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[TreasureHunterG]

TLR: Nintendo is just too different from what the big third parties have become over the last 15 or so years. They seem to have a totally different vision for what they want console games to be compared to, say, EA.

The OP is basically an elaboration of all the old arguments we've been through before, and I also think it misappropriates some of the later points.

It's pretty much accepted that this all started when PlayStation provided developers with an escape from Nintendo's draconian policies of the 80's and 90's. Where things get hazy is Nintendo's relationship with third parties between the late 90's and today. For that timeframe I've actually given up trying to blame one side or the other, and I've begun to think that Nintendo and most of the major western third parties are just too different from one another. They seem to want different things.

Starting around the Gamecube era, Nintendo actively tried to reverse the third party policies it was known for in the 8 and 16-bit days. I remember reading articles during the Gamecube era where developers stated Nintendo still had high minimum orders compared to Sony or Microsoft, but Nintendo had clearly tossed the strong-arm tactics of the 80's. Over the course of the Gamecube era, Nintendo more or less repaired their relationships with Japanese third parties, almost all of whom are still fairly willing to support Nintendo consoles where the market makes sense.

I think the OP might misunderstand what actually caused the Gamecube's problems. I think the mini-DVD issue is a bit overblown, as there weren't a huge number of console games during that era that had to be cut down for Gamecube. In my opinion the real problem was that the Gamecube had no "selling point" to developers. The PS2 had its massive install base, the Xbox had Live and the familiarity of its PC-like architecture to western studios, but the Gamecube didn't really have anything to make it stand apart. Before the Gamecube launched Nintendo went on about how easy the system was to develop for compared to N64, but that wasn't enough. Nintendo didn't anticipate the Xbox being equally accessible to developers. I think all the other factors like the discs and controller were ultimately minor. The Gamecube's real problem is that it offered developers nothing the other two consoles didn't already offer.

The Wii is I think where the truth really came to bare: The kind of console game market Nintendo wants is very different from what most of the dominant third parties want.

It's probably a schism that really started during the PS1 era. Sony and third parties were all about flashy, cinematic games that leveraged the advantages of the CD format. Nintendo's games on the other hand have remained heavily mechanic-driven and lean on presentation. I remember quotes from Miyamoto stating that he didn't like using huge amounts of voice acting for games because he thought it was a waste of disc space. The N64 was basically designed for that man's games, and Miyamoto has typically come off as someone who doesn't really care for the flashiness of modern gaming. When Nintendo and Silicon Knights split up, they officially said it was due to "ideological differences."

The other thing is that Nintendo has never really cared about making a platform specifically for the 16-35 male American gamer, which is where the PS1 started to take the industry. This means they didn't necessarily care about supporting games like shooters specifically. Guys like Iwata have repeatedly said they just want "fun games."

This basically continued throughout the Gamecube era and went into overdrive with the Wii. In hindsight, third parties were probably a bit foolish to bet as much as they did on the PS3 and Xbox 360. Just look at how many of them went under because of it. On the other hand, Nintendo was probably foolish to expect the likes of EA and Take Two to support the Wii's vision, since it differed so much from their own plans. Did Nintendo really think those guys were gonna abandon their whole way of business? Even if it might have been more economically sensible to do so?

Also, you have the western PC guard that recently invaded the console space, made up of guys like Epic, BioWare, Bethesda, Obsidian, and Irrational. These guys don't have a bad relationship with Nintendo because they don't have ANY relationship with Nintendo. Most of the aforementioned companies have never shipped a game for Nintendo hardware. They were all only making PC games during the time of Nintendo's console dominance. They occupy a world totally foreign to Nintendo.

On Nintendo's end, they, like Sony, were completely caught off-guard by the rise of the west this gen. They didn't anticipate the western PC guard coming in, and those guys sure as hell weren't compatible with what the Wii was trying to do.

And then there's online infrastructure. I don't think Nintendo has been unaware of the internet all this time, they just don't quite agree with how Sony and Microsoft are utilizing it. During the Gamecube era people at Nintendo (Iwata I think) stated that online gaming wasn't profitable enough, and that only a very small fraction of console gamers even used it back then (they were right).

Friend codes were there because Nintendo thought of online gaming as basically a secondary way to play with your existing friends. To this day Nintendo doesn't seem to completely agree with the system of paying a subscription to play with and meet new people completely online. Admittedly, friend codes were a fucking terrible way to do this. Shit, just look at how much Nintendo still emphasizes local multiplayer over online.

Anyway, to summarize, since the mid-90's you have:
-Sticking to smaller media formats to accommodate game mechanics over flashy media.
-Creating a console with a simpler control interface and weaker hardware in order to attract a whole new consumer base and encourage lower development costs.
-Emphasizing local multiplayer over online for philosophical reasons.

In my opinion what you have here is not incompetence on Nintendo's part, but an ideological war the company is waging against basically the entire rest of console gaming.

All the companies in the console retail space right now are all about bigger and better AAA games, and Nintendo seems to be vehemently AGAINST that kind of thing. They are also against targeting one specific demographic. They won't block those kinds of games on their platforms, but they aren't specifically trying to make a console where those games will sell either.

Just look at the third parties Nintendo is heavily supporting. They went and grabbed Monster Hunter, and they are deep in bed with Sega and Platinum. One of the biggest third party games Nintendo put front-and-center was Lego City Stories. They've been publishing western versions of Dragon Quest games themselves. Nintendo even offered to publish the Japanese version of Rayman Legends. Nintendo does try to put backing behind third party games, just only the ones it actually likes, which rarely, if ever, end up being a Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed.

Personally, I don't think Nintendo can ever fully repair their relations with the big western third parties currently running the show because of these differences. They just seem to want different things. Whether that's good or bad depends on what you want.

For Nintendo to become what the big third parties and a lot of gamers want them to be, they'd probably have to cease being the company that made so many of the games we love. On the other hand, the number of publishers willing to go along with Nintendo's way of doing things is shrinking.

In my opinion Nintendo has two options if they wanna get a lot of good third party support and still remain Nintendo:
1) Somehow get Japan fully behind the Wii U.
2) Gain the heavy favor of indies and hope they blossom on Wii U.

Japanese third parties are basically how the 3DS is kicking ass right now, and in my opinion indies are more similar to Nintendo ideologically than anyone else. Of course Nintendo's main problems are tearing Japan away from the 3DS long enough to notice the Wii U and competing with Sony's heavy push for indies.

One of the best posts I've ever read on NeoGAF. Congratulations, RedSwirl.

 

[JordanN]

Errr, for example, PS2 and PS3 are a nightmare to develop for? Isn't that enough for some developers to bail out? They could have said: well, lets make games for Dreamcast and Gamecube only, let's make games for 360 and PC only. Did this happen? No. Yet it would be more credible than you saying Wii U's account system is alienating 3rd parties.

So I come back a couple of hours from writing that post (which was in a hurry) and that's all you can give me?

I don't know what to say.

I'm really frustrated right now. I gave the most compelling reasons for why there's no third party support and the best you got (that is equal to all the restrictions Nintendo does) was "PS2 and PS3 are a nightmare to develop for?".

Again, I really am frustrated.

Were the consoles such a nightmare games were going to fail? Like, I'm not sure how I'm suppose to respond. Maybe you can help me out.

