Nintendo and their addiction to failure.

[Saelune]

I also think Zelda doesnt get enough credit for being different. Mario likes to tread out the same game over and over, but I think most Zelda games are pretty different from eachother. More so than acknowledged.

Mmmmyes and no. Plenty of things about each new instalment are different, but the blue print is always identical. Always Link who is the hero, always Zelda who (at one point) needs to be saved, and always Ganon who is the villain. When Link was rumored to maybe being female in the new Zelda the community went wild over the implications, showing just how starved fans are for something truly fresh from this franchise.

I remember arguing that the new protagonist was a girl after the first trailer, when she (I mean he) was wearing blue. It was disappointing to find out it was Link again. I could go for more weirdness in Zelda, like in Majora's Mask. Just let the protagonist travel the world, discovering new places like Termina, instead of starting over in the same old Kingdom of Hyrule all the time. I would be okay never seeing Princess Zelda, the Master Sword, the Triforce, the towns and Ganon again. You can only recycle that crap so many times.

After a point its not a Zelda game. Now, if they want to go the Dark Souls/Bloodborne route and make a game that is basically Zelda, but not, that would be cool.

To elaborate, Dark Souls and Bloodborne IP came about because they were basically their predecessor, but not, so they made a new name for it. Especially Bloodborne (since Dark Souls might have been more a legal issue, while Bloodborne wasnt a "Dark Souls" game because Miyazaki figured it was too different that people would get upset if it had the same name).

That would be ideal. Not gonna happen, though. Nintendo doesn't pour that kind of money and love into new IPs. Maybe after the old CEOs are dead. The best I can hope for right now is changes within the series.

But I'm not expecting anything big and positive. They've made Hyrule fully open now, but I think that was a bad idea, as I said in the other thread. Epona was a mistake, ever since her inception.

I liked that after the guy who turned Nintendo into a video game company, the people running it were game developers. But with Iwata gone, the new CEO isnt a game developer, and that bothers me. Its fine to want new blood making decisions, but I wish it would stick with people who have first-hand knowledge making games at the head. Its part of why I believe Nintendo has stuck with gaming, while Sony and Microsoft did and still do other things, and their consoles show it.

 

[Igor-Rowan]

Didn't Yahtzee address all of this in the Capcom Five video? The answer is yes, yes he did.

The main problem in Nintendo Consoles is they have to avoid the vicious cycle of not having third parties, then having to rely on their own titles to sell the system. I still remember that EA interview where the CEO said that they were "forced" to make games for the Wii due to its popularity, and how Bethesda and FromSoftware's devs laughed when asked about the possibilty of porting Dark Souls II/Skyrim to the Wii U because it was a "kiddy" system. Ubisoft and Activision are there, ready to jump ships but help while their can. And Sega is there too to make a Sonic game that turns Nintendo's sytem into a gimmick to deliver a watered down game (Secret Rings, Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Boom, it almost seems on purpose).

The NX might be a toaster for all I care and I'll still buy if it has a good game library, that's how you sell a systenm, I didn't buy a Wii for its motion controls I did because of the games. However the reason they might be waiting for its reveal is to observe the VR waters, Sony and Microsoft are making great gambles in VR, and Nintendo might be wondering if this pays off in the short run, because the NX sales might be affected by the success/failure of this.

Addiction to failure is not the term to be used here, addiction to impress, maybe, addiction to "just get this stupid systems out of the way so they can focus on making games" might be the better title.

 

[Yuuki]

The NX might be a toaster for all I care and I'll still buy if it has a good game library, that's how you sell a system, I didn't buy a Wii for its motion controls I did because of the games.

But then why even have said system to begin with? If you really just cared about the games, then you would agree that Nintendo consoles (i.e. their hardware) haven't had a justifiable reason to exist for over a decade.
They don't need to "sell the system" when the system itself is redundant, because all Nintendo games can just as easily run on the established platforms i.e. PC/PS4/XBO, if not with even better visuals/framerate.

Consoles should only exist when they bring something neccessary for the games on those consoles. Having arbitrary hardware to run software should have good reasoning...otherwise it's like having a toaster that only toasts a specific brand of bread and refuses to toast anything else.

