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[Tookay]

This is interesting, but the source is so removed from any power-players (he spent most of the year on tours) it's difficult to take as gospel. Especially any info about the arrogance or confusion that is seemingly attributed to NCL. I'll take it as one man's ground level experience, colored by a lot of hindsight and embellishing.

I do think it captures Nintendo's continued identity crisis, in terms of both their marketing troubles and their issues with the faithful. The Gamecube was seriously hampered in America by the product design, lack of DVD, and initial reveals of big titles (Sunshine and TWW are great games but were NOT the evolutions people expected following the N64 era). The marketing people attempted to reverse course and maybe over-corrected to banish the "kiddie" image, but the damage was already done by NCL with this decisions from the outset, and all that something like the Fusion Tour contributed to was dissonance. They looked like they were trying too hard to be cool, instead of just... being cool, for lack of an artful term.

 

[10k]

Excellent article. I enjoyed reading it. I always knew guys like Yamuachi were holding Nintendo back. Now we need some young blood in upper management.

 

[Neon_Icarus]

Rare developed Golden Eye, & Perfect Dark
Silicon Knights developed Eternal Darkness Nintendo published them exclusively for their consoles as a second party deal.
When those dev houses were gone so were those types of games & it has been over a decade.
Give credit where it is due, name one M rated game Nintendo developed solely themselves?
They refuse to thus the ever shrinking market share they outright ignore a n enormous segment of the market.

I think whether a Nintendo published game was developed in-house or not is irrelevant. EAD (i'm guessing you are only talking about EAD here, as people usually do in these cases) makes the kind of games they are good at - as they should. Having Miyamoto or Tezuka sit down and telling them "Listen, you're going to make an M rated game today", would not exactly be the best starting point for a new project.

Nintendo's old strategy of partnering with studios like Silicon Knights, Rare and Left Field for M rated games and sport sims aimed at Westerners (which those studios used to be good at) was a pretty smart one. The problem was, they gave up on that immediately after Iwata took over, long before it could bear fruit. Now, most of their partnerships with Western studios are only about creating sequels to their old family-friendly game series(Luigi's Mansion, Donkey Kong, Punch Out, Pilotwings, the Excite- series...), not new IPs for older gamers, designed to broaden Nintendo's first party lineup.

Of course, Nintendo did produce some games aimed at mature audiences this gen (the Fatal Frames, Zangeki no Reginleiv, Pandora's Tower...), but considering how reluctant NoA was to release them in the West, they were probably only created with Nintendo's home market in mind. The art style and the subject matter of those games affirms this interpretation.

I guess Nintendo's just given up on pursuing the older "core gamers" in the West.

 

[Shig]

It's no surprising revelation that Japanese branches have a perpetually awful frame of mind in handling their overseas markets. Read up on Sega and you'll see the same patterns; When the chips are down they bury their heads in the sand and say it's beyond their understanding, so they grant a few allowances to the overseas branches to make some risky decisions because fuck it, what have they got to lose? The overseas branch wields this rare lending of power to make a few good moves that pay off in spades, yet rather than saying "wow, good job," and rewarding the overseas branch with more autonomy to continue their forward momentum, the Japanese home office almost seems to interpret their success as a threat. They double down on tighter Japanese oversight and strip the overseas branch of any worthwhile decision-making capacity, and surprise, suddenly the market is in decline. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Like I said in another recent thread, Nintendo not broadening their western portfolio last gen is just unbelievable pigheaded short-sightedness, all the stars were aligned:
-Wii and DS were successes beyond their wildest imagining, thanks in no small part to strong and stable performance in western markets.
-They have super-obvious holes in their portfolio shaped precisely like the games western devs tend to make.
-Western studio acquisition while the dollar was weak to the yen would have made for bargain-basement deals for them.
-They had an HD console with a more involved online presence on the near horizon; Western devs have a lot of experience with those two fundamentals, versus little if any experience on Nintendo's side.

The state of the Wii U could easily be an entirely different story now if they had an ounce of sense to pounce on the opportunity they were staring at last gen.

 

[ExigentContact]

It's no surprising revelation that Japanese branches have a perpetually awful frame of mind in handling their overseas markets. Read up on Sega and you'll see the same patterns; When the chips are down they bury their heads in the sand and say it's beyond their understanding, so they grant a few allowances to the overseas branches to make some risky decisions because fuck it, what have they got to lose? The overseas branch wields this rare lending of power to make a few good moves that pay off in spades, yet rather than saying "wow, good job," and rewarding the overseas branch with more autonomy to continue their forward momentum, the Japanese home office almost seems to interpret their success as a threat. They double down on tighter Japanese oversight and strip the overseas branch of any worthwhile decision-making capacity, and surprise, suddenly the market is in decline. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Like I said in another recent thread, Nintendo not broadening their western portfolio last gen is just unbelievable pigheaded short-sightedness, all the stars were aligned:
-Wii and DS were successes beyond their wildest imagining, thanks in no small part to strong and stable performance in western markets.
-They have super-obvious holes in their portfolio shaped precisely like the games western devs tend to make.
-Western studio acquisition while the dollar was weak to the yen would have made for bargain-basement deals for them.
-They had an HD console with a more involved online presence on the near horizon; Western devs have a lot of experience with those two fundamentals, versus little if any experience on Nintendo's side.

