Nintendo has a strong start with the Switch as it stands now. While the event did show numerous titles, in the end it left yearning for more. Seems like Nintendo’s intending to keep a hype train going until the launch hits.
Overall, I have to say that the presentation itself was rather professional. No outlandish theatrics or anything like that. No real bullshit dead air, just proper and interesting presentation. The clothing was a highlight in itself, showcasing that most of these people are professionals. There was class in this event that is absent from most. Well, outside some choices, like Nogami aiming for funnier style that was more worth a facepalm than anything else, and Aonuma really needs to stop wearing that terrible looking hoodie. Actually, remove Aonuma altogether.
Having Tatsumi Kimishima on the stage in the very beginning was what was needed. He might not be Iwata or Yamauchi, but the public does not yet know who he is. He took the stage in a very sure and confident manner. Mikishima had a proper stage presence, which was enhanced by the fact he had an interpreter. Having a Japanese businessman speaking in broken English is jarring, as you have to concentrate on the words rather than on the content. Shibata of course went in with broken English as an exception.
Shinya Takahashi is another new-ish name. As with Kimishima, the public got to know him better. While Miyamoto has been the face of the company alongside Iwata for some time now, it seems Nintendo has been progressively been pushing to give a face for their franchises. After all, Nintendo has been becoming a company of IPs in few ways.
The info about the Switch goes from pretty damn neat to weak. First of all, region freedom is a welcome change in how Nintendo handles their machines, and this tickles all the importers’ nuts just the right way.
Paid online is hit on the system, but then again a game that relies solely on online multiplayer will become obsolete in number of years solely because of that. Like it or not, a game still needs to have a solid offline mode stand the test of time. Hopefully the subscription for the online is less than what either of their competitors prices theirs at, and is more usable than before.
Switch’s battery life is no worse than 3DS, but at least I can throw in a battery bank. However, the main hardware showcase, the real piece of hardware that really matters when it comes to game consoles, is the controller design. While I personally love all the stuff they managed to pack into the Joycons (the name is still terrible) the fact is that they are over-engineered. The reason the Switch retails at $300 is probably partially because the controllers. I intending to do a longer piece about the controller design itself sometime later, so let’s leave the rest for later.
I admit that the size of the controllers seem to be on the smaller side.
The Pro Controller will retail at $70, which further reminds me how tired I am to pay stupidly high prices for controllers. The price point will hurt Switch’s sales, and with what looks like a Mushroom Kingdom-less 3D Mario, the Switch has few things going against it already.
I did expect to see more gameplay footage rather than promotional trailers, but I guess that was a foolhardy wish. 1-2-Switch is no WiiSports and won’t drive system sales. It probably works the best as a tech demo of sorts and a party game for some, but overall there will be no large interest in it. Arms won’t fare any better, but I hope it’ll have better controls than most of Wii’s boxing games. The logo’s also too industrial, something that would fit on a DeWalt drill. It needs to be punched up a bit. Splatoon has its fans, but a system seller it is not, and the sequel really doesn’t seem to change things around one bit.
Super Mario Odyssey is a surprise in that it reminds more Sonic Adventure than previous Mario titles. There is nothing special about 3D Mario, and moving to the “real world” instead of expanding on Mushroom Kingdom is a mistep. Now if they could put the same amount of effort and money into 2D Mario games, things would be great. 3D Mario hasn’t really driven high sales with Nintendo’s past consoles, and with the changes Odyssey has to the world, it’s doubtful this will drive sales either.
Xenoblade 2 looks nice and all, but I doubt it will be a huge hit either. Fire Emblem Musou will stay a niche title still. Only Japan cares about Dragon Quest, there are numerous reasons why Final Fantasy has always been more popular. Shin Megami Tensei‘s 25th anniversary title hopefully visits the roots of the franchise a bit more and hopefully gets a fully uncensored release in the West. Let’s be honest, RPGs is what Switch needs, which is why something like Skyrim will probably see at least decent sales. Project Octopath Traveller left people largely cold as it showed jack shit.
It was fun to see Suda-51, Sega’s and EA’s representatives come to the stage and mention they know the Switch exists and intend to develop for it. Props to EA’s interpreter. Europe loves FIFA, so this bit felt more fanservice towards soccer fans than anything else.
Despite the lineup we saw towards the end of the event, we didn’t get launch lineup, but we got confirmation for numerous titles, including a Street Fighter II (now confirmed as Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers) and a new Bomberman. Goddamit, a Bomberman title on launch? Sign me in. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild goes for the epic, and it still needs to convince me that it’s more than what the trailer show (i.e. less plot and more adventure content to play with lesser emphasize on puzzles.) However, between it and Super Mario Odyssey, it’s BotW that has the edge.
Thou the edge needs to be cleaned up, it’s rusty and needs polishing
3rd of March is when the 9th console game generation hits. It was a nice ending for the show, though more info came soon after.
For example, the Switch Online Service as a free trial period and seems to have the usual stuff you expect from modern online services: free games, exclusive deals and online multiplayer. However, the inclusion of device application for phones and tablets is stupid. Why would you need to use their dedicated application to call your friends to play an online game? You can just phone them. Online play for NES and SNES games can be good, if its implemented right and connection is up to it. Then again, not many retro game is worth online play, if we’re brutally honest. Co-op is fun and all, but without direction connection to the second player, it’s missing something essential from the mix.
