Email: Iwata is an incompetent manager

Dear Malstrom:

 

I agree with you on the Wii U. I think the system cost too much and so do the games. But, today, I was thinking. I’m starting to think that Iwata is not able to be the head of Nintendo. I do not think he’s doing the company good. 

 

I think some of them are vary obvious. I can pretty much just say that Nintendo is running a lose. The company has never done it and not twice in a row. Nintendo always made a profit. This is how they made it though the Gamecube years. But now Nintendo is eroding capital. They are decreasing all of the equity they built up over the years. And for what? 3D? They made a system that wasn’t fit for the market, and now they pay the price. Iwata’s job is to increase the value of the company by making money. I think the Wii U will be in the same boat. I will avoid buying it because I know Nintendo will likely cut the price as they did with the 3DS and just like the HD twins did. A big reason I’m upset is Nintendo isn’t telling us anything. They announced Smash Bros over a year ago, and we haven’t seen a thing. What about Retro’s new game? They ended DKCR in 2010. They must have something by NOW. 06 Nintendo showed off everything. They even showed a lot for the 3DS. But not now. Now they drag their feet. Was there any reason to have this conference if they were just saying the price and showing new trailers for games we already knew about? Where is the rest of the stuff?

 

I think the biggest thing is the erosion of their games. I’m a bank examiner, and we rate banks on different components (to make sure they wont fall apart, but it still happens). The most important thing for a bank is Asset Quality. If you have good loans, you’ll make a lot of money. If you have bad loans, you’ll not only not make any money, but it can cost you too. I’ve heard of some banks having loans that cost them $700,000 (this is one loan, BTW). I think the same is true of video games. If you keep your series strong, consumers will keep coming back. You’ll make a lot of money. In part, this is how Nintendo has been able to make so many spin offs. But if you don’t manage the quality of your properties, than you’ll lose money. I think Nintendo is losing. Metroid is the best example. Before Other M, Metroid was healthy. Metroid games made money and gamers loved them. But then Nintendo made Other M, and a good IP became a bad IP. Now, Metroid loses money. People don’t want more Metroid. Zelda is the worst. Everyone was excited for Twilight Princess. But no one was for Skyward Sword. Zelda is now a bad IP. It loses money (probably more than Metroid). The reason everyone put up with Anouma Zelda is because Zelda was a strong series. Anouma and Nintendo has eroded that goodwill. Nintendo is not managing their IPs. Mario is starting to erode too. Even worse, they aren’t making new ones. Everyone is complaining about it. And it’s catching up to them. If Nintendo erodes all of their series, than there will be nothing left. There is no new pipeline of series to replace ones that have died (either though poor management or just boredom). It’s not hard to achieve quality series. Just set guidelines and policies for new games. Have a committe or something. Even let new developers sit in on the meeting so they can learn what make a good game. Try and make a new series for every system. One is better than none, and if we see one series decay, Nintendo can move on. Make a plan. Hold people responsible (like demoting anouma).  But not only is Iwata not creating a pipeline of new series, but he’s willingly letting old ones getting ruined. There is no control over the series quality, and in the end, the manchild ruins Zelda. No oversight. This is a fatal flaw in any business. With a bank, you can always tell it’s direction based on the qualty of the assets (in this case, loans). Assets drive everything. If they go bad, earnings will fall, and so will bank capital. Nintendo assets, their series, are very weak. They can’t make the same money. I think I can say that Nintendo will not do well in the coming years and will likely do worse. 2D Mario alone can not save the company. They need quality series, and Iwata is not effectively managing this. 

 

Nintendo Land is the problem. Instead of making a new series, they wasted all of that time putting their old series as sock puppets. They have Smash Brothers. Why have this too? Why not make a new series. It’s clear Iwata can not make appropriate decisions. I’m sure you can come up with more than what I wrote. I think Iwata needs to leave. If he is letting his employees ruin the companies series, than it’s clear he’s not managing. 

 

Take care Malstrom. Maybe you should run Nintendo. I’m sure you’d do a better job.

 
I agree with all this. And I know what you mean by asset devaluation. It is why I make so much noise about the direction of Mario, Metroid, and Zelda on this blog. At least with NSMB U, that is a game that should have come out on the Gamecube. In the year 2012, it needs online and/or different characters to play like THE PRINCESS.All I can do is hypothesize what is going on behind the scenes. We do know that Iwata is an admirer of Apple and, likely, of Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs had a famous quote where he says to let the engineers/developers be in charge of the products and not the salespeople (as what happened with IBM and Microsoft).Iwata is proving that a game developer shouldn’t be running a game company. Why? Iwata’s game developer background is not having him manage the other developers as he is removing the leash. Iwata is the one who coined the term: “The programmer shouldn’t tell the designer what the game cannot do.” He probably doesn’t think he has the right to manage people like Miyamoto and all.

Iwata took over when the Gamecube launched. Iwata’s tenure seems like recess for the Nintendo developers. Aonuma remakes Majestic with Zelda Wind Waker. He gets to design Zelda games with whatever his son wants (like trains!). When people complain of the motion controls in Zelda Skyward Sword, Aonuma ridicules them and shows no empathy. Miyamoto is allowed to keep making 3d Mario games and even design the 3DS system due to some sick, sick obsession to getting 2d Mario players to buy 3d Mario. And how the hell did Sakamoto get to turn Metroid into Other M? Why didn’t anyone stop him before he destroyed the franchise?

