Loathe Nintendo. It's hard for me to pinpoint the exact time when this started, but I'd bargain it was around the first year or two after the Game Cube launched. I'd already jumped ship a few years earlier, though, when I chucked the N64 in favor of Playstation. I did actually like the N64, but it wasn't delivering *enough* of the games I wanted to play. I'm starting to think that I was never a big Nintendo fan in the first place, but simply went where the majority of the games went. Nintendo had the 3rd party scene locked back in the day, as we all know.
Anyway, I suppose that's neither here nor there, but I did actually enjoy the company's first party games in the NES/SNES days.
The shift that sent me over the edge, though, is just as hard to nail down, but once again, I feel it happened during the N64 -> GC transition period. It was subtle, but it was a lot like New Simpsons compared to Old Simpsons or Eisner's Disney to, uh, Disney's Disney. Nintendo was losing its edge and started to become a parody of itself. True creativity was overshadowed by a continual reapplication of iconic characters and themes. The charming elements of their games became saccharine or juvenile (not in the raunchy, immature sense, but the playschool sense). And even worse, their biggest fans settled into a mindset befitting of the company's new attitude and they're willing to express it in the form of bad fanart or socially awkward manchildren posting loveletters in the form of youtube videos.
The Wii is only their most recent and extreme expression. I've barely used the console since I've gotten it and the future lineup appeals to me less and less. It's ironic that my favorite Nintendo series remain the Mario-themed RPGs and SSB, two of the most self-referential ones in the company's repertoire (well, there's Earthbound, too, but we can see how well they treat that one)! But I suppose they both have a knack for expanding the lore, being cheeky and humorous in a way that's beyond Teletubbies slapstick, or cherry-pick elements of Nintendo's past that the company, in a greater sense, has tended to forget about.
The DS is alright. It's got a lot of 3rd party support and said 3rd party games are far and above my favorite on the system.
But it all comes back to the feeling that Nintendo's schtick has long since worn thin with me. I'm looking for a fulfilling core experience with new ideas that don't seem forced upon the user. I want longer, more engaging narratives and complex gameplay and the times when I'm itching for a more arcade-style, short-form gaming experience all I've got to do is log onto XBLA or PSN.
Edit: Also, what the hell has happened to the company's music composers? They haven't produced a truly iconic new tune in years. Instead we get endless remixes or way-too-chipper songs that seem like they were tapped out on a Casio over a preset background track.