If Nintendo keep holding onto their age-old stance of "games exist to sell consoles" then they won't be around for much longer. The Nintendo generation has grown up and they are not attracting the modern core gamers whatsoever with their shit consoles, gimmicks, and endless remakes of Mario/Zelda/etc.

 

[Joccaren]

The NX might be a toaster for all I care and I'll still buy if it has a good game library, that's how you sell a system, I didn't buy a Wii for its motion controls I did because of the games.

But then why even have said system to begin with? If you really just cared about the games, then you would agree that Nintendo consoles (i.e. their hardware) haven't had a justifiable reason to exist for over a decade.
They don't need to "sell the system" when the system itself is redundant, because all Nintendo games can just as easily run on the established platforms i.e. PC/PS4/XBO, if not with even better visuals/framerate.

Consoles should only exist when they bring something neccessary for the games on those consoles. Having arbitrary hardware to run software should have good reasoning...otherwise it's like having a toaster that only toasts a specific brand of bread and refuses to toast anything else.

If Nintendo keep holding onto their age-old stance of "games exist to sell consoles" then they won't be around for much longer. The Nintendo generation has grown up and they are not attracting the modern core gamers whatsoever with their shit consoles, gimmicks, and endless remakes of Mario/Zelda/etc.

Why do the PS4 or Xbone exist, when everything they do is done better by PCs?
Why do we just criticise Nintendo for this?

OT: Nintendo are, honestly, the one console company I don't dislike. Their consoles try new, innovative things. They don't always work out, sometimes they do. Their games are almost always of a high quality standard, and while they may not use new IPs, there are often changes within the games that make the experience quite different, while still similar at the core, showing further innovation on their ideas rather than iteration. Again, sometimes that works, sometimes that doesn't.

Nintendo focus on a streamlined gaming experience, and don't let anything get in the way of that. They have innovations that sometimes aren't the best ideas, but I can't greatly fault them for that. I recently watched a Jimquisition, out today or yesterday, where he rants about Sony - because he brought Mafia 3, installed it, clicked play, and then spent the next day sitting around waiting for it to install, because it hadn't actually installed - it just said it did because it needed to do so to satisfy Sony's impossible "You can play while it downloads" promise, which is never truly kept. I can't imagine that experience from Nintendo, as they keep true to the plug and play mentality of consoles that made consoles popular in the first place. You can say that's because they have simpler games, but I'd disagree. Any Zelda game is more complex in the gameplay than the latest Modern Warfare. The graphics are simply stylised and not system intensive, which isn't a bad thing at all IMO.

Put simply, for their "Addiction to failure", they are the only console I ever consider owning. I have a gaming PC, and a WiiU. I would never buy a PS4 or Xbone, because it is literally just my PC, but shitter. I was willing the buy the WiiU, because it does things differently. It is just a quick and easy experience, the screen on the controller I actually really like and makes life a whole lot more convenient in games like Zelda, being able to mess around with my inventory without constant pausing. The games I can get on Nintendo systems also, while "Simpler" than the PS4 or Xbone, actually give me different experiences to what I'd have on my PC. I don't need another AAA action adventure game. I've got a ton of them. I am interested in a faster, smoother, more gameplay focused action adventure like Zelda.

To the criticism of Nintendo being too controlling - how do you think they rose to power in the first place? They rose to power because they were reliable, and could promise consumers a quality experience, unlike Atari who had let shovelware take over. People had lost faith in games. It was that control that let Nintendo become a success in that world.

As for the comparison between the 3DS and mobile... I really don't see that as relevant. Tell me where I can play a game like Pokemon, Zelda, Dynasty Warriors, Fire Emblem - ect - on the mobile? And I mean full sized game, full content, fully detailed, with no freemium bullshit to go with it. MAYBE you can find a couple of examples. I don't even try. Why? Because mobile platforms are clogged with shit, and I'd rather just buy a Nintendo game on the 3DS than go searching through the App store for several hours. Let alone trying to keep all that stored on my phone, the annoyance of playing games on a phone's touchscreen, and what that'd do to my battery and data that I need for the phone's other abilities. They don't compete. People play different types of games on each. Its like complaining that PCs are obsolete because everyone has a smartphone now. Cool, but you use them for different things.