Edit: You bring up Dreamcast but the PS2 was actually touted as more powerful than it. Gamecube showed up later and by then PS2 pretty much won.

 

[metalslimer]

Sony should follow their philosophy on handheld games software development.

Sony's problem with vita is the handheld market is damaged and they dont have the first party power to save their share. But looking at how vita is selling, sony has made some moves to get some support. Its not that much but at least in japan they are doing a better job than nintendo with wiiu with 3rd parties

In my opinion what you have here is not incompetence on Nintendo's part, but an ideological war the company is waging against basically the entire rest of console gaming.

Great post and nintendo has lost this war heavily and conceded such with wiiu. I think its both. Nintendo is incompetent enough to think their current strategy is good

 

[MisterHero]

GC was the lead platform for Resident Evil 4 and (probably because of its lower hardware requirements later on) it bore fruit for Capcom on multiple later platforms. They are doing the same with REvelations, a 3DS game.

I contend that leading on the least demanding hardware would make porting to the other platforms much more convenient. However, 3rd-parties bet on the HD twins and weren't about to lower the expectations of gamer, investor, media, etc. on "cutting edge" videogames.

A lot of 3rd-party games could've played well in standard definition. Lacking HD resolution itself or features better supported on HD platforms (games with large player counts) isn't an absolute loss, because Wii games were $10 cheaper by default. It's a different framework for games, but not necessarily worse.

Nintendo isn't perfect when appealing to 3rd-parties (like the Wii's 40mb for network games), but I feel they've been undeservedly shut out.

Capcom admitted to missing out on Wii support. It's possible that other 3rd parties were wrong too, but they'll be given the benefit of the doubt and never need to admit missed opportunities.

In my opinion what you have here is not incompetence on Nintendo's part, but an ideological war the company is waging against basically the entire rest of console gaming.

That is exactly what I believe. Their methods are sometimes good and bad, but they are constantly fighting for their space in the industry. IMO that's a good thing; for them AND developers who've historically worked on consoles.

In the grand spectrum of gaming platforms, Nintendo is arguably middle of the road. There's the smartphone/tablet/social platform on one end, and the boundless production/publishing potential of PC games on the other. Consoles leaning too much in either way is bad for console-first developers like Nintendo.

Wii U is capable of delivering top-notch experiences. It would be nice if the industry remembered that console development thrived when Arcade ports were consistently compromised. Developers adapting to PC-quality games and downporting to compatible consoles isn't the same answer as actually making the console market safe.

 

[Mondriaan]

I think Nintendo's evergreen titles on their consoles pretty much provide eternal competition to third parties whereas MS and Sony provide only temporary competition that actually serves to make the audience larger for third parties.

There's hardly any incentive to fix this because Nintendo can make so much more money this way.

 

[Timeless]

I also see this point up a lot, but I'm not sure it holds water.

It may explain why Wii didn't get ports of 360/PS3 games, but why didn't it get quality, core oriented PS2 era ports? Those proved right out the gate that there was a strong demand for that sort of software (Twilight Princess, Resident Evil 4). Why didn't more of those ever materialize?

Why didn't more PS2 era original games appear? The risk was far less; development costs were much lower and the audience much larger.

Why didn't Wii get PSP games?

If hardware not being up to the competition in terms of horsepower was an issue, why did the DS have so much third party support? Third parties hadn't developed PS1/N64 level games in years. Where was the Final Fantasy III-level effort from a third party on Wii?

Why is there so much quality 3DS software from third parties, if they packed up the PS2 tech prior to the Wii?

The attach rate on the Wii was really poor. (I assume worse than the NDS.) (edit: nope, NDS attach rate was worse than Wii's) There were early attempts from third parties (Madworld, HotD Overkill, Zak and Wiki), but they were all risky moves.

I never did understand why we never saw Burnout 3 Wii or MGS3 Wii or anything like that.

Wii did get quite a few quirky, low-risk games, but I think the 360 architecture and digital distribution model made it a better fit for odd games.

 

[SmokedMeat]

Red Swirl- Nintendo's strong arm tactics ended when they no longer wielded the power to do so. That was the 16-bit era when Sega's Genesis became so popular that Nintendo finally had a true rival. Third parties suddenly didn't have to be afraid of Nintendo, because they were no longer the only game in town.
Once Playstation entered the market and became tremendously popular third parties could just snub Nintendo who decided to show up two years later with an antiquated format. The balance of power had officially shifted.

 

[jwhit28]

The attach rate on the Wii was really poor. (I assume worse than the NDS.)

That's not true.

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/sales/hard_soft/index.html

DS 6.06 games/console
Wii 8.70 games/console
GBA 4.63 games/console
GC 9.59 games/console
GB 4.22 games/console
N64 6.83 games/console
SNES 7.72 games/console

 

[lowhighkang_LHK]

Nintendo needs to create their next console that is homogenized with Microsofts Xbox "two" and PS5.

That way, they can get the third party games released on their system (since it's hardware should be similar to Sony/MS/PC making it an easy port) and they have the benefit of their 1st party games.

 

[flippedb]

The problem is Nintendo. They make great games that sell a lot. Consumers end up busy with Nintendo's games, and they feel no need to buy 3rd party offerings.

 

[Manmademan]

TLR: Nintendo is just too different from what the big third parties have become over the last 15 or so years. They seem to have a totally different vision for what they want console games to be compared to, say, EA.

Decent post, with some caveats:

It's pretty much accepted that this all started when PlayStation provided developers with an escape from Nintendo's draconian policies of the 80's and 90's. Where things get hazy is Nintendo's relationship with third parties between the late 90's and today.

It actually started the second SEGA launched the Genesis, and Nintendo got knocked around in court over anticompetitive practices. The Genesis was the first REAL competitor nintendo had (all others were locked out of the market) and they were beaten very, VERY badly stateside- mostly because they did not know how to market their console, and also because they had no idea how to make games outside of their niche. Sega Sports was HUGELY popular, and Nintendo either did not have an answer for it, or had no interest. This is a theme that will crop up to bite them in the ass many, many times in the future.

I think the OP might misunderstand what actually caused the Gamecube's problems. I think the mini-DVD issue is a bit overblown, as there weren't a huge number of console games during that era that had to be cut down for Gamecube. In my opinion the real problem was that the Gamecube had no "selling point" to developers. The PS2 had its massive install base, the Xbox had Live and the familiarity of its PC-like architecture to western studios, but the Gamecube didn't really have anything to make it stand apart.

The DVD issue was half about space, and half about a marketing bullet point that Sony owned, and Microsoft made concessions to. The Gamecube omitting it entirely is more of a marketing failure than a technical failure- Sony and Microsoft could to an extent market themselves as multipurpose machines- Nintendo could not, and designing the system as a purple lunchbox with a handle got them slapped with the "kiddy" label VERY quickly. This is a Bad Thing when the west was rapidly expanding as the largest market.

The Wii is I think where the truth really came to bare: The kind of console game market Nintendo wants is very different from what most of the dominant third parties want.

