It has to be multiple factors. Perhaps the biggest one is something you’ve already mentioned. The fact that others are made to take the fall for the failure of Miyamoto & Company, has got to be the biggest one. The sales people get replaced and so perhaps there isn’t anybody there in authority with actual longevity and seniority to do pattern recognition and say “Hey, we see a pattern emerge with your games, and it’s that when you get to make the games you enjoy, nobody buys, and when you make the games you hate, people buy them up and even to the point that our hardware sells out.”
Emphasis is the emailer’s.
I suspect the ‘Iwata on the ejection seat’ might refer more to the fact he allowed the 3DS to go into mass production without a second slider than anything else. That is an extremely expensive mistake. If it weren’t for the prior DS and Wii success, Iwata wouldn’t be there today.
I think the ‘Game Industry’ has had it fat and easy because of two main reasons. 1) Constantly prosperous Western economies. 2) Spending ability of gamers greatly increased as child gamers of the 80s and 90s grew up to become adults.
Both 1 and 2 no longer are growing. The only true way to grow is by fighting ‘disinterest’.
This is what I do not understand. Nintendo already demonstrated they understand this with their declaring war against ‘disinterest’ (which created the DS and Wii success stories). Notice how now there is no more talk about ‘disinterest’. They only talk about disinterest is the disinterest of the developers. The disinterest of Aonuma in Classic Zelda. The disinterest of Miyamoto in 2d Mario. The disinterest of Sakamoto in Metroid gameplay.
I believe what happened is that the N64 and Gamecube were largely the child of the ‘creative side’ at Nintendo (as well as some bad ‘red ocean’ strategy). The creative side wanted to make yet another Gamecube and ‘have proper marketing’ (as Miyamoto would say because only bad marketing causes his games to fail. To Miyamoto, the Virtual Boy would be a success if it had ‘proper marketing’).
The business side stepped in and overruled the ‘creative side’. The strategy and direction of Nintendo radically changed with the Seventh Generation. ‘Disinterest’ because the focal point and not ramming 3d down people’s throats. The DS and Wii became success stories. Because of this success, the business side was satisfied and allowed the creative side to drive the next system.
And what do we get? More 3d. More Gamecube-esque design. In the Creative Side’s viewpoint, such as Miyamoto’s, the difference between the Wii and Gamecube was only a matter of marketing and accessibility. With the current marketing of Nintendo unable to really turn 3DS into a phenomenon, the issue isn’t the marketing. The issue is becoming more and more about the Creative Side of Nintendo. We got a hint of this when Miyamoto begging people to buy Mario 3d Land in the Iwata Asks so the creative side wouldn’t have to do things they didn’t want to do.
It’s going to be very interesting to see what Nintendo does from here on out. With the macro-environment changing, they literally cannot afford to keep making only 3d Mario and 3d orientated systems. Some businesses (like newspapers) decided to ignore the macro-environment changes and just plow on arrogantly ahead… to their eventual demise. Will Nintendo do this? Or will they adopt the DS/Wii direction again? I suspect Nintendo knew there would be a decline with the 3DS and Wii U (note that the titles of the consoles fits Miyamoto’s belief that the ‘marketing’ was wrong for the Gamecube). They were hoping the decline would be ‘small’ where they could readjust things and hopefully get their 3d output systems selling (and make the games they want to make). But the decline is too steep and had to be surprising.
You know what I think is really animating Nintendo? I think they already have the Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and even Twelfth generation consoles already planned out.
“No way!” says the reader.
We do have proof about the Ninth Generation console. Iwata has already said that the Ninth Generation Nintendo home console will use 3d output like the 3DS. What that implies is that the ‘independent screen’ on the controller with the Wii U is a foothold for it to become a ‘3d output’ screen. It is too expensive now to do all that. But in seven year, it may not be expensive.
Nintendo plays with “technology” all the time. The problem is that the costs have not come down enough to mass market this “technology”. Notice how with Iwata Asks interviews, they always say how now the technology has come down where they can make this. This means they have been playing with it and toying with it for a LONG time outside the public’s eye.
I’m convinced Nintendo believes the destiny of their consoles is to go 3d output. If the market disagrees with them, then the market is wrong and must be made to understand the value. Therefore, according to Miyamoto, the problem is always the marketing.