is to make these things available in an affordable and desirable form, not issue copyright takedowns on ROM sites and fan games and piss everyone off. Do Nintendo do that? In a limited fashion with Switch Online, yes, I suppose they do, but their abandoning the Virtual Console - which had its flaws, but was still better than what we currently have - has not done them any favours.

And Nintendo's IP is it's biggest strength - if anything is going to make them outlive Sony and Microsoft, it'll be their core IPs. They have access to Pokemon, the largest media franchise in existence. Bigger than even DISNEY, and Disney has been around for 96 years, almost four times longer than Pokemon, and Disney's expansion over the last few years has been overwhelming: they own Marvel, they own Star Wars. Their movies are raking in terrifying amounts of money. They STILL don't match Pokemon's revenue. Nintendo might trail in the wake of Sony and Microsoft when it comes to industry practices, but they definitely set the standards of quality in their games. Practically every Action-Adventure is compared to Zelda in some form. Platformers are compared to Mario. Any RPG that has a creature capture mechanic is compared to Pokemon. Nintendo could easily stay relevant if they stopped making dedicated games consoles just by making games.

I've not talked much about Sony, because I'm not really sure where they sit in all this...I think if Nintendo are going to outlive anyone, it'll be Sony. Sony doesn't have the symmetry with PC gaming that Microsoft does, and it doesn't have the IP recognition that Nintendo does. Once the Playstation bubble pops, there's not much left for them. Sony have really carved a name for themselves with some amazing first-party exclusives this generation - the PS4 is currently the fourth best-selling console of all time too, it is FAR from being a disappointment - but, again, past success is no reflection of future success, and there's no guarantee that the PS5 will perform as well. The PS3 was an absolute disaster when it first launched, and even after recovering, it was Sony's poorest performing console. I think Sony will struggle the most to stay relevant in the future, if things continue as they have been.

With all this said: it's impossible to predict the future. If Xbox Series X crashes and burns, Microsoft could abandon the industry first. If the PS5 has a worse launch than the PS3, Sony could fold. If the Switch's successor repeats the Wii U's performance, that could be it for Nintendo. It is HIGHLY unlikely that will happen, because the amount of revenue generated by video games is staggering, and despite the constant claims that gaming is going to hit a technology barrier, or that smartphones will kill gaming, or that people don't want just video game consoles anymore, nothing suggests that this is going to happen within the next decade.

Also, something kinda interesting that I think worth bringing up is that Nintendo's brand intimacy in the US is actually behind both Sony and Microsoft, with Microsoft being the only one of the three who have gone up this year. That's very interesting, considering the Switch's success. It doesn't really indicate anything - at least, not right now, and not by itself - but it's an interesting thing to see.

I think, that Nintendo's real advantage in he console market, ignoring the IP advantage Dawn already went over, is their willingness to innovate. The gaming experience with Sony and Microsoft's consoles hasn't really altered at all since their original consoles. The graphics have improved, storage has become interior and systems are just all around more powerful, but the actual way you physically interact with their systems has never changed.

Nintendo on the other hand, have long since been willing to push boundaries more. We got touch screens and Dual Screens, the wiimote, whatever the deal was with the Wii-U and now the Switch which is a perfectly functional home console as well as a handheld. Their willingness to experiment like this, in combination with some other stuff like a lack of 3rd party games (which has been largely fixed with the Switch), is a big part of why Nintendo's sales have been more volatile than Sony or Microsoft's. However, I feel like we're approaching a point where we are reaching the maximum for what we can accomplish with system power alone for the foreseeable future - graphics and storage can only get so good. So if/when we hit that point, Nintendo will have an upper hand.

That being said, I don't know if that slight advantage in a hypothetical future scenario is really enough to say Nintendo will outlast its competitors, especially after reading everything Dawn said above.

With the massive exception posted by Dawn; I want to at least give my 2 cents on how I see the industry.

Will Nintendo continue to develop games and outlive Sony and Microsoft? They may outlive Sony but they may not ever outlive Microsoft.

What's my reasoning for this? Nintendo somewhat attempts to take the 'Apple' route to develop their hardware; they find some affordable, under powered hardware in comparison to their competitors they can purchase on the cheap and develop a programming environment that can somewhat 'push' that hardware to be the next best thing and whether or not you agree or disagree that's part of their advantage; business wise, it's a smart-ish move. You can make your game console more affordable-ish for families with kids in middle class and even low class. I mean that price point is still up there, but a $200 Switch Lite for a kid not having much growing up and some cheap games from a digital shop or borrowing cartridges from his well off friends can speak volumes.

The only 'Apple' route they don't take is making your console breakable. Nintendo has centered their work life from games to hardware around kids to teens or early preteens. They want to make sure those consoles are sturdy because.... I don't really need to explain that, if you have a destructive 5 year old who picks up a controller and becomes a sore loser over a game; you know what's going to happen.

