Why Nintendo has a credibility problem

Everyone is noticing Nintendo putting out contradicting statements. Look at this Fischer interview:

Ashley: So the Wii can act as a Nintendo encyclopedia as it were?

Laurent: I would be even more generous; it is a video game encyclopedia as we are not just releasing Nintendo games on it. I like this idea of a video game library, but not the word ‘museum’ as its not a museum, its alive. You can compare it to the movie industry; before having DVDs it was difficult as you had to catch the movie in the cinema and when it was gone it was gone forever. Of course you had the option to get all of these things pirated at the market or whatever but it’s not so easy. So here you have access to all this history and you can make a real journey through the history and see how clever the people were who made these games within the video games history we are all very happy to be part of.

That sounds great! Wonderful! Customers go “rah! rah!”

Then he says this:

Ashley: Since the DSi was announced fans have hoped for a DS Virtual Console. Have there been any discussions at Nintendo to introduce this?

Laurent: We have no plans to introduce the Virtual Console for the DSi.

Ashley: What are your reasons for this?

Laurent: It is not within our current strategy.

How can Nintendo be for a “Game Library” with VC on the Wii but not on the DS? Nintendo is contradicting itself and giving no reason for customers to pay attention anymore to these ‘interviews’.

Of course, the ‘strategy’ is a defensive one to make sure that iPhone and PSP don’t take all the smaller game developers as well as offer ‘teeny tiny games’ aside the usual handheld games.

However, this is the wrong strategy. The only right strategy is to delight customers. Customers are saying to Nintendo to do a handheld VC and Nintendo is saying, “Screw you!”

If WiiWare had come out the day the Wii launched, I doubt we would even have a VC in the first place. Nintendo has to hate the VC. It keeps their lawyers busy. Many games have to be re-rated by the ESRB. All the money it generates goes straight to NCL.

Where is Super Smash Brothers 64? Where is Super Mario Kart? Where is Yoshi’s Island? Reggie said the VC would be used to put up old games when there were long stretches in releases. Well, there have been long stretches in releases for the entire 2009. The release of VC games has been very poor.

And how is it that there can be like five different versions of Street Fighter 2 on the VC but only three Mega Man games as well as no Gargoyle’s Crest and other Capcom classics? VC isn’t being managed well at all.