News are pouring in all the time, but I’ll take the slow route with them. Little consideration and taking it easy instead of insta-blogging should do some good for the thought.
However, from what we already have here can make an educated guess that the Switch won’t probably be the same success story as the NES (sans Europe) or the Wii, but won’t be a bomb like the Wii U either. It’s going to do just fine, meandering on the more positive side of the story.
The title may be click bait-y, but it’s really the best title for this topic. This will kick off a loose Monthly Three for the time being, as it seemed most people deemed themed posts worthless. But first I’d like to note that I am talking about the casual game industry, not about the casual gamer.
What the term casual gamer entices in the end is muddy at best. Its meaning has changed significantly at the core to the point of it being mostly a throwaway marketing term to push certain kinds of products over the other, and largely to condemn consumers with certain tastes and habits.
The first console in the 2000’s to be named as casual to any extent was the DS due to it having low-end games in mass quantity. Low-end game does not mean a game that is bad, technically or in design, but a game that is extremely easy to get into and play. A low-end game is not necessarily lacking in content or anything that most people would associate with so-called casual games, as New Super Mario Bros. on the system would show. To go further back in time, many modern industry workers who played the NES would not consider Super Mario Bros. 3 in the same league as Wii Sports, but both titles are high-quality low-end games. In comparison, the DS had high-end games like Solatorobo and Umihara Kawase Shun Second Edition Kanzenban, which in comparison weren’t massive hits. Mostly because the aforementioned Umihara Kawase title was Japanese only, but you get the picture.
The Wii is often regarded as the pinnacle of a console, where quantity was over quality, thou history would disagree. There are consoles out there that may have smaller library of games, but in reality only one or two games are even decent. Virtual Boy being an example of this. The other end would the Game Boy and the DS itself. Nevertheless, the Wii was regarded as the most desirable console out of the three of its generation and sold higher number of consoles than its competitors. Not because of wagglan, like most suggest, but because the Wii disrupted the game industry.
The industry had abandoned low-end games almost completely before the DS and the Wii, producing mostly high-end games. These games were not of highest quality either, so for every few good title you got loads of titles with pretty design and technical aspects. The PS2 library is like this in large extent. The consumer base was not being expanded and companies continued to cater to the niche, red ocean consumers. Most people who bought a PlayStation seemingly moved to the PlayStation 2, with those who didn’t have faith in the Dreamcast and whatever Nintendo would be pushing out after the N64 were doing the same. Much like how most American comics only sell to comics comic nerds without any regards, and even in that there has been changes to cater a more niche audience.
The Wii however started much like other Nintendo’s successful consoles; low-end, but high-quality titles. This disrupted the industry, as there was very little production of low-end games going on at the time in comparison to the 1980’s or even the early-to-mid 1990’s. This goes hand in hand with the rising costs of game development, where higher-end game requires higher bucks to be finalised, but it will also lose big if it’s a bomb. Wii Sports is a perfect example of a low-end game hitting what the general consumers were looking for. Without a doubt it’s a game with a very simple surface that anyone can access, but the underlying layer of complexity, the physics, offered a challenge. There were multiple modes too. It’s execution left people to yearn more of content in similar philosophy, but after a booming start, not even Nintendo kept up with this. It’s much easier to realise your own dream of a game than take consumers’ voice into account.
However, making a good low-end game is hard. Not anyone can replicate Super Mario Bros.‘s quality, and even the Big N themselves shot themselves in the leg by giving their later 2D Mario titles less attention and resources during development, thou Miyamoto himself has admitted that 2D Marios take more work to make right. No wonder they released Mario Maker to take off that load from themselves.
The game industry doesn’t like being disrupted, especially when disruption ends up making a company huge amounts of money. Looking at the coverage the Wii was getting from both industry insiders and gaming press, the news are pretty raw. Outside the usual Nintendo’s finished we see every time they release a new console, the consumers were pretty much called idiots and considered almost like subhumans who couldn’t appreciate the marvels that HD gaming and cutting edge hardware could produce. This attitude is very apparent in the third-party games on the Wii across its years, as there is no passion in the titles. These people who bought the Wii, they weren’t the people who bought the PS2, these weren’t the people who played games. They were casual gamers. Who has a passion to make games for people they consider as idiots, unworthy of appreciating true pieces of works?
The game industry created an industry just to cater the consumers they thought they were seeing with Wiimotes in their hands, but in reality no such area existed. This was apparent in the sales as well. When the third-party games turned out to be less than satisfactory, the Virtual Console titles became the main point of the console, outselling even Nintendo’s own new titles. Super Mario All-Starts 25th Anniversary Edition was a surprise to Nintendo, as people still wanted to play those games. Low-end and high-quality combination has always been highly desired combination when it comes to gaming, and largely is the silver bullet in plans to make a successful game. The rest comes with world and game design.
The death of the casual game industry essentially came to an end when the industry stopped making games for idiots. It wasn’t because of the hardware’s power, but the design and utility of it. It’s surprising how little people consider a console’s design anywhere else but in outer appearance and technical hardware, except when something negative had to be mentioned. The Wii could use traditional controllers, it had the Motion controls, which also served as a more traditional NES style controller, and it had the possibility for multiple other input methods (at least on the outer appearance.) However, all this largely fell apart, the potential of the Wii was kicked in the curb when Nintendo moved onwards to concentrate with their next console. If I were to say my view on the matter, the killing blow Nintendo dealt to the Wii was Wii Music, a title that nobody ever wanted and a title that showed that Nintendo too believed their consumers were idiots, unwilling to purchase their masterpieces… like Metroid Other M. Indeed, Metroid Other M is like anti-thesis to Wii Sports, filled with the intentions of making the best story-driven high-end Metroid that would wow the opposite audience of these idiots, ensuring that Nintendo and the Wii that they were the shit. What happened is common in cases like this, and the less said about it the better, except that it is a title that showcases how Nintendo once again left their larger audience, the audience that had made them a recognized name in the overall popular culture.
