While creativity in games has been in decline, creativity has soared through journalists and analysts. In school, if you ever took a creative writing class, you know that it means to write whatever you wish as ‘fiction’ has less rules than ‘non-fiction’.
Analysts have given up analyzing in any meaningful way and have resorted to creative analysis. What is creative analysis? It is playing make-believe that the sales data is something else entirely and then analyzing that. Since the market has decided not to cooperate with analysts, the analysts have now decided to no longer cooperate with the market. They will now make up stuff. The market says that the Wii sold more units in December 2009 than any month in the history of NPD. And then, the market said that the Wii sold out early in 2010. This, however, does not fit into the template for our analysts. So they make-believe the sales data was something else instead. Not once has any analyst acknowledged or illustrated Nintendo altering its strategy toward ‘User Generated Content’ during 2008 to 2009 and, very creatively, say this strategy was the same one used in 2006-2007. Now, why do they do this? As a Wedbush Securities analyst keeps talking, he is saying, literally, that he intends to manipulate the players in the market, e.g. “Nintendo did not listen to me in wanting to make a Wii HD.” The analyst’s role is not to manipulate the market but to analyze it. This hints at scandalous behavior at Wedbush Securities suggesting the company is making business deals with players in the market and are fabricating ‘creative analysis’ in order to re-shape investment in the market to be more beneficial for these companies.
What has become more prevalent lately is creative journalism. Objectiveness used to be defined as being tethered to facts. Today, objectiveness now means to be defined as being tethered to the cause. An example of creative journalism was to paint a picture that Nintendo was going to go out of business prior to releasing the DS and Wii. There were no financial facts about this. But this did not matter. Creativity is very important to journalists these days. Who are you, the impudent reader, to stand in their way?
Check out this shining example of creative journalism. Since there is no ‘war’ between Apple and Nintendo, creative journalists are just creating it anyway.
Nintendo is preparing to unleash the full force of its development and marketing artillery against Apple after profits tumbled at the Japanese giant for the first time in six years.
Nintendo, following the concepts of Blue Ocean Strategy, does not see itself in a ‘war’ at all and the thinking of its executives, at the highest levels, does not talk about ‘marketing artillery’ or ‘unleash the full force’. Nintendo is not Genghis Khan.
Now, there have been many statements made by the top executives of Nintendo. Quoting any of these would upset the ‘creative journalism’ and ruin the immersion. Therefore, implications of behavior are made up instead.
The reversal of fortunes, though flagged in advance by the company, throws the spotlight on threats to what once seemed a bulletproof business.
The reversal of fortunes occurred with the release of Super Mario Brothers 5 which caused the Wii to be sold out in the United States. However, the creative journalist has decided to make up another reversal of fortune entirely.
Satoru Iwata, the Nintendo president, is understood to have told his senior executives recently to regard the battle with Sony as a victory already won and to treat Apple, and its iPhone and iPad devices, as the “enemy of the future”
Look at that! Quotation marks for a statement that cannot be verified but is only ‘understood’. What does ‘understood’ mean? It is another way of saying ‘I think’. This offers countless paths towards creative journalism.
I can do it too: Satoru Iwata, the Nintendo president, is understood to have told his senior executives that chocolate is yummy and that lollipops “are stupid and need to be wiped from the face of the earth.”
That, say analysts, may be premature. Last Christmas, almost twice as many Wii consoles were sold in the US as the PlayStation3. But games developers increasingly see Sony’s machine as having a large enough base of users to justify not making titles for the Nintendo machine.
Who are these game developers? It doesn’t say. And seeing how many game developers already do not make titles for ‘the Nintendo machine’ (why not just call it the Wii? I suppose ‘Nintendo machine’ sounds more ominous), not making games for the Wii would be status quo. But creative journalism means we can make things up.
Sony and Microsoft are also making their own forays into family-oriented gaming and the iPhone has emerged as a formidable competitor for Nintendo in the handheld gaming arena once dominated by the DS console.
This would certainly be news to Nintendo. There is no sales data to back any of this stuff up.
In order for Apple to compete against Nintendo, Apple would have to have first party game developers. This is not happening and will never happen.
