This is what I thought the DS and Wii represented: Nintendo as a Cultural Renegade to destroy the Game Industry. Instead, it was just Nintendo trying to claw back into the industry’s ass. Switch 2 certainly confirms it with its EA mindset for everything.
For decades, people have asked, “How will this help the Game Industry?” I’m like, “I DON’T CARE! The Game Industry must be destroyed!” Gaming and game development preceded the ‘Game Industry’ and it is the ‘Golden Era’ of gaming. Game Industry has given us DLC, gacha games, paying for online multiplayer, iterative sequels, and tons of jank. The Game Industry is more problematic than it has any right to be. It needs to go away.
“Are you saying that games should be made by GAMERS?”
YES!
The Game Industry is ‘games made by shareholders’. Real gaming is ‘games made by gamers’.
Most people in the ‘Game Industry’ are not gamers. They are people who don’t want to get a REAL JOB. They want the ‘tech lifestyle’ of sipping on lattes and being inside air conditioning all day.
The real original game developers knew how to work. They knew how to get things done. And they how to ship.
I remember when newspaper writers were screaming about the Internet. Oh no! Anyone could post a story on the Internet! A shop clerk, Matt Drudge, for example, broke the Monica Lewinsky story which was a big deal in the 1990s. The point is that regular people could be journalists.
I remember when TV stars were complaining about Internet video. “Remember when being on TV was special?” they whined. But now, anyone can be on TV if you upload a video of yourself to the Internet.
And now the Game Industry is being wrecked. Being a game developer used to be ‘special’. And successful game developers were treated LIKE GODS complete with shrines and people worshipping them! So disgusting! But we need a game industry like we need books’ publishing companies. Why do I need a game publisher if the Internet can distribute my game?
It’s so funny! The Game Industry thought all the technology advancements would only benefit THEM! They didn’t realize they’d be disrupted from existence.
Today, they are worried about indie gaming. What they need to get worried about is indie hardware. It’s coming.
Konda says the music of Super Mario Brothers 3 is all wrong because it doesn’t match the screen action. Since he was told the music of the first game was Latin, he went to a Reggae style for Super Mario Brothers 3.
But it does match the gameplay. The gameplay of Super Mario Brothers 3, aside from the scrolling levels, is exploration. It matches it perfectly.
The University of Pittsburg has a paper devoted to the music of Super Mario Brothers 3. Time for The Reader to deep dive into it. Go reader, go!
The music makes the level feel like a world more than a ‘stage’ to be run through.
This music is great for underwater! We don’t need very fast tracks for exploration. Now get that Frog Suit and go explore, reader!
The map music is so distinctive that it will never get old. A ‘fast’ song simply wouldn’t work for map music!
Above: Bowser’s Land! So scary! (Runs away.)
The drums go so hard in Super Mario Brothers 3. The final Bowser fight is glorious.
The ending music transitions from baroque to a more european style? It’s all very nice!
2d Mario games used be about world building and exploration. Now they are collecta-thons with puzzle level designs. Boring. Lame.
That’s great you’re having fun with Unreal Tournament. I’m not too much of a PC gamer, but those older PC shooters look like a lot more fun than all of the WWII/CoD that came out afterwards.
Since I was an N64 kid, it was GoldenEye/Perfect Dark for me (and then I dabbled in the Conduit series on the Wii, and even the GoldenEye remake).
I got my Batsugun recently, and that has been fun and quite challenging. I also downloaded Raiden III, IV, and V on my Switch. Damn fun games! And I ordered Gradius Origins based on your recommendation, even though I tend to prefer vertical shmups over horizontal ones (the two player feature is a huge selling point for me).
Cheers.
On my recommendation? Oh no! I have no idea how Gradius Origins will turn out. But the game isn’t that expensive, and M2 does a solid job of ports.
Emailer, are you telling me you haven’t played the Gradius games? I hope that is not what you are implying.
Salamander, at least the first one, shifted between horizontal and vertical with each stage. Honestly, that is such a flex by Konami’s programmers.
Even if Salamander 3 bombs, you have solid entries of Gradius and Salamander. Gradius 1 and 2 and Salamander are pure classics. The other titles a little more iffy. This collection would be better if home console versions were included (such as SNES Gradius III).
Above: Salamander for the PC-Engine came out great. I wanted a video showing what the game was about instead of a playthrough of the entire game.