Nintendo has its problems. It needs to be more open to adopting the other changes in the industry, and making them work successfully, rather than just doing its own thing completely. It shouldn't just homogenise with the rest of the industry though, and that seems to be most of what this thread asks of them. Just be everyone else. I'm sorry, but I hate Sony and Microsoft because they are just everyone else. They don't do things that are unique with their consoles, and instead try to buy up games for their respective platforms to arbitrarily force people on to them. If each did something different, it would be better. The last time I actually played games on the playstation, and I've never owned an Xbox, was the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series. Why? Because they did something with hardware, the controllers, that I couldn't really do elsewhere, and that better fit the setting of a living room with your family or friends around, and enough space to use them. Of course, that was just a gimmick, as is anything different.

I find I'm agreeing a lot with Saelune these days. If you're going to criticise Nintendo, at least know what to praise them for too. If they're just doing something you don't personally like, that doesn't make them a failure. It just means that you don't like what they do. I don't criticise Gears of War for existing just because I don't like what it offers as a game. I recognise who it appeals to, and that that's not me. Nintendo these days gets a lot of hate because it does things differently, and some people don't like that different. At the same time, there are also people who do like that different, and as OP noted, this has been enough to turn them a higher profit than Sony recently, and honestly they've done that several times in the past too. That means they aren't "addicted to failure", they're just not trying to appeal to OP and many of those who criticise them in this thread. That doesn't mean they're a bad company, it just means they appeal to people other than you. And that isn't a bad thing.

Don't get the phrase "anti-consumer exclusivity", having their own exclusive games is what actually sells consoles (or any consoles) and isn't anti consumer in any way (since no competition causes stagnation which is far worse than having to spend money for a console or just playing a different game). The truth is that they cannot compete graphically with any other games and this causes a lot of trouble with 3rd party support and it's a hard hole to climb from, especially as the cost of making games rose extremely high.

Well, it is anti-consumer. For a game that is physically able to run full featured on either console, but its restricted to only one because of back room money deals, just to try and get more money out of consumers, forcing them to buy a duplicate of a console they already own, just from a different brand, is anti-consumer. As another poster I quoted said; Imagine every time you brought a toaster, it only toasted one or two brands of toast to 'promote competition'. It'd be anti-consumer.

If the consoles have an actual hardware of software feature difference that means that one game could run on one, but couldn't really run on the other - cool. That's fair enough. But having two near identical consoles, whose only real competitive advantage over each other is "I have purchased the rights to these games", then Sony/MS shouldn't be making those consoles, they should just be games publishers. The consoles need to compete on their own advantages, not just with which games they can hoard.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Well this thread clearly isn't trying to start any arguments.


Gr8 B8 M8. I R8. 8/8.

It's not so much that as it's completely redundant. I wouldn't mind these threads so much if they weren't retreading arguments that are either A) Old B) Irrelevant C) Debunked D) Clearly copy-pasted from some Youtube/Net personality and thus lacking in original thought or E) all of the above.

 

[Fox12]

First of all, I apologize for a certain thread I posted several months ago that was quite uninformed (if you have to ask, you don't need to know about it).

Now, on to the next order of business...Nintendo and their addiction to failure.

Spoiler: Warning: Long...no...VERY long read ahead.

Okay, let me get the obvious out of the way: I am thoroughly aware Nintendo are still making money. In the last quarter, they made a larger profit than Sony, if memory serves me correctly. My problem isn't with that.

My problem is that they, as a company, seem to be doing everything in their power to alienate any potential audience they have and are more interesting in pretending that they are still the dominant force in the industry.

So where did this shitstorm start? Surprisingly enough, the NES. The NES was the dominant system of the day. It destroyed the competition so completely that any chance Atari had of returning triumphantly to the world of consoles went the way of the dinosaurs and the only way that SEGA bounced back was by having an aggressive marketing campaign.

But it created this idea that Nintendo, as the dominant force in the industry, could get away with anything they wanted. That idea became institutionalized, and shit began to hit the fan. Games had to be NES exclusive for two years. No blood anywhere. The "three games per year" rule. But then the SEGA Mega Drive (or Genesis if your country is dumb) was released and suddenly they didn't have any market dominance.

