Another code might be that Nintendo is still selling super well, producing great games and consoles, and just crushing it even with that kind of competition.
Broadly speaking Nintendo is competing with all forms of entertainment for people's time and money, certainty
But in terms of selling game consoles and games? I actually don't think anyone is really competing with Nintendo
While Sony and Microsoft have chased hardware power and "next-gen" consoles, Nintendo is exploring and solidifying different niches.
You can see this really strongly nowadays. Every game Sony releases eventually winds up with a PC port, and many of them are even released on Xbox. Meanwhile Nintendo has an incredibly strong library of games for Switch, many of which cannot be purchased for other platforms. Not just first-party titles either. Other studios make games that can only be played on Switch hardware
It really is impressive that Nintendo has managed to design game consoles that have maintained its individual identity, while Sony and Microsoft have both basically settled on "just a mid range PC with a custom OS" more or less
You buy Nintendo for Nintendo games, as in first-party games. Everything else is just a plus. That has been the case since I'd say N64 days. Before that it was still a toss up, especially with Sega. After that, Nintendo drifted wholly into its own world, supporting its own worldview, and others were competing for third party titles and using specs in the marketing as if it mattered - which it did if same game was available on multiple target platforms and you were buying for that.
> You buy Nintendo for Nintendo games, as in first-party games
There are still Nintendo console exclusive third-party games, too. They often don't stay exclusive if they are successful enough, but they do happen
But largely you are correct
The truly impressive part is just how large the First Party Nintendo ecosystem is. They have a ton of IPs that you can only get on Nintendo systems. Pokemon alone is the most valuable franchise in the world
I’d argue their last two custom hardware competitors were xbox 360 arcade (the indie store) and cell phone games.
(I’m counting competitors as “the game mechanics are more important than production values”)
In a massive self-own, Microsoft killed arcade at xbone launch (worst. console. ever.), and cell phone games were ruined by pay to win (most games) and lack of first party physical controllers (the other games, e.g., Apple Arcade).
These days, it’s just steam, abandonware and nintendo. I used to pay for nintendo online to get the emulation games, but the library kind of sucked, and (more importantly) if you pay for it, there’s no way to turn off in-game ads for online play in stuff like mario, making the entire system inappropriate for kids.
I’m curious to see how the switch 2 does. The lock screen on our switch is wall-to-wall ads for it, but nothing looks compelling so far. The kids are more excited about an old switch 1 port of a wii game...
Technically there are also second-party games, which are independent companies exclusive to them like those from HAL Laboratory (Kirby), Intelligent Systems (Metroid), Game Freak (Pokemon).. maybe things have changed, but yeah.
The distinguishing feature of Nintendo is they're a toy company. That's the angle they approach the whole ecosystem from. It tends to result in consoles with features that are unusual (or, more specifically, it has ever since they decided to get off the CPU/GPU integration competition train Sony and Microsoft have first-class tickets on and made the Wii instead).
It's also why they released a fancy alarm clock with the same breathless excitement as a new game console.
> Every game Sony releases eventually winds up with a PC port, and many of them are even released on Xbox.
It's the other way around, Microsoft games on PC and more recently PS5. Sony sometimes releases their games on PC (often years after console) but AFAIK the only one they've released on Xbox is MLB The Show and that was MLB forcing their hand if they wanted to keep the license.
Nintendo has a digital store with all sorts of cruft on it, too. They're not curating or limiting releases in the same way as they did on the NES with the seal of quality.
