Nintendo Can Be Out in Front of a Trend

While Nintendo has been a leader, setting trends and gameplay conventions in many areas (d-pad, analogue, motion sensing, etc.), there are also many areas where the company has lagged terribly behind, with a stubborn attitude to boot. The company resisted the compact disc format and instead used cartridges in the Nintendo 64, has yet to fully embrace online gaming or offer a robust, feature-rich online service for the Wii, and of course Nintendo deliberately chose to not include HD in this latest console generation.

Although Nintendo could argue that there weren't enough HDTV owners in the world at the time they launched the Wii, and that online gaming is only something a minority of gamers really care about, there's no argument to be made against social networks. Facebook and MySpace have grabbed the attention of nearly everyone and are easily accessible to nearly everyone, unlike HDTVs. Rather than entering the space when it's reaching the saturation point, Nintendo could take this opportunity to actually be out in front of a major worldwide trend, grabbing the reigns of social gaming and driving it a direction that could only boost the company's overall business.