Nobody makes a bad game intentionally is something I hear people saying when it comes to terrible titles. However, not everybody aims to make the best title either, lacking either in passion or will to go all out on a game they themselves have little faith or value in. The casual game industry died when the industry largely stopped producing those games, to some extent. The Wii U is filled with middle-end games with no quality whatsoever, despite Nintendo making it the anti-Wii. The 3DS had such an awful start with ports and carry-over titles that it wasn’t desired until the library had grown and saw more low-end titles with less emphasize on the 3D. The less Nintendo listens to the industry, the more they find success. It just takes loads of work.
The argument that you need third-party products to succeed nowadays is partially correct. You need high-quality products on your system across the spectrum, not just from one end of the spectrum no matter who makes it. A game library is like a food circle, with high-end games being the meat and low-end games being the greens. Breads, rise, pasta etc being lower-mid end, milks, meat and fish being higher-mid end and high fat foods being the high-end foods. Roughly speaking, that is.
Ports of games people are already playing on a different systems does not allow it to rise above from the sea of grey, and seemingly ports are treated as the fries of a console library; they’re there to supplement the main burger. Third party burgers aren’t rare either, seeing both Microsoft and Sony have largely relied on third-party to make their systems big hits. Except for Halo in many ways.
Will Nintendo Switch have a casual game industry? Only if the developers start treating their consumers like retards again and unwilling to produce quality products for the system. They’ll feel that in their pockets then. Whatever the Switch ends up being is completely tied to its software library.
It’s interesting that Miyamoto talks about F-Zero may return once the right controller interface becomes available, because that’s a load of horse shit. What sort of controller interface needs to be made available for a new F-Zero? If a GameBoy Advance is enough to accommodate F-Zero’s controls, then surely their controller interfaces on 3DS and Wii U would do just fun for a racing game. Hell, all you really need is to adapt Mario Kart controls, even with the tilting of someone wants to, and hey presto you got a controls.
Unless Miyamoto means physical control interface, in which case the next F-Zero will be utilising some sort of new controller, which could lead the game being extremely gimmicky and/or expensive. Just look at Tekki /Steel Battalion on the Xbox. It has a controller interface that was custom built for that game and its sequel, but goddamn if those two are not expensive and saw limited production. Could you see Nintendo producing a controller made just for F-Zero, a series Miyamoto himself called a no-seller? Then again, alternative controls would be welcomed on any platform, as long as they are affordable.
Also, there is a sect of F-Zero fans who regard the GameCube controller as the all end for the series, much like how Smash Bros. players, and some devs, regard that controller the best and only one for the series. Nintendo has that GC Controller adapter for Wii U now, so that’s no excuse either, thou some would disagree.
What is more important is what is not mentioned; Metroid. Did the failure of Other M make Nintendo look at their other space sci-fi franchises with a new look? Duringlast E3, Nintendo representatives did not state that new Metroid games would be developed anytime soon; only that they are having internal discussion what they could do next with the series. It would be good to hear what Nintendo is discussing of their games and planning for them. Then again, we are in the near future and nothing tangible has come forth. Both Takahashi and Miyamoto give diplomatic answer how they like the different styles of Metroid. Miyamoto’s comment how there are things they could do with the Prime series is like musician saying there’s thing left you can do with a guitar.
Granted, there has been some rumours on Retro working on something Metroid related, but rumours are worth nothing. If one takes the developers into notice, it’s good to remember that the people who worked on the Prime series games no longer work at Retro Studios. Yet, somehow I’m getting a feeling that the power that be in Nintendo are just turning their heads this time and measuring some reactions, but that fails when you remember how Nintendo’s devs barely give a damn about the wants of their customers.
Now playable Star Fox sounds nice, all things considered. However, the last few titles were not all too successful and it seems more people are forgetting the DS Star Fox for whatever reason, and the two games on GameCube were more or less panned down. The Wii U Star Fox better put something new on the table rather than recycling stuff like either version of Star Fox 64.
Speaking of new entries for silent franchises, where’s one for Star Tropics?
In a recent QA discussion, Iwata of Nintendo touched a little upon Nintendo’s policies on region locking. Zelda informer has a translation on the bit that matters. Much like other similar sessions, Iwata’s comments on the restriction are rather empty. While he does make a proper comment on the worldwide troubles when it comes to global licensing and localisation, Iwata regards that there is too many problems on region free console despite its possible benefits to both customer and service provider.
Whether or not Nintendo will make a move towards region free consoles is an open question, but because it’s Nintendo I would not get my hopes up.
This QA sparked a small discussion on the ‘net about Nintendo’s region locking. Nintendo has a history for region locking when it comes to their home consoles as each and every has a form of region lock implemented in them. In handhelds however, the DSi was Nintendo’s first and this was simply because of the eShop.