The state of the Wii U could easily be an entirely different story now if they had an ounce of sense to pounce on the opportunity they were staring at last gen.

Really though, it was a just a continuing trend from the generation Iwata took over. The Nintendo 64 cornered and dominated the FPS market on consoles. Not only did it have successful exclusives like GoldenEye and Perfect Dark, it saw nearly every major PC FPS that its meager hardware could handle. It's utterly baffling to me that Nintendo passed up that market in the GameCube era to the Xbox when they held most of the cards just a few years before. I don't think many people saw Halo coming, to be fair, but if Nintendo had their fingers on the pulse of the industry, they could have easily had a western shooter portfolio to match that. Instead, they went from Perfect Dark, Quake, and Turok to Geist. Geist.

The transition from Wii to Wii U gave them a huge opportunity to carve a niche into the west. Acquire a few western developers and have them make games for them. I think Nintendo dropped the ball in not acquiring Free Radical a few years back. Having them on-board for the Wii U launch with a fast-paced FPS IP that knocked the doors down would have been great. The TimeSplitters IP may have even been worth pushing for its relatively small name value. Whatever. They're part of Crytek now.

 

[javac]

Really though, it was a just a continuing trend from the generation Iwata took over. The Nintendo 64 cornered and dominated the FPS market on consoles. Not only did it have successful exclusives like GoldenEye and Perfect Dark, it saw nearly every major PC FPS that its meager hardware could handle. It's utterly baffling to me that Nintendo passed up that market in the GameCube era to the Xbox when they held most of the cards just a few years before. I don't think many people saw Halo coming, to be fair, but if Nintendo had their fingers on the pulse of the industry, they could have easily had a western shooter portfolio to match that. Instead, they went from Perfect Dark, Quake, and Turok to Geist. Geist.

The transition from Wii to Wii U gave them a huge opportunity to carve a niche into the west. Acquire a few western developers and have them make games for them. I think Nintendo dropped the ball in not acquiring Free Radical a few years back. Having them on-board for the Wii U launch with a fast-paced FPS IP that knocked the doors down would have been great. The TimeSplitters IP may have even been worth pushing for its relatively small name value. Whatever. They're part of Crytek now.

I think Nintendo expected Rare to have a few titles ready for launch which all fell apart. Rare was important in regards to the development of the more western oriented games for Nintendo during the N64 era right?

 

[nin1000]

“And then at the end [of the presentation], Reggie looked around the table and basically said “Look, don’t bullshit me. How do you guys really think this thing is going to hold up?” No one said a word for a minute

lol that made me laugh and cry at the same time

 

[Manmademan]

I think Nintendo expected Rare to have a few titles ready for launch which all fell apart. Rare was important in regards to the development of the more western oriented games for Nintendo during the N64 era right?

eh, rare is many things, but "speedy" has never been one of them. Expecting them to have "a few titles ready for launch" isn't realistic.

It's no surprising revelation that Japanese branches have a perpetually awful frame of mind in handling their overseas markets. Read up on Sega and you'll see the same patterns; When the chips are down they bury their heads in the sand and say it's beyond their understanding, so they grant a few allowances to the overseas branches to make some risky decisions because fuck it, what have they got to lose? The overseas branch wields this rare lending of power to make a few good moves that pay off in spades, yet rather than saying "wow, good job," and rewarding the overseas branch with more autonomy to continue their forward momentum, the Japanese home office almost seems to interpret their success as a threat. They double down on tighter Japanese oversight and strip the overseas branch of any worthwhile decision-making capacity, and surprise, suddenly the market is in decline. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Like I said in another recent thread, Nintendo not broadening their western portfolio last gen is just unbelievable pigheaded short-sightedness, all the stars were aligned:
-Wii and DS were successes beyond their wildest imagining, thanks in no small part to strong and stable performance in western markets.
-They have super-obvious holes in their portfolio shaped precisely like the games western devs tend to make.
-Western studio acquisition while the dollar was weak to the yen would have made for bargain-basement deals for them.
-They had an HD console with a more involved online presence on the near horizon; Western devs have a lot of experience with those two fundamentals, versus little if any experience on Nintendo's side.

