Edit: Apologies for the overly long post. I promise I won't say much else on this subject after this. GBA is a great example. I wasn't referring to the GBA SP. The GBA platform, as a whole, existed for only about four years before the DS came out. That said, I'm sure a lot of people complaining today would be complaining about the GBA SP given that it added a built-in front light, which was a HUGE new feature at the time, less then two years after the GBA came out, AND it was announced right after the 2002 holiday season when a lot of people had just gotten their GBAs. I agree, not the same thing as this, but it still effectively rendered the original GBA obsolete in a MAJOR way.
Nintendo ISN'T implementing the same philosophy as the phone market. The phone market has yearly upgrades, the 3DS will have been around for four years by the time we get this. The average lifespan for game consoles has historically been five to six years, and I've already brought up three examples of Nintendo doing this in the past. They've pretty much done this with every piece of handheld hardware they've made, this is NOTHING new. Hell, the GBA wasn't even replaced by a slight upgrade after four years, it was replaced with A WHOLE NEW CONSOLE. Here's a timeline to put things in perspective:
Game Boy Color: 1998
Game Boy Advance: 2001
Nintendo DS: 2004
Nintendo DSi: 2009
Nintendo 3DS: 2011
Nintendo New 3DS: 2015
New 3DS isn't even the second worst offender on here. XD
And you can't really segregate phones from dedicated handhelds anymore. I mean, well, you CAN, but you'll be ignoring the huge changes made in the handheld gaming market these last four years. I agree that the exact same philosophies can't be implemented in both, but as I've already demonstrated Nintendo has already been implementing these philosophies, albeit on a different timescale. A phone lasts three years, but becomes obsolete in one. So a phone becomes obsolete one third into its standard.
A game console's lifespan is normally 6-8 years, as you've stated, but Nintendo will typically upgrade or replace their handheld system after 3-5 years, with the only real exception to this rule being the original Game Boy, which had a lifespan of about 9 years before the GBC came out. So for a Nintendo handheld, it's typical for a handheld to become obsolete around halfway to about two thirds into the standard console lifespan. This is coming out for us next year, four years into its life span, so anywhere between 50% and two thirds into the standard console lifespan.
So it's not really applying the same philosophy, but it is applying one that has made sense to Nintendo for about 16 years. Hell, Wonderswan, Neo Geo Pocket Color and GP32 all became obsolete by new hardware about a year and a half to two years after release. It's been an INCREDIBLY common practice in the handheld gaming market for awhile. Sony has been the exception here.
There is a reason behind the backlash I've seen online.
There may be a reason, but I don't find it to be a particularly compelling one. There was a huge amount of backlash from the internet over the 2DS last year as well. There were cries of this being a stupid move, fears over market segmentation, etc. A year later, no one cares. It didn't bring about the apocalypse, and Nintendo is still selling the darn thing so it can't be doing all that badly. A year from now, most people are going to be enjoying the fact that they finally have a model with a built in C-stick, additional triggers, longer battery life, a faster UI, faster downloads, and faster SD card reading. People who were complaining will either bite the bullet and buy it, or come to realize it didn't have the horrible effect they thought it would. That's how this song and dance usually tends to go.
Also, do backup what I bolded out. Unless you're working at Nintendo Japan I don't believe you can say what you did with such certainty.
I can say this with plenty of certainty just going by what we've seen, how Nintendo tends to operate and past trends. In terms of graphics, Nintendo only showed off one New 3DS game, and it was a Wii port. 3DS has already gotten a port of one of the Wii's best looking games, and all they had to do was halve the frame rate. They did not demonstrate any significant graphical upgrade. On top of that, the New 3DS is being priced at roughly the same number as current 3DS models (16000 and 18800 yen).
Nintendo DSi was pretty much the same deal as this. Every single major DS release made after DSi was launched was compatible with old DS systems. Why? Because the market for DSi was much smaller, and there isn't much sense in making a lot of exclusives software for a version of a console far fewer people own. That's also why the vast majority of, say, iOS game will work with less advanced versions of the phone: to maximize userbase. What was a far more common practice with the DSi was including optional DSi only functions, such as camera functions and voice chat in Pokemon B&W.
I have no doubt we'll be getting some exclusive software like the already announced Xenoblade, but unless the New 3DS blows up and sells boatloads of units there isn't really much economic sense in producing all of your content exclusively for it. If that was something Nintendo was interested in doing, they'd be announcing more then just a port of an obscure Wii game.
Hell, who knows, I could be wrong I guess. Nintendo's been treading new ground lately, it could be they'll find a new way to be stupid (hopefully, while they correct their old ways of being stupid). I can't say I personally care all that much if I am. A year from now, everyone who is complaining will either own the damn thing or won't care anymore. People already got used to this sort of thing in the phone industry, and they have been taking the practice from Nintendo in stride for years. I guess I'm just kind of taken aback of people are this angry over Nintendo effectively listening to their fans and making their fun little handheld a LOT better.
And yeah, your still pissed, I get it. Having your hardware become obsolete sucks. Always does. I'm gonna be incredibly jealous when people around me start busting out their new iPhones and enjoying features I wish I had. But in the grand scheme of things, my phones gonna be perfectly fine for the next few years because millions of people own it and people aren't upgrading all that frequently anymore. Unless Nintendo come down with a MAJOR case of stupid and decides to abandon it's current user base of 40 million 3DSs, you'll be fine too for the next few years to.
what more is there to say? Iwata thought Wii Fit U and Wii Sports U were going to make the Wii U sell millions. How wrong he was. lol
Not to mention Miyamoto's recent statement that says Nintendo is done trying to appeal to casuals, which means all their latest hardware was made to appeal to casuals, which really isn't that hard to see.
I'm personally quite happy Nintendo is done trying to appeal to the casual audience. That means better quality hardware and software coming out of Nintendo. I don't hate Nintendo, I only hate Wii-era Nintendo.
I'm not sure what any of this has to do with "tricking" core gamers, which is what I quoted.
