Hello Sean
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It appears Rawmeat Cowboy is feeling more alienated by Nintendo’s attitude than their business decisions (such as not releasing games like Xenoblade).Here is a quote from RC: I didn’t need to agree with them, but at least there were some points of view or explanations for what was going on. This is the first time where I don’t agree with Nintendo’s decision, they haven’t explained themselves, and fans the world over were brushed aside. It really irks me to see that happen to all of us.
It isn’t that Nintendo is doing something he disagees with, it is Nintendo’s attitude toward their fans that is setting him off. While some people will argue, “These are niche JRPG games…”, let me make an argument.
What about Nintendo’s original core audience? The games that originally turned Nintendo into a powerhouse were games like Donkey Kong, Super Mario Brothers, Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and Super Mario Kart. Nintendo owes its entire success to the customers who played and purchased these games.
As Donkey Kong’s gameplay core was carried over into Super Mario Brothers, the only game series that actually respects the core customers is Super Mario Kart. Super Mario Kart, especially with the DS and Wii versions, remembered what made the series popular in the first place and tried to get back to some of those fundamentals (as well as revisiting old tracks in the new games).
Mario and Zelda are facing decline. The only upshot to Mario was the 2d Mario games which Miyamoto appears to have declared war against. We can see Nintendo’s attitude at work when the Tanooki suit, giant world, all the stuff fans want somehow ends up in 3d Mario yet 2d Mario gets nothing… except Miis which is an insult. And Nintendo executives keep telling us that the Zelda customers who originally made Zelda a success had no idea what they were playing in the gold cartridge. Yet, Zelda as a brand is self-destructing faster than anything. Wait, that is not true. Metroid self-destructed faster than anything. Fans of Metroid were shown how Nintendo really thinks of them with Metroid: Other M.
These aren’t ‘niche games’. These are the reasons why Nintendo is no longer a toy and card company anymore. Yet, Nintendo’s rapid decline correlates cleanly the more they go against their ‘core audience’.
Today, the N64/Gamecube crowd is considered Nintendo’s ‘core audience’. But Nintendo will go against them just like the original Nintendo gamers. You see that HD Zelda teaser for the Wii U? Watch it become a cell-shaded mess and nothing like the teaser when Wii U Zelda is made.
The Wii and DS’s success is almost entirely dependent on Nintendo appealing to the original Core Audience. 2d Mario on the Wii? Wii sells 4 million in a month, and Super Mario Brothers 5 becomes the best selling home console game in Japan for the past twenty years. The secret to Wii Sports success? Basing the game off the NES sports games (such as the golf courses from NES Golf).
I’ve noticed Nintendo (such as Iwata) become very hostile to the idea that Wii/DS explosion was due, in large part, to the Original Core Audience. The reason for this hostility is that if that interpretation is correct, everything Nintendo thinks about itself and its twenty year console history is wrong.
What is missing from Nintendo’s perspective is the fact that entertainment businesses operate based solely on the pleasure of the audience. The customers who are responsible for making Donkey Kong a success, Super Mario Brothers a success, Wii Sports a success, have the power to destroy it all. Nintendo keeps acting like its developers like Miyamoto have the ‘power’. They don’t have any power whatsoever. They only serve or not serve. The true Lords and Masters of Gaming, who must be pleased and satisfied, are the customers, are the gamers. It is they who are the true Game Gods.
Gamers are referred to as a landscape, like a plot of land for a console company to ‘capture’ or ‘control’. When they talk about ‘market’, they do not refer to Human beings who have a mind and will of their own. They talk of the ‘market’ like it consists of pieces of land full of passive cattle.
Let us look upon the market as Human beings, as gamers as being people of a will and spirit of their own. The history of gaming then takes a different tone.
What caused Atari to succeed where other companies failed? The gamers chose Atari to succeed.
And what caused the Crash? Who destroyed Atari? It was the gamers. The gamers shoved E.T. back at the company, refused to buy that awful Pac-Man ‘port’, and it was the gamers who were responsible for destroying Atari. When people say, “the market destroyed the company”, what else can they mean but flesh and blood human beings we call gamers?
The crash of Atari was a great turning point in gaming. Gaming would not become like movies and music to be controlled and corralled. The only reason why the ‘game market’ is “hard” is because gamers cannot be co-opted.
What made Donkey Kong a success? Who is actually responsible for launching Miyamoto’s career? It has to be the people who originally played Donkey Kong in the arcades. Who is responsible for Mario and Zelda of becoming phenomenons. It isn’t Miyamoto, it was the gamers who made those games a success.
What made the Wii a success? Was it the marketers? Was it the game makers? Or was it the gamers, the actual customers? Note how the ‘viral success’, which is a gamer selling a game to another gamer, is wrongly credited to the marketer or game developer.
The entire concept of selling to the masses depends on seeing the masses as equals, as flesh and blood people with gaming needs of their own. The concept of selling to the masses is NOT about a developer thinking he is an Angel of Creativity hovering above a lower, pitiful, retarded jumble of Human beings. The reason why the ‘casual games’ ended up being so dumb is because of this incorrect attitude of the relationship between the game maker and the customer.
It is amusing to me that these people do not realize their future is in the customers’ hands. PlayStation 3 failed because Sony pissed people off. Nintendo is pissing people off, and there is reason why their company is currently crashing down all around them. Eventually, the pain of destruction will be greater than the pain of humility. And only then, will Nintendo choose to pick up the pieces and act as a servant to the customers instead of the master. And seeing how it took two or three generations of free-fall decline before Nintendo realized it needed to pick up the pieces with the Wii, it may be the Tenth or Eleventh Generation before Nintendo decides to do things correctly again.
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