I think this is half true. Yes, the kind of market nintendo has an interest in competing in is different than the one targeted by Sony and Microsoft- but it's also about business models. Nintendo (like apple) prefers to make a fairly large margin on hardware as well as software. This is what "sticking to cartridges" was ultimately about- protection of an incredibly lucrative source of revenue that they controlled. Nintendo could not keep those margins AND compete with Sony and Microsoft technically. Not only were Sony and Microsoft willing to sell hardware at a loss, but both had engineering resources that were better than Nintendo had. It was a losing battle- Sega would have run afoul of the same problem even if the DC had not collapsed.

It's probably a schism that really started during the PS1 era. Sony and third parties were all about flashy, cinematic games that leveraged the advantages of the CD format. Nintendo's games on the other hand have remained heavily mechanic-driven and lean on presentation.

Here I disagree significantly. It wasn't "sony and third parties" that were into "flashy, cinematic games." That was almost entirely Square, and FFVII and it's ad campaign meant that JRPGS (which had a lot of eye candy) blew up around this time. JRPGS aside, The PS1 had a metric ton of games that did not rely on flashy FMV and cinema scenes. I could get into a list war, but I think we all know that this one is kind of pointless- but I will note that Sony's best selling franchise and it's oldest appeared first on PS1- and that game is Gran Turismo. Flashy cinematic game it is not.

I remember quotes from Miyamoto stating that he didn't like using huge amounts of voice acting for games because he thought it was a waste of disc space. The N64 was basically designed for that man's games, and Miyamoto has typically come off as someone who doesn't really care for the flashiness of modern gaming. When Nintendo and Silicon Knights split up, they officially said it was due to "ideological differences."

Here is another issue. The N64 in particular seemed to be designed explicitly to play super mario 64. You can't get away with designing a machine around one man or one game. you need to consider the needs of third parties, and consider what users are actually playing outside of their own games. The fact that nintendo has never (to my knowledge) actually done this was bound to cause serious problems eventually. can you imagine any other company that operates this way?

The other thing is that Nintendo has never really cared about making a platform specifically for the 16-35 male American gamer, which is where the PS1 started to take the industry. This means they didn't necessarily care about supporting games like shooters specifically. Guys like Iwata have repeatedly said they just want "fun games."

Nothing can really be further from the truth here. The market was led to a VERY large degree in the PS1 and PS2 era by Japanese tastes, not "american male gamers". What were the largest franchises on the PS1? Final Fantasy? Gran Turismo? Metal Gear Solid? Resident Evil? Castlevania? Tekken? Ridge Racer? The only significant western franchise that really found success at this level is probably Tomb Raider. All consoles skew more male than not (even nintendo), but The PS1 and PS2 had their focus squarely on Japan. FPS games are VERY popular in the west, but this genre was almost entirely absent on the PS1, and very weak on the PS2.

Ironically, there WAS a system that competed well against the PS1 in the US that had no shortage of FPS games that appealed to western gamers, but sold next to nothing in Japan. Games like Turok. Mission Impossible. Goldeneye. Doom 64. Perfect Dark. Duke Nukem. Care to guess which console this was?

In my opinion what you have here is not incompetence on Nintendo's part, but an ideological war the company is waging against basically the entire rest of console gaming.

The point of a business is to actually sell games and consoles, not wage ideological wars. if you want that, start a religion. from a business perspective, this is incompetence.

I would continue, but I'm running low on time. I'll be back to respond later this evening.

 

[Mr.Awesome]

Decent post, with some caveats:



It actually started the second SEGA launched the Genesis, and Nintendo got knocked around in court over anticompetitive practices. The Genesis was the first REAL competitor nintendo had (all others were locked out of the market) and they were beaten very, VERY badly stateside- mostly because they did not know how to market their console, and also because they had no idea how to make games outside of their niche. Sega Sports was HUGELY popular, and Nintendo either did not have an answer for it, or had no interest. This is a theme that will crop up to bite them in the ass many, many times in the future.



The DVD issue was half about space, and half about a marketing bullet point that Sony owned, and Microsoft made concessions to. The Gamecube omitting it entirely is more of a marketing failure than a technical failure- Sony and Microsoft could to an extent market themselves as multipurpose machines- Nintendo could not, and designing the system as a purple lunchbox with a handle got them slapped with the "kiddy" label VERY quickly. This is a Bad Thing when the west was rapidly expanding as the largest market.



I think this is half true. Yes, the kind of market nintendo has an interest in competing in is different than the one targeted by Sony and Microsoft- but it's also about business models. Nintendo (like apple) prefers to make a fairly large margin on hardware as well as software. This is what "sticking to cartridges" was ultimately about- protection of an incredibly lucrative source of revenue that they controlled. Nintendo could not keep those margins AND compete with Sony and Microsoft technically. Not only were Sony and Microsoft willing to sell hardware at a loss, but both had engineering resources that were better than Nintendo had. It was a losing battle- Sega would have run afoul of the same problem even if the DC had not collapsed.



Here I disagree significantly. It wasn't "sony and third parties" that were into "flashy, cinematic games." That was almost entirely Square, and FFVII and it's ad campaign meant that JRPGS (which had a lot of eye candy) blew up around this time. JRPGS aside, The PS1 had a metric ton of games that did not rely on flashy FMV and cinema scenes. I could get into a list war, but I think we all know that this one is kind of pointless- but I will note that Sony's best selling franchise and it's oldest appeared first on PS1- and that game is Gran Turismo. Flashy cinematic game it is not.



Here is another issue. The N64 in particular seemed to be designed explicitly to play super mario 64. You can't get away with designing a machine around one man or one game. you need to consider the needs of third parties, and consider what users are actually playing outside of their own games. The fact that nintendo has never (to my knowledge) actually done this was bound to cause serious problems eventually. can you imagine any other company that operates this way?



Nothing can really be further from the truth here. The market was led to a VERY large degree in the PS1 and PS2 era by Japanese tastes, not "american male gamers". What were the largest franchises on the PS1? Final Fantasy? Gran Turismo? Metal Gear Solid? Resident Evil? Castlevania? Tekken? Ridge Racer? The only significant western franchise that really found success at this level is probably Tomb Raider. All consoles skew more male than not (even nintendo), but The PS1 and PS2 had their focus squarely on Japan. FPS games are VERY popular in the west, but this genre was almost entirely absent on the PS1, and very weak on the PS2.

Ironically, there WAS a system that competed well against the PS1 in the US that had no shortage of FPS games that appealed to western gamers, but sold next to nothing in Japan. Games like Turok. Mission Impossible. Goldeneye. Doom 64. Care to guess which console this was?



The point of a business is to actually sell games and consoles, not wage ideological wars. if you want that, start a religion. from a business perspective, this is incompetence.

I would continue, but I'm running low on time. I'll be back to respond later this evening.

I don't think you want to go down a business perspective, since Nintendo is run miles and miles better than the competition. I know we at GAF would love to think otherwise but their bottom lines arent lying. It's doubly impressive when considering the differences in resources.

 

[HiredN00bs]

The last thing I needed were more reasons to despise Nintendo. You tread on my childhood.

Great read.

 

[MisterHero]

The point of a business is to actually sell games and consoles, not wage ideological wars. if you want that, start a religion. from a business perspective, this is incompetence.

Setting trends vs. following them is not an unknown concept.

 

[Mondriaan]

I don't think you want to go down a business perspective, since Nintendo is run miles and miles better than the competition. I know we at GAF would love to think otherwise but their bottom lines arent lying. It's doubly impressive when considering the differences in resources.