The state of the Wii U could easily be an entirely different story now if they had an ounce of sense to pounce on the opportunity they were staring at last gen.

couldn't agree more. I've said the same thing myself a few times. Nintendo has had more than enough opportunity to either invest in new studios to make new kinds of games, or acquire IP outright when it was on firesale (THQ). They simply chose not to, falling into the mindset of "nintendo doesn't make those kinds of games."

 

[GameGuru59]

This article makes me sad as a Nintendo fan. Nintendo needs so badly to give NOA and NOE more autonomy. NOJ will always be the flagship, but its not like NOA and NOE are totally incompetent (and if they are, lop heads off until you find competent people). I'm fairly sure Reggie could run NOA pretty well himself if they just let him hire a couple of dev teams (in addition to Retro) and let him run the show for awhile. Same for NOE. This dictatorship that NOJ has going on is truly holding Nintendo back. That ought to have at LEAST 4 or 5 development studios in the west (the territory that buys most of their shit by the way).

Honda and Toyota have cars designed specifically for the western market they don't sell in Japan. Same for Hyundai and Korea. Why can't Nintendo do the same with its games? Hell they ought to have a dev. team in Korea too!

 

[Manmademan]

This article makes me sad as a Nintendo fan. Nintendo needs so badly to give NOA and NOE more autonomy. NOJ will always be the flagship, but its not like NOA and NOE are totally incompetent (and if they are, lop heads off until you find competent people). I'm fairly sure Reggie could run NOA pretty well himself if they just let him hire a couple of dev teams (in addition to Retro) and let him run the show for awhile. Same for NOE. This dictatorship that NOJ has going on is truly holding Nintendo back. That ought to have at LEAST 4 or 5 development studios in the west (the territory that buys most of their shit by the way).

Honda and Toyota have cars designed specifically for the western market they don't sell in Japan. Same for Hyundai and Korea. Why can't Nintendo do the same with its games? Hell they ought to have a dev. team in Korea too!

This seems to not just be a "nintendo" thing, this is something that appears to be epidemic with japanese developers period over the last couple of generations or so.

Sega has already been discussed above, but look at Sony. Sony Japan's studios haven't done shit this gen. Gran Turismo aside (which doesn't come out nearly as fast as it needs to) SOJ has been absolutely miserable.

It's been the WESTERN studios that have been knocking it out of the park and saving the PS3. To Sony's credit, they know the value of their western studios and give them a fairly long leash to make the games they want to make.

 

[Neff]

I don't see how Nintendo didn't see the rise of the "new hardcore" in games like RE and MGS that were popping up on PlayStation, replacing the old hardcore that was so prolific on their and Sega's systems. I mean, they were right there seeing it with their own eyes, how could they've missed it?[/SPOILER]

There have always, always, been hardcore first and third party games for hardcore gamers on all Nintendo systems save for perhaps the VB. It could be surmised that Nintendo underestimated the importance of 3rd party core content for Wii due to its wild success, or nobody wanted to develop for it because it was seen for what it (for most consumers at least) was- a disposable living room toy.

But Nintendo have always known that gamers want games. Zero bullshit, meat and potatoes games. Hence them attempting to correct the imbalance left by Wii with stuff like W101, SLW and Bayo 2.

 

[Moon_frogger]

Not sure where those quotes came from but it reads like a poorly dramatized script from a made for TV movie.

 

[Oddduck]

Not sure where those quotes came from but it reads like a poorly dramatized script from a made for TV movie.

It explains it in the first paragraph. The story and quotes are from the perspective of Kyle Mercury who worked with Nintendo's marketing/promotions for seven years.

 

[Matt]

I think Nintendo expected Rare to have a few titles ready for launch which all fell apart. Rare was important in regards to the development of the more western oriented games for Nintendo during the N64 era right?

Both Rare and Retro were supposed to be big pillars of the GameCube as far as Nintendo was concerned, and both completely fell apart. Things may have been somewhat different if that didn't happen.

 

[Zee-Row]

How big of a boost did RE4 bring to Game Cube sales?

 

[A Black Falcon]

Pretty good article. I didn't pay too much attention to those concerts and stuff at the time, but I cared about the games, not the marketing for non-Nintendo fans... and the GC definitely had some great games, even if it wasn't as successful as other Nintendo consoles.

I love the Gamecube and it's still my favorite 7th gen console, but yeah, Nintendo definitely made some mistakes with it. I've gone over why before -- basically the biggest hit they took was because Microsoft stole away the "softcore" Western gamer audience, who mostly wanted shooters and sports games and many of whom had owned N64s (Goldeneye!). Nintendo's closest thing to an answer to that was Metroid Prime, but sadly, it just didn't sell as well as Halo, even though I at least think it's a far better game. Ah well. It is true that the first one didn't have multiplayer, and Halo LAN multiplayer was huge.

