Between Trust and Profit: Why Nintendo Abandons Its Players

The worst thing you can experience as a user is feeling like the company you trusted has simply decided to turn its back on you. This is precisely what Nintendo has been doing for years: a blatant neglect of older consoles and an unjustified rush to newer ones, as if the age of the console in the user's hands doesn't matter as long as there's a new product to sell.

Nintendo doesn't believe in the concept of "long-term support," but rather a policy closer to abrupt discontinuation. A console that's still capable of delivering, with a huge user base that hasn't yet been exhausted, is gradually being ignored, both in terms of updates and compelling games, in favor of a newer generation that consumers are forced to buy.

In stark contrast, we find Sony's policy with PlayStation consoles. If we look at the time gap between the launch of the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation 5, we find many years of genuine support. Sony didn't treat its older console as a burden, but rather as part of a system that respects the user.

More importantly, Sony continued to release strong games and cross-generation exclusives, despite knowing full well that the PlayStation 4 was a "hacked" device and that games could be played on it illegally. However, they didn't penalize honest users, nor did they use piracy as a pretext to cut support. Instead, they chose a more respectable path: maintaining their audience's trust.

Nintendo, on the other hand, operates on a different principle:

New console = New profits

Old console = Deliberate neglect