Whoa Whoa Whoa,
What exactly is wrong with the "CoD/Madden" crowd? They love their games and will pay to play their games, each and every year. Neither are common denominator either, both games are incredibly complicated with great online communities, though I would readily concede they see very little year over year development.
Nintendo seems to want to make one or two versions of major titles for each system, which given that they generally get hardware and licensing profits makes sense, but if you are a developer, having a cash cow like CoD or Madden is a must.
Besides, what is so bad about giving the customer what they want? Right now Nintendo's platform woefully under serves online gaming and they are effectively two generations behind, which seems to be OK to Nintendo, they dont really seem to be interested in that market.
kill3r7 pretty much nailed what I was getting at. There's nothing wrong with the CoD/Madden crowd themselves. They like those games and play the shit out of them.
The problem is that market is so big, everyone but indies from the most part focused on them and trying to put out the next $100 million+ profit game. Few developers are taking risks and trying new stuff, especially not at the AAA level. There's too much playing it safe, too many sequels or games that just ripoff other popular games etc.
Nintendo tries to do something a little different, but mostly fails as the market is just so focused on shooters, racing games, sports sims etc. that few other things sale other than some big WRPGs and some action/adventure games like Uncharted, Tomb Raider and Assassin's Creed.
To be fair, Nintendo is very guilty of playing it safe lately as well. Their games differ from those, but there's been VERY little innovation from them and a ton of just pumping out Mario games, Zelda games etc. Great games, but games that feel like the same thing we've been playing for ages with new level designs and better graphics each generation. So more or less the same we're getting on other platforms, just in different genres.
Anyway, I'm just more disenchanted with Nintendo as I've been a fan of them longer and I'm more burnt out on their franchises than Sony's stuff or the third party stuff that's mostly only on Sony/MS. I just picked up a PS4 at Costco today, and will have to do a lot of thinking about whether I need to keep the Wii U around. I'm leaning toward selling it and keeping my 3DS for my Nintendo fix. Though I'll probably just wait until after E3 and see how Wii U and 3DS game announcements pan out.
But I feel a bit overwhelmed having the PS4, PS3, Vita, Wii U, and 3DS. For someone that games 5-15 hours a week usually depending on work etc., that's just too much hardware and too many game libraries to keep up with. I have a few more PS3 games I definitely want to get through, then I'll probably ditch that and just skip the remaining games (mostly PS+ freebies anyway) that aren't in anyway must plays for me. And I'll at least get rid of one of the two Nintendo platforms as I just don't need both. But one would probably be good to keep around to complement the PS4/Vita pair.