Of course, the "purple lunchbox" thing helped those problems along; Nintendo had always been hit with that "Nintendo is kiddy" stereotype, but that made it a whole lot worse. They should at minimum have advertised with the black system as the main one they were focusing on, over the purple. Black was available from day one, and that's what I got, but purple was in all the ads...

Beyond that, selling off Rare proved to be a significant mistake. Sure, Rare had nothing for the system's first year and that was unfortunate, but NCL itself had had a horribly bad transition the previous generation, and struggled throughout the N64's life to produce enough games for it. Rare really bailed them out then, but as soon as Rare has a tough transition, Nintendo dumps them? Fools... sure, I know Iwata was coming in and the strategy was changing to a Japan-developed-games focus (versus the N64's big Western games focus Nintendo had), but while the losses of Silicon Knights, Factor 5, and Left Field were really bad (SK made my favorite GC game, and F5 made the game I bought a Gamecube for...), Nintendo could survive those... but losing Rare? That was a killer. If Rare hadn't been sold off, Kameo, Perfect Dark Zero, and Donkey Kong Racing would have been on GC, for sure, minimum. Probably a few more Rare games as well. Rare failed to move its audience over to Microsoft consoles, but on Nintendo they'd still have sold well, and Rare might not be dead today. Having Rare wouldn't have "saved the Gamecube", but it would have given it a better library, and would have sold some more consoles, at least.

 

[Matt]

Rare really bailed them out then, but as soon as Rare has a tough transition, Nintendo dumps them?

That's not what happened. Nintendo wanted to keep its relationship with Rare, but the Stampers wanted to cash in. Nintendo wasn't willing the shell out that kind of cash for a studio that was already having a ton of issues at the time, so the Stampers shopped around, and Microsoft was the highest bidder.

At that point, there was no reason for Nintendo to hold onto their 37-ish percent, so they sold them back to Tim and Chris, and they sold them in tern to MS.

 

[A Black Falcon]

That's not what happened. Nintendo wanted to keep its relationship with Rare, but the Stampers wanted to cash in. Nintendo wasn't willing the shell out that kind of cash for a studio that was already having a ton of issues at the time, so the Stampers shopped around, and Microsoft was the highest bidder.

At that point, there was no reason for Nintendo to hold onto their 37-ish percent, so they sold them back to Tim and Chris, and they sold them in tern to MS.

Nintendo should have just bought out the rest of Rare. They'd have gotten their money's worth out of it, I think. That was my point.

 

[chemicals]

I remember the Geist trailer was a mystery trailer where they released it with no title or studio name known. I kinda bought the hype.

But then wow... PS2 hit it's stride and Gamecube was but a "could have been great" console.

 

[Madouu]

The article is very bizarrely written to say the least...

edit: Oh well Stumpokapow articulated pretty much what I was thinking after reading the article in a pretty good manner.

 

[Matt]

Nintendo should have just bought out the rest of Rare. They'd have gotten their money's worth out of it, I think. That was my point.

Who knows, Microsoft still hasn't...

 

[A Black Falcon]

Who knows, Microsoft still hasn't...

Well, as I said, I'm sure their games would have sold better on GC and Wii than they did on Xbox and X360. The core audience for traditional Rare games, as they made up until BK: Nuts & Bolts, remained on Nintendo platforms, even after Rare left.

 

[Matt]

Well, as I said, I'm sure their games would have sold better on GC and Wii than they did on Xbox and X360. The core audience for traditional Rare games, as they made up until BK: Nuts & Bolts, remained on Nintendo platforms, even after Rare left.

You could be right, but look, Rare was a BIG, EXPENSIVE to run studio with a lot of problems and few super attractive projects in the pipeline when Nintendo made this decision. Nintendo would have had to cough up ~200 million (or more) to keep them, and then pay a ton to keep the enterprise going on top of that. That's serious money with, again, no guarantee that the rough patch they were in would end (and in retrospect, it never did).

Rare was a great studio at one point, and I miss them. The videogame fan in me does wish Nintendo kept them and that we were still enjoying the quality of games they put out in their heyday. But to criticizes Nintendo's actions without considering all the facts is a mistake.

 

[Freezie KO]

Great retrospective. Relevant and timely. NES and Emily Rogers do some great work on longer-form content.

Of course, I also agree that Kyle's word must be taken at face-value (especially the anecdote about him being the only one to stand up to Reggie). But that said, Nintendo is a fortress, so any information/opinion we get is valuable.

And if Kyle is indeed being truthful, rather than fitting the past into pre-existing narratives, it really does seem that Nintendo's disillusionment with the core audience has come full circle with their abandonment on Wii U.

This piece also makes me want to get rid of Iwata and have George Harrison run the company. All of Harrison's quotes (that Emily dug up) make him sound so prescient, not just for Cube, but for Wii U and the American market. His quotes reveal lessons, but they apparently went unheard.

