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[kunstClick]

I'm dreading who will run the show after Iwata. They'll probably improve Nintendo's financials but I know it will be at the expense of the company's soul. I don't want Nintendo to go out like Sega or Atari.

 

[RedSwirl]

This concept was flawed in the 7th gen and it's flawed now; everything doesn't revolve around what young men want in this industry.
Families and casual gamers never wanted to play the kinds of games that were found on the PS3/360 because they were never interested in them.
How in the world are you supposed to make those consumers "graduate" to experiences that they never found appealing in the first place?

Either way, some new growth in the userbase has to happen for what Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are doing to be sustainable going into the future. Even if you just look at young men or other adults, the audience of people playing "core" games hasn't grown fast enough to accommodate rising development costs. Blockbusters like Call of Duty and GTA sell mega numbers but too many other games don't, even when they try to be more like COD to get that audience. It's still a problem that needs to be solved.

 

[IDKAboutThat]

Yeah, the Wii U's marketing was Iwata's fault. Totally. Super glad our friends in the slightly more casual gaming market still aren't being sold on the best console of current-gen.

 

[Kageshinzo]

Either way, some new growth in the userbase has to happen for what Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are doing to be sustainable going into the future. Even if you just look at young men or other adults, the audience of people playing "core" games hasn't grown fast enough to accommodate rising development costs. Blockbusters like Call of Duty and GTA sell mega numbers but too many other games don't, even when they try to be more like COD to get that audience. It's still a problem that needs to be solved.

OR developers can learn to scale down the budget of their games so that even a modest sale in the hundreds of thousands can still be considered profitable instead of chasing CoD or GTA numbers. Regardless of how video games have become more mainstream in the past decade or so, by and large, it is still a market thrived on, and supported by, a core set of people. The more "mainstream casuals" seem to be content with mobile.

 

[Disaster Nebraska]

IIRC Twilight Princess is the best seller in the series. Also, ALBW is doing well

OoT is still the best seller. Twilight Princess is also very un-Aonuma as far as presentation and feel goes. All of his other games from WW until now were very different than TP. ALBW is a step in the right direction which is why I said maybe he's turning things around.

 

[catmario]

It's iwata's fault.

But firing iwata right now is really risky than change his mind.

Nintendo Management's dat infinite mobile love is really disgusting.

 

[Sandfox]

OR developers can learn to scale down the budget of their games so that even a modest sale in the hundreds of thousands can still be considered profitable instead of chasing CoD or GTA numbers. Regardless of how video games have become more mainstream in the past decade or so, by and large, it is still a market thrived on, and supported by, a core set of people. The more "mainstream casuals" seem to be content with mobile.

No dev is going to do that unless they plan on releasing a $15 title or something.

 

[RedSwirl]

OR developers can learn to scale down the budget of their games so that even a modest sale in the hundreds of thousands can still be considered profitable instead of chasing CoD or GTA numbers. Regardless of how video games have become more mainstream in the past decade or so, by and large, it is still a market thrived on, and supported by, a core set of people. The more "mainstream casuals" seem to be content with mobile.

A lot of games probably should have done that for a lot of reasons, but on an industry-wide scale it's basically accepting of the idea that traditional console games are a niche industry. It's probably not good for business if you keep appealing to the exact same fans for years and years as costs inevitably go up, however slightly.

 

[Mysterious]

IDGAF ANYMORE
ON-SCREEN TV MAP IN MK8

NINTENDO DONT EVER CHANGE

Spoiler

Mario Kart 8 is 100x more fun than The Last of Us.

 

[CoffeeJanitor]

Reading over this and every other Nintendo-opinion-time threads, it's clear that there are several themes on missed opportunities:

- Virtual console
- 3rd party relations
- Western-market orientation
- Online capabilities and services
- etc..

These are all strong, and there's plenty of evidence to link to these as main drivers of Nintendo's current fiscal position. What I think we're missing from the discussion, however, is the most glaring missed opportunity by Iwata as a CEO: lack of a global customer relationship management system (CRM.)

Let me posit the perspective this way: if I'm on Nintendo's marketing team today and I see our sales figures cross-generation I ask myself 2 immediate questions:
"Where did my market go?" --> "Who (as in name/address/etc. info) exactly left?"
If I can't answer the second question, then at best I can only perform blanket marketing tactics (aka promotions, sales, mall campaigns) at approximations of my customer base. In other words, my visibility into customer retention is poor, because I don't actually know who they are.

