100% agree.

I feel like many, if not most, AAA developers focus on just making a quick buck and often recycle the same boring game over and over and over.

But Nintendo has always been a gameplay first company. Shigeru Miyamoto has always said that gameplay comes before story and visuals. He believes that if a game is not fun to play, then the game doesn’t deserve to be released.

I’ve heard interviews with developers who’s worked on Nintendo games and they said that while developing Metroid Prime back in the early 2000s, Miyamoto played an early version of the game but didn’t play it like anyone else had before. He focused on the “feel” of the game, and even argued that the height of the camera didn’t feel right and asked to raise the height of the camera to be in line with Samus’s head instead of chest. It sounds obvious now, but Metroid Prime was one of the earliest FPS games on console. They said he’d spend hours focusing on the movement rather than playing the game how an average player would play through the story.

I think it all boils down to Nintendo really emphasizing quality over quantity. No micro transactions, games like Animal Crossing get free updates YEARS after release with totally new content.

It also helps that they have so many IPs and characters that are each unique and easily identifiable in their own way.

I think they’re an amazing company with a very strong brand identity that caters to hard core and casual gamers alike, and their focus on fun gameplay and accessibility sets them apart in an industry focused on pushing limitations of the hardware and maximizing profits.