“If there’s a shortcoming for us on GameCube, it’s not delivering enough consistent breadth and variety of software. That really is the key. Consumers, I think, are past the time when they buy a system just to get one game. We used to believe that was the case,” says George Harrison.

 

[onipex]

I'll take story with a spoon full of salt. Anyway the real gem are the quotes. Its funny how these quotes can apply to the Wii U and the 3DS launch as well.

Satoru Iwata and Perrin Kaplan blame software droughts after launch period for GameCube’s sales slowing down.

“When we launched GameCube, the initial sales were good, and all the hardware we manufactured at that time were sold through. However, after this period, we could not provide the market with strong software titles in a timely fashion. As a result we could not leverage the initial launch time momentum, and sales of GameCube slowed down


Satoru Iwata and Perrin Kaplan blame software droughts after launch period for GameCube’s sales slowing down.

“When we launched GameCube, the initial sales were good, and all the hardware we manufactured at that time were sold through. However, after this period, we could not provide the market with strong software titles in a timely fashion. As a result we could not leverage the initial launch time momentum, and sales of GameCube slowed down


Reggie says Nintendo thought portability in a console would be a huge selling point — but it wasn’t.

“With GameCube, at the time, portability was thought to be a big factor – that’s why it has a handle. Obviously, that wasn’t the case.”


Reggie talks about the lessons Nintendo learned from GameCube.

“First, we’ve got make sure that the titles in the first six months are strong and can drive sales. We’ve also got to make sure the console is attractive visually. And we’ve got to deliver on the right consumer needs.”

And this one points to a Wii U price cut coming soon.

Satoru Iwata says 3DS price cut was due to lessons learned from GameCube.

“According to Iwata, the Gamecube suffered because Nintendo did not take certain opportunities when they were available. The general feeling within company management is that the console had a chance to succeed, but that chance was not seized upon,” reports Destructoid

 

[A Black Falcon]

You could be right, but look, Rare was a BIG, EXPENSIVE to run studio with a lot of problems and few super attractive projects in the pipeline when Nintendo made this decision. Nintendo would have had to cough up ~200 million (or more) to keep them, and then pay a ton to keep the enterprise going on top of that. That's serious money with, again, no guarantee that the rough patch they were in would end (and in retrospect, it never did).

Rare was a great studio at one point, and I miss them. The videogame fan in me does wish Nintendo kept them and that we were still enjoying the quality of games they put out in their heyday. But to criticizes Nintendo's actions without considering all the facts is a mistake.

No, in terms of game quality, I'd absolutely say that they got over the rough patch, just not for long. Between '05 and '08 Rare released a string of quite good games... the Conker remake, Kameo, and BK: N&B are quite good, Viva Pinata and the expansion for it they did was too (and may have fit well with the Wii audience too...)... sure, PDZ isn't as good as those others, but it's okay anyway. Rare never got back to their N64 levels of production, consistently, but still, they showed there that they could still release several major titles a year. And on Nintendo platforms, PDZ and Kameo would have released earlier (no need to port them twice), and certainly sold a lot better as well. It would have been expensive to keep Rare, but all you need to do is look at the GC and Wii game libraries and you see how badly Nintendo needed a Rare... Retro did not turn out to be that, they release too few games. Retro's quality is there, but not their quantity, even compared to '00s Rare. I think Nintendo lost a lot more money long-term than they didn't spend, overall, when they let Rare go.

 

[JordanN]

“Pride turned to arrogance. Ugly arrogance. Nintendo started to develop contempt for the gaming community. They felt as if they were being betrayed by the gamers they created.

Explains why they region lock their consoles. It's basically their way of saying "fuck you" for supporting them.

And I don't care what millions of excuses they can come up with or the people who defend it.

 

[Version 3.0]

How big of a boost did RE4 bring to Game Cube sales?

Hard to say, but that January, it did worse in the US than the prior January (112k vs 130k).

To be fair, Capcom was really stupid to not only announce a PS2 version 2 months before the Gamecube one went on sale, but also announced it would have exclusive content that the Gamecube didn't have. I think the press release was titled "If you own a PS2, don't buy Resident Evil 4 on the Gamecube".

 

[Jinfash]

The marketing teams started to look at gamer focused strategies with ire and spite.” says Mercury. “The “hardcore” Nintendo audience was equally cast aside. “Why bother? They’re going to buy anything we put out anyway.”

I feel that mentality permeated their most ardent subset of their fanbase..

 

[D.Lo]

I've gone over why before -- basically the biggest hit they took was because Microsoft stole away the "softcore" Western gamer audience, who mostly wanted shooters and sports games and many of whom had owned N64s (Goldeneye!). Nintendo's closest thing to an answer to that was Metroid Prime, but sadly, it just didn't sell as well as Halo, even though I at least think it's a far better game. Ah well. It is true that the first one didn't have multiplayer, and Halo LAN multiplayer was huge.

