Nintendo NES

My 2 cents: This is far from an Xbox issue. Gaming has become boring and commercialized. I grew up with the Atari 2600, ZX Spectrum, NES, SNES and Genesis. There were a lot of weird, goofy, unique games that took major risks. Games that were obvious attempts to just earn cash were largely ridiculed (I’m thinking of you, M.C. Kids). Much like music, film, books and all other media, gaming has largely lost its attraction. Steam is still great because it allows small developers to try new things. From what I’ve read, trying to bring such games to consoles is almost impossible. As for Xbox, specifically: they have sanitized a lot of the online interactions, trying to make everything family-friendly. Half of the fun of Call of Duty is hearing other players lose their shit. The shit-talking makes it fun. They keep trying to remove it and have made the game a glorified Fortnite. We have to go back.

I got Atari 5200 when I was a kid, and the disappointment was immense, considering the marketing and hype that went into it. The controller made playing games very difficult. And the games were pretty bad as well. Later, I got a Commodore 64 and then also NES, which just revolutionized home gaming in general.

I still love and much prefer physical buttons, but they can and do fail with age and use when they're made cheaply. I've got NES controllers that took decades of button mashing and abuse yet still function, but I've thrown out cell phones, mice/keyboards, and modern controllers that didn't last 2 or 3 years.

It's noteworthy precisely because it's relatively unusual for Nintendo. I mean, I'm one of the ones complaining about stuff like this, but I also have a NES, SNES, GC, and their peripherals working like a charm. Meanwhile my Xbox 360 just randomly stopped working and my original Xbox died a long time ago. I can't speak for the quality of ps4 or Xbone controllers (seems fine?), but as far as intensely-used technology goes Nintendo does vastly better than most hardware. (I also still have a working Gameboy, which puts it alongside only a Nokia phone I have as far as durability goes. That piece of tech has SEEN things). EDIT: I will say the joy-cons definitely aren't the best Nintendo has put out, but the problems there pale in comparison to the D-Pad issues we've had GC-on.

> The main selling point of Nintendo was always their ip. They're better at making games then making consoles. I'd have to think about it, but I might defend the NES, SNES, and Gamecube as the best consoles of their generations, if we're just looking at the consoles themselves. The first two do even better if we consider the games, too (though the GC is plainly not its generation's frontrunner, if you add that—the lack of 3rd party interest really hurt it, its library is tiny, and consists mostly of few great Nintendo games and a bunch of terrible shovelware). I'd put the N64 at a tie with the Playstation. The N64 looked better and had four-player support out of the box, which made a big difference in how many games supported four players. The analog stick on the controllers was a real problem, though, as was the storage size. Then again, the Playstation launched without any analog sticks. Call it a draw. It's only really with the Wii that they stopped credibly trying to keep up (and IMO the Wii's various gimmicks don't make up for its deficiencies, among which I count some of those same gimmicks)