Title wise; Nintendo has their own in-house teams for game development; though 3rd Parties have greater trouble since the console they've porting their titles on can barely pull teeth with whatever the current hardware can do so they have to follow Nintendo's example and find easier, logical shortcuts to make the breaks in the technology to make it work so no easy use use of an Unreal Engine or Unity...

Which, frankly speaking, as a programmer is what you're somewhat suppose to do to start no matter what platform your on. If you can optimize any game title and make it work taking smaller resources than everything all at once for a title to be backwards compatible with almost anything, you title or software piece will be able to manifest it's own Doom destiny in an attempt to get it to run on anything and everything. I mean, Cave Story already has this destiny, the core site has so many different ports! PSP, PSVita, Xbox's Original through Xbox ONE, I can't really emphasize harder on all of this!

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I do think there are dumb moves in Nintendo Software wise; they're treating their fanbase or players as a bunch of idiots. A prime example would be Majora's Mask, if you played the N64 version, you had to discover game quests, elements and work for a few things to figure out new side missions and what not, solving puzzles on your own. When you get ahold of the Remake on the 3DS; most of that element of experimentation, self discovery and effort to attain things has been ripped out such as getting the Bomber's notebook from the Happy Mask Sales man instead of re-earning it or re-entering the secret code to the kid who blocks the hideout to get it without the tedious chore of finding them all. It's a small example, but Luigi's masion also somewhat backs this up; in the first Luigi's mansion, the elemental medal's would allow us to stock up on spirits to use for puzzle solving or stopping ghosts with Ice, water or fire... Ice especially for those crafty Boo's that phase through all the walls. However, they removed that element in Luigi's Mansion 2, giving us a Darklight for simple puzzle solving and left it out still for Luigi's Mansion 3.... Which there is still puzzle solving and new elements to rethink a few things, but the elemental ghosts are still removed which again, is somewhat removing another dimension of puzzles for players to think their way through things...

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... Putting my thoughts or views of Nintendo out of the way; Microsoft. Why I think they'll still be around. Aside from the Xbox, They have the support of those who use their OS, they have other avenues and too many people have stock in them. It's a multi-billion dollar company that will continue onward with what it does. Though personally, I think they could do better with the library and console exclusives; I won't knock'em if the console they develop is a solid platform. Microsoft may become Nintendo's rival out of all of this. A plumber against a super soldier; one side relying on the latest and greatest with the other getting by with the least but can push it further to be the greatest. One with guns of solid gold, the other with weapons made of wood and steel; Sega may no longer be their competitor now, but this kind of competition I think is far more interesting.

Why do I think Sony won't get far to live? Their structure on how to publish games has been horrendous; Games had to have content removed and item's censored to meet their 'standards' before a title can be placed for wholesale on that said console... It's kinda like saying you make a sword for a hero and that sword looks too much like it's a boys sword, make it gender neutral by making it pink... It's probably not my most accurate representation, but it's a point worth noting what they have done and are still doing. They're right now only surviving on their current mascots that represented their brand that they have control over; Rachet and Clank, Jak and Sly Cooper.... Though they haven't ordered any new games on these continuations and expect their consoles to just survive on the technology alone than the software...

Though that's my 2 red cents... Anyone thinking Stadia will live; I'm laughing like a madman and telling you to get a refund and go buy a Switch Lite or a new Xbox; Google has abandoned a lot of projects and Stadia is faltering; it will stagger it's way onto this market and die before the investors make anything back; you have a massive community of you-tubers to tell you that. Just type in stadia and I gurantee the first 2-3 videos will tell you about it's major faults and flaws.

Quto said:

Why do I think Sony won't get far to live? Their structure on how to publish games has been horrendous; Games had to have content removed and item's censored to meet their 'standards' before a title can be placed for wholesale on that said console... It's kinda like saying you make a sword for a hero and that sword looks too much like it's a boys sword, make it gender neutral by making it pink... It's probably not my most accurate representation, but it's a point worth noting what they have done and are still doing. They're right now only surviving on their current mascots that represented their brand that they have control over; Rachet and Clank, Jak and Sly Cooper.... Though they haven't ordered any new games on these continuations and expect their consoles to just survive on the technology alone than the software...

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Trying to misinform everybody here aren't you? Since the only games that have seemed to be effected by censorship has been the niche Japanese anime games. As for surviving on Mascots when there has literally been very little of that on the ps4 and they are at nearly 110 million consoles sold for the ps4 by itself is a bogus claim. Not to mention most of Sony's exclusives for the ps4 have been universally praised by the industry and have sold very well.

This is coming from someone who has owned every single Playstation that has ever been released, so I have followed news on Sony for many years. What you're saying would not be the reasons why Sony goes under.