Their practices are 100% the reason why the Wii U is where it is now. That's the bottom line.

 

[IchigoSharingan]

NIntendo deal with the people paying for games, not the people making them(as they have plenty of those in-house).

Nintendo must do both now and in the forever future. Help 3rd parties in marketing, offer even more tools for devs and some staff from time to time, anything to bend over backwards and establish long lasting relations.

Does Nintendo have a 3rd party relations department? Should make one and fill it up ASAP if not.

 

[Dali]

Excellent and informative op. Over the years Nintendo has done their own thing ignoring trends and as such has lost the confidence of both consumers and developers. If they played the same game as Sony and ms they fail to realize the strength of their 1st party would create parity. Now they're in this funk where they have to rely Nintendo fans to make their home consoles successful. Maybe their business plan accounts for that. Maybe not. I know I'd personally be more than happy make a Nintendo console my sole console if I knew it wasn't a mario box.

 

[zigg]

The point of a business is to actually sell games and consoles, not wage ideological wars. if you want that, start a religion. from a business perspective, this is incompetence.

Are you the gaming businessman's investor, or are you the gaming artist's audience?

 

[tehrik-e-insaaf]

The attach rate on the Wii was really poor. (I assume worse than the NDS.)

Wii had a 9 tie-ratio. It was great. Let's not repeat urban myths.

Much of OP is revisionist history trying to explain "third-party" decisions - this is flawed because the bulk of today's third parties are primarily PC-driven developers who never had any relationship with Nintendo. The few remaining like EA were always closer to Sega/Sony which both had California-centric executives who all lived in the same neighborhoods.

Some of the empirical evidence cited is really dumb. Yes Nintendo built lock-out chip, but it was in direct response to the flood of crap that destroyed the Atari 2600. There were many pleased third parties even if there were some that were dissappointed. The licensing fees that developed from maintaining the proprietary nature of the platform kept the format alive and gave birth to the idea of subsidized hardware that Sony pushed when the Playstation came out.

As far as the revisionist history of the Gamecube. The mini-disc format did not matter as most games were well under 1.5 gigabytes at that point and compression was a cakewalk. Third parties supported it well frankly who were traditional console developers - where Nintendo failed was in bringing over the Goldeneye market to the Gamecube by dumping Rare and losing their party-game shooter Perfect Dark that had a shot at recapturing that market from the N64. Microsoft came in with with Halo and Nintendo was left with a console that didn't have its traditional dominance in local multiplayer nor the novelty of DVD. Nintendo tried to fit into industry conventions and failed IMHO with respect to gaming hardware because they were fighting on multiple fronts.

I would argue that even having DVD would have made little difference. Sony had two things: Grand Theft Auto III exclusive for the first few years, and second, exclusive Japanese games that Nintendo wasn't gonna get since Sony had an iron fist in Japan. Microsoft realized the problem with getting Japan since Sony had a brutal lock on everyone there, and courted PC developers to prop up the Xbox after they realized it was going to be difficult. They also bought off Peter Moore to effectively destroy Sega's US base in exchange for a job offer. Nintendo was squeezed as the Western relationships they had cultivated were poached away (including a ton of people at NoA) in a few months by Microsoft and getting back into Japan was going to be a difficult process with Sony's mega-dominance of that territory.

Listen, forget the revisionism and all the other side show drama. There is a very simple reality here. Nintendo doesn't have third parties because they have decided there are better places they can spend their time and money to get a return, and they get loads of attention from MS (and Sony to an extent). NIntendo has to do two things: first show there is a market for non-Nintendo content currently on the platform by actively co-promoting third party games and building a userbase for those games. They are doing that by taking localization risk for certain games from Japan, and promotions like the SMT IV eShop credit that will likely convince Atlus that releasing console-content is worth the risk. They could do a few more things which I won't delve into here.

Second, they need to have a better on-the-ground presence in the markets where most of the executives and developers are so that there is momentum on their side (California mostly). In the past they delegated those tasks to NoA - but faced poaching by MSFT pre-Xbox release - and the new Japanese management couldn't just rebuild NoA overnight and get those institutional relationships back. NCL has now incorporating those relationships directly through Japan because they don't want another NoA-like situation.

These things will come in time as NCL is now becoming a more global company rather than offloading regional work to silos abroad (Nikkei has an article on this if anyone is interested) - in any case I think depending on PC developers and EA is a poor strategy to rely on fixing the issues with the Wii U - because there are already lots of alternative places to play that content - and most people are not going to buy a Wii U to play those games on a Nintendo console (although it might help).

To turn things around, my view is that Nintendo should stick to generating more first-party content, focusing on diversifying their own lineup, growing indie relationships (perhaps by having an indie center in Austin in proximity to Retro Studios and really funding smaller projects that take advantage of the GamePad), focus on locking up interesting content that they know will be a good fit for the userbase from Japan where they have a better presence and localizing it, expanding retail by growing the Nintendo World format and controlling the experience of buying a Nintendo console more closely, and pushing their own last-gen tie-ratio beyond 10 with most it being their own software.

The word from Japan is that third parties are finally getting back into 3DS development - it took Nintendo's sheer willpower to get the content out that made it attractive. Now Nintendo needs to focus on getting the Wii U business back and I think they are on the right track - they are releasing games that their own base will consume far quicker than the Wii - and they are rolling out the red carpet - once the momentum comes back they can focus on doing riskier projects and really push third-party collaborations.

At the end of the day,even with all the Wii U's issues, I think it will clear around 40 million consoles and end up being *far* more profitable than the Gamecube was for Nintendo.

 

[metalslimer]

Wii had a 10 tie-ratio. It was great. Let's not repeat urban myths.

Uh no it wasn't. let's use facts to get rid of urban myths

And i won't get into most of this post, but nintendo is not releasing content much quicker than the wii. They are much slower

 

[wildfire]

TLR: Nintendo is just too different from what the big third parties have become over the last 15 or so years. They seem to have a totally different vision for what they want console games to be compared to, say, EA.

The OP is basically an elaboration of all the old arguments we've been through before, and I also think it misappropriates some of the later points.

It's pretty much accepted that this all started when PlayStation provided developers with an escape from Nintendo's draconian policies of the 80's and 90's. Where things get hazy is Nintendo's relationship with third parties between the late 90's and today. For that timeframe I've actually given up trying to blame one side or the other, and I've begun to think that Nintendo and most of the major western third parties are just too different from one another. They seem to want different things.

Starting around the Gamecube era, Nintendo actively tried to reverse the third party policies it was known for in the 8 and 16-bit days. I remember reading articles during the Gamecube era where developers stated Nintendo still had high minimum orders compared to Sony or Microsoft, but Nintendo had clearly tossed the strong-arm tactics of the 80's. Over the course of the Gamecube era, Nintendo more or less repaired their relationships with Japanese third parties, almost all of whom are still fairly willing to support Nintendo consoles where the market makes sense.

