“Hilariously out of touch.” I love doing these petty over effort responses, so here we go.

My comment about indie games beating AAA increasing over the years is pretty easy to show. At the time of this comment Palworld has the 3rd highest player peak of all time on Steam at 2,101,867.

The peer release for pokemon Z-A sold 5.8 million. Palworld has sold 25 million.

“But Palworld came out first.” This is an early access indie game that has possibly beaten, or at least matched, Game Freak’s flagship. Judging by the complete lack of effort and the poor quality of Z-A, that flagship is sinking fast.

Source: https://steamdb.info/charts/?sort=peak
Click “About” and you’ll see that the top ten over the last year have been dominated by indies or small studios. This isn’t just the PC scene either.

The age demographic is objectively older. Nintendo themselves (yes, six years ago, but still their data):

“According to our latest data, we have seen that the ratio of players in their 20s and 30s has risen for Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon compared to past Pokémon titles for Nintendo 3DS.”
Source: https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2017/170201_2e.pdf

More recent (2021):

Source: https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2021/211105e.pdf

A more recent take, though not official:
Source: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/nintendo-says-i-pokemon-i-players-are-now-older-than-ever

Accusing me of being in an echo chamber when I’m actually invested in Nintendo is wild. I put my money where my mouth is, so I do this weird thing where I trawl through their PDFs, look at the market as a whole, follow the trends and form my opinion based on that.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

They don’t seem to realise how much this has cost them. Post-Iwata Nintendo was already going to struggle, and they’ve just doubled down with the same arrogance in a market where a $6 game beating a $60 one is becoming more and more common.

My second console was an NES when I was 7. I’m in their biggest demographic, and Pokémon’s biggest demographic too – one that isn’t growing, by the way.

The Switch is the last one I would’ve been willing to buy. They’re another brand that thinks they have automatic access to my purchasing choices, and another one I’ve personally blacklisted based on behaviour. With emulation, we’d always say “yeah, it’s a dick move,” but you can at least understand it, even if they have no intention of releasing some of their most-wanted backlog or letting you transfer your digital ROM purchases. But going after indies just for showing them up as complacent, fat dragons trying to patent “mid”? Lawsuit or not, get fucked.

I’m not the only one, either. I think the only people left are those who see Nintendo as video-game iPhones and autopilot into a purchase, and the diehards who have dedicated Amiibo rooms.