Nintendo
 

Why you annoy me:

• You had everything: market position, brand recognition, stellar reputation and a fantastic cash position.  Then you made a series of business decisions that are absurdly baffling.  Starting with…
• …your decision to release a bloodless version of Mortal Kombat.  Yeah good move, sell a game that was only popular due to blood and neuter it.  How much market share did you lose to Sega over that?  A lot I imagine.
• You failed to release a CD-ROM drive system despite the sheer obviousness of the format’s inevitability.  The Nintendo 64 was garbage because the biggest game was like 160 megs which is about 4 times smaller than the average Playstation game.  The lack of depth in your games this created, along with the lack of full motion video cut or cinematic cut scene, along with developer support due to profit margin on cartridges being more expensive than CD-ROM dics created a massive market share flight to Sony.
• Your big plan to combat the stellar Dreamcast and Playstation 2 is to come out with… the Gamecube.  It doesn’t play music CD, doesn’t play DVD movies and the games are only 1.8 gigs per disc.  One of the great successes of the PS2 was that they kept the same controller that everyone was already familiar with.  Nintendo constantly “innovates” in the controller department.  If you had kept the Super Nintendo controller through the N64 and Gamecube you would have been FAR better off.  The disc size being smaller is unforgivable.  The price of cartridges alone is not what killed the N64, it was the limited space too.  This same problem arises with the Gamecube.  While the Gamecube has better hardware than the PS2, it still often has to trim features from the PS2 version of games in order to fit on the disc.  Good moves Nintendo.
• You dominate the handheld market.  You have 100% market share.  Then you announce the DS.  This piece of trash is only a slight improvement over the old GBA graphics-wise.  Again, by including a touch screen with stylus, you push “innovativeness” at the expense of accessibility and relevance.  This wouldn’t be so bad but you are extorting developers to make use of the stylus in gameplay if they want approval.  What’s the result of that?  Good games incorporating the stylus?  Nope, a complete lack of games.  If the system wasn’t backwards compatible with the GBA there would be a grand total of 1 good game for the system.  And it has been out how many months? 
• Sony announces the PSP.  A hand held system that has Playstation 2 level graphics, which means ports of the many classic PS2 games will be available, plays DVD quality movies, AND plays mp3s.  Nintendo’s response… claim the PSP isn’t “innovative.”  Yes, people definitely want two shitty screens and a stylus on their handheld rather than one big, clear screen and a familiar controller.  Overnight Nintendo is #2 in the handheld market.  Nintendo still has a huge market share advantage, but unless they make some radical changes that market share will be gone by fall.

Possible mitigating factors:

• You make the best games.  Metroid, Mario, Zelda etc are always top notch games.  So much so that they keep your systems afloat.  These games make up for the fact that you don’t have any decent driving games like Gran Turismo and your sports titles are severely lacking; besides Soul Calibur 2 your fighting games are just as abysmal.  Luckily you know what you are doing with your in-house games.
• You still have household name brand recognition and a lot of cash and easily marketable intellectual property.  With those two you can make a comeback.  You aren’t going bankrupt anytime soon, in fact with a good CEO you could retake a big chunk of market share from Sony.
• You have nostalgia on your side.
• Your games and even your hardware are works of art.  However, its art for the sake of artiness rather than art for the sake of art.  A difference that is inexcusable.  Apple learned the difference, you should too.