This is a point I always make too. The Xbox didn't even scratch Sony - all Microsoft did was split the 'second console' market down the middle, taking half of the N64 successor audience. And all this did was lock-in Sony's dominance for the generation.

If you look at market growth, at the end of PS1/N64 it was 60 million to 30 million - a clear winner, but a strong second, and it was even closer in the US (that the PS1 continued to sell well after the PS2 was out, selling another 35-40 million showed what a gap there was in the market). Compare that with the next generation, which finished something like 120m/24m/22m (once again PS2 kept on selling).

Microsoft came in to eat Sony's lunch, but just stole half of Nintendo's. For all the fake-hype and bought press coverage the Xbox sold like shit for a console that lost $4 billion. $166 lost NET per console sold! For the amount of money Microsoft lost, they could have bought 40 million Gamecubes at the $99 retail price.

As such, the Gamecube existed at a time where a massive market distortion occurred. Nintendo made mistakes, but it's not like they were competing against others who were playing fair.

 

[Freezie KO]

I'll take story with a spoon full of salt. Anyway the real gem are the quotes. Its funny how these quotes can apply to the Wii U and the 3DS launch as well.

Satoru Iwata and Perrin Kaplan blame software droughts after launch period for GameCube’s sales slowing down.

“When we launched GameCube, the initial sales were good, and all the hardware we manufactured at that time were sold through. However, after this period, we could not provide the market with strong software titles in a timely fashion. As a result we could not leverage the initial launch time momentum, and sales of GameCube slowed down

It's just so damning. What an example of gross mismanagement. They've been making the same mistakes for over 10 years.

 

[jhmtehgamr20xx]

“Pride turned to arrogance. Ugly arrogance. Nintendo started to develop contempt for the gaming community. They felt as if they were being betrayed by the gamers they created

Come again?

Dat entitlement, man.

Jokes aside, they're probably referring to the NES heads.

 

[XANDER CAGE]

I'm not sure I really appreciate this article's narrative voice, as if Nintendo was this last bastion of innocence ("fun, pure and simple!") and that anything violent, serious, or story-driven isn't "fun."

I'll definitely agree that the gaming industry's facade has become a little grimmer and more violent, but the idea that darker or more violent games are inherently worse and less fun and at fault for Nintendo's woes is really silly. That's like blaming Terminator 2 for Terry Gilliam films not doing well at the box office.

 

[Bgamer90]

Welp, they definitely seem to be acting in a similar fashion now when it comes to the Wii U. The ignorance and stubbornness is amazing.

And based on that, it seems like Reggie needs to go since it seems like he hasn't learned anything from why the GameCube didn't do well (again, based on Wii U).

 

[D.Lo]

To be fair, Capcom was really stupid to not only announce a PS2 version 2 months before the Gamecube one went on sale, but also announced it would have exclusive content that the Gamecube didn't have. I think the press release was titled "If you own a PS2, don't buy Resident Evil 4 on the Gamecube".

Not stupid, it had to be spite or something. Gamecube version missed the holidays for no good reason, it could obviously have been ready a few weeks earlier. And then pre-launch they announced that the PS2 version and said it would be better (of course it looked far worse being a rush job for a less capable console, but besides the point). This of course pissed off the creator of the series who then left.

Why do this if you care about your bottom line? Why not sell as much of one version as you can, then sell your 'ultimate' version again later? They wanted to announce something to make investors happy, but they needn't have delayed the GCN version, and had no reason to say the PS2 version would be better. There had to be some 'making Sony happy' factor to it.

 

[Ragnarok]

This is pretty sad

It's also complete bullshit. Killing people in HD *is* fun. They aren't mutually fucking exclusive.

 

[MercuryLS]

Nintendo Gamecube era fuckups:

1) Console name

2) Console look

3) Console default/marketing color (Purple)

4) No DVD playback support

5) Lack of multi-plat mature titles (especially GTA)

6) Not pushing Rare to continue to make games like Goldeneye and Perfect Dark

 

[Bgamer90]

I'm not sure I really appreciate this article's narrative voice, as if Nintendo was this last bastion of innocence ("fun, pure and simple!") and that anything violent, serious, or story-driven isn't "fun."

I'll definitely agree that the gaming industry's facade has become a little grimmer and more violent, but the idea that darker or more violent games are inherently worse and less fun and at fault for Nintendo's woes is really silly. That's like blaming Terminator 2 for Terry Gilliam films not doing well at the box office.

Yeah, I agree with this. Plus Nintendo was known for violent games too in the past-- I mean, for a long time you had SNES models that came with Killer Instinct.

Another example could be Goldeneye. Don't have to say anything more in terms of that game.

