Here is the video of the financial briefing for Nintendo with English translation. I actually watched it all. I want to make three points.
The first is that while every market is a little different (dance games selling large in America and in some European countries), there are two types of Nintendo games that do not stop selling in all markets. One is Mario Kart. The other is 2d Mario, i.e. the game Miyamoto doesn’t want to make. NSMB DS and NSMB Wii keep selling. Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 have vanished from the charts. I only saw Mario Galaxy 2 on the Spanish chart, and it was near the bottom.
“Clearly, this means we need even more 3d Mario!” Miyamoto would probably say after viewing those charts. Insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result.
The second, and main point, is that the financial briefing reveals Nintendo is in denial. When Iwata begins talking about the future prospects of the 3DS, listen carefully. Iwata admits that sales of the 3DS dropped too fast. This didn’t occur just in Japan but in Europe and America. Why?
Iwata admits Nintendo thought the ‘value’ of no-glasses 3d would excite customers. So Iwata is saying Nintendo is looking at ways to spread the ‘value’ of 3d output as well as spread the ‘value’ of Augmented Reality software and… Spotpass. Yeah.
Customers DO understand the value of 3d output. They just don’t value it. Nintendo is in denial because when customers are clearly showing their disinterest, Nintendo is saying, “We must communicate the value to them.” They get it! Customers get 3d! They understand it! They just don’t want it!
Sorry to sound like a broken record, but it is like 3d Mario. Customers understand 3d Mario. We get it! The masses just don’t want to play it. They think 2d Mario is fun while 3d Mario is not. Constantly trying to show these customers the ‘value’ of 3d Mario has never worked. Ever. Yet, Nintendo is ignoring these CLEAR signals from the market.
Why? If the market said about the DS, “We understand touchscreen gaming. We just don’t like it,” Nintendo would have no problem creating non-touchscreen games.
If the market said about the Wii, “We understand motion gaming. We just don’t like it,” Nintendo would have no problem creating non-motion control games.
But now the market is saying about the 3DS, “We understand 3d output. We just don’t like it.” Nintendo SHOULD have no problem putting out software that doesn’t try to force 3d. But Nintendo is not doing this. Nintendo is giving the market the middle finger and saying, “You must buy our 3d products.”
Folks, do you know how bad this has gotten? Look at the so-called ‘3d Classics’. These are NES or other oldschool games. Yet, they are being retooled for ‘3d’. No one wants this. In fact, it even comes across as insulting. Why the hell are you messing with the classics? Do you think a game like Pac-Man, when made with 3d output, gives it any additional value? NO! It is insulting in two ways. First, it is insulting because you are messing with a classic. Second, it is insulting because you are trying to sell an old game at a ridiculous increased cost by adding nothing that altered the gameplay.
Just as an unhealthy ideologue will re-write history to the ‘correct view’, Nintendo is so unhealthily 3d obsessed they appear to be re-writing oldschool games to be ‘properly 3d’. It is bad enough that the entire console’s identity is 3d, but why must you mess with the games of the 1980s and 1990s? Who do you think you are, George Lucas putting in more special effects in the original trilogy? Do you realize how much Lucas is hated for doing that?
And the third point was when Iwata mentioned Ocarina of Time as one of the games coming out soon. When he mentioned it, he stopped, and said, “When Zelda: Ocarina of Time originally came out, it took the world by storm.”
That is not true. Absolutely, that is not the case.
If Ocarina of Time ‘took the world by storm’, then why was the N64 such a failure of a console? The myth that Ocarina of Time is this mass market game has been created by obsessed Zelda fans who, most of them, had Ocarina of Time as their very first Zelda game. Ocarina of Time had no competition on its console unlike previous Zeldas. Ocarina also was the GTA 3 before GTA 3 came out. Ocarina of Time’s sales are very weak compared to other adventure games that have come out.
There are two realities. The reality that Iwata and Nintendo lives in is that the 3d Revolution of the N64 was all wonderful and the only issue was to make it more accessible. Hence, 3d Mario must keep being made over and over and over until the market finally ‘gets it’.
The other reality was that the 3d Revolution of the N64 was one of the worst things ever to occur to video games. The core market of Nintendo fans rejected the N64 causing the N64 sales to fall apart everywhere but America. Nintendo’s market was reduced to kids because only kids had the patience to play these 3d games.
These two realities are two different visions of video games and go beyond the N64 both forward in the future and backward in the past. In Iwata’s reality, the Wii sold only because it was ‘surprising’ and created a new feeling just like the N64 did. In my reality, the Wii sold only because it was a rejection of the N64/Gamecube values and the Wii remote was a middle finger to the Game Industry. The Wii explosion had populist streaks in it.
Do not think of ‘Console War’ any longer. Dismiss the idea of ‘fighting against disinterest’. The true war is between these two realities.
Iwata’s reality is called ‘The New School’.
Malstrom’s reality is called ‘The Old School’.
Only one reality can be correct. These two contexts are at epic war with one another now.
The denial I am referring to with Nintendo is that they keep rejecting the existence of my reality, the reality of the ‘Old School’. Anything that contradicts the ‘New School’, Iwata shoots it down.
An example is the big spike in hardware sales caused by Super Mario Brothers 5. This is a clear victory and absolute illustration that the Old School Reality of video games is the correct one. Iwata, however, kept rejecting it. To this day, he even says the reason why it sold was due to ‘nostalgia’.
Contrast this to Ocarina of Time port to the 3DS. Iwata cannot contain his excitement for it. If it makes huge sales numbers, Iwata will declare it is because consumers really want 3d. Iwata will never say Ocarina of Time sold because of ‘nostalgia’ even though it is a port of an old game. Bizarrely, he said Super Mario Brothers 5 sold due to ‘nostalgia’ even though it was a completely new game. The ‘nostalgia’ argument might work with Super Mario Collection, but not a brand new 2d Mario game.
Both the Old School and New School are taking credit for the Wii revolution. The Old School says the Wii sold because it got back to the ‘old school values’. New School says the Wii sold because it was ‘surprising’.
Old School and New School cannot both co-exist. One must be destroyed.
The 3DS is clearly the child of the New School. The Old School cannot claim any of it. Despite 3DS sales not going the way Nintendo wants, does Nintendo decide that it should perhaps change direction in an Old School way? No. Nintendo is so firmly in the camp of the New School that it will keep trying to ‘show customers the value’. They hadn’t stopped attempting ‘to show the value’ with endless 3d Mario games, so why would Nintendo stop now?
Nintendo would find it acceptable for Sony or Microsoft to be market leaders because that would mean the New School way works. However, the game market is in overall decline and has been so in quite some time (which the Old School blames on the New School direction for making games lame).
The biggest fear of Nintendo is that Sean Malstrom is right. It is the fear that the Old School way is the true reality of video games. The question is whether Nintendo will admit this before they destroy their company.