In reality, there is no real problems with region free consoles in modern gaming. Any and all handheld consoles were universally produced to be compatible with one sort of software, and thus there was no reason to region lock anything. The whole idea of a handheld is to have it everywhere you go and have the software working on it on the go. The GameBoy line and the DS enforced this and you can find many stories where people travelled to other regions and buying games there for their own region GameBoys.
In this regard, Nintendo has stopped producing handheld consoles as they are perceived. The DSi, 3DS and Flanders all are home consoles in handheld form. The idea of a handheld console on the go is the core basic of it. With region locking, the core of portability takes a hit. Because Nintendo forces the user account to be locked to the consoles rather than on a server, losing or having the console breaking down essentially causes the consumer lose everything digital one that particular console. That is a risk Nintendo should have taken into account from the get go and remove such possibility. How Nintendo is handling their user accounts at this moment is horribly designed and against the benefits of the customer, and thus against the benefits of Nintendo themselves.
There are completely valid legal reasons to limit the user access to different region online stores on the consoles, that much is true. SONY’s PlayStation Network is brilliant in this regard that the store is tied to the account region, and has the gray area that allows the user create different region accounts if one knows what they’re doing. This benefits SONY and allows more sales software globally than what it normally would have. Microsoft’s account system is less flexible, as the consoles are tied to a region as is the online store, but the developers are able to select whether or not lock their games to a particular region.
In order to enforce the core freedom of a handheld console while enforcing the online region lock, one possible solution would be to lock the online store, eShop in Nintendo’s case, to the account region while allowing the physical cartridges, or the games themselves, to be region free. This causes some problems, such the inability to access add-ons and updates to the game software if they’re only available on the online store. This could be solved by allowing the games access their online store page and nothing else, thus allowing the customer to fully take use of their software while limiting access to any other part of regionally locked material on the store. It’s not a perfect solution, but the companies could also form agreements where the contents of the games are licensed for use in a particular software on a console without limitations. It would be a legal jungle to tackle and entirely possible feat to do. It would require a paradigm shift in the companies, however.
Earlier on, Iwata has mentioned that region locking is due to cultural differences and the aforementioned legal restrictions. However, to say that they employ region lock because one regional culture may deem certain aspects as offensive or something similar is outright stupid. If that was the case, every nation would need its own region code and localisation and that’s not happening. Iwata would actually have a good chance here to come out and say how Nintendo encourages people to experience others culture through video games and see the differences as well as the common things cultures share.
With the discussion of Iwata’s QA it became apparent that not all were familiar with Nintendo’s history of region locking. Many claimed that the Super NES and N64 were region free consoles. Let’s take a look what sort of locking mechanism Nintendo has employed through the years in their home consoles.
The NES had a chip called 10NES and physical cartridge differences to enforce region locking. The NES and Famicom cartridges were different in size and shape as well as having different pin layout. The NES carts had their own chip inside, which the 10NES checked. If there was a conflict between the chips, the console would refuse to run the software.
The Super Nintendo followed some of the NES’ practices. The US got a abomination of a redesign, making a physical lockout between NTSC carts. This physical lockout is easy to bypass in either US or JPN console with removal of pegs that prevent different region cartridge insertion. PAL region console has a CIC chip, which functions like an upgraded 10NES chip. The PAL region used the same superior design the Japanese had, but because of the physical differences with the malformed US carts and the CIC differences with Japanese cart, the PAL console can’t run either.
The N64 region lock is the same as with SNES at its basics, but due to common design worldwide, the US and JPN only had raised surfaces preventing insertion of different region carts. This is easily solved by removing surfaces. There are five different variations of the N64 CIC chip in both NTSC and PAL of varying rarity. For example, Starfox has its unique chip for whatever reason.
With the removal of cartridges, physical differences between regions died out. The discs are uniform across regions, but the consoles still have a bios chip that check certain pathways on the PCB. The Game Boy Player add-on is region free in itself, but the disc required to run the device is not, as per standard. The Wii has a region check routine tied to its IOS system. Wii U has similar system to it, but it should also be noted that the Wii U GamePad is also region locked for whatever God forsaken reason.
Most physical lockouts can be circumvented in a way or another. mmmmonkey is a good site to start with older console region modding, if you’re into that. Modern consoles are another thing, and often bring piracy with the homebrew scene.
I’ve got no difficulties in admitting that I used to be a Nintendo fan. I liked their games and consoles and turned a blind eye to their worse decisions. At some point I began to wonder why Nintendo didn’t continue making as great products as they used to, but told myself that I had changed. The truth was that I still enjoyed the same old games they were producing, but the new ones just didn’t capture the same spirit. It was Nintendo that had made that change in themselves, and with these changes we’ve seen drop in quality and in their profits.
It all sort of came together as a whole this week, like seeing somebody into their soul and seeing how they really think.
With the DS and Wii Iwata told us that the only way for video games to survive as a business and as an industry is to expand the market, to include everyone in their user base. They succeeded in this, and Nintendo’s platforms flourished like during the NES days. Software and hardware sales were far higher than any of the competition. DS utterly devastated PSP. The Wii sold more than either of its competitors as one of Nintendo’s aim was to have a Wii in every household, at least in America. They pretty much succeeded.
The turning point in all this is hard to pinpoint. There’s two clear points to argue about; the release of Super Mario Galaxy 2 with its instructional disc, or the revelation and release of Wii Music.