If you like shmups in any way, getting Gradius Origins is a no brainer.
I’m a fan of shmups before the ‘bullet hell’ that came in the 21st century. Gradius and R-type games are the gold stand standard. Gradius spin-offs such as Salamander and Parodius are also a gold standard.
Parodius was a popular series in its own right. It is like ‘peak Japan’ sense of craziness and wackiness that you rarely ever see anymore. Can a game like Sexy Parodius even be made today?
Above: I have no idea what is going on here.
Above: The ‘Modern Gamer’ will probably run away screaming.Remember when games were fun?
I have a pile of Shmups I got Switch I still need to play. From Cave, I do like Esp Ra De Psi probably because it goes away from the fighter jets and is an odd world to say the least.
Above: Arcade port only available on Switch and PS4. I hope the reader picked up a copy while it was available!
Ikaruga is a ‘modern’ (in my eyes) classic which even non-shmup fans should pick up. I think the Gamecube version is the best, but it is available everywhere now. As is Radiant Silvergun.
I just wish there was more innovation and experimentation with the shmups. Give us more blending of genres. Give us another Guardian Legend!
Your recent post about Unreal Tournament made me spin up the game again. The trouble with these old games is often getting them to run nicely on modern systems. The game itself might run, but it will feel off in some weird way.
They list essential fixes, solutions for common issues, tweaks, command-line parameters, which APIs are used and so on. In the case of UT I had to get the updated OpenGL renderer and adjust the FOV to get it to feel right.
I’ve been using the GOG version of Unreal Tournament ’99.
“But Malstrom, there is no GOG version available.”
Not anymore. Even though it is de-listed, I can still download and play it. AS IT SHOULD BE.
I just came from a session of playing the campaign. I love how I can have high octane rounds and then shut off the game all within a time period of half an hour or so. Very sweet get in and get out intensity gaming.
I’m nothing special, I am just doing the campaign on normal. I’m at the latter parts of the various ‘modes’. At first, they were all a breeze. Now, I have to retry them! I need to ‘get gud’.
One thing that helps is making sure my AI teammates do not hang around me. So I tell them to ‘freelance’ by bringing up the AI controls via the ‘V’ button. So far, victory depends on me blowing away all the opponents with the exception of Capture the Flag. Usually I just run in there and bunny hop back. Even if they take my flag, too bad. My teammates will eventually get that back, and they can’t score if they don’t have their flag! And I still haven’t unlocked Last Man Standing.
Once I am done with Campaign, I will likely try mods and download other maps. Unreal Tournament ’99 has a ton to offer!
My favorite mutator is ‘Instagib’. All weapons are a one shot kill laser. So this improves your aim!
Here is another video. Only two months old.
This streamer is very witty, and I enjoy his story telling.
If I never became ‘Malstrom’, what I would be doing is likely making clans/guilds and playing games with a group of online people. That is how it was done back in the day. I’d have groups on Kali. Today, however, communities are more game centric. I also think MMOs such as WoW completely inhaled those old clans/guilds. It’s fun to have a group of people online you know that you can play a game from a selection with. It is hard to play online today because everyone has to work for a living and often have wives/families/house chores that take them away.
But yeah, Unreal Tournament ’99 is a perfect game.
I was living in Austin when Unreal Tournament 2004 came out (which immediately sold out everywhere). Hard to realize that UT 2k4 was literally half a decade from UT 99. UT 2k4 had the innovation of bundling all of UT 2k3 with it creating Content Overload. The package of UT 2k4 was just tremendous. I didn’t like it as much as I did UT ’99, but Onslaught was crazy fun.
I now want to explore more games from this era. Maybe it is time to try out games like Descent again. But only once I am done with UT ’99. I may never uninstall this game again!
Have any of you played the tutorial of Unreal Tournament 99? While this can be seen as part of the map, it really stands out in the tutorial. “Please look around the arena…” says the voice. And we see this:
This is a screenshot taken from my own computer footage.
That’s right. Nude Girl at the beginning of the game! Old School Epic was amazing. NO ONE would do this today.
What’s fascinating too is that none of that was controversial or even ‘noticed’. The controversy then was about the ‘violence’ of video games. And UT did have an option to tone down the naughty words and the gore. In fact, the customization that UT 99 offers is very impressive even to this day.
“I am very offended by this image of a nude woman in the tutorial zone,” cries the reader. “The game must be patched immediately!”