I think the OP might misunderstand what actually caused the Gamecube's problems. I think the mini-DVD issue is a bit overblown, as there weren't a huge number of console games during that era that had to be cut down for Gamecube. In my opinion the real problem was that the Gamecube had no "selling point" to developers. The PS2 had its massive install base, the Xbox had Live and the familiarity of its PC-like architecture to western studios, but the Gamecube didn't really have anything to make it stand apart. Before the Gamecube launched Nintendo went on about how easy the system was to develop for compared to N64, but that wasn't enough. Nintendo didn't anticipate the Xbox being equally accessible to developers. I think all the other factors like the discs and controller were ultimately minor. The Gamecube's real problem is that it offered developers nothing the other two consoles didn't already offer.

The Wii is I think where the truth really came to bare: The kind of console game market Nintendo wants is very different from what most of the dominant third parties want.

It's probably a schism that really started during the PS1 era. Sony and third parties were all about flashy, cinematic games that leveraged the advantages of the CD format. Nintendo's games on the other hand have remained heavily mechanic-driven and lean on presentation. I remember quotes from Miyamoto stating that he didn't like using huge amounts of voice acting for games because he thought it was a waste of disc space. The N64 was basically designed for that man's games, and Miyamoto has typically come off as someone who doesn't really care for the flashiness of modern gaming. When Nintendo and Silicon Knights split up, they officially said it was due to "ideological differences."

The other thing is that Nintendo has never really cared about making a platform specifically for the 16-35 male American gamer, which is where the PS1 started to take the industry. This means they didn't necessarily care about supporting games like shooters specifically. Guys like Iwata have repeatedly said they just want "fun games."

This basically continued throughout the Gamecube era and went into overdrive with the Wii. In hindsight, third parties were probably a bit foolish to bet as much as they did on the PS3 and Xbox 360. Just look at how many of them went under because of it. On the other hand, Nintendo was probably foolish to expect the likes of EA and Take Two to support the Wii's vision, since it differed so much from their own plans. Did Nintendo really think those guys were gonna abandon their whole way of business? Even if it might have been more economically sensible to do so?

Also, you have the western PC guard that recently invaded the console space, made up of guys like Epic, BioWare, Bethesda, Obsidian, and Irrational. These guys don't have a bad relationship with Nintendo because they don't have ANY relationship with Nintendo. Most of the aforementioned companies have never shipped a game for Nintendo hardware. They were all only making PC games during the time of Nintendo's console dominance. They occupy a world totally foreign to Nintendo.

On Nintendo's end, they, like Sony, were completely caught off-guard by the rise of the west this gen. They didn't anticipate the western PC guard coming in, and those guys sure as hell weren't compatible with what the Wii was trying to do.

And then there's online infrastructure. I don't think Nintendo has been unaware of the internet all this time, they just don't quite agree with how Sony and Microsoft are utilizing it. During the Gamecube era people at Nintendo (Iwata I think) stated that online gaming wasn't profitable enough, and that only a very small fraction of console gamers even used it back then (they were right).

Friend codes were there because Nintendo thought of online gaming as basically a secondary way to play with your existing friends. To this day Nintendo doesn't seem to completely agree with the system of paying a subscription to play with and meet new people completely online. Admittedly, friend codes were a fucking terrible way to do this. Shit, just look at how much Nintendo still emphasizes local multiplayer over online.

Anyway, to summarize, since the mid-90's you have:
-Sticking to smaller media formats to accommodate game mechanics over flashy media.
-Creating a console with a simpler control interface and weaker hardware in order to attract a whole new consumer base and encourage lower development costs.
-Emphasizing local multiplayer over online for philosophical reasons.

In my opinion what you have here is not incompetence on Nintendo's part, but an ideological war the company is waging against basically the entire rest of console gaming.

All the companies in the console retail space right now are all about bigger and better AAA games, and Nintendo seems to be vehemently AGAINST that kind of thing. They are also against targeting one specific demographic. They won't block those kinds of games on their platforms, but they aren't specifically trying to make a console where those games will sell either.

Just look at the third parties Nintendo is heavily supporting. They went and grabbed Monster Hunter, and they are deep in bed with Sega and Platinum. One of the biggest third party games Nintendo put front-and-center was Lego City Stories. They've been publishing western versions of Dragon Quest games themselves. Nintendo even offered to publish the Japanese version of Rayman Legends. Nintendo does try to put backing behind third party games, just only the ones it actually likes, which rarely, if ever, end up being a Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed.

Personally, I don't think Nintendo can ever fully repair their relations with the big western third parties currently running the show because of these differences. They just seem to want different things. Whether that's good or bad depends on what you want.

For Nintendo to become what the big third parties and a lot of gamers want them to be, they'd probably have to cease being the company that made so many of the games we love. On the other hand, the number of publishers willing to go along with Nintendo's way of doing things is shrinking.

In my opinion Nintendo has two options if they wanna get a lot of good third party support and still remain Nintendo:
1) Somehow get Japan fully behind the Wii U.
2) Gain the heavy favor of indies and hope they blossom on Wii U.

Japanese third parties are basically how the 3DS is kicking ass right now, and in my opinion indies are more similar to Nintendo ideologically than anyone else. Of course Nintendo's main problems are tearing Japan away from the 3DS long enough to notice the Wii U and competing with Sony's heavy push for indies.

This post should be its own original post because the problem with even small threads like this is people will only read the first page and post.

 

[wildfire]

Uh no it wasn't. let's use facts to get rid of urban myths

Don't be one of those people who justify dismissing the overall theme of a lengthy post because you disagree one minor detail.

 

[KyanMehwulfe]

In my opinion what you have here is not incompetence on Nintendo's part, but an ideological war the company is waging against basically the entire rest of console gaming.

The two are not exclusive, and squandering the incredible success of the Wii can only be described as incompetent. It's far and beyond any industry or economy trend, extending into bewildering to analysts and tragic for shareholders. None of that was required to remain on their ideological course as the initial Wii success showed. That said, if they don't become at least somewhat more flexible, their decline will continue. The west wants bigger single blockbusters for their living room and the east wants more micro experiences for their mobile devices, and Nintendo has become steadfast in their refusal to adapt to what either market wants. As a fan I hope it's brave but as a shareholder I am scared it will be stupid.

I don't think you want to go down a business perspective, since Nintendo is run miles and miles better than the competition. I know we at GAF would love to think otherwise but their bottom lines arent lying. It's doubly impressive when considering the differences in resources.

The bottom line of their business is their shareholders and Nintendo has destroyed them. What their CEO has done in the last 5 years is one of the worst performances in all of technology equities. The only thing impressive is how he still has a job. It's downright sad what he's done to anyone that invested in the success of the Wii. It's nice to praise the idealism as a consumer or a fan but at the end of the day Nintendo is a public company that represent its shareholders, and they have crushed their shareholders. Far worse than any of the big western publishers from their Wii peak, and far beyond any market risk.

 

[Amir0x]

Real quickly as I still work on my master response post because I've seen more than one post say this:

Just because a particular developer no longer exists does not mean employees who worked for them no longer exist. A countless number of people who worked within the industry back then are still in the industry now; the chairs have simply been reshuffled. Many moved to PC development, some moved to different companies, some moved to the indie space, some moved on to bigger and better things. But simply because there have been great sea changes within the industry since that point means nothing. There are countless devs who you would be shocked the history they have within their band of employees.

