Originally posted by: CZroe
The most cliche "gaming fact" I hear day-to-day is the one that claims that Nintendo consoles have "always" been under-powered to their biggest competitor at-launch and that it is the reason why they keep failing to capture the lead. Until now, they've only been under-powered to their biggest rival at launch ONCE and yet that was the time they managed to recapture the lead! History is slapping these morons in the face and they still argue.
Nintendo's biggest competitor at the launch of the NES was undoubtedly Atari, and we all know how the NES stacks up against the 2600/5200/7800/XL/XE. Heck, you could even toss in Atari's biggest competitors, like Commodore 64, ColecoVision, and Intellivision. The NES PPU just put it way out ahead.
Their biggest competitor at the launch of the SNES was definitely the Sega Genesis/Megadrive. Rather than compare the minutia of specs and clock speeds and the like, I'll just sum it up:
There was almost nothing the Gen/MD could do that the SNES couldn't and plenty the SNES could do that the Gen/MD simply couldn't. Just like today, it wasn't all about clock speed. I guess the PC Engine/Turbo-Grafx 16 was their biggest competitor at the time in Japan but the SNES outclassed it even further.
Next up: Nintendo 64. Their biggest competitor at launch turned out to be the Sony PlayStation, but at the time most gamers thought it could just as easily be the Sega Saturn. This one is a bit like comparing apples to oranges since the N64 did not have high-capacity storage media outside of Japan and the 64DD was too little, too late even there. That one difference makes it *seem* like there's a lot the others can do that the N64 can't, but we are really focusing on what the hardware itself is capable of to determine if Nintendo was underpowered for that generation. If Nintendo had equipped the N64 with a CD-ROM it could have done all the FMV and sound of the others and proceeded to blow them out of the water with the rest of it's on-tap potential. It was the first mainstream console with full 3D acceleration and it shows! Anti-aliasing, texture filtering, and boatloads of untapped CPU performance. It was on a whole other level from the perspective of hardware performance, even if their choice of storage format hamstrung it. The N64 had problems but being "underpowered" certainly was not one of them. If anything, it was significantly overpowered, especially for the format choice.
GameCube was easily more powerful than the Sony PlayStation 2. Sure, the XBOX was a closer match, but their biggest competitor at-launch was still the PS2. The proof is in the pudding: Any GCN port to PS2 had to be watered down significantly. Heck, Resident Evil 4 even resorted to replacing the real-time cut scenes with FMV of the GCN game! The only ports on GCN that suffered similarly did so not because the GCN was underpowered, but because the GCN market wasn't important enough to bother with a proper port that takes advantage of the increased performance. The PS2 had some technical advantages, like digital audio output and the ability to output 1080i in a rare game or two, but that doesn't change the fact that it just couldn't handle the lighting, effects, LOD, and textures that the GCN was capable of. Oh: And the GC hardware was capable of digital audio. They just never released the cables to utilize it and they weren't going to pay for Dolby Digital license anyway. Heck, they developed a way around the Dolby Surround license with Factor 5 but then they got a sweetheart deal from Dolby Labs so that Dolby could maintain precedent with other potential licensees without having to win a lawsuit.
Wii was the first time Nintendo launched with a console that was technically inferior to their most significant competition: Microsoft XBOX 360 and Sony PlayStation 3. Did they suffer for it like the haters claim? Heck no! Nintendo beat the pants off them and proved it was the smartest thing they ever did. *sigh* Doesn't stop idiots from claiming the EXACT opposite in the face of reality though. You can't play half the Nintendo DS games on a Sony Playstation Portable no matter how much more powerful the PSP is simply because it did not have suitable controls. By rehashing the GCN hardware with accessories that changed the way you played, they showed that the same concept can apply to consoles. Pointing games, motion games, traditional games, games where you got audio messages through your Wii Remote, ... there was no PS3 or 360 game you couldn't make on the Wii in watered-down form but there were plenty of Wii games that just wouldn't translate to PS3/360.
For once, Nintendo launched before the other next-gen consoles with the Wii U so their closest competition at launch was actually the same consoles they faced in 2006 with the Wii. Contrary to popular belief, the Wii U did not perform "worse than 360." That comes purely from assumption and bias. It outclassed the 360 and PS3 in pretty much every way it possibly could. Of course the console that came out a year later performed better, but expecting it to outperform future consoles is like expecting the 2012 Wii U to outperform the 2016 PS4 Pro and 2017 XBOX ONE X. Ridiculous. The important thing is that Nintendo was not the bottom of the performance rung at launch. Once again, they were at the VERY TOP. Launching early with lower specs certainly didn't hurt the PS2, and launch late with better specs didn't help the GC or N64, so, if anything, Nintendo would have been stupid to keep trying what wasn't working.
Blame the Wii U performance and early launch for its failure if you want, but the Switch should shut those haters up real quick. It's the second "underpowered at-launch" console Nintendo has ever launched, yet it feels silly to even consider it when we haven't been considering handhelds before. If anything, considering handhelds further proves the point that trying to compete on hardware never works for Nintendo even when they are more powerful than the competition. Capability-wise, the Switch is really just a less complicated Wii U with a similar level of performance, supports fewer controller types, is unencumbered by backwards compatibility/Power PC, and is as portable as many people assumed the Wii U was. Is that really what is making it such a success?! It really just comes down to good timing for better reception/perception. Sharing a CPU architecture with their competitors (Power PC) was actually seen as an advantage when the Wii U launched and a huge issue when the rest of the industry moved to X86, but the Switch deliberately eschewed the industry's choice and has flourished without that OR backwards compatibility. Amazing! The same people who called the Switch "underpowered" and "worse than 360 graphics" are now looking at the Wii U and saying "ZOMG! It's like having something almost XBOX One-class IN YOUR HANDS!" I personally know one who can't stop gushing about the visuals in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and how great the Switch is in particular. He keeps saying this like having graphics on this level is something new for Nintendo and I need to keep reminding him that Mario Kart 8 on the 2012 Wii U looked almost equally amazing!
So, there we have it: The Wii and Switch are on-track to be Nintendo's two most successful home consoles of all time and yet those are also the only two that were "under-powered" compared to their closest competition at-launch. If anyone tries to tell you that "the problem" that keeps Nintendo behind is them being perpetually under-powered, please laugh in their face. They deserve ridicule for being so clueless in the face of reality. It's especially funny when they claim that they would buy a Nintendo console "if Nintendo would catch up with the times" or some nonsense. "Really? Well, why didn't you buy a GameCube? Why didn't you buy a Wii U?"
tl;dr you're a nintendo fanboy
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