An Open Letter to Nintendo
Dear sir or madam,
I’m an early WiiU adopter. On January 13, I purchased the Deluxe
console with a pair of games. On that day, I was elated – there were
new games to play, and literally infinite possibilities running
through my mind as I brought the system home. Nintendoland appeared to
offer just a taste of what was to be, and Ninja Gaiden was the update
to the franchise I had been craving since the second game. And Mario –
Mario was just a masterpiece… truly what I asked for in a Super
Mario game (aside from the music… but thank you for passing up the
3D!) Rayman was just around the corner, and both Monster Hunter and
Lego city seemed like they couldn’t come fast enough! I felt happy
with my purchase – I was confident that we’d get games that couldn’t
be found elsewhere, and that a small slow-down was something that
could be dismissed by “launch window issues.” The system, with its
line-up of games new and current, seemed like it would be a perfect
solution to somebody who would want to play as much as possible.
Then, as February rolled in, I started seeing the news roll in. Rayman
was delayed twenty days before release (leading to a lost pre-order,
and a lost sale on Ubisoft’s part), Ninja Gaiden got ported elsewhere
(which left me somewhat annoyed that I spent $60 on a game that would
be available for far less in April), and game announcements started
coming through with truly peculiar asterisks attached: “This won’t run
on WiiU” or “It’s not WORTH releasing this on WiiU”, despite developer
claims otherwise (Dead Island, Crysis 3), sales data that points to
contrary realities (ZombiU being the best-selling third party game on
the platform, and Dead Island), and an INCREDIBLY vocal community
asking for content (various Miiverse boards, websites, and blogs).
Instead, we’re receiving received half-hearted ports, some of which up
to TWO YEARS late to the party (Deus Ex: Human Revolution), while
developers say they don’t “want” to make games for the platform.
Yesterday’s Battlefield announcement was the biggest, most egregious
offender of this – where we have XBox360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation
4, and Next XBox versions in development – there’s no reason this
SHOULD NOT be on the platform.
But it won’t be.
And seriously, this is where my argument is coming in. As a customer,
I feel as if I’ve been lied to. Nintendo, who trotted developers
onstage over the past two years to proclaim “unprecedented support”,
who gave promised a steady stream of incredible content for the
platform, is delivering nothing. They’ve given total radio silence on
the platform, with no real advertisement, no real commentary, and no
real push to even SELL the thing! We’ve had FIVE games release in two
months. Sales are in the toilet, retailers are talking about ditching
the thing. And, more and more, we are left feeling like we bought the
proverbial “bridge in Brooklyn.”
I’m not going to get angry and cry “MAKE MORE GAMES!” as if it’ll do
something to fix anything. I’m a software developer by trade – I know
that, more than anything, good content takes time. And I know that
third party relations don’t work like some crazy Willy Wonka
contraption where one pushes a button and a game pops out. I’m just
asking, BEGGING your company to acknowledge us, and to grow a pair of
proverbial testicles in content acquistion. The 3DS is on an upswing.
And, while it needs help still, the WiiU is simply in dire straits.
It’s not selling, developers are abandoning ship, and, let’s face it,
the system is a running joke among industry circles.
We need Nintendo to return to its days when Howard Lincoln was at the
helm. We need an attack dog that will relentlessly chase content down
and drag it into Nintendo owners’ living rooms. We need to see
investments in the future – new franchises, new content, and a
fighting spirit that seems to be strangely absent from the company in
more recent days.
But, more than anything, we need hope. We need assurance that our
boxes won’t be paperweights in six months, and that we’ll have options
to play that aren’t limited to the off Nintendo gem, and lackluster
third party “tests.” We need Nintendo franchises that kick ass and get
people EXCITED again – and again, sorry but Zelda hasn’t been exciting
since Ocarina, and Metroid is dead to many of us unless a full reboot
from a capable group occurs. We need games like StarTropics,
old-school Zelda, and Excitebike. We need classics, timeless legends
that show the real fighting spirit of the company and a willingness to
shoulder some risks. But, more importantly, we need a company that
will fight, argue, and negotiate with third parties until they get
what the hell they want. We need a company that will act like a
winner, not as the arrogant geek from high school. Someone who will
say “the chips are down, but we have a solution”, then TELL US the
solution instead of just giving pleasantries.
We saw flashes of this last generation. Wii adhered to the Blue Ocean
strategy, which emphasized the logic of “crappy products for crappy
consumers.” And, when this was the focus, things worked. Wii Sports
showed a return to the NES Classics Sports series, and New Super Mario
Bros. brought people who were thought to be lost from gaming forever
back into the fold. We saw Metroid rise to its highest sales peaks
with the Prime series! We saw Xenoblade – the little game that could –
go from a write-off by Nintendo of America to one of the most talked
about and most-sought-after role playing games in a decade! And, most
shocking, we saw the market grow, to the point that a slow sales month
for Nintendo was a disastrous event for the industry writ large.
But at the same time, we saw a strange combination of greed, and
arrogance, and childishness arise. We saw developers, both inside
Nintendo and out, move from products that customers wanted, to
products that they wanted to make. We heard Sakamoto prattle on about
“maternal instincts” and how we needed to know Samus “as a woman”
(Bullshit! we wanted to kill aliens and feel badass for doing it!). We
saw the Mario team put their most requested ideas, like Giant Land,
and the like, get put into two Mario Galaxy games that, their sales
combined, didn’t come close to matching the sales of New Super Mario
Bros. Wii. And, more and more, we heard the same Nintendo buzz about
how “developers should be happy” arise. And again – as a software
developer myself, I can sympathize… however, I also know that “being
happy working on a product” and “making a product that sells” are two
different things entirely. Sometimes, the products we want to make
least are the ones that have the greatest sales of all.
But I digress.
Years ago, Hiroshi Yamauchi stated that “Nintendo was a box people
bought to play Mario.” And, really, he was right – Nintendo means a
lot to people around the world – many of us grew up in a world where
Super Mario Bros. 3 was a phenomenon, Zelda II sold out completely,
and games, regardless of who made them, were “Nintendo Games.” We grew
up in an age when the brand wasn’t some “lame” moniker, but something
to respect and admire. It was, and still is for many of us, video
gaming itself. However, without the games, it’s just a box – a sad,
empty box that hungers to be used, even though nothing draws people to
it.
As a customer, I’m afraid that Nintendo, as a company, lost sight of
what was important. That they’d rather make silly experiments and
half-hearted sequels than return to their former glory. They’d rather
be “the nice guy” that people smile at in person, but laugh at once he
walks out of the room. The company’s western support is a joke, and
the company itself is a joke to the west (why are these developers
tripping over themselves to make PS4 and 720 games, and why did they
go to the point of bankruptcy in some cases to keep feeding the PS3
and XBox? Respect.), and a risk to the east. And, more and more,
Nintendo is growing irrelevant to the consumer.
And, to me, you are also losing face. I fear that, unless the company
can drastically turn things around, you will lose me, and many others
as customers forever. And, if you recall your Blue Ocean literature,
customers like me are the hardest to win back.
While I don’t expect you to have all of the answers, whoever reads
this, I do feel that this needed to be said. And, more important,
needs to be addressed… not to me, not to the core consumer base, but
to everybody watching. Take it as an open letter, and please, forward
this as high as it can go.
I thank you for your time – all of your time – and hope you have a
fantastic day.
I feel really sorry for Wii U owners. During the Gamecube era, Nintendo was already down with the N64 so it just went down further. The Wii to Wii U transition is unprecedented in console history.
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