And you think those employees forgot about those times? Of course not. But the argument I made is not contingent on this point anyway. It is to demonstrate that each potential new system they deliver continues to expand on Nintendo's reputation for doing things that make life difficult for third parties. This history is known by most within the industry since they are intimately involved and, ya know, likely have been around for some time. But they don't require history because they see negative steps being taken for an unproblematic third party environment all the time from Nintendo.

Anyway, back to writing up my big post.

 

[Manmademan]

Are you the gaming businessman's investor, or are you the gaming artist's audience?

the two aren't mutually exclusive. You can create games that gamers want to play AND stay in business at the same time.

If you make amazing games, but repeatedly make market mistakes that mean it's no longer viable for you to compete, then you're not doing gamers any favors, are you? Look at SEGA. Sega made great games. Sega made great hardware. Sega also made completely boneheaded business decisions with the Sega CD, 32x, and Saturn that absolutely crippled them by the time of the DC launch. Better business decisions could have meant a Sega that stayed viable longer, making the games they wanted to make on hardware that was best for them.

The two are not exclusive, and squandering the incredible success of the Wii can only be described as incompetent. It's far and beyond any industry or economy trend, extending into bewildering to analysts and tragic for shareholders. None of that was required to remain on their ideological course as the initial Wii success showed. That said, if they don't become at least somewhat more flexible, their decline will continue. The west wants bigger single blockbusters for their living room and the east wants more micro experiences for their mobile devices, and Nintendo has become steadfast in their refusal to adapt to what either market wants. As a fan I hope it's brave but as a shareholder I am scared it will be stupid.

very well put.

 

[Dark Octave]

Nintendo brings their problems on themselves. This has been clear as day since the N64.

Edit-

Great OP BTW.

Greatest (should have been) first post.

Furthermore, nobody wants to develop for near decade old tech that won't last three years against the competition.

 

[TreasureHunterG]

I think this is half true. Yes, the kind of market nintendo has an interest in competing in is different than the one targeted by Sony and Microsoft- but it's also about business models. Nintendo (like apple) prefers to make a fairly large margin on hardware as well as software. This is what "sticking to cartridges" was ultimately about- protection of an incredibly lucrative source of revenue that they controlled. Nintendo could not keep those margins AND compete with Sony and Microsoft technically. Not only were Sony and Microsoft willing to sell hardware at a loss, but both had engineering resources that were better than Nintendo had. It was a losing battle- Sega would have run afoul of the same problem even if the DC had not collapsed.

Nintendo could bring a beefed hardware at loss and compete against PS3/360 tech-wise with the motion control implemented if they wanted. DS was selling like hell in 2005/2006 and the profits from it could bank a loss situation hardware from a beefed-Wii in the first years. Judging from how well received the motion controls were and how Wii Sports and Wii Play sold, this strategy would probably work.

Yet, Iwata decided to go the cheap, low-tech apporach he decided with the Wii hardware. It worked nicely was a short-term strategy, but not so great as long-term, as Nintendo struggled to adapt now to HD development as Iwata didn't opted to implement it originally on Wii.

Here I disagree significantly. It wasn't "sony and third parties" that were into "flashy, cinematic games." That was almost entirely Square, and FFVII and it's ad campaign meant that JRPGS (which had a lot of eye candy) blew up around this time. JRPGS aside, The PS1 had a metric ton of games that did not rely on flashy FMV and cinema scenes. I could get into a list war, but I think we all know that this one is kind of pointless- but I will note that Sony's best selling franchise and it's oldest appeared first on PS1- and that game is Gran Turismo. Flashy cinematic game it is not.

PS1 was notorious for FMV in their games even before FFVII. Tomb Raider and Resident Evil, two big hits, both came out before FFVII had FMV. Sure, there was games that didn't rely on flashy cinematics, but that was a major selling appeal from Sony's machine.

 

[tehrik-e-insaaf]

Uh no it wasn't. let's use facts to get rid of urban myths

And i won't get into most of this post, but nintendo is not releasing content much quicker than the wii. They are much slower

http://www.ign.com/articles/2008/01/24/wii-tie-ratio-at-81-in-december - 8:1 for units in December 2008, compared to 4:1 for the PS3 - moreover while this might be skewed because of the month it held constantly over time and the Wii did well

Numbers I have: 680 million physical software (not including digital) w/ 76 million units sold in Japan, North America, and Europe end of 2010 - if you include global sales (including all the piracy-prone regions) I guess that ratio comes down but it was still MUCH higher than the DS.

I never said they ARE releasing more content incase you missed it, I'm just explaining that from my perspective ramping up your own output is better than trying to get a watered down version of Battlefield - while they should do both to some extent - right now they have a unique opportunity to expand internally and build a deep bench - something Sony did over the past few years and it is paying off for them when Japanese dominance of game software ended and they needed to adapt to Western market realities and were ready to do so.

 

[mightynine]

I wish I had more I could add to the conversation, but I think "How We Got Here And Why" is some of column A (Amirox) and some of column B (RedSwirl).

Both very well stated arguments.

Now excuse me, I have to go set up my Wii U.

 

[metalslimer]

Don't be one of those people who justify dismissing the overall theme of a lengthy post because you disagree one minor detail.

Well to be honest i would like to write some decent response in here, but i have to keep my answers short as my arm is in a cast. I will edit it down because i shouldnt have quoted the whole thing

 

[weevles]

There would be more third party support if there was a large enough customer base to warrant the resources. Strong-arming and backwards corporate attitudes aside, their handhelds have plenty of support from developers large and small regardless of whatever political issues Nintendo can't break from because the sales are there.

It's over done now, but the Wii U came in unprepared with a questionable gimmicky feature set (dat touchpad) and a terrible marketing strategy based around a weaker Wii brand which left consumers unimpressed as they were ultimately unsatisfied with the first Wii.

 

[grap3fruitman]

I don't think even Nintendo is developing games for the Wii U. Why would third parties?

 

[metalslimer]

There would be more third party support if there was a large enough customer base to warrant the resources. Strong-arming and backwards corporate attitudes aside, their handhelds have plenty of support from developers large and small regardless of whatever political issues Nintendo can't break from because the sales are there.

It's over done now, but the Wii U came in unprepared with a questionable gimmicky feature set (dat touchpad) and a terrible marketing strategy based around a weaker Wii brand which left consumers unimpressed as they were ultimately unsatisfied with the first Wii.

Disagree. In fact, i the the majority of the market is perfectly happy with their wii and have no need to upgrade.The tie ratio for wii was good, so lets not pretend like the wii was a wii sport machine because it wasnt

I don't think even Nintendo is developing games for the Wii U. Why would third parties?

What does this post even mean? They have 6 internally developed games coming out before the year is up and 4 more announced for next year

 

[wildfire]

Real quickly as I still work on my master response post because I've seen more than one post say this:

Just because a particular developer no longer exists does not mean employees who worked for them no longer exist. A countless number of people who worked within the industry back then are still in the industry now; the chairs have simply been reshuffled.

Many moved to PC development, some moved to different companies, some moved to the indie space, some moved on to bigger and better things. But simply because there have been great sea changes within the industry since that point means nothing. There are countless devs who you would be shocked the history they have within their band of employees.

