For once I actually heard/read this story before it showed up on Slashdot, and some of the reactions in the comments... well, they're fairly well expected. I doubt anyone would try Mario in a criminal court of stomping on Goombas, and they don't want you to receive a dishonorable discharge in halo for tea-bagging. They're more focused on games about modern warfare (including but not limited to Modern Warfare.)

Console war.

Console war never changes.

Actually that was pretty damn fun too, come to think of it. It just fell short due to the requirement for GBA connections to play multiplayer.

Let's see...

Silicon Knights: Point. I'll give you that one.

Camelot: Their parent company is Nintendo, who took them from Sega back in 1999. They've programmed exclusively for Nintendo and are even the creators of Waluigi. Thankfully, since they made the Golden Sun series, I can forgive them for that. Link.

Monolith Soft: Monolith Soft was formerly owned by Namco, who sold all 96% of their shares to Nintendo, meaning Monolith Soft is wholly owned by Nintendo and thus for all intents and purposes considered first-party. Link.

Tri-Crescendo: Their developed titles are almost exclusively Nintendo, though you have somewhat of a point since they've done work for other consoles.

Are you going to tell me that Metroid Prime and Donkey Kong Country returns aren't first party because they were developed by Nintendo's Retro studios? As far as I'm concerned if Nintendo owns the studio, it's first party. Beyond that, the original poster suggested that they hadn't done anything new in the past 30 or so years- which is an obvious falsehood since 30 years ago is when the original Mario Bros came out in the arcade. So, unless the poster was receiving arcade cabinets for Christmas...

Not to mention of course all the innovation done within its more well known titles, even if the stories themselves are often "rehashes", they've kept the gameplay fresh.

Huh, you mean like Warioware, Eternal Darkness, Golden Sun, Pikmin, Xenoblade, Wii sports, Luigi's Mansion, Baten Kaitos, and more?

Have you checked out the LttP sequel coming out? It runs on an almost exact replica of LttP's map, but has added some interesting mechanics. No clue about the story though so far.

Well, let's see... Oh! The X-box has this camera thing that you can control with your motion. Oh, and the Playstation 3 has had two different controllers now that you could control by moving around too!

...hey, wait a second...

...yes, because real is brown.

Damnit man I didn't want to laugh at this but I did.

True words indeed. I think a bit of a mis-step was made with the Wii U, releasing it essentially gameless, but I feel like the same thing happened with the DS and 3DS as well, both of which turned out fantastically (though, of course, those are handhelds and this isn't.)

Nintendo's first party titles are completely secure, and even the supposed "rehashes" are good enough for me to come back and want to play again several times (Hopping on Windwaker HD tomorrow, and looking forward to it!) Plus with Monolithsoft... well, I'd buy a Wii U just to play "X" alone, if it's anything like Xenoblade was. Simply incredible.

I was going to write a full reply to you until I saw this line. Just... wow, man.

Ugh, Nintendo Potatoes are so casual.

It's been so long that I forgot there ever was a Sega Saturn. For me it always sort of jumped from Genesis to Dreamcast.

The N64 had some downright amazing games, and this is the first time I've seen any real hate/badmouthing for it. It's hard to dislike the console that brought us Mario 64, LoZ: Ocarina of Time and Majoras Mask, Banjo Kazooie, Goldeneye 007, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Starfox 64, Mario Kart 64, Perfect Dark, Super Smash Bros, and... well, the list just goes on.

That being said, this is sad, sad news. This is one of the men to whom I owe a large part of my childhood, and can blame part of my adulthood on as well.

You raise a good point, of course- I suppose it depends on how they're obtaining the data and if it's being tracked from within the USA (since I imagine they're (IDEALLY) only tracking transactions between the USA and other nations, rather than (sadly, likely) transactions between completely separate nations with no US party involved.

If I've misunderstood and they're tracking, say, transactions between the UK and Germany, then yes, everything about this is illegal and they should feel bad.