No you aren’t, reader.
It’s only been twenty five years since this game, and yet it feels like the game came from another civilization.
This game was SO good, it clearly caused a debate over whether it or Quake 3 was better. Unreal Tournament 99 also has the best ever demo I’ve ever played. Anyway, I played the GOG version just now for hours with no mods. The game still holds up. I am playing the ‘Campaign’ mode make believing I am scrappy tourney fighting my way to the top!
What is so fantastic about this game is how immersive it is. The game is built on multiplayer but oozes atmosphere everywhere. They simply don’t make games like this anymore. Even more crazy is despite how landmark this game is and how well it has sold, you cannot buy this game anymore. Epic like doesn’t care about it.
This game is a Perfect Game. I hereby give it the Malstrom Award given only to few precious games that are eligible. In fact, it has made its way in my Top 5 PC Games I Keep Playing.
This was the old list:
Paradroid – C64
Civilization 3 – PC
Master of Orion – PC
Master of Magic – PC
Ultima VII Part 1 and 2 – PC
Now I am updating that list. Paradroid has gotten kicked off.
Unreal Tournament – 99
Why is Unreal Tournament 99 so good to play today? It is because the game has EVERYTHING.
Despite the game being multiplayer and people still playing it multiplayer, it has fun bots. The bots know how to move. They keep the game going and even fun in team modes.
The music is also slam dunk.
The game maps are very interesting and very well done. The weapons are superb. I don’t think I’ve seen a FPS with better weapons.
There are several modes in the game. They are all fun. You have your standard Death Match and the Capture the Flag. In addition, you have Domination (hold control over three points) and Assault mode (team vs team battlefield). And finally, there is Last Man Standing.
Assault Mode really is the star of the show. There is a Saving Private Ryan scenario where a team lands on the beach and has to storm in while the other team attacks from the beach. There is another scenario where you run on a moving train. Then there is one where you take over a starbase (!).
Unreal Tournament is wild with even its basic deathmatch levels. It takes everything cool of the late 1990s. In the map Morpheus, definitely from the Matrix, the deathmatch map is on several skyscrapers. However, there is low gravity so you can jump across the buildings! The game was much more imaginative than Quake 3’s ‘space dungeons’. On another map called ‘Hyperspace’, you are on a spaceship that is warping through hyperspace. Inside the ship, all is how it should be. But you can get on top of the ship or jump between the ship in low gravity. Game is crazy.
I love it all. The game not only holds up, but it deserves a permanent spot on my harddrive.
“But what about Unreal Tournament 2004? What about Unreal Tournament 3?”
UT2k4 is also very good especially the Onslaught mode. But ’99 is extremely tight.
I just can’t stop coming back to Unreal Tournament 99!
I hope this holy day of patriotic festivities finds you well.
The upped ante speaks to an unanswered childhood longing- Mario All Stars was never followed up with Zelda or Metroid All stars like we always thought it would be. Zelda All Stars in particular seemed completely inevitable considering Zelda 1 had the wonderful (if altered) re-release on Satellaview that Nintendo Power once teased us with pictures of. One must wonder if they were saving them for the second attempt they made at a CD ROM, as you do raise a valid point about the cost of a larger ROM as an issue. Perhaps a subject for your spies at Nintendo to investigate when their Ninja rivals divert too much manpower to securing the Switch 2 facilities.
You strike at the heart of Metroid’s easy/hard duality when you say that the interconnected world of Metroid was frustrating. Metroid was a childhood lesson in navigation and finding your own direction that can’t be learned twice, a true experience. I doubt you could get accurate answers, but it would be interesting to survey gamers who can beat the NES Metroid and find out what game they think they learned those lessons from. I would expect quite a few to claim they learned them from Metroid II or Super Metroid, but wouldn’t be surprised to see other games like one of the Zeldas or original Final Fantasy to pop up.
I would suggest The mOTHER+99 romhack is worth a try if you would like to see what Metroid 1 is like in almost the exact form you suggest for an All Stars release, minus graphics. (As to graphics, I see another reader has suggested the Mesen HD pack, which might be running it under the hood, I should look into how that one works.) It restores the original JP Save system, it refills your HP when you continue after death, and it adds in Super Metroid style beam stacking. It also has a built in map, although due to the hackers’ skill limits it does not hide unexplored areas.