Paige; that was only my 2 cents on what I think; I wasn't aiming to be malicious or 'misinform' everyone all at once.

If your going to act malicious over what someone else thinks; then you can at least post here why you think Sony is going down than the issues I've seen so far instead of just attacking me or others.

Let's all be civil, please.

I'd actually forgotten about the censorship issue with Sony, although considering the only "mainstream" title it has affected is Devil May Cry 5, I'd say it's more a minor symptom of a potentially larger problem: Sony's obsessive need for absolute control over all elements of its hardware. I mean, the crossplay/crossplatform problem, which is STILL going on to some extent, is ridiculous. Sony's need to keep their consumers on Sony platforms to the extent that they exclude everyone else is really going to hurt them down the line if they continue with it, especially if Nintendo and Microsoft maintain a healthy relationship. The days of exclusivity are slowly coming to an end, and whilst Sony are accepting this more readily than Nintendo - Death Stranding, at the very least, is coming to PC, and we're getting rumours of other PS4 first-party exclusives primed to make the jump as well - they can't realistically prevent crossplay with other platforms and expect to keep customer or developer goodwill in the long term. The situation now is better than it was in the past, but...yeah, it could be an issue.


Something I forgot about until this morning that could be a point for Nintendo actually folding first is the element of third party support, something that they've never had all that much of, historically speaking. One of the reasons the Switch - and the Wii before it, too - is so successful is because of the third party games that have made it onto there. Sure, the majority of the best-selling Switch titles ARE first party games, but there is no way that third party support hasn't contributed towards the Switch's success, especially in the West. This applies to indie support too - Hollow Knight sold 250,000 copies on the Switch in TWO WEEKS, and Stardew Valley was the #1 sold game for months on the eShop; it sold about 1 million in 6 months. I'll find some articles if anyone is interested in the exact numbers...I might do that anyway, because I'm pretty sure this was from 2018 or so. But my point is that, asides from the obvious draw of portability, one of the Switch's major draws for a lot of people (and developers, in fact) is the third party support.

I think Nintendo's continued success is going to partly depend on their current hardware being able to run more recent third-party games. Even if it's in a diminished form that doesn't really matter, because games like The Witcher III, Wolfenstein, Trails of Cold Steel III, and the Metro games are garnering interest and no small amount of praise. I guess my point is that Nintendo consoles cannot be only for Nintendo games if they're going to continue into the distant future: sales figures show that whilst their IP might sell the best on the consoles, if the consoles only have the IP and very limited thirty party support to fall back on, they don't perform as well. This makes the hardware element arguably more important to Nintendo than anyone else I think, because they absolutely NEED to keep up in some form with Sony and Microsoft so that their consoles can run these games. Third party games cannot be entirely Sony and Microsoft exclusives.

Also, expanding on what Quto said about Google Stadia - whilst that's been an absolute mess, I do think the concept of cloud gaming, and years down the line VR, is going to affect Nintendo's survivability. If/when this technology becomes viable, Nintendo will need to be able to either accomodate this, or respond with their own innovation...and let's face it, their systems are AWFUL compared to their competitors. Anyone remember this glorious mess? Nintendo like to pretend that their competitors don't affect their business, and this attitude likely contributes to why a lot of their hardware in the past has performed so poorly compared to their competitors. They do not exist in isolation, and they really need to acknowledge this. Recently with the Switch they have, and they've done fantastically well.

@Dawn to my knowledge Sony folded on crossplay and now allows it. Also at least here in the states said censorship of DMC 5 was removed in a patch. I only see the niche japanese anime styles being affected by any sort of censorship, but I don't think it is going to be a major factor. Not to mention Sony is going to release mlb the show 21 on the xbox platform as well so I think relationships between both platforms are getting better and I think Sony will be using Microsofts network for theirs as well next gen since both companies have agreements on things.. Not to sure on Nintendo.

More or Less I generally don't like predicting things but Sony and Nintendo both aren't near ready for cloud gaming.

Also I think Nintendo is going to have no choice, but either release a more powerful switch or start a new generation if they want to keep third party support in the dawn of the new generation Sony and Microsoft are releasing later this year.

@Quto- I wasn't trying to be malicious, but I generally am blunt about my opinions on things and I'm sorry if it sounded that way.

I know Sony have started to fold with crossplay, but the list of titles that allow it is pretty short...although this is perhaps more on the developers than it is on Sony themselves. Honestly I'm not sure there. I know some developers aren't happy with the way they're doing it, if that means anything. But that was last year. Maybe things have changed by now?