And you think those employees forgot about those times? Of course not. But the argument I made is not contingent on this point anyway. It is to demonstrate that each potential new system they deliver continues to expand on Nintendo's reputation for doing things that make life difficult for third parties. This history is known by most within the industry since they are intimately involved and, ya know, likely have been around for some time. But they don't require history because they see negative steps being taken for an unproblematic third party environment all the time from Nintendo.

Anyway, back to writing up my big post.

Well ...duh

That's what we have been saying. You can't co-opt our arguments and act like you are the first to say it. The key difference is that we are pointing out the number of 80s-90s devs has mostly been phased out with PC devs and post-modern devs.

It would have been more clever to say the leadership levels of development is dominated by the old timers who survived. Personally I can't agree even with that because the majority of leaders are PC developers who didn't have any past relationship with Nintendo during the NES/SNES years that you feel is so important as to why devs have lingering issues.

Well to be honest i would like to write some decent response in here, but i have to keep my answers short as my arm is in a cast. I will edit it down because i shouldnt have quoted the whole thing

Fair enough. Sucks about your situation.

 

[Manmademan]

Nintendo could bring a beefed hardware at loss and compete against PS3/360 tech-wise with the motion control implemented if they wanted. DS was selling like hell in 2005/2006 and the profits from it could bank a loss situation hardware from a beefed-Wii in the first years. Judging from how hell received the motion controls were and how Wii Sports and Wii Play sold, this strategy would probably work.

I'm not disagreeing with you- nintendo COULD have engineered a system that could have competed with the PS360 with motion controls if they were willing to sell product at a loss to compete.

unfortunately, their adherence to making a profit on hardware meant that nintendo was not willing to do that, and felt that leaving the core audience entirely to Sony and Microsoft was a better option than competing directly and taking a risk.

PS1 was notorious for FMV in their games even before FFVII. Tomb Raider and Resident Evil, two big hits, both came out before FFVII had FMV. Sure, there was games that didn't rely on flashy cinematics, but that was a major selling appeal from Sony's machine.

Resident Evil 1 had very little FMV in it. There was some very cheesy live action footage in the intro, but that's not the reason that game caught fire. Resident Evil 2 also had a minimal amount- There's even an N64 port of that game. "FMV" is not the reason those games sold.

The PS1 sold the way it did not because FMV was flashy, but because Sony made a conscious decision to target older gamers (16-25 or so) that nintendo and Sega had neglected. (note that I'm not saying "american" gamers here.)

The SNES sold about 50 million units. the Genesis sold about 30. The PS1 by itself sold 100 million in addition to the 35 million N64s sold. that's a jump of about 50 million gamers seemingly out of nowhere, and it wasn't "fmv" that brought them in. just different experiences that nintendo wasn't making. People used to grow out of gaming, now that's no longer really true.

 

[Amir0x]

Well ...duh

That's what we have been saying. You can't co-opt our arguments and act like you are the first to say it. The key difference is that we are pointing out the number of 80s-90s devs has mostly been phased out with PC devs and post-modern devs.

It would have been more clever to say the leadership levels of development is dominated by the old timers who survived. Personally I can't agree even with that because the majority of leaders are PC developers who didn't have any past relationship with Nintendo during the NES/SNES years that you feel is so important as to why devs have lingering issues.

Right here you're proving you are not saying what i said, so I don't know what you're going on about.

If you think that PC devs are filled with newbies who never dealt with Nintendo, then you're not going to be convinced of my point. But there are literally endless examples where this is not the case.

The development environment is an incestuous community where employees on both the low and high levels are constantly shuttling between companies. That includes PC devs. So even if a developer IN NAME never dealt with Nintendo, there are almost certainly employees within that company who has. And if you think they don't have an influence on decisions being made, that's of course absurd.

 

[Bucket Mouse]

Good post and good points.

I think one of the largest obstacles Nintendo have struggled to overcome is the perception that their brand only caters to children. This was something that solidified in the transition from the SNES to the N64, and was partly out of their control, but also partly their own doing. As the industry matured into the mid-'90s, so did the general audience and the idea that adults could pursue gaming as a legitimate hobby. Playstation embodied this shift into "lad culture", essentially catering for the now all powerful 16-30 demographic with edgy titles like Tomb Raider, Grand Theft Auto, Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid. By the end of the '90s, the rise of the FPS on PC coincided with the decline of the once-dominant genre, the platformer.

In the NES era, Nintendo's virtual monopoly allowed them to implement censorship policies in compliance with "Nintendo of America's Video Game Content Guidelines". This continued into the SNES era, with one famous example being the removal of blood from Street Fighter II. Sega's strategy during this time largely consisted of mocking Nintendo's old fashioned image, eroding their standing among the image-conscious youth. Nintendo, having cultivated critical and commercial significance with family friendly properties like Mario and Zelda, found themselves in an uncomfortable position by the time the N64 rolled around. In addition to all of the other problems that this console brought with it, they also had to contend with this solidifying perception and become increasingly self-reliant on their own first and second party software sales. For every successful "mature" title they had such as Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, the Playstation simply had a lot more to choose from.

The GameCube widened the gulf further and Sony were now the undisputed "cool" face of gaming. The PS2 saw sequels to hugely successful games on the previous console, and newcomer Microsoft targeted the mature demographic aggressively.

With the seemingly revolutionary Wii, Nintendo successfully managed to close the sales gap and temporarily render the child-friendly perception irrelevant by actively targeting new demographics such as female players and audiences over the age of 30. Fast forward to today with the Wii U, mobile devices continue to leech this new market away from Nintendo, and they find themselves in the same position as before.

 

[cloudyy]

So I come back a couple of hours from writing that post (which was in a hurry) and that's all you can give me?

Your argument was that 3rd parties aren't there because Nintendo ties digital to the system. Then you move goalposts by saying that it's not that, it's that their systems aren't "perfect" in comparison to the competition which I replied that no system is perfect. Yet you wanted "examples" or what ever. I gave you a couple, you don't like them, fine.

 

[IrishNinja]

best nintnedo thread ive seen around here for a while - reasoned OP, with fantastic replies from guys like RedSwirl. ill post back more later when im done catching up on other replies.

 

[DICKS AHOY]

The lack of 3rd party support for the Wii U is so frustrating since it feels like moreso than previous gens (besides the N64 maybe) it was a situation Nintendo could have easily avoided if they'd planned things out better with their late transition to HD gaming and started up a better dialog with 3rd parties. Instead they banked on a gimmick that hasn't caught on at all and wound up with a console that still can't handle the upcoming library of 3rd party software for the PS4/XB1, despite engines like Unreal 4 being more scale-able than ever.

There's the argument that you never buy a Nintendo system for 3rd party software since you'll inevitably find better versions of those games on competing systems or the PC, but I still feel like this past nine months of nearly nothing on the system was a result of Nintendo expecting far more 3rd party support than they ultimately got. It's obviously a line of thinking at least until now Nintendo themselves didn't share, and all the talk of Iwata back in '10 and '11 of strengthening 3rd party relations or EA's retrospectively depressing appearance at Nintendo's original Wii U reveal are all the more depressing to look back on. What the hell went wrong?

Even if it starts selling well for whatever reason, my Wii U's still going to wind up being a dedicated Nintendo games system with a few collaborative 3rd-party games. Not a problem for myself personally, but hopefully some significant changes happen internally to avoid a mess-up this huge happening again come the next console. It really felt like back in early '11 Nintendo had the next two years served to them on a plate if they'd played their cards right too.

