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Email: Nintendo still has a potentially serious problem…

seanmalstrom
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A big problem that I had with the Wii in hindsight is that it seemed Nintendo wanted to only make the games they wanted and left the actual “games people actually wanted to play” type of software up to third party developers.  The problem was that the third parties mostly snubbed the Wii and didn’t understand what its audience wanted.  Nintendo did everything they could to entice third parties to plug in the holes that they didn’t want to, but for the most part it didn’t happen.  And when Nintendo had it within their ability to easily fill in a few of those gaps with The Last Story and Xenoblade, they simply sat on their hands.

 
I see why you’re saying that the Wii U could be like the SNES in terms of performance from Nintendo, but a MASSIVE difference between now and then is that back then the rest of the game industry mostly understood and adhered to the console gaming context.  Third parties were releasing large amounts of console games, not just dumbed down PC gaming ports, which is what the majority of third party games today represent.  The game industry back during the SNES wasn’t in the steep decline that it is today.  Back then while Nintendo slowed down on their software output, third parties were picking up the slack by a great deal, for both the SNES and the Genesis (and of course the Genesis got all the sports game).
 
But that’s not the case today.  Back when the Wii came out third parties were in a much more advantageous position with Sony and Microsoft as they could threaten to freeze one or the other out (as Kotick threatened to do with Sony).  They couldn’t do that with Nintendo so even while they were dumping garbage onto the Wii, Nintendo was still sitting pretty. Where Nintendo screwed up was not taking it upon themselves to fill in the gaps in their software variety themselves.  They sort of did that with Xenoblade but then they refused to release it outside of Japan and Europe at first.  The 360 got quite a few RPGs on its system early in its lifespan.  They weren’t great but they were SOMETHING.
 
But now the game industry is in major decline.  We got idiots talking about Unreal Engine 4 and the next generation of game consoles when many of these developers are barely breaking even on their games now.  Even worse is that many of them either don’t understand the console gaming context or do but don’t give a damn anymore.  Nintendo can no longer rely on the game industry to fill in the gaps of their software variety because nobody is going to, or going to be able to whether try to or not (because they lack the arcade gaming context).  Nintendo is going to have to get off their ass and actually start making the games that they were expecting the game industry to make for them.  They’re gonna have to make the sports game.  They’re going to have to make the FPS games.  They’re going to have to make the open-world games.  They’re gonna have to make the online games.  But because they spent all their years focused on 3D gaming they are well behind the curve in regards to a lot of these types of games today.
 
If Nintendo is serious about online, they need to show me they care.  Make our digital game purchases account-based.  And then show us you are serious about online gaming.  While Nintendo can fall on Dragon Quest X to do that job for them with the Wii U (maybe…), that will only fly in Japan.  Since Dragon Quest isn’t as big over here, it’s going to take something else to really show us Nintendo cares.  Maybe Mii Universe is them trying to take a more aggressive approach with the WiiWare games in seeing what kind of gameplay people want and flexing the game development muscles they let waste away for years now?  But I think much of Nintendo’s complacency when it comes to making games we want partly comes from them expecting the third parties to do it for them.  But that sure as hell isn’t going to happen this time.  Nintendo is going to have to pull up their pants and do it themselves.  And given their track record in the last 15+ years, I don’t care what they say, I am still very dubious that they will do that.
 
While I’m glad you’re being more optimistic about Wii U’s chances, I’m still very much doubt the longevity of the Wii U’s software support.  If Nintendo is just treating it as they did with the WIi–a means to ease us into playing 3D games–then it doesn’t matter what Nintendo does, the system is still doomed to fail because they won’t be putting their all into it.  It’ll simply be “Another step towards 3D.” instead of them trying to make an awesome game console that people will want to keep playing years from now.What you’re saying is that Nintendo got arrogant. In 2006, Iwata said: “We must not become arrogant.” Yet, that is what happened.One increasing point of frustration is Nintendo’s “integrated hardware and software”. The reason why consumers buy new hardware is because computer technology gets better and games look and play better on new hardware. Nintendo sees new hardware as another way for them to ‘be creative with integrated hardware and software’. Nintendo seems to be making hardware for their appetites, not for consumers’ appetites. And after a few years, Nintendo becomes ‘bored’ with the hardware and then comes up with another ‘integrated hardware and software’ console. This is not what we want.