Apple’s devices are the equivalent of VCRs and Walkmans. Nintendo, however, not only makes their VCRs and Walkmans, they have the equivalent of movie studios to make movies specifically for their own VCR player and their own musicians to make music specifically for their own Walkman. And Nintendo entertainment cannot be played on any other media playing device.
The desire for an Apple vs. Nintendo war in the handheld space is a product of de-arrangement from psychotic Apple fanboys who have been reeling since Microsoft bounced back with Windows 7. By their own logic, why isn’t the Macintosh in competition with the Wii? Or the NES for that matter?
PC gaming is not seen as a competitor to console companies for a reason. The same applies for handheld gaming and handheld computers.
Sources close to the Kyoto-based company describe a mood of concern as the hardware and software divisions race to restore the capacity to “surprise” — a traditional feature of Nintendo games that Mr Iwata holds dear.
Creative journalism also has creative sources. This ‘concern for surprise’ has been the mainstay at Nintendo since before the DS came out as Nintendo believed the games market was shrinking due to disinterest. But creative journalism wants to write it about concern about Apple and Sony instead.
The company’s recent strategy has centred on creating devices aimed not just at children and dedicated — generally male — gamers, but at the whole family. Two years ago, the company claimed to have permanently altered the demographics of video games by raising the average age and the gender mix of gamers. Unfortunately, the very people it claimed to have converted — high-school girls and men aged between 30 and 40 — reported that they would rather have an iPhone than a DS in their pockets or handbags.
Claimed? Creative journalism ignores data it doesn’t like and reports as fact as data it does like. A report that people would rather have an iPhone than a DS in their pocket? Nice report. But apparently the report was wrong because the sales data shows that isn’t happening.
Although the company ended the 2009 financial year squarely in the black, analysts described Nintendo’s profit slide as a “triple punch”.
Who are these analysts? Why are they ‘unnamed’? Analysts love getting their name in stories so why isn’t this happening? I have a hunch that these ‘analysts’ post regularly on a message forum somewhere.
Despite selling over 10 million copies of the latest Mario title for the Wii console, the pipeline of new games has stopped delivering the sort of blockbusters that drove console sales to record levels in the first two years after its launch. Nintendo has also suffered from the financial crisis. Households around the world spent most of last year in full belt-tightening mode, and remain cautious about buying games with a relatively short playing-life.
This passage is a massive amount of fail. Deploying creative journalism, the writer decides to just ignore Super Mario Brothers 5 as if doesn’t exist. It is like saying, aside from Wii Sports, Wii Play, Mario Kart Wii, and all other Nintendo titles selling more than ten million, Nintendo has no blockbusters! Oh no!
But what is fail is that the creative journalism wasn’t creative enough. He forgot about Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit Plus that have sold over ten million which, even by pretending Super Mario Brothers 5 doesn’t exist, still shows Nintendo had recent blockbusters.
But the most striking decline was in sales of the consoles. Although both the Wii and DS have outsold their Sony and Microsoft counterparts, the lower technology of the Nintendo machines is starting to show. With far less processing power than either the PlayStation3 or Xbox 360, the Wii is suffering. Its sales were 21 per cent down in the year to March 31. Net profits at Nintendo, meanwhile, fell to Y228.64 billion (£1.6 billion) from Y279.09 billion.
Creative journalism loves correlation. Saying Wii sales declined because of the Wii’s lower processing power is like saying the Wii declined because it has a funny name. You could slap on any correlation an attach it. You could say Wii suffered because it had motion controls and PS3 and 360 did not. Anything could be inserted.
The reason why there is creative journalism or creative analysis is not to report on Nintendo but to influence Nintendo. But this ‘influence’ isn’t for Nintendo’s benefit. It is for other companies. It is like when they influenced Nintendo to think it needed to be ‘more mature’ on the Gamecube and that didn’t help Nintendo at all. Or that Nintendo needed to make more ‘hardcore games’ and that definitely didn’t help.
One creative analyst from Wedbush Securities is complaining that Nintendo refused to put out a new console because he told them to. Creative journalists from all other are complaining that Nintendo doesn’t make games based solely on their tastes.
The only thing these journalists and analysts are truly creative about is their delusions.
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