As journalists, bloggers and pundits prescribe poorly thought-out solutions for Nintendo’s woes, the gaming giant continues to chug forward, although at a much slower speed than it did in the last console generation. Despite disastrous sales figures for the Wii U, software sales remain relatively strong and the 3DS took advantage of slowing hardware sales to top the charts in 2013. Nintendo has countless issues that it needs to address, but while the doomsayers of the Internet continue to prophesy the downfall of the company, it’s important to understand just how destructive Nintendo’s death could be. Erik Kain, a Forbes contributor, argues that without Nintendo the entire industry could suffer a major setback in creatively and quality. As Kain notes