2014.05.27 PS vita:nintendo

Despite having the full faith of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Nintendo has had some rough years recently with video game fans turning away from the company’s latest home console. So when Nintendo of Europe tweeted out a promo video for Sony’s handheld PS Vita last week, netizens wondered if this was just a mistake or part of a larger, more sinister plan for the video game industry.

Was the tweet promoting the PS Vita just a Freudian slip by a Nintendo employee or was it the result of some nefarious hacker’s work? Click below to read some fan theories about how this “Nintendon’t” made its way to the company’s official Twitter account!

Gamers around the world – we at RocketNews24 included – usually have a soft spot in their hearts for Nintendo and its major role in video game history with iconic series like Pokémon, The Legend of Zelda and everyone’s favorite Italian plumber—Mario. But that nostalgia for video game classics is not really translating to great sales for the company as of late. Sales of the portable 3DS system were down last year and the Wii U, which was originally estimated to sell 9 million units in 2013, only sold 2.72 million last year. Yikes.

It was under that somber picture that Nintendo fans saw a tweet from the company’s official Twitter account in Europe that linked to this video from February announcing the arrival of a new model of Sony’s PS Vita system. The tweet was quickly removed, but quick-thinkers took a screenshot and shared it online.

▼ The tweet in question, wherein Nintendo of Europe links to a video for the new PS Vita, a portable console from competitor Sony

2014.05.27 nintendo woopsImage: Twitter (TiLMEN)

Companies making mistakes via their official Twitter account is hardly a new phenomenon, but this tweet got Japanese fans thinking. While most people thought a Nintendo employee accidentally just copy-and-pasted their “dream machine,” some wondered if this was just a ploy by Nintendo to get the Internet talking about them. (If so, it seemed to have worked!)  More cynical, and dare we say tin-foil-hat-wearing, observers wondered if this tweet proved their theory that Sony is actually the secret owner of Nintendo and has been behind the company’s recent underwhelming performance to convince gamers that the only worthwhile video game maker is the maker of PlayStation!

“Nintendo? More like Nintendon’t.”

“The Nintendo coup d’etat has begun!”

“It’s very possible that Sony has infiltrated Nintendo of Europe…”

“Poor Nintendo! They just don’t want to advertise their own subpar game system. lol”

“Looks like some Nintendo employee was thinking, ‘I’d love to be able to trade in my piece of junk Wii U for a Vita…'”

Wow. Don’t hold back, guys, will ya…

Japanese video game enthusiasts held an informal poll on the website Hachimakikou about the motivation behind the tweet. Of the nearly 5,000 who answered, 48 percent thought it was just a Nintendo employing “checking out” the PS Vita and mistakenly pasting in the link remaining on their clipboard, 26 percent thought the move was part of Nintendo’s overall strategy, and 26 percent thought this exposes the great Sony conspiracy. Really, guys??

Was this a real-life example of why you should always “measure twice, cut once,” or are these netizens onto something? Let us know in the comments below what you think of Nintendo’s “oops” moment on the Internet last week!

Source: Hachimakikou
Feature Image: Wikipedia, Wikipedia, Edited by RocketNews24