Super Mario Galaxy 2 was marketed at the people who bought New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Nintendo clearly felt that Galaxy 2 was a superior product, but the consumers just needed to be taught how to play the game. That’s pandering, and an awful strategy. Everybody just laughed at this motion, and Galaxy 2 went to sell less and NSMB Wii. However, modern Nintendo always does whatever they want to, disregarding the customers. 2D Mario has always sold more than any 3D Mario. It’s what the consumers want, but that’s exactly what Miyamoto denies. He wants to do 3D Mario more than 2D Mario. Why? Because he wants and is allowed to whatever the wants to, and Wii Music is a prominent example of waste of resources.
Furthermore, Miyamoto has been pushing 3D Mario into 2D Mario with the 3DS to a large extent. Both Super Mario 3D Land and 3D World saw large amounts of 3D Mario elements pushed in while gaining long wanted properties, like the Tanooki Suit and multiple proper character that are not Toads, while the 2D Mario was essentially left into shadows and given very little attention, resources and effort. Latest 2D Mario games are like cheap flash games people do for practice. 2D Mario has always taken more effort to produce properly, but as mentioned, it also has produced more profits than 3D Mario. It would make more sense to give 2D Mario far more attention to maximise the potential profits, but that would mean Miyamoto would have to do something he doesn’t like and Nintendo can’t allow that.
It’s the exact same thing with Zelda. Aonuma doesn’t want to make an Action RPG, but a Puzzle Adventure games. It’s no wonder Zelda’s sales have dropped. Same thing with Metroid. Other M’s infamy is well known and everybody and their mothers knows what a Metroid game should be. Sakamoto clearly didn’t.
New Nintendo doesn’t just hate me, but it hates everybody. It’s common to see people blaming other mobile devices on the low sales of Nintendo products. Even Miyamoto does this in the Edge Magazine interview. It’s a common misconception. iPhone was released in 2007 and the whole pad boom began then, overlapping both DS and Wii. It didn’t impact the sales because the software was driving Nintendo’s profits just fine. The pad and mobile phone game market do no overlap with portable game console market. The only difference now is the quality of the products offered. It’s not the attitude of the customers of the expanded market they managed to create changed; the customer has always expected the service provider to entertain them. Nintendo was the one who changed from a healthy company to an incestuous self-back patters. The market pushed these games and consoles away because they ranged from mediocre to rubbish. This same market has no problems with games like Mario Kart, which saw high sales and for a while was a hardware seller as well.
But Miyamoto and Nintendo see their opinions worth more noting than what the market and numbers state.
That, of course, creates the question Who are the people Nintendo makes for? Sakurai has an excellent answer for this; the less vocal, not so visible group of players. Translation of that would say; our own imaginary customers. In the market there is two groups; the larger and the smaller. No matter how you hate the thought, the smaller group is the hardcore gamers, and out of these hardcores you have a smaller section of devoted Nintendo fans. This crowd is extremely loud and voices their opinion and the moment something goes online. They shout as strongly as possible in and out of the Internet. They are extremely passionate small group of users. The larger market, the ones Nintendo managed to expand to, remains largely silent and only voices their opinion on sales. With the Wii U and 3DS, Nintendo has lost most of its expanded market already because they began to cater hardcore group.
Aiming to sell only to a small, exclusive group of customers can be a valid strategy. This means that the products need to be more expensive in order to keep profits at a satisfactory level. Often these products are also have a high production value in every regard and come in limited numbers. This strategy often also sees support from products aimed at a larger market, but everything is of lower quality here. Nintendo’s strategy here is to just cater the one small customer group, the hardcore. This is not a sensible business decision as it’s not sustainable, especially in entertainment and video games. Nintendo’s aim to further diminish their market will equally diminish their profits, and seeing how mediocre products they’ve been cashing out toward the hardcore, like the few latest Zelda games and Other M, their products will see a drop in quality as well. Even more so, if Nintendo decides to cater just their core fans, it means they are able to do whatever they want. The small dedicated fanbase would probably buy anything and everything Nintendo puts out and defend it as the Second coming. I bet there’s Nintendo fans out there that defend even the Virtual Boy.
We’re seeing Nintendo’s disregard of their products even in Sakurai and Smash Bros for -console-. Sakurai has progressively put more characters from the games he has worked on for the sake of having them. Kirby is understandable and so is Pit. Then suddenly, we get King DeDeDeDe, Palutena and, for no good reason, Dark Pit. King DeDeDe is another understandable character, but Palutena and Dark Pit are slot wasters. There are more female Nintendo characters that would fit better in Palutena’s place, to promote another games series altogether too. I hope the leaks are incorrect and Dark Pit is merely just a colour change and nothing more. Sakurai pushes characters he regards as his own onwards, just as Nintendo pushes games that the expanded market doesn’t purchase. Fire Emblem, as much as fans tote the series as great, has never seen great sales in the West. It is inherently Japanese game for Japanese people to play, just like the Super Robot Wars series. Yet Nintendo pushes no less than four Fire Emblem characters to SSB for -console-. It’s surprising that Wii Fit Trainer got in, but I doubt it’s because of high software sales and more because of the infamy of Wii Fit with the hardcore crowd.
Sakurai calls other customers more interesting than others. What the hell does it matter if other customers are more interesting than others? Either group of people bring in money, and essentially are the ones funding his pay. Games won’t fade away if you don’t listen to a small group of people, it’s the complete opposite. By concentrating on a small group of people, like the hardcore crowd they’re now concentrating on, game will get monotonous, very similar and worsen in quality. There’s very little challenge in trying to make something that will appease small amount of people, but there’s incredibly challenge in producing something that will be a hit with everybody. And Nintendo has a history of doing the latter over and over during the NES era.