Regarding “Samus is not a Ninja”: I wholeheartedly agree! There is but one response to a Metroid game featuring a QTE melee event, and that is turning off the game and getting a refund. Metroid is not Dragon’s Lair. I want to play an authentic Metroid game, not some random Mochtroid FMV game that might as well be made for Phillips CDi. Really, any game featuring a QTE event or Timed Hits is an immediate refund for me. I’ll put up with it from early games, but by the Dreamcast, gamecube and PS2 everyone should have known better.
Your mention of an interconnected Mario reveals what a shame it was that Mario never properly dabbled with the open world back in the day of genuine Mario games, when Miyamoto’s head had not yet grown three sizes too large and he could still be forced to make the same game twice. Were I not working on my RPG, I might be tempted to prepare to do battle with the famous Nintendo Ninjas and invoke Fans do what Nintendon’t and attempt such an open world Mario game combining the mechanics of SMB2 and SMB3. SMB2 gameplay really seems like the glue/secret sauce here, with the way “rooms” connected, pulling up tools, keys, and door potions, stacking up blocks- Some of the later stages as you get closer to Wart, while fundamentally linear games, had a sense of connected world exploration that felt the closest to Metroid out of the Authentic Mario games. If only. If only.
But yes, speaking of the RPG, I did drop a bomb of a line and walk away! In part because I did not expect much if any interest as RPG ideas and unfinished RPGs are a dime a trillion. You ask “Do you hate yourself or something?” and the truth is actually the inverse- I have decided I no longer hate myself enough to walk away from childhood dreams. (Although… I am willingly using the dumpster fire that is HTML5, ThreeJS/WebGL, and Javascript to build my own game engine…)
As for “Why an RPG?” the answer is simple: motivation. I am an artist by nature, and coding is not easy for me, so I have tried over the years to learn everything I need to know and it did finally click for me… but I have tried many times with “learning projects” I was not passionate about, and that made it harder. Focusing on a game I want to play got me over the hump, and while describing what’s left as “downhill” would be wrong, at this point it is a matter of brute force and not giving up as I learn what things I don’t know. There is no substitute for the combination of passion and determination.
I have made a few neat demos to learn what I’m doing, like an FF6 style overworld using FF3j’s map and a recreation of FF1’s battle system, but I expect most of my prototyping stage would feel unimpressive to non-coders. I have been focused on solving the “felt but unseen” parts of a game like snappy gamepad support, custom keybind support, menus, baking in multiple language support form the start, checking as I go to make sure that my engine performs well on old systems, etc. Kind of boring, but people notice and often want their money back when those things aren’t done right. I am still a few systems away from the exciting things that make for great devlogs and enticing teasers. When I make an interesting prototype or reach the shareware demo stage I will send over links- HTML5 is wonderful because you just pull up the webpage and press a button on your gamepad. No installation required. (It’s a bit of a dated reference at this type, but I always loved how the Japanese website for Phoenix Wright had a fully playable tutorial demo in Flash. Why settle for screenshots and descriptions when you can let the reader play the game?)
As for details about my RPG itself… In truth I am unsure how much to say. Too much remains to be done, and while I enjoy speaking about the project I don’t want to reveal too much, too early. I will say I want it to be a Fantasy take on the classic Western, and while I have a story in mind that asks some hard questions of virtue, morality, and ethics… The story of any RPG is like the wrapping paper on a christmas gift- it is there to make you wonder what amazing toy might be inside. For that toy, I want to have an interesting job system, Click Adventure puzzles, REAL Turn based JRPG combat (No ATB nonsense or QTEs), and I want it to all combine to let the player get lost in leveling up his characters, exploring, and imagining his own stories for them as he plays.
The player’s story begins mere minutes into the game. After you are introduced to the leader and key figures of the small town you are there to save you will be brought to the pub. There you need to create and name characters for the story’s protagonist to take with him on adventures, like Wizardry or Dragon Warrior 3. I have not yet decided how big a party can be, but it will be at least 4 characters, possibly as many as 6. I will spice it up some with adventures occasionally presenting random choose your own adventure inspired prompts meant to help the player decide who his party members are. That story is more important than the one I am writing- because an RPG that’s just someone’s “I want to make a book/movie” story and has cookie cutter gameplay like every other JRPG is no different from being gifted a tube of wrapping paper for Christmas instead of a toy.