I’m certain Yamauchi wouldn’t tolerate this crap. He wanted his games to sell. And he knew the console was “a box people buy to get to Mario”. But Iwata has changed Nintendo’s definition to be ‘integrated hardware and software’ which hurts third parties and hurts the consumer.

Nintendo developers LOVE the ‘integrated hardware and software’ strategy because that means they aren’t measured against anyone else on other consoles.

The history of game consoles shows one pattern over and over: no one buys the game console for ‘creativity’. No one buys the console for ‘surprise’. PONG home version sold because everyone knew what PONG was as they already played it. Atari 2600 sold due to Space Invaders which everyone knew because of the arcade. Coleco-vision sold because everyone knew what Donkey Kong was. Zelda was originally sold as a hybrid arcade/CRPG game, there was no ‘surprise’. Super Mario Brothers was continuing off of the popular arcade Mario Brothers. Metroid was continuing what other exploration and adventure games were doing. Is Metroid’s exploration really that different from… say… Pitfall 2? And Wii Sports had no surprise as everyone was familiar with the sports.

I know you guys have seen me say the same stuff over these years. Since time converts more than reason, I hoped something, anything, would sink into Nintendo. But Nintendo is full of the most arrogant jackasses I’ve seen. Remember when Reggie Fils-Aime was declaring how fast of selling the Super Mario in 3d Land was and emphasizing how much faster it was than the 2d handheld Mario games? That was a dig at me.

I learned everything I needed to know about Shigeru Miyamoto when he went out of his way, in an Iwata Asks, to emphasize that Super Mario Brothers had no inspiration whatsoever to Alice in Wonderland. He said this because I was saying it was. Thinking I’m some sort of mouthbreather Internet tard, they must have been surprised when I immediately linked Miyamoto directly saying Super Mario Brothers was inspired by Alice in Wonderland in a business interview he did a couple years earlier. I remember Iwata, at an investor’s conference, passionately denying that 2d Mario had any impact on Wii’s sales at the end of 2009.

This site presents a very different context to Nintendo’s gaming history. The reason why the N64 and Gamecube failed was, in great part, due to the decrease in Nintendo’s games. Super Mario 64 was a decline, to many, many, many people from Super Mario World and Super Mario Brothers 3. While Ocarina of Time was great, Zelda has been in steep decline since then. And the more Sakamoto does storytelling in Metroid, the worse Metroid becomes.

The Wii succeeded because it got back to the values of a game console, back to what the Atari 2600 and NES were about. Wii Sports was designed off of the NES sports games. This resonated as Sony and Microsoft were more interested in making Dumb-PC-Gaming-Connected-To-TV-With-Controller than in making a game console. THAT was what differentiated Nintendo back in 1986 and in 2006. The Wii was radically the opposite to PC gaming. This is what made it so refreshing and fun.

Nintendo’s context is very different. They, naturally, don’t think their games have declined in quality at all. Instead, the N64 and Gamecube suffered due to ‘accessibility’ problems. You see, everyone did love Mario 64 but that the game was ‘inaccessible’. This is why Mario Galaxy was designed as a ‘kinder and gentler 3d Mario’ and another Galaxy 2 for it. It is why the 3DS was made to make 3d more ‘accessible’. Aonuma probably thinks all his Zelda games are brilliant but only that ‘accessibility’ was the problem. Sakamoto thinks Other M is genius but the problem is that the customers have an established idea of Samus Aran.

In Nintendo’s context, the developers are always geniuses and never wrong. Even the Virtual Boy was genius. The problem, according to Miyamoto, was the marketers. The marketers were the reason the Virtual Boy died. It is unbelievable how out of touch with reality people inside Nintendo are.

The consequence is that people are going to get fired. I cannot imagine the same decision makers staying in place when the ninth generation comes around.

The best way to describe myself is someone who refuses to lower his standards for consoles established with the Atari 2600, NES, Genesis, and SNES. When a new Mario game comes out, I expect it to be as awesome as Super Mario Brothers 3 or Super Mario World. When a new Metroid comes out, I am expecting Metroid or Super Metroid type quality. When a new Zelda comes out, I will do no less than the quality of Zelda 1, 2, Link’s Adventure, Link to the Past, or Ocarina of Time.

These aren’t crazy standards. Nintendo, once upon a time, met our expectations. We bought sequels to Zelda, Metroid, and Mario as a passionate consumer. This is why Nintendo has been so successful with the Mario Kart franchise as that series has constantly met people’s expectations since the original version.

When you deal with established brands, you deal with established expectations. Nintendo wants the safe install base of an established brand but none of the expectations. We’re supposed to buy Metroid: Other M because it is Metroid yet not complain when it plays nothing like Metroid? This is the contradiction that is destroying Nintendo’s software franchises.

I really do want Nintendo to succeed. But in order for Nintendo to succeed, they must allow the gamer to succeed. Nintendo TVii doesn’t do this. Making us buy all our VC games again doesn’t do this. Making us use controllers we don’t want to doesn’t do this.

Nintendo needs to revolve itself around gamer behavior. Instead, it feels like Nintendo expects the gamers to revolve around its behavior.