Then we have to talk about New Nintendo 3DS. I’m not sure if I should type it as *new*to emulate the logo. This, by all means, is further pushing the existing 3DS userbase away from the company alongside the expanded market. This is just a big middle finger from Nintendo. I almost typed CAPCOM there, I’m so used to using that sentence with them. The New 3DS, the N3DS, or as I call it; Stupid Flanders, is a dumbfounding product.
Pictured; The Customers’ view at Nintendo giving a numerical value in how much they care about their customers
Stupid Flanders is like the DSi, but worse. At least with the DSi, the games that supported it had no troubles running on the base DS models. While it’s typical for Nintendo to renew their handheld console design in its lifetime, never before we have seen this many; the 3DS has four different models now; the 3DS, 3DSXL, 2DS, Flanders and Flanders XL. The GameBoy had four iterations as well, if we count Colour, and that was during the span of nine years. The 3Ds has been out for three years, and now they’re making the decision to push a new hardware out that singles out previous version owners with their exclusive games. However, I honestly wish that the amount of exclusives will be small and consist only of home console ports.
The question is whether or not Stupid Flanders is worth buying? Sure, it has double the shoulder buttons and that C-Button, but those are worth crap if there’s no software behind it. It always depends on the software whether or not a console is worth purchase. Xenoblade Chronicles being announced for the Flanders is both dumbfounding and understandable. It’s stupid because it’s coming for Wii U and has been one of its hype driving forces among the hardcore, but bringing it on the Flanders seems would increase its sales. Stupid Flanders will most likely increase overall 3DS software sales as well, as they’re grown stagnant everywhere.
The stronger CPU means nothing if the developers are not up to the task. Even Nintendo’s own staff couldn’t port their own NES games properly into 3D. I’m still wondering what kind of black magic SEGA’s M2 section is using in order to make perfection 3DS ports of SEGA classics with the best possible 3D effects. Nintendo has been pushing GameCube games on the Wii U despite them never selling well on the original platform and the lousy success if Pikmin 3. I can see Stupid Flanders getting better CPU to accommodate GameCube ports of sorts. Even the included C-Button supports this.
And who the hell is heading the name department at Nintendo? NEW Nintendo 3DS? Super Smash Brother FOR WII U / 3DS? Both of these are horrible names, just like the Wii U. But why should we care? Nintendo clearly doesn’t.
Why can’t Nintendo stop for moment and see what the market at large is wanting? Why do they keep pushing their own wants and desires over the customers? There’s only one real answer, and it is that they are selfish and in love with themselves. We’ve been seeing the slow death of Nintendo the Servant, and slow creation of Nintendo the Selfish Artist. Is this what the death of Hiroshi Yamauchi leaves? It seems like it. The sad thing is that Stupid Flanders will most likely sell decently, especially in Japan and among the hardcore Nintendo fans, but it won’t raise the quality of the products. Nintendo just isn’t in this business to make money anymore, but to make whatever they want to have fun with at the customers’ and profits’ expense.
Exclusivity in video games is polarising matter to handle. It might be strange to find out that while I am all for the customer always, I am a solid supporter of exclusivity when it comes to video games. As such, this is one of those rarer posts where I will voice a clear statement that is mine, rather than from a point of view that I might or might not agree with.
A common argument why most, if not all, video games should be available on all platforms is that this would enable the customer to choose whatever platform he prefers and purchase those games for it. It sounds really good argument and tickles the hardcore crowd’s funny bone in their lower backs. A general customer would then ask Then what would be the point of having multiple machines?
That’s a question that thickens the plot and makes the spider spin its web. Why DO we have all these consoles? After all, the machine’s purpose it to run the game, and the machine shouldn’t matter, right? If all games would be released on all consoles, shouldn’t that increase the competition? Or if we just had one console, shouldn’t that increase the competition too?
Well, the very reason we have multiple consoles is that we would have different companies running their machines in our houses over the other. At the moment we have three competing machines, two of which are basically the same shit in a different package and then one that has a screen on its controller. On the handheld side we have a machine that’s barely successful and then one that repeated every fault its predecessor had and added new ones. In contrast to this, on the fourth generation of video games we had around nine consoles running against each other and at least three handhelds and buttloads of Tiger Electronics games. And fourth generation of video games was insanely successful and popular in contrast what we have nowadays.
And all those consoles had large amounts of exclusive games and nobody complained.
As the Neo HD-Twins are the same shit with different package, the devs are having perhaps the easiest time of porting games from those to PC or back. Wii U is the only machine that they’re having trouble with, but according to an article it’s mostly because Nintendo themselves screwed a lot of things up with their devkits and helpdesk organization. Thus, Wii U will see lesser amount of stuff than its competitors. Then you add the cost of HD development, which again went up with the generation shift.
I don’t want game developers to have easy time. Their work is already relatively easy, as all they do is sit inside in front of their computers and type shit down while they chat and drink coffee. Most of them barely want to do the math how to take all they can out of a system anymore, and just want the best and most powerful machine out there so they can go all wild and not care how well their game is formed up. This might be shocking to hear, but I’d love to see games made with care, with high level of coding and so that it wouldn’t take three to six years. We’re barely getting a new real Zelda games twice a decade now, and we haven’t seen a well made 2D Super Mario game since Super Mario World. In hindsight, New Super Mario Bros. got a freepass because it was the first 2D Mario game in a long time. Now that Nintendo has milked half-assed 2D Mario to death, they’ve been forcing 3D game elements into 2D Mario and its failing.