You're correct that it's the more niche Japanese titles that are being hit by Sony's censorship policies though, and as those cater to a smaller market I'd agree that it won't impact Sony's future too significantly as long as it remains confined to that area. It isn't just Sony that's affected by this either - Nintendo has had its fair share of controversies over the last couple of generations, the most recent one to my knowledge being the re-release of Tokyo Mirage Sessions using the censored Western version rather than the original Japanese. It's...only really a major point of contention inside the sphere of those who are interested in such titles. A sphere that is growing smaller as fewer developers can be bothered to dub their games in English anymore. Honestly I'd even consider arguing that is a more pressing concern because it's only going to make these titles inaccessible to people whose first language isn't English and who don't have the interest in or patience for Japanese language-only titles. Although that's beyond the control of Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo.

Either way...as I said, I think it's a small part of a controlling attitude that definitely needs to shift. If it continues to shift as it has been...well, perhaps it's a moot point?

As for Sony outright removing content from games...well...I can't think of any examples there. It's very rare for content to be completely removed from games; the only examples I can think of is a couple of CGs being removed from Dungeon Travelers 2 on the Vita, and the whole Fire Emblem Fates petting minigame fiasco. Whilst the latter is arguably not as niche as it would have been pre-Awakening, I doubt many people have heard of or played the former. Outside of R18 visual novels on Steam I don't think there are too many at all...or am I missing something here?

Don't quote me on this; but it's more over how things are handled when your developing on a platform, Sony's Platform to be more specific and their move to relocate their main headquarters in the U.S.A. in California... The latter of that doesn't mean much unless you have an angry mob protesting if something they make isn't what they want in their culture though I digress; it's more over what's OK to publish with them out west and what isn't. Aside from Asian Games out of the land of the rising sun and DMC 5; the rest of this is more or less left with the developers trying to make a partnership work with the other company they are trying to publish on, developer side from what I've heard and learned is that developers have had to go back to the drawing board after submitting different builds of their games to Sony and they can be hard sticklers for just about almost everything other than the lewd or horny content. The developers have had to go back and forth to fix and patch out different portions of content in the games they've developed.

That's less of a trend between Microsoft and Nintendo to an extent; though that's just my observation and I'm willing to admit what I've heard is mostly horror stories similar to the horror stories of how Papa John's treats their I.T. department, everything from their digital artists to the guys who are responsible for keeping the website where you order your pizza up and running...

As for the entire bit of their systems being bad; they know. I said earlier already their Switch doesn't have the power to 'pull teeth' like the PS4 and Xbox One, because they rely on using weaker tech and make up for it using software to counter balance it... What does this mean? Well, the best example I can give is the WiiU; anyone who has picked up a copy of Nintendo Land, the minigame theme park which is kinda cool, should know this game was suppose to show the technological abilities of the WiiU and one of the things they we're able to do so well with it that wasn't brought up was Data Positional Streaming.... or.... Something, I forget the name; but the games involving where you had to hold the gamepad up to the TV screen to 'reveal' hidden objects, get a closer look at things, we probably should have noticed that the Gamepad has no camera out the back end of the controller so how would it know the position of where we we're holding the gamepad with what accuracy other than a sensorbar? There are a dozen ways to explain it now-a-days, but at the time it was a feature not really explored further with especially since noone wanted to develop using that feature.

As far as Game streaming goes; it's a future I want to do without. Mostly because it's a future where game titles can become too volatile. If I purchase a game, I want to be able to own, have a right to play it whenever I want during my free time. When the game becomes old and no longer cared for by it's developers, I want to have the right tear the game apart in it's code, learn how to make mods and improve it if I could, have the right to sell it and if it's a truly terrible game; take it outback with a machete, a slingshot and a video camera where I can make a youtube video about it getting destroyed or make a will-it-blend video and post it to vine or youtube. When my body and mind become to faulty to keep up with it, I want the right to pass it down to my kids if I have any one day to inspire the next generation of gamers instead of buying it again...

Game Streaming and Digital Sale's are killing that right... Well, the former will, the latter isn't just yet. Paying for a service to be able to play a game over a network and having that service gauge you for every dollar your worth until the service becomes as expensive as your internet bill. Even then, if there's a game you bought from that service you want to play, only to have it pulled off the servers permanently because of a court case or someone got so uptight and 'offended' by a game's.... let's say artwork for kicks; then it's money you invested your not getting back for software you purchased in full and will never get to try again. Title's like Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World the Game, Disney's Duck Tales Remastered, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled(XBLA; don't know about PS3 version), The Simpsons Arcade Game; these are merely a few, there's a larger list of good and bad but again, just a few.... Though then again, that's just me; I'm probably too 'old fashioned' for the BRAND NEW FUTURE OF GAME STREAMING AND PLAYING IT WHERE EVER I WANT!!! While the streaming generation enjoys the Witcher 4 or 5 over the internet, I'll still be rocking out on some old fashion Rachet and Clank on my PS2, PS3 and PS4 and some old Dreamcast titles to go with it.... and some PC gaming over Gog.