Some might think focusing so much on engaging the player’s imagination is a crazy idea, but I feel getting the player so involved they write their own fanfics and imagine their own spinoffs is the truest measure of success.
Sincerely,
The Gaming Luddite
PS – Today’s post about foreign temp workers deserves a pun that I keep hearing more and more often: “AI stands for Actually Indians”.
Let me answer this email in parts.
I do not participate in the rom hacks. It is mostly because there are way too many games and adding on rom hacks just makes my brain explode. I don’t blame people using save states for 1980 type games especially when dying sends you all the way back. Time is precious, and games expected you to have time to redo things that we do not have time to do today. I mean stupid things like the long run of the final dungeon in NES Final Fantasy 3 without a save point.
One thing I am a fan of is ‘everywhere saving’. Japanese seem to hate this. “You may only save at these certain points.” And they always spoil when a boss battle is ahead because of it. I enjoy save scumming. I wish developers would stop trying to attack how the players play their game.
Anyway, about 2d Mario. You are right about SMB 2 USA. SMB 2 USA is extremely underrated as a video game. I’d argue it is the most underrated video game of all time.
“Of ALL time?” says the flabbergasted reader. Yes. Of ALL TIME.
Above: The most underrated video game of all time!
SMB 2 may not be the ‘first’ game to do certain things, but it did them very well before anyone else.
-Metroidvania style gameplay here. You go left and you go right.
-Verticality is emphasized. You climb up. You dig down. Most platformers don’t even do that. SMB 2 embraced verticality.
-Different characters at start. They all play a little differently. No one was doing this back then. Even to this day, few do it now.
-Dark World via the doors. The ‘dark world’ concept was made infamous with Zelda: Link to the Past but it starts here. This is the next phase of the ‘Open World’ would be this.
It is amazing to say that a mainline Mario game is underrated, but SMB 2 definitely is underrated. The game emphasizes exploration and tool interaction (picking up turnips and enemies). Like Super Mario Brothers 1, the game hints at an interconnected world with stage 1-2 starting off where stage 1-1 ends.
I was initially disappointed with Super Mario Brothers 3 because the game didn’t build on Super Mario Brothers 2. Why could I only choose Mario? Why can I not dig or pull up enemies? That passed because Super Mario Brothers 3 is a freaking juggernaut of a game. Super Mario Brothers 3 adds in a world map and has full blown exploration including optional levels.
So when we get to Super Mario Brothers 4, i.e. Super Mario World, you can see why I was so sorely disappointed with the game. Super Mario World was much weaker than Super Mario Brothers 3 and still had none of the gameplay coolness of Super Mario Brothers 2 (different characters, the grabbing, the Dark World, etc.). I do remember at the very end of Super Mario World where you have that spotlight and at the end of Bowser’s castle, the last enemy is the jumping black ninja from Super Mario Brothers 2. I just sat there and stared at the thing jumping up and down. Why did I stare there shocked? Because this was a signal from Nintendo that they were going to merge SMB 2 universe of enemies with the rest of the series! So I was SO EXCITED for Super Mario Brothers 5! Man, oh man, that game was gonna be great!
The last half of the 16-bit Era is still bitter to me to this day because of how Shigeru Miyamoto completely dropped the ball on Mario. And with 16-bit Zelda and Metroid feeling like downgrades, I made the (smart) decision to go PC gaming only. I didn’t return to playing Nintendo until this blog started (with buying a DS because NSMB was on its way).
Nintendo doesn’t know how to make 2d Mario anymore. They keep making 2d Mario more about level design and collectathon instead of about exploration and adventure. The joy of 2d Mario was exploring new worlds. All they do now is re-use the old ones. There is no new content in 2d Mario, nothing is being added to the Mario Universe in these 2d incarnations. The music in the modern 2d Mario games is also terrible. I would talk more about 2d Mario, but I am inclined to make a 2d platformer game once I am done with my rpg.
So let’s talk about your RPG.
You talk about RPGs which are people wanting to do a ‘story’ but then put in cookie cutter gameplay. Having seen these ‘RPGs’ and being in the soup of these game developers making them, I can confidently say the issue isn’t in the cookie cutter gameplay. If it were, then games like Dragon Quest 3 HD or Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters wouldn’t be selling as big as they are. I don’t think the issue is their gameplay. (But in the amateur’s hand, they even fumble that by making it unbalanced, uninteresting, etc.).