A successful company is for the customers’ best. A successful company that has tough competition is better for the customer. A successful company that has successful competitors need to put our good amount of high quality products and hit the Blue Ocean market in order to eclipse their competitors, and this is good for the customer.
What I mean by this that the current situation is all kinds of wrong when you look at it properly. We’re seeing the exact same games repeated in slightly different forms, or in Fifa’s case just with a skinjob. Just as the Neo HD-Twins are same shit, their games to a large extent are the same with a different package. While there would be nothing wrong in having the same game on all machines, it does take out the uniqueness of each released game. Say you have ten games released on three different system. You’re basically left one unique game in that set of ten, because three games would be on three systems, effectively making you have either three to four games depending on the system of your choice. The competition is screwed, and even more so if that one game is for a whole other platform from the three others. On the other hand, the devs could make one of those games a multiplatform game, and the rest would be unique standalone titles. We would see seven different games that wouldn’t only compete with each other, but would also compete with the platforms. We would see a thing called variety.
When you have a large amount of variety aimed in different parts of the Blue Ocean with the aim of making the possible product, magic starts to happen.
The most successful console has the most games. Most of these games are also exclusive to this console. When it was said that the NES had the best games, it was true. It saw the most sales, and numbers don’t lie or change. People lie and change, and are prone to be biased. While quantity does not mean quality, there is a higher chance of having quality products in high quantity set than in small quantity set.
When you start thinning out all the multiplatform releases from the last generation, the overall amount of single games released starts to look a bit strange. A multiplatform game barely matters; it doesn’t sell consoles. However, games that sell consoles matter always, and the most games that move console sales are exclusives.
There are also sad sides on exclusivity, such as that it creates fanboys. The common customer doesn’t actually give a damn if they’re playing a Nintendo or Microsoft, all they care for if they have games they’re interested in. It’s the small hardcore crowd that cares if they have a certain console over another. I can completely understand the existence of Nintendo’s fanbase, as they’re basically the only hardware and software manufacturer nowadays, but seeing that most SONY and Microsoft fans always put multiplatform gaming on a pedestal and compare the exact same product side-by-side to see the minuscule differences, I don’t understand why these two would even have an issue with each other? Most of their competition doesn’t even come from the games, but from the company producing the machines. At least during the 8-bit and 16-bit Console Wars we used to compare games against each other.
There’s also the interesting point, that while the hardcore and the rest of the industry just laughs at Nintendo, they can’t help but say how much they’d love to play their games. In comparison, very rarely does Nintendo owners have a feel to play games on other consoles because they had ports of games or other games that filled the same niche.
And that where it all actually lies; by having these companies creating different games for different platforms, even within same genre, there would be competition to outwit the other. Even better if this would happen inside the developing companies too.
And when companies compete with each other, and with themselves internally, that can be highly beneficial to the customer.
Sadly, the game business is warped nowadays, and not just because of Neo HD-Twins being completely dumbed down PCs rather than game consoles and the hardcore crowd driving the industry further down, and the industry actually listens to these Red Ocean people rather hitting the Blue Ocean with all their might and making money. Of course, the macro-economic situation doesn’t help in this either.
As such, I stand on the side that wants to see more different games populating the console libraries rather see the same games populating all the consoles. The customer would have much wider selection to choose from, as well as more reasons to pick one console over the other. As such, the customer would have the option to pick from multiple games rather than just one on many platforms. And naturally, this would also be good for the console business.
All of us knows that the DS had a bad start. We all saw that when it went from being a portable N64 to a portable SNES, it became something exceptional; it became the King of consoles. Nintendo’s wish to tap the untapped marked, ie. the Blue Ocean market and reset the userbase served them well; both DS and Wii became a steamrolling monster. No console was spared. There was something for everybody, new and old alike.
It really boggles my mind that Nintendo decided to ignore what Wii and DS were and proceed with the Wii U and 3DS.
As Wii U’s EU release date is closing in, I decided to check out Iwata Asks if they offered some good info for me to think about. I haven’t really thought of Wii U as there’s nothing to think of. However, the latest Iwata Asks made my blood boil for a moment. This time they were discussing New Super Mario Bros. U (drop the New prefix Nintendo) and this just shows that these people have no idea what the hell they’re doing.
“Iwata; A Super Mario action game is also like a puzzle game.”
DOES THIS LOOK LIKE A PUZZLE GAME? For the sake of everything you hold holy, how the hell is Iwata regarding Super Mario Bros. a puzzle game? Things couldn’t get any worse really.
“Iwamoto: Last time, there was a Free-for-All Mode for lightly playing the regular courses. We decided at the start that we wanted to put in something similar to that. We tried connecting certain courses and playing them through, but it wasn’t very fun.
Iwata: The gameplay was uneventful without surprise.”
It’s your job to design the stages so that they’ll pose a challenge. Gimmicks and different modes do not make good game play. Even less, surprises do not make good gameplay. Iwata obsession to surprises only compares to his obsession with 3D. Iwata doesn’t even understand what makes Super Mario Bros. gameplay and thus calls it uneventful and lacking in surprise. The next thing they want to add is racing because hey, everybody likes racing in 2D Mario, right?
