“After the SNES generation, something changed in Nintendo. I think they got corrupted by the creativity myth (and the game god mythology).
What is the cure to this? I can think of only one:
Destruction of Nintendo’s market. The worse Nintendo performs increases my chances of receiving another Wii.”
These are your very words, and I do agree (though I think the business side wouldn’t wait that long to react and replace Iwata by someone who would fire Miyamoto).
But with another Wii made, won’t the problem repeats ? It would be a success, and then they go crazy again ! you always tell us to look back in History, then, shall we ? The NES was a huge hit, the SNES strated well and about half of the SNES life cycle, things started to plummet and the N64 killed things for good (or almost, even on the worst console, there are games to be praised or at least with good things).
We got the Wii and DS, then the Wii U and 3DS. It is exactly the same. But worse because it went faster than before and on both markets (home console and handhelds).
So what for next time ? Nintendo is about to die, we have the Next Wii/NES era for both home consoles and handhelds, Nintendo gets to be the strongest on the market again in a few months and… it does not even take a year to go down to ruins again ?
I may sound pessimistic, but even if a new Wii, NES, DS or original Gameboy comes out, I won’t buy it on day one, but I will wait for it to survive two years at least. Then, I would consider buying it, if I have evidence that it will last at least twice that time.
In the Iwata Asks for the 3DS, Miyamoto says that the reason why the Virtual Boy failed was because of the marketing.
Of course, my mouth fell open when I read that. All of us, those of us in the market, we know why the Virtual Boy failed. The Virtual Boy did not do the job we wanted the game console to do. You couldn’t even play the Virtual Boy in multiplayer.
The value of ‘virtual reality’ and ‘3d’ was not felt by the consumer. The consumer understood it but rejected it. Virtual Boy was not how we wanted the future of video games to be. Pure and simple.
We, in the market, know that the Virtual Boy failed because of the philosophy of the system. It did not have value. The marketing was not why the Virtual Boy failed.
The NES, SNES, and Gameboy systems are nothing but boxes we buy in order to get to a game (like Mario). That is the philosophy of the system.
Nintendo does not like this. Nintendo wants the game console to change how we play games. To the distant observer, the N64 and Gamecube may appear like a box you buy just to play a game, but Nintendo intentionally designed them to reshape the definition of gaming. I remember that the Gamecube controller prototype showed off at E3 originally didn’t have a D-pad (which meant no more 2d games).
I believe this philosophy of Nintendo of the hardware being something other than a ‘box’ is pushing away gamers such as myself and makes the platform appear hostile to third party companies. Third party companies have no choice but to adopt Nintendo’s “dogma” because the hardware is designed around that dogma.
Nintendo doesn’t blame the N64 and Gamecube fall on its change of philosophy on consoles. It blames the marketing, the time when the console was released, lack of third parties, etc. etc.
The Gamecube forced Nintendo to change its ways. When designing the Wii, they looked back to the NES. They dismantled the N64 controller (the modern controller) and returned the classic simplistic NES design controller.
The question we are all asking is, “Why wasn’t the DS/Wii philosophy institutionalized at Nintendo? Why was it temporary? And why is Nintendo returning to the Gamecube ways?”
When Nintendo sees the success of the Wii, they believe it was validation of their console philosophy. They honestly believe marketing was the problem all along.
But when we, in the market, see the Wii, we see it is a total rejection of the Gamecube ways. We see it as validation of when home consoles were a box that ported arcade games at home. I see the Wii as a successor to the NES and SNES, not a descendant to the N64 and Gamecube.
When the N64 and Gamecube were being made, Iwata was not president of Nintendo. Reggie Fils-Aime was not president of NOA. Should Nintendo’s market be destroyed like it was with the N64 and Gamecube, only one conclusion can be made: the game console must be a box we buy in order to get to a game.
I’ve been amazed that no one in the game media has called out that Nintendo is following a completely different philosophy with the 3DS and Wii U than they did with the DS and Wii. What is the Wii U but a Super Gamecube with Wii marketing? It even has the Gamecube controller! And what is the 3DS but the Second Coming of the N64? It even has the N64 ports.
Nintendo knows that people like me think of the Wii and DS as successors to the Classic Nintendo systems. But Nintendo’s mistake is to assume people like Malstrom are an island, a minority, some ‘segment’ of the market as if we are some backwards retro crowd. The truth is that we are the majority of the market. It is not 2d Mario that draws me to the game console so much as the console is just a dumb box I buy in order to get to Mario. The Wii U also has 2d Mario but I won’t buy it. Why? Wii U isn’t a dumb box. It is trying to impose its definition of gaming onto all the software. I’d rather buy a Sony or Microsoft system as an alternative.
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