Always a pleasure.
I saw Iwata talk to Tezuka about NSMB U in the E3 video.
I wish people wouldn’t ask such a broad question (what did they do right and what did they do wrong?). Why not ask me what I’d do if I was in Iwata’s place?
The Wii U is too bloated. There is too much junk. You can tell how the DS was a simple device but with the 3DS, it all has this crap in it. Aside from the (omg) 3d, it has cameras, street pass, and all this other functionality that even I don’t know (and I have a blog about Nintendo). The Wii U also has too much junk in it. It has cameras, near field sensor, stylus, etc. etc. etc.
Like the NES, the Wii was a very simple device. The reason why Nintendo is having problems explaining the product is because complex products are bad products. I wouldn’t be surprised that Nintendo’s development side got their feelings hurt when people made fun of the Wii and called it ‘simple’ and ‘using low grade parts on purpose’. Now, they are overloading the hardware with all these gadgets and functionality.
Nintendo’s software also has this problem. While I have barely played Pikmin, does anyone know what Pikmin 3 is about? Can you explain it in two sentence?
The fundamental basis for selling to the public was found when Nolan Bushnell replaced Computer Space with PONG. PONG’s instructions could be explained in one sentence: “Hit ball for high score” (paraphrasing). When you look at games that sell a ton, they are extremely simple… at least at the beginning. Diablo 3, for example, is nothing but moving the mouse cursor and clicking. There is more to the game than that, but that is all you need to know at the beginning.
Even NSMB U has so much bloat in it. I don’t even understand the ‘features’ in the game such as the U Pad’s touch platforms. With Super Mario Brothers 3, even though that game was far more complex than SMB 1, people identified it with “Mario can fly now! I must buy this game immediately.” And Super Mario World was identified with Mario sitting on Yoshi. Mario riding Yoshi was what people saw the game as about. Super Mario Brothers 5 had people see many people playing Mario together.
And don’t get me started on Nintendo Land. I can’t even begin to explain those games. Wii Sports could be easily identified since everyone understood the game of bowling or golf or tennis. But what the hell is Ninja Stars or that Link game? I watch and read all this promo crap, and even I can’t tell.
As Vizeo says, marketing should just say what the product does and that is that. But Nintendo is having trouble saying what the product does because, like Sony with their PS3, they tried to get into ‘depth’ and only made an engineering trainwreck. If a product is too complicated to explain, it is too complicated to sell.
You know what I keep trying to point out? Just because NES games, the games that created the Mario, Zelda, and Metroid franchises, had simple rules didn’t mean the games were simple. You feel like you can do so much in those games. Then when it comes to 3d Mario, Aonuma Zelda, etc. they throw all this convoluted complexity at you (like the story, like all the moves you can do in 3d, etc.) that by the time the game gets going, the game is over. The vast majority of Nintendo games now are tutorials. After 1-1 in Super Mario Brothers, you were on your own. You already had all the power-ups and mechanics introduced. I remember being upset when I first played Super Mario World in 1992 when it took me to the SECOND ZONE in order to get a cape. It should have been introduced in the first or second level.
Miyamoto asks what they can do to get Zelda fun at first. The answer is to get rid of all the bloat. The ‘story’ is also bloat. If Zelda is not fun with one sword attack, adding in fifteen additional sword attacks are not going to help. If Zelda is not fun with an item, adding in more items is not going to make the game suddenly fun.