The ‘cookie cutter’ nature is actually occurring with the STORY. With all these RPG game developers making their AMAZING STORY GAMES, they are almost all COOKIE CUTTER stories. They are all boring. All uninteresting. They offer no surprises.
“My INCREDIBLE RPG game is based on a celtic fairyland. The protagonists’ village gets burned down by THE BIG EVIL. He starts off on a path of revenge!!! Isn’t this game’s story such AMAZINGBALLSZ!??? Tee hee!”
As far back in Birdman and the Casual Fallacy, I’ve stated that the nature of video games are not culture producing but more like cultural parasites. Video games absorb other pop media and create a parody of that. For example, Space Invaders pulled from Star Wars. Donkey Kong pulled from King Kong. Ultima pulled from Lord of the Rings. The ‘rush’ of imagination and ‘freshness’ comes from this ‘new cultural source’ being translated into a video game. With FTL, it was ‘You are Picard commanding the starship’. That was literally the design philosophy behind the game and is why it connected and felt ‘fresh’.
Imagine a spotlight on the wall. It is assumed the light is coming from the game. It is not. The light is coming from an outside source. The video game is only directing the light. The source material is what creates all the different video game genres and types.
Phantasy Star used a different source material for their games. While the gameplay is incredibly identical to Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star carved out its own market by leaning into the sci-fi. My point is that if you use a different and unique source material, you can create a new market.
I believe this is also the best way to toggle the player’s imagination. If the source material is new, the player will not use prior game experiences as comparison. The player has to utilize his own imagination as the material is ‘new’.
Source Material -> Game Developer -> RPG Game.
Simplified, it looks like the above. So let us say we have something like this:
Lord of the Rings -> Game Developer -> RPG Game
This RPG Game is going to seem tropish because Lords of the Rings has been done time and again for RPG source material. However, it is not the worst source material. Here is the worse:
Favorite RPG Games -> Game Developer -> RPG Game
The problem here is that the ‘favorite RPG games’ are a warped case of the original source material. So your RPG Game will feel extremely hollow despite its execution. See ‘Sea of Stars’ as an example of this.
I am making the deliberate decision to use a source material that is unknown, yet the book is still in print (it still sells). It isn’t Star Wars, but it has fan base that is still around for decades. This source material is the horse that is pulling my game into odd and strange directions. These directions can be good and bad. But they are different.
I’ve shown off my project to some published RPG devs. They criticize me for my execution, of course (“I see why you don’t want to show this…” hahaha), but they say: this is very different from anything else out there. You should keep doing it.
Whether or not this is different ‘good’ or different ‘bad’, it runs the RPG to a different destination than the ‘slop pile’. It’s really interesting how different games can be when you change the source material. Imagine:
Shakespeare -> Game Developer -> Game
Hmm, but what type of Shakespeare? How about this:
Richard III -> Game Developer -> Game
Richard III was the blockbuster hit play of an ugly short man who used machivellian tactics to become king and bed the beautiful aristocrat woman. I do not believe there is any game made in such a fashion. Perhaps it should be made!
The crisis in gaming is not that there are too many games coming out. It is that they are all using the same source material. Game developers, today, need to READ, go OUTSIDE, and become INTERESTING PEOPLE. Only interesting people make interesting games.
If you quote from this Q&A, please include a citation or link to this file.
OK, Nintendo. Link is above. Nintendo wants people to link the source material so no one makes stuff up. I, of course, always source my quotes.
We will continue to explore various ways to leverage game music, including concerts and live events, since we believe that the experience of listening to it is a precious memory for our consumers.
Do we really need concerts of Zelda and Metroid music? BOTW music was lame piano slop. Metroid Dread had DREADFUL music.
I think Nintendo is overrating their music. Nostalgia only goes so far. No one wants to buy tickets to listen to Super Mario Brothers’ athletic theme.
QUESTION: It appears that the supply of Nintendo Switch 2 is not meeting demand, especially in Japan. Is this due to insufficient production volume, or was the demand forecast inaccurate?
Oh my! How will Nintendo President answer this question? Let’s listen…
Currently, for Nintendo Switch 2, demand is exceeding supply in many countries, and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may be causing our consumers. I understand that some of our shareholders and their families and friends might still be unable to purchase Nintendo Switch 2.