Iwamoto: Yeah. There were a lot of opinions to the effect that simply playing the courses you had played in the story mode was lacking something. Then we tried adding rules, so that the screen keeps scrolling and the more coins you get the faster it goes. It’s slow at the start, but it gradually gets faster and more difficult. That fit Super Mario gameplay.
Nintendo, make that Adventure Island game if you want to make one so badly. You still have the money to buy the license. Not for long thou, this kind of game development will only cost you money with no revenue. NSMBU will sell as much as 3DS Mario games, and those were a sad case of utter failure. This kind of forced movement and mode concentration clearly has taken their attention away from what’s important; content.
“Iwata; So while New Super Mario Bros. U is an action game, you can also enjoy puzzle and racing game elements.”
Nobody will ever buy a Mario game for its puzzle elements unless it’s a straight up puzzle game. It’s like saying that people buy Street Fighter for the story, Metal Gear for the fighting, Puyo Puyo for the action or Muv-Luv for the gameplay. It’s stupid, and from Nintendo’s part it’s both unprofessional and selfish. And Nintendo still wonders why Super Mario Bros. 3 is the one game that everyone will always regard as the shining example for a perfect game. Even in this Iwata Asks they talk about how SMB3 influences them, and yet they admit of doing nothing with it. Just copying the world map.
This makes me sad. I wish I still had some honest to God rage in me, but CAPCOM drained all that from me. They’re talking about modes but not of Worlds, of content. They’re congratulating themselves for making a game that nobody wants. They’re not adding any value on the pre-existing template. Rather, they’re taking away building blocks that made Super Mario Bros. games a success. Literally, blocks. Think back to SMB3 and how things were blocks. Music blocks and all that. They weren’t just tools, they were there to jump on, to break, to bounce off and to kick to enemies. Now Nintendo’s thinking that SMB games are nothing short of obstacle courses you need to run trough. Even with this they’re making the games easier. Having a Big Mario with Fire Flower at the end of the stage was a big deal in the first three Mario games. Now, you have so many lives and powerups that it doesn’t matter. The game’s broken at a fundamental level. The lack of challenge combined with the abundance of lives and powerups just break the game’s challenge completely. SMB3 didn’t allow you to go back to past levels, it always forced you to advance and conserve your power-ups. Not so any more.
I also need to ask this; why did they break the controls? All Mario games prior Super Mario 64 had tight and responsive controls. After we got 3D Mario, all SMB games have had that same unresponsive, feathery floaty controls that barely constitute as working. Why did they force 3D floatiness into 2D Mario? Why they made the controls less precise when people enjoyed those? I don’t feel that I’m in control any more with modern Mario games. They’re going and going and it feels like I can’t make precise jumps or runs. Then I play some SMB1 and find myself making pixel perfect executions.
How much has Nintendo screwed up that I’m fearing for 2D Mario’s future?
There are two kind of Zelda games; the likes that sell and those that don’t. Zelda is supposed to be system seller, a game that grabs your attention and draws you to a console and convinces you to buy 200€ system plus the game. The Legend of Zelda was one. Link’s Adventure was one, as was pretty much much everything else as well up to the SNES era. We can argue if Ocarina of Time truly sold N64, as the system’s sales were low to begin with. None of the Zelda games have been system sellers since.
And now Nintendo’s putting huge amounts of money, manpower and resources on the WiiU Zelda.
I have to ask this; What are they thinking? Why are they wasting this much resources on an Anouma Zelda title? Anouma Zelda does not sell, because at its core it’s not a Zelda game, but a PC Adventure game. “The new Wii U Zelda will feature “about the same amount of dungeons as previous Zelda games, but these will be vastly bigger in scope and will be totally different from each other. Some dungeons are so big they’re broken up in 3 parts and will literally take hours to complete”.
Why? Because these Dungeons are nothing but puzzles. Why? Because Anouma can’t make a good action RPG even if his family’s life would depend on it. For Pete’s sake the guy wanted to cut grass rather than play the game properly! Anouma himself has admitted that he can’t even finish Super Mario Bros. Christ, how is this man still allowed to direct an action RPG if he can’t even use simple tactile controllers like the NES’?
Zelda has never been about the dungeons being humongous entities to wander through. Ever since Zelda I the Overworld has played an important role in everything. Game by game the action and the Overworld itself has been getting smaller and smaller, until it got removed completely.
I do not wish to wander in a dungeon for hours. I want to have an adventure, gallop through the fields that have something in them, unlike in every 3D Zelda. It’s laughable that Wind Waker has the best Overworld of all 3D titles because it offers so much to do and see, just like Zelda I had.
They speak of innovation (God I hate that word more every day) and they’re talking (excuse me the figure of speech)total bullshit. If game uses the console’s controller to its fullest extent, it’s not innovation; it’s using the controller to its fullest extent.
You know what was innovative? The idea the Japanese found for playing Armored Core V.
ACV uses pretty much every face button on the controller. High level players found that this way of holding the controller can make your play level even higher; they innovated how to hold the pre-existing controller.
I was disappointed at Nintendo because of Zelda for long time, but now I’m just angry and frustrated. They need to get back to basics, to their arcade roots. That’s where their forte is and has always been. Nine people made the first Zelda, people who had to make a good game. These nine people made the first real action RPG there is. Hundreds of people can’t make the same; the more you have cooks…
Aaltomies 
