 Nintendo is back. I've been waiting a long time to say this, because Nintendo was such a big part of my childhood. Today, I turn 31 years old, but for the vast majority of my adult life, I lived during a long standing era where Nintendo just wasn't ever fully clicking on all cylinders. Thanks to the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo's renewed dedication to software, I finally feel confident, after E3 2017, to make what too many may be the most obvious of statements. Nintendo to me has five pillars that need to reach to be back, and as I stand right now, they have hit on four of those pillars. Wait, did I just say five? Well, they can only really fully control four of them, and the combination of those four pillars should make number five happen naturally over time. Let's dive right in, shall we? The first pillar seems so simple, but Nintendo definitely missed the boat on this with Wii U. Hardware, Appeal Yes, games sell systems, but if the system lacks the appeal factor, it doesn't really matter what the lineup is. It has to click and make sense, find a market to cater to. Nintendo did this with the Wii, by targeting a broad blue ocean audience. They got rid of most of the buttons and one of the joysticks to replace it with more simplistic controls and easy to understand motion movements. Yes, there were several really great, even hard core style games on the platform. And yes, I still argue today that Call of Duty on Wii was a superior game compared to the other platforms based purely on the controls. But for the most part, the Wii didn't really signify that Nintendo was back. Yes, it's their highest selling home console ever made, but it did that by focusing so much attention into a singular game pillar that even the hardware itself was catered to that pillar. The more broad, casual audience. And to be fair, catering to that audience is a highly profitable venture when you do it right. They call it the lightning in a bottle effect for a reason. Because you create what is essentially a mainstream fad. It doesn't last forever, but at its peak it's a near unstoppable force. As I said previously, that doesn't mean there weren't games catered to other audiences. But the system lacked balance in this regard. It was so heavily catered to one specific audience that the Wii collecting dust kind of phrasing became stuff of legend. The DS of course was a behemoth. Even more than the Wii. It catered to a broader audience. Now that doesn't mean the DS lacked high quality games that catered to a more core audience. But it was games like Nintendo and Brain Age that really made the DS hit a mainstream accord unlike any other Nintendo system ever did. The 3DS and Wii U are respectively Nintendo's worst selling systems to date. Oddly enough, the 3DS actually had some appeal at launch from a hardware perspective, while the Wii U definitely didn't. 3DS had all the sexiness associated with Glasses Free 3D, but it severely lacked games. With its biggest game over the first 6 months being a remastered version of Ocarina of Time. It released 3 months after the system first hit store shelves. You literally could not make that up. It also came out at a price point the market was not comfortable with. Nintendo did eventually rectify this software issue and pricing issue within the first year. But a slow start out the gate is extremely hard to recover from. The Wii U confused consumers both in name and advertising, wasn't a new controller for the Wii. Easy to understand, give it all the Wii whatever accessories. On top of that, while its launch lineup was actually pretty decent, it didn't get a worthwhile game again until 4 months later. And then another Nintendo game until 9 months after launch. Like the 3DS before it, the Wii U's game drought killed any chance that software could possibly push through the bad hardware name and marketing. And possibly bad concept though that's up for debate. The Nintendo Switch meanwhile is a complete 360. It's neither catering to the super casual blue ocean strategy nor is the hardware targeted at the extreme end of the gaming spectrum. It's not confusing in name and concept and it fills a void in the gaming industry that few realized even existed. What if you could take those console games on the go? A novel idea that Sony tried to rectify with the Vita and Remote Play to some meandering success. Plus, you needed two separate devices, a hassle for most consumers and a huge investment at that. The Nvidia Shield made progress on the PC side of the market but never could find ground as a mainstream concept. Nvidia and Nintendo teamed up using the Shield technology combined with Nintendo's console TechSavvy to create a device that is sleek, feels like a premium product but is priced in a range with other gaming consoles. It doesn't have the same power as a PlayStation 4 and Xbox One but because it's advertised as a portable home console most consumers already go in not expecting it to be, especially in a world where comparable tablets and phones cost $600 plus easily. The hardware just makes sense. Nintendo brought motion controls back without having to sacrifice a traditional controller setup. They kept control simple and easy to grasp with quick to player joy con action and ended up creating a platform that while it doesn't specifically 100% cater to any side of the spectrum, it does all of the spectrum just well enough to sit squarely in the middle with an easy to understand appeal factor. And that's really just one pillar though, one that Wii U didn't have. The second is hitting on games that clicked with a core single player player base. A killer launch title like Breath of the Wild ticks that box but it takes more than one game right? Just this year the system got Zelda, it has Skyrim coming, Mario Odyssey and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and that all lands before the end of the year. We already know about Metroid Prime 4 potentially for 2018 or 2019 and there's a core Pokemon RPG coming out as well and yes that does have a buddy multiplayer aspect but the core of the game is still based on single player. We see already in year 1 that Nintendo is hitting on this core consumer base unlike what they did with the Wii U or 3DS so soon. The third pillar is hitting on the multiplayer game kingdom. They've already done this with titles like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Minecraft which by the way has cross play coming. Pretty sweet. Plus a new IP in arms. Now we have Splatoon 2 on the horizon, poke and tournament deluxe and every console always gets a smash game eventually. Oh did I forget to mention Rocket League? This pillar is fully stocked and while some are re-releases we have to recognize that a lot of people buying Switch never actually owned a Wii U in the first place. These are new games for them. The fourth pillar is the casual audience. Nintendo has hit them with Minecraft from Microsoft but next year we could see Kirby and Yoshi coming. Games that cater to a broader market like children and families. Just Dance 2017 already released with Just Dance 2018 coming too. This is an audience that doesn't need new games landing all the time nor even at launch because they typically won't buy a system during launch anyways, the Wii not withstanding. They just need them landing consistently every year and Nintendo is already delivering on that. The fourth pillar checks out. The last pillar is third party support. This is the one we can't really check off just yet. Nintendo definitely has quality indie developers on board which is great but they have yet to get full commitments from the other AAA developers. There are a few games testing the waters this year but the last time Nintendo truly checked all four of the previous boxes was with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System so we'll see if this box gets checked by the end of 2018. I do want to note that while I think Nintendo is back or has arrived again as it were, obviously they could still get better. Streaming services, online, virtual console and so much more is yet to come but Nintendo rightfully figured out that these are secondary to what makes a console tick. Nintendo is in a place they haven't been in a long time and while the chance always exists that they screw it up, E3 2017 made me all the more confident that Nintendo finally knows exactly what it's doing and its approach to the gaming market has finally returned to the true for everyone approach. I couldn't be happier. As always this is Nathaniel Rumpeljantz from Nintendo Prime. If you liked this video you know what to do. If you want more videos like this hit that subscribe button and as always if you'd like to give us support head on over to patreon.com slash nintendo prime for $5 a month you can get early access to our podcast the full audio podcast not segmented great stuff and folks I will see you in the next one.