 

[XANDER CAGE]

Yeah, I agree with this. Plus Nintendo was known for violent games too in the past-- I mean, for a long time you had SNES models that came with Killer Instinct.

Another example could be Goldeneye. Don't have to say anything more in terms of that game.

Or the fact that plenty of hyperviolent Japanese games in the 90s became incredibly popular worldwide, like Resident Evil. It's not like the West is solely responsible for darker games.

 

[aronmayo2]

They were unseated from No 1 a long time before the Gamecube. They'll be number 5 or 6 soon if they don't act proactively. There will be some new players soon and they understand the market more than Nintendo does.

 

[A Black Falcon]

This is a point I always make too. The Xbox didn't even scratch Sony - all Microsoft did was split the 'second console' market down the middle, taking half of the N64 successor audience. And all this did was lock-in Sony's dominance for the generation.

If you look at market growth, at the end of PS1/N64 it was 60 million to 30 million - a clear winner, but a strong second, and it was even closer in the US (that the PS1 continued to sell well after the PS2 was out, selling another 35-40 million showed what a gap there was in the market). Compare that with the next generation, which finished something like 120m/24m/22m (once again PS2 kept on selling).

Microsoft came in to eat Sony's lunch, but just stole half of Nintendo's. For all the fake-hype and bought press coverage the Xbox sold like shit for a console that lost $4 billion. $166 lost NET per console sold! For the amount of money Microsoft lost, they could have bought 40 million Gamecubes at the $99 retail price.

As such, the Gamecube existed at a time where a massive market distortion occurred. Nintendo made mistakes, but it's not like they were competing against others who were playing fair.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. It is fairly ironic how MS came in to take out Sony, but all they ended up doing was taking Sega (remember, Xbox as "Dreamcast 2") and half of Nintendo's audience...

 

[ST2K]

Reggie talks about the lessons Nintendo learned from GameCube.

“First, we’ve got make sure that the titles in the first six months are strong and can drive sales. We’ve also got to make sure the console is attractive visually. And we’ve got to deliver on the right consumer needs.”

They have not followed a single point of advice from this for Wii U. They had a games drought for 8 months, the Wii U is virtually indistinguishable from the Wii to the casual consumer eye to the point of confusing it for Wii, and they have failed to deliver on consumer needs across the board.

How incredibly frustrating.

 

[grap3fruitman]

“When we launched GameCube, the initial sales were good, and all the hardware we manufactured at that time were sold through. However, after this period, we could not provide the market with strong software titles in a timely fashion. As a result we could not leverage the initial launch time momentum, and sales of GameCube slowed down.”

No kidding?

 

[Clov]

LOL Nintendo is correct. The hardcore Nintendo audience buys anything with "Nintendo" on it anyways.

If that's true, why didn't Sin and Punishment: Star Successor sell?

Spoiler

why ;-;

 

[Matt]

No, in terms of game quality, I'd absolutely say that they got over the rough patch, just not for long. Between '05 and '08 Rare released a string of quite good games... the Conker remake, Kameo, and BK: N&B are quite good, Viva Pinata and the expansion for it they did was too (and may have fit well with the Wii audience too...)... sure, PDZ isn't as good as those others, but it's okay anyway. Rare never got back to their N64 levels of production, consistently, but still, they showed there that they could still release several major titles a year. And on Nintendo platforms, PDZ and Kameo would have released earlier (no need to port them twice), and certainly sold a lot better as well. It would have been expensive to keep Rare, but all you need to do is look at the GC and Wii game libraries and you see how badly Nintendo needed a Rare... Retro did not turn out to be that, they release too few games. Retro's quality is there, but not their quantity, even compared to '00s Rare. I think Nintendo lost a lot more money long-term than they didn't spend, overall, when they let Rare go.

It took Rare until 2005 (3 years after the buyout) to release a remake of a game that sold horribly on the N64, and it bombed. The only other console game that they release in that time was Ghoulies, which sold horribly. That year they also released PDZ and Kameo, both of which benefited from being launch games but still did not sell fantastically, and both of those were games that were originally meant to come out in 2001. All of Rare's games since then have been massive sales disappoints (save for Kinect Sports).

I don't know where you think this return on investment for Nintendo would have come from. You're only basing that on a feeling that you have. Now, you could be right, who knows? But the kind of investment Nintendo would have had to put in would not have been an easy one to recoup.

 

[A Black Falcon]

It took Rare until 2005 (3 years after the buyout) to release a remake of a game that sold horribly on the N64, and it bombed.

Actually Conker didn't sell badly. It's just that the game was in development for a long time, so they needed higher sales to make a profit than they'd have needed for many other N64 Rare games, and they didn't get that... but it didn't actually sell badly, it did okay.