The issue of stewardship seems to be the biggest issue among gamers. People are not uncertain about the Wii U, they are uncertain about how Nintendo will approach Wii U in the future. Game console hardware does not exist so Shigeru Miyamoto can have recess. Game consoles exist so we can have recess.

Nintendo annoyingly puts out a few games for the first years of the console and then surrenders it to third parties. They stagger their handheld and home console so they bounce between the two.

With the SNES, there were Nintendo published games that came out much later.

(SNES was launched in 1991. We start three years later. The reason why you don’t see games like Super Mario Kart or Link to the Past is because they were already out prior to 1994.)

These are the games Nintendo published:

1994

Donkey Kong Country
Illusion of Gaia
Ken Griffey Junior (baseball game)
Stunt Race FX
Super Metroid
Super Pinball
Super Punch-Out
Tetris 2
Tetris and Dr. Mario
Tin Star (little known sheriff game played with SNES controller or super scope)
Uniracers (oh yeah)
Wario’s Woods

1995

Donkey Kong Country 2
Earthbound
Killer Instinct
Kirby’s Avalanche
Kirby’s Dream Course
Toy Story
Yoshi’s Island 2

1996

Donkey Kong Country 3
Ken Griffey Junior’s Run (more baseball)
Kirby Super Star
Maiu Mallard in Cold Shadow (A Donald Duck platformer)
Pinnochio (apparently, Nintendo began publishing Disney games)
Street Fighter Alpha 2
Super Mario RPG
Tetris Attack

1997

Kirby’s Dream Land 3
Space Invaders (yes, Nintendo published this one)

What to make of this? Obviously, Nintendo was publishing some games that other publishers were somewhat holding back on just to keep breathing life into the console such as the Disney games or Super Street Fighter 2 Alpha. There are also too many Kirby games and the Donkey Kong Country games, while cool, were Rare games.

Nintendo did publish Illusion of Gaia and Earthbound. Nintendo also put out games like Yoshi’s Island 2 and Tetris Attack. These are the waning years of the system.

Nintendo would be in a better position concerning the competition if they stopped thinking of their consoles as frontloaded. Pokemon changed everything for the Gameboy and the DS erupted after it had launched.

I don’t think anything has changed since decades ago (except the macro elements). There were third party PC game companies back then as there are today. The NES had PC game ports from Ultimas, M.U.L.E., Shadowgate, and others. So did Sega Genesis and the SNES.

By all accounts, the Game Industry is shrinking (in great part due to the macro issues such as a bad economy). A critical thinker would say, “Nintendo has proven they can grow the market. PC game companies-on-console have shown they cannot. Why is it assumed the Nintendo console, which obviously has Nintendo games, will have a bad future while a console, stuffed with PC game companies-on-console, be rosy? Sony and Microsoft will still be cannibalizing each other as well.”

I think the Game Industry, meaning the cabal of large software entertainment companies, are in Big Trouble. No one seemed excited about Microsoft or Sony’s press conferences. If all those games were on the Wii U, let’s just say, would that change anything?

When we talk about third party games, it would be more useful to deal with more specifics instead of abstractions. Nothing has been announced except the third party games we saw at Microsoft and Sony conferences (which everyone says sucked). It might be better to wait until the games exist in reality before we see what platforms they are on. For all we know, they could be on all platforms including the ipad. Not only are people comparing Wii U to imaginary consoles, they are creating imaginary third party games that are announced no where.

I expect the macro elements to put pressure on all publishers to attempt to get revenue off of every console possible. The economy is going to get worse, not better.

From a financial and market context, I see Nintendo in a far better position than Microsoft and Sony (their gaming divisions) as well as most third party companies. While people are pointing out disinterest in some of Nintendo’s stuff, there is also disinterest rising with these Game Industry games.

With these economic conditions, everyone is going to be a loser. But who is going to be the biggest loser? Look at what happened with Sony and the Vita.

While the spotlight is on Nintendo since they are launching a console, big trouble abounds for the other console makers as well as various companies. Out of all generations, the 8th Generation will have more in common with the latter part of the 2nd Generation.

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