 

[Pociask]

The two are not exclusive, and squandering the incredible success of the Wii can only be described as incompetent. It's far and beyond any industry or economy trend, extending into bewildering to analysts and tragic for shareholders. None of that was required to remain on their ideological course as the initial Wii success showed. That said, if they don't become at least somewhat more flexible, their decline will continue. The west wants bigger single blockbusters for their living room and the east wants more micro experiences for their mobile devices, and Nintendo has become steadfast in their refusal to adapt to what either market wants. As a fan I hope it's brave but as a shareholder I am scared it will be stupid.

The bottom line of their business is their shareholders and Nintendo has destroyed them. What their CEO has done in the last 5 years is one of the worst performances in all of technology equities. The only thing impressive is how he still has a job. It's downright sad what he's done to anyone that invested in the success of the Wii. It's nice to praise the idealism as a consumer or a fan but at the end of the day Nintendo is a public company that represent its shareholders, and they have crushed their shareholders. Far worse than any of the big western publishers from their Wii peak, and far beyond any market risk.

This this this this this. Nintendo is a business. They are in the business of selling video game hardware and software. Their business has been disastrous recently. It's as if after the iPod, Sony decided that they didn't like MP3's because the sound wasn't pure enough, and they were just going to keep selling CD players. That's not pure or courageous or trying to push the industry in a certain direction. It's managerial suicide that shows NCL has completely lost touch with its customers (and that's customers on every level - consumers, developers, and retailers).

 

[Imm0rt4l]

Great thread, Nintendo does bring most of this on themselves. I knew about the minimum inventory requests from devs, but I didn't know about some of their practices back during the NES. It seems their is a problem deep rooted in Nintendos culture.

 

[Opiate]

I tend to think many of Amirox's explanations are valid concerns, as no single explanation can be the one truth that explains everything in one simple, easy package.

But I do think we want to look for some consistent pattern in why the gap between Nintendo and western third parties seems so persistent. It persists across highly successful platforms (NDS, Wii) and less successful ones (Wii U, GC), across cartridge systems and disc systems, across systems of comparable power to contemporaries (GC, N64) and less powerful systems.

So I feel like something more systemic must be going on. It doesn't negate Amirox's points -- there are lots of valid situational explanations depending on the era -- but something deeper is going on, too, or else we wouldn't be seeing such a consistent pattern across a wide variety of platforms.

I think Red Swirl got to that common, persistent problem for Nintendo: they have a different philosophy on game design that appeals to a different demographic than virtually every major third party in the West. Western publishers are high concentrated around AAA, big budget productions and heavily focused on the 16-35 male demo, while Nintendo is actively pushing against that AAA/big budget production and has had recent, major hits with women, the elder, and little girls, among others.

To me, that's been a consistent pattern not just since the N64, but even since the Genesis, when the Genesis got a Mortal Kombat with Blood and the SNES did not.

 

[D'ultimate]

It's almost as if Nintendo develops their system in a vacuum. No consideration that they have competitors, the fact that system power matters, ease of development, ease to port, and connectivity matters. It's purely what the Heads think the system should be and nothing else. They'll just bully the community into seeing it their way.

It's as if they haven't left the NES/SNES era.

 

[RurouniZel]

I will repeat again that I agree with the vast majority of the OP. But I do want to address one argument that has been mentioned here and other threads that I think needs to be reanalyzed.

People says there's no feelings involved when 3rd parties ignore Nintendo, that it's strictly business and no pride is involved whatsoever. But I often read comments that Nintendo, a business just out to make money like the aforementioned 3rd parties, makes some of the backwards decisions they make regarding their structure and regard for 3rd parties because of Nintendo's pride or their "culture".

So... which is it? Is Nintendo the only company with pride while 3rd parties are autonomous bots who function solely on logic and never mix personal feelings or pride in there at all?

 

[metalslimer]

I will repeat again that I agree with the vast majority of the OP. But I do want to address one argument that has been mentioned here and other threads that I think needs to be reanalyzed.

People says there's no feelings involved when 3rd parties ignore Nintendo, that it's strictly business and no pride is involved whatsoever. But I often read comments that Nintendo, a business just out to make money like the aforementioned 3rd parties, makes some of the backwards decisions they make regarding their structure and regard for 3rd parties because of Nintendo's pride or their "culture".

So... which is it? Is Nintendo the only company with pride while 3rd parties are autonomous bots who function solely on logic and never mix personal feelings or pride in there at all?

Maybe its both? Their company culture makes them think the best avenue to making money is treating 3rd party developers like necessary evils instead of partners? Going back to redswirls post nintendo and the rest of the industry have a completely different view of the industry. At the same time 3rd parties think their way will net the most money and that nintendo is antiquated and needs to listen more to them. Its not that companies are letting feelings prevent them from making money. Everyone has their idea on how to make the most money and in a perfect well both could coexist, but we saw with the wiiu nintendo at least start to make big concessions that they were wrong about the digital market and wrong about online and now the indie relationship is better

 

[RurouniZel]

Maybe its both? Their company culture makes them think the best avenue to making money is treating 3rd party developers like necessary evils instead of partners? Going back to redswirls post nintendo and the rest of the industry have a completely different view of the industry

Right.

Which is why I think the "it's just business and nothing more" argument is a little lacking when there are far better arguments people can use.

 

[jwhit28]

I still see the comparison between Sega and Nintendo a lot, but for as much trouble Nintendo is having and as far as they have dropped, they are still one of the top sellers of software and still have the most pieces of hardware moving into the hands of customers each month in the US and Japan.

You can call it arrogance but Nintendo does it there way because they can afford to. It doesn't make it right, or even a good idea, but until business is such that they either change or they don't survive, I don't see them falling in line behind Sony and Microsoft. This year will most likely be Nintendo's lowest point as a console manufacturer and they will most likely still pull in an overall profit.

 

[metalslimer]

Right.

Which is why I think the "it's just business and nothing more" argument is a little lacking when there are far better arguments people can use.

Well i think its an argument to the nintendo fan argument that 3rd parties hate nintendo and wouldn't put their game on the platforms even if they thought they could make money even though capcom is putting there biggest game on 3ds and nintendo handhelds enjoy strong japanese support.

You can call it arrogance but Nintendo does it there way because they can afford to. It doesn't make it right, or even a good idea, but until business is such that they either change or they don't survive, I don't see them falling in line behind Sony and Microsoft. This year will most likely be Nintendo's lowest point as a console manufacturer and they will most likely still pull in an overall profit.

Right because they have a handheld that is killing it in japan due to 3rd parties. You would think if anything their handhelds enjoying such strong support would make them realize how much they need 3rd party support, even ports, but nintendo seems to want exclusive content and thinks they can literally turn wiiu into the 3ds with exclusive games when thats now how consoles work anymore

 

[MercuryLS]

When Nintendo creates a console they don't give a damn about 3rd parties and what they want (cutting edge tech, robust online) and then they cry when 3rd parties ignore them. Nintendo needs to wake up and realize that they're not the centre of the gaming universe, 3rd parties aren't going to bend over backwards for them like in the NES and SNES days. The industry has moved on and Nintendo is still stuck in the past.