Notice how he didn’t answer the question! Hahaha. Shareholder was asking if it was a supply issue or a demand forecast issue. That’s a binary question. He just said ‘demand exceeds supply’. Then he bloviates about tales of the drawings and lotteries as if that has anything to do with the question.
In other words, if you read it casually, it sounds like he is saying there is spectacular demand. But if you truly read it, he isn’t saying that. What is actually going on is that Nintendo doesn’t really know the true demand for the Switch 2. We are still in the Early Adopter Phase after all.
Check out Question 7: Are there any plans to utilize Nintendo IP for children’s education? Do you intend to continue developing products that stimulate creativity in children like Nintendo Labo, which used cardboard to make things?
Are we going to get another Donkey Kong Math?
Although we have nothing to announce at this time regarding the use of Nintendo IP in education, we are constantly researching opportunities to introduce a broader range of generations, including children, to the appeal of our IP. Nintendo Labo was an ambitious product for us. We will continue our research into such products that differ from conventional games.
Alas, poor readers! Being a Labo fan is hard these days…
Let me explain our current initiatives using Nintendo Switch 2 as a specific example. To support a wide variety of play styles, Nintendo Switch 2 offers various accessibility features, such as adjusting on-screen fonts and colors, text-to-speech for on-screen text, and button-mapping customization. We are also continuously evaluating various technologies to expand accessibility features in our current and future products.
Does Switch 2 offer button mapping customization? Was it just introduced in Switch 2? Is it for all games? This is something I’ve always wanted. The poster child of this is the Mega Man Collection for Gamecube.
I never understood why console game developers wouldn’t let us remap the controller buttons for the game.
Question 10 has this new Miyamoto quote that will go down into legendary status:
MIYAMOTO: I am co-producing the animated film based on the world of Super Mario Bros. with Chris. We have reached a point where we are confident that the new movie will be an entertaining film, so we have announced its theatrical release for next spring. We do not want to set a release date first and then force the production schedule to meet it. This is similar to game development; we want to release something that we are confident will satisfy our consumers. I always tell our teams to“work for the consumer, not for your boss.”
But who is the consumers for AAA games these days? It appears to be the shareholders, not the gamers.
Question 11 is a fun one: How long does the company expect the business lifecycle of Nintendo Switch 2 to be?
President Furukawa answers:
Nintendo Switch 2 has just been launched, so it is not yet the time to discuss its lifecycle. However, like Nintendo Switch, we aim for as many consumers as possible to enjoy it for as long as possible. Nintendo Switch 2 is also compatible with Nintendo Switch software. We are still developing new titles for Nintendo Switch, and a vast library of software is already available, so we believe there will be opportunities for consumers to experience Nintendo Switch titles for the first time on Nintendo Switch 2.
Indeed, if you consider Nintendo Switch, a child who was in the first grade at its launch is now in intermediate school. The longer a platform remains active, the more opportunities there are for consumers to pick up software. We will continue to develop each Nintendo Switch 2 title with care and strive to have it played by as many people as possible.
This is such a non-answer!
Question 12: Nintendo Switch 2 has a higher price point than past platforms like the Family Computer system (Famicom). I am concerned that this might reduce opportunities for young children to engage with it. How will you address this issue?
Oh no! How did this shareholder get into the meeting? Let’s hear what President Furukawa has to say. Shhh… Quiet, reader, and listen…
We believe the pricing of Nintendo Switch 2 is appropriate for the gaming experience it offers, and what is most important is to provide entertaining experiences that demonstrate the value to consumers. To achieve this goal, we have incorporated various features into Nintendo Switch 2.
It is true that Nintendo Switch 2 has a higher price point than our past gaming systems.We are creating various opportunities outside of our gaming systems for young children to engage with Nintendo characters and game worlds, with one of the ultimate goals being that they will eventually play on our gaming systems. We are closely monitoring to what degree the price of the system might become a barrier.
The bold and italics are my emphasis.
No one, and I mean NO ONE, can no longer say Switch 2 price is ‘fine’ due to ‘inflation’. The Nintendo President not only acknowledges the Switch 2 is more expensive, he even says Nintendo is ‘creating various opportunities’ OUTSIDE THE GAMING SYSTEM for young people to engage with Nintendo characters and game worlds WITH THE ULTIMATE GOAL BEING THEY WILL PLAY ON THE GAMING SYSTEM.