The Xbox remake may have done worse, I don't remember offhand, but it WAS just a remake. Had they stayed with Nintendo, I bet we'd have gotten a sequel instead of a remake... or maybe a DK64 sequel instead? That game was one of their best-selling N64 games, after all. I'm sure they'd eventually have done another one.

The only other console game that they release in that time was Ghoulies, which sold horribly.

Ghoulies apparently was originally going to be a platformer where you could play as both characters, but they turned it into a beat 'em up during development. Perhaps had Rare stayed with Nintendo, the game might have stayed a platformer, and would have surely been a better game as a result... and sold better as well.

That year they also released PDZ and Kameo, both of which benefited from being launch games but still did not sell fantastically, and both of those were games that were originally meant to come out in 2001. All of Rare's games since then have been massive sales disappoints (save for Kinect Sports).

I don't understand why you think that Rare's poor sales on the Xbox and Xbox 360, consoles which didn't have much of any overlap with Rare's target audience, has anything to do with how vastly much better their games would have sold on Gamecube and Wii... because you're very wrong about that. Look at the chart of Rare game sales, they drop off badly after Rare left Nintendo because they abandoned their audience, and their audience did not follow them.

Also, once again, PDZ and Kameo would not have been 2005 games if Rare hadn't left Nintendo. They would have released probably years before that. Rare did have a tough stretch from 2001-2004, but that tough part would have been better had they not had to switch platforms three times (to GC then to Xbox then to X360)!

I don't know where you think this return on investment for Nintendo would have come from. You're only basing that on a feeling that you have. Now, you could be right, who knows? But the kind of investment Nintendo would have had to put in would not have been an easy one to recoup.

Many of Rare's games with Nintendo sold well. Saying that they would have continued to do so isn't a guess, it's a certain thing. The return on investment would come because Rare's games sold well in Nintendo's audience. They didn't on MS consoles not because all of the games were bad, but because they were targetting the wrong audience. The Conker remake, Kameo, Viva Pinata, and BK:N&B are quite good games, they just weren't right for that audience. They would unquestionably have sold better on Nintendo consoles -- and Nintendo would have spent less for them, too (200 million for Nintendo, versus what was it, 500 million for MS to buy Rare?). And without multiple added console transitions, Rare would have made more games in the '02 to '06 period, as well!

 

[Lumyst]

If that's true, why didn't Sin and Punishment: Star Successor sell?

Spoiler

why ;-;

I would consider myself a Nintendo gamer (I have an Xbox and Xbox 360 though, but they collected dust for the most part). I would pretty much only get Mario and Zelda console titles after the launch of the Wii. My Wii collected dust. I always heard about people bragging their Wiis collected dust. Then I read about the Operation Rainfall games on IGN while checking up on Skyward Sword, and had no idea Nintendo made those kinds of games. I played Xenoblade and loved it. I then found Neogaf.com this year and learned about "overlooked gems" on the Wii.

I bought a bunch of those overlooked games, some of them by Nintendo, I even bought 3rd party games (gasp!). I got Sin and Punishment: Star Successor for $10, played it...

Spoiler

WHY? DAMN IT WHY DIDN'T I KNOW ABOUT THIS GAME, WHY DIDN'T SO CALLED NINTENDO FANS PLAY THIS MASTERPIECE????? :'-(

Nintendo wishes Nintendo gamers only bought Nintendo games, each and every Nintendo game, but I guess they're really only buying Mario games, (let's pray for Wonderful 101 to buck the trend...

Spoiler

:'-(

Oh and on topic, I didn't even know Geist existed until this year too.

 

[A Black Falcon]

Oh and on topic, I didn't even know Geist existed until this year too.

Geist is actually decently good, but yeah, it definitely got lost somehow...

 

[dream]

They have not followed a single point of advice from this for Wii U. They had a games drought for 8 months, the Wii U is virtually indistinguishable from the Wii to the casual consumer eye to the point of confusing it for Wii, and they have failed to deliver on consumer needs across the board.

How incredibly frustrating.

Yup. And they still seem to believe this:

“The “hardcore” Nintendo audience was equally cast aside. “Why bother? They’re going to buy anything we put out anyway.”

Which is hard to disagree with, but it still seems like such an outright contemptuous attitude to have towards their most loyal customers.

 

[Version 3.0]

NoA did fine with what they had to work with, more than half of all Gamecubes sold were sold here.

I don't know about "fine", but yes, they obviously did much better than the other regions: almost 13 million sold in "The Americas", the bulk of which obviously was US (NPD has it at ~11.75m LTD), vs. 4 million in Japan and less than 5 in the rest of the world.

So all the criticism in this thread goes double or more to NCL and NOE - not that I don't have loads of criticism of the Gamecube era, even though it's my favorite console of all time, and I've been gaming since pre-2600 Pong.