At Nintendo's peak market years: DS & Wii; Iwata should have instituted a global CRM system to track who exactly are his customers, their needs and ultimately what offers they can provide in order for them to continue becoming Nintendo customers. Had they done this well in 2009; by today they'd be able to actually go out to every ex-Wii and DS owner (that haven't jumped on the next-gen) and give them targeted offers to continue the ride.

I see this as a great misstep, because Nintendo's fundamental strategy: "increase the # of video game players" requires a need to retain those users into your ecosystem. Thus, if you want to increase the entire user-base, make sure you identify who they are so as to keep them along for the ride.

What's most interesting is that I think Iwata clearly recognizes this fault, since he has publicly addressed this in his investor meetings with the "Nintendo account system" (instead of device specific IDs) pitch. [insert arrowNNiDdevice.jpg] My contention is that he's too late, and should have envisioned this during his market-boom years while he had the ability to target million more families than he can today.

The most "I'm banging my head against the wall" view of this: is that Nintendo already has some pretty strong CRM . . . at the local level. Club Nintendo. It's the classic: you send them your info and your gaming habits and they reward you with free games/products. <-- Club Nintendo is an obvious missed opportunity in terms of CRM for Iwata's Wii/DS market. Should have expanded its capabilities and signed as many people up while they had the chance. I bet some managers at NoA are crying that they never got the budget to implement Club Nintendo in this way.

tl;dr: A global CRM system would allow Nintendo to better market to their DS/Wii market today; it would help answer the question: "who exactly is no longer a Nintendo gamer but once was?" May not answer all the problems (like "why aren't they playing anymore?") but would have definitely been a wise tool to ensure customer retention.

Anyone else feel this same way?

i completely agree...as with the list you included at the start of your post, the lack of foresight in not investing in a quality CRM has really hurt Nintendo and has put them in their current, terrible, position

 

[Turrican3]

The biggest failure of the Wii and DS is probably that most of the people who bought those systems along with games like Wii Sports or Nintendogs didn't "graduate" to more complex games.

Problem is, I think they actually did.

As of today I still can't find any other plausible explanation for the insanely high numbers of New Super Mario Bros and/or Mario Kart on the Wii (and to a slightly lesser extent, the equally impressive numbers of Wii Sports Resort, which in itself could be arguably considered a more complex/refined version of the seminal title).

And I'm 99% confident Nintendo itself thought a fairly reasonable number of Wii customers would "graduate" to Wii U given the Wii Sports to NSMBW/MK ratio. Hell, they probably even had an educated guess of how many people were exactly following that kind of "evolutionary path" on the Wii, thanks to Club Nintendo registrations and/or the console own internal stats system.

For all the objective flaws the Wii U has (Gamepad definitely can't hold a candle to the wiimote immediacy), I'm not entirely convinced Nintendo did the best they could to promote and explain this product to the aforementioned, so called "expanded" audience.

 

[radcliff]

The biggest failure of the Wii and DS is probably that most of the people who bought those systems along with games like Wii Sports or Nintendogs didn't "graduate" to more complex games. Sony and Microsoft were even hopeful those people would graduate to playing PlayStation and Xbox games, but it just didn't happen.

I think they did. Unfortunately for Nintendo, they graduated to Call of Duty and GTA instead of Mario and Zelda. As a result, Nintendo is now obsolete to a good portion of the video game market. To get some of these people back, Nintendo may need to bite the bullet and start either making these types of experiences on their own, or partner with someone to do it for them.

 

[ElRenoRaven]

Kind of funny. Saw this today in my facebook feed and it made me think of this thread.

Like I said if this is what they want then I'll root for Iwata who is the lesser of the two evils.

 

[TheBanditKing]

While there is a strong desire to bring games/franchises like Mario to smartphones, Iwata is strongly vetoing the idea."

This is exactly why I want Iwata to stay president

"Iwata reiterates that “Nintendo’s strength is in unified development of game hardware and software”,

I really hope people wake up, diluting your brands by shoveling them on to smartphones will not save Nintendo (or any companies) bottom line. Sega is much worse off since it stopped making hardware and devotes far less time to innovation because new hardware is no longer pushing them forward. Anymore the best games come from first party devs who are closely tied to the creation of the tech that goes into these consoles (Naughty Dog). Sony used their brand strength and made a product specifically for the market they were selling to and look what happened. Nintendo's problem is brand perception and consumer mind share, not that its characters and games aren't on cell phones.

 

[Ninja Scooter]

For some reason I pictured Miyamoto dressed as a nurse, visiting Iwata at his hospital bed telling him that he doesn't like shareholders because they are schemers, handing him a vitality sensor and telling him to introduce a little chaos.