Folks, this is huge. HUGE. Monumental. Bigger than all the Xbox news. (Xbox failing and laying people off? That’s been going on for twenty years!)
Nintendo’s rise as a video game juggernaut came through the pipeline of children. The stable and high sales of the handheld game console, including juggernauts such as Pokemon, comes through the pipeline of children. The customers of the Gamecube, N64, and even the Wii U came through the pipeline of children. For Nintendo to says that the pipeline of children is not going through the game console to the extent that Nintendo needs to make ‘outside opportunities’ to lead the children to the game console as they grow older IS FREAKING MASSIVE NEWS.
Of course, no one is reporting this. Typical. But this is why we go through these shareholder Q/As dear reader. People read the same sheet and somehow miss it. They quote stuff that doesn’t matter and do not mention the stuff that does.
This might be prelude to a ‘child’s Switch 2’ in the future not unlike the 2DS.
Hohoho! Look at Question 16!
QUESTION 16: Nintendo Switch 2 has adopted a game card specification called the game-key card. There are opinions online that this is a hybrid between physical and digital software, and that physical software containing no full game data is not very appealing. I am concerned that, if titles from software publishers on game-key cards do not sell well as a result of adopting this format, these publishers might move away from Nintendo Switch 2. What are your thoughts on this?
President Furukawa answers:
The game-key card used for Nintendo Switch 2 does not contain the full game data for the game itself; instead, it stores a key to activate the software. An internet connection is required for downloading the data for the game the first time you play it. Subsequent gameplay does not require an internet connection, but the game-key card must be inserted into the system.
This is one of the new software distribution methods we have introduced to accommodate the larger game data sizes on Nintendo Switch 2 compared to Nintendo Switch. Software can be released in various formats, and we will continue to work closely with software publishers on many fronts to ensure that they actively support our platform.
There was no answer here, but you can hear the answer in the silence.
The entire purpose of the game key cards was to get third parties to put out software for the Switch 2. If game key cards were not available, such third party software would not appear. This is what Furukawa is saying.
I think it is clear Nintendo understands the value of putting the game content on the card (as Nintendo first party games do). However, third party companies think this is too expensive. Nintendo is walking a tightrope here.
The problem is that Switch 2 is obtaining the reputation for being the ‘anti-collector’ console. No collector will buy a Switch 2 and its software.
Question 17: I am concerned that the improved performance of Nintendo Switch 2 will lead to higher ame development costs, which in turn could result in higher software prices and ultimately a decrease in the gaming population. What measures are you considering to address this?
President Furukawa responds:
Recent game software development has become larger in scale and longer in duration, resulting in higher development costs. The game business has always been a high-risk business, and we recognize that rising development costs are increasing that risk.
Our development teams are devising various ways to maintain our traditional approach to creating games amidst the increasing scale and length of development. We believe it is important to make the necessary investments for more efficient development.
We also believe it is possible to develop game software with shorter development periods that still offer consumers a sense of novelty. We see this as one potential solution to the concern about rising development costs and software prices, and we will explore it from various angles within the company.
Bold is my emphasis.
I’ve been arguing since the start of this blog that if Nintendo could put out games like 16-bit Quality, that is fine enough. We don’t need every game to be OMG 3d. We don’t need every game to be massive open world or to be a game played in Every Single Way.
Instead of 100 people making one game, I’d rather see 100 people making ten SNES quality games. BRING BACK 2D!!!!
This Microsoft producer has decided to give words of wisdom to the terminated game developers.
Matt Turnbull, Executive Producer at Xbox Game Studios Publishing – after the Microsoft layoffs – suggesting on Linkedin that may maybe people who have been let go should turn to AI for help. He seriously thought posting this would be a good idea.
But the visa is often tied to a specific role at a specific company, meaning an employee’s right to live in the United States is tied to their employment and, theoretically, making it less likely that they will quit their jobs.
Once their role is terminated, they often have to leave the United States.
‘In some sense, there’s nothing strange here,’ Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, told Newsweek.
‘You have a situation where the advocacy or use of guest worker programs is entirely always disconnected from the actual behavior of businesses.
‘The actual data we have never supports the idea that we are terribly short of workers in the way that the business community says.’
To you guys in the ‘tech sector’ or even ‘game industry’, your companies are OUTSOURCING your work alongside hiring TEMPORARY WORKERS from other countries. This is IDENTITICAL to what happened in the blue collar type companies.
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