Yet they still persisted in this delusion that they had market dominance, and this led to anti-consumer behavior and failure. They kept the NES around for a good two years in the Americas and Europe, even though there was no chance of it competing with the Mega Drive/Genesis. They assumed everyone would buy the Virtual Boy, simply because it was Nintendo-branded. They stuck with cartridges because they assumed no-one would jump to the cheaper (both to develop for and to buy) PlayStation. Then, five years later, they pulled the same stunt with the GameCube. "What to people put in DVD trays besides games?", they said. "People will never adopt online gaming", they snickered.

In many ways, it's similar to what's currently happening at Apple. They had one product that was accidentally a massive success, now they believe they can do anything.

The difference here comes in the small rectangular shape that is the Wii and the even smaller and more rectangular DS. They were Nintendo's first massive success since the original Game Boy. To give you an idea, for every Wii U, there are roughly 2 GameCubes, 3 N64s, 4 SNESes, 8 NESes, 8 Game Boys, 9 Wiis and 11 DSes. They were such a massive successes. Nintendo is back, they were right all along!

Except they weren't. For, like all new technologies, the Wii was a fad. Soon enough, everyone had moved on to mobile, the 360 and the PS3. But Nintendo had a plan. The Wii's biggest selling point was the motion controller, the DS's the touchscreen. Gimmicks were obviously the way forward. Except again they weren't.

That's where we are today. The 3DS has been a success in Japan, but has been outshined by smartphones everywhere else. The Wii U is so utterly dead that not even the new Zelda has provoked the response Nintendo were hoping for.

As well as this they are hiding their new product for fears of 'copying'. But the idea that someone could make blueprint, prototype and produce a copy in under six months is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

The problem here is that Nintendo still have this mindset that they are on top of the world, even though they really aren't. They may have outdone Sony's profits in the last quarter but that's only because Sony is determined to keep their failing mobile business afloat.

Nintendo might be making money for the time being, but they are far behind the competition. The 3DS is a mobile gaming machine...and nothing more. Against the Vita it has the edge, it's cheaper and has better games. Against mobile? No chance. I love Majora's Mask 3D, but it's not going to make the 3DS a viable mobile competitor. In the home console business, they've failed. Home consoles are almost as much of a hardcore gaming platform as PCs these days (not in hardware, but in audience and content). The Wii U and it's cutesy Mario games might please fans, but it simply won't sell for $60.

Put bluntly, Nintendo has this delusion that they are on top of the world, and that their games will always sell and that the public loves nothing more than gimmicks. That's not going to work Nintendo. Mainstream consumers have shown they would rather play the flashy-est games than have a giant fat touchscreen. Your fans are tired of the fact that you persistently dick them over with crappy sequels to established franchises.

Some may believe that the NX will save Nintendo. But if the rumor mill is proven right, they've done the same thing all over again. A handheld with detachable controllers? Just...no.

What's particularly annoying is that Nintendo's two biggest franchises, Mario and Pokemon, don't even feature astronomical budgets and don't require massive development teams either, so they could be made on the cheap and sold digitally. That's a pile of money right there to fund Nintendo's pursuits. But no. "The captain never abandons his ship" seems to be the office mantra.

If they wanted to fix this, the next system would be about the games. It would feature less anti-consumer exclusivity. It wouldn't try to ship 100 2D Mario levels as a AAA title. But at the current rate it seems that Nintendo would prefer to live in it's own little world, unaware of the fact that they are losing the Console Crusades.

TL;DR, Nintendo's gimmicky consoles and anti-consumer practices are hurting them more than the competition ever will.

Anyway, that's my two cents. I apologize for any grammatical errors that may have come up.

Out of curiosity, is that Sony as a whole, or just the gaming division? Because their other areas of business are really dragging them down. It's been a rough time for the company. Some of it was deserved (ghostbusters) and some was not (the interview). I think it's safe to say that their game division has spanked Nintendo rather soundly.

 

[Sonmi]

Failure? Not really, their games still sell well, and the company is still very healthy.

You could say that they have a certain propensity to stagnate though, and not to thrive to dominate the market. But it's all fine as far as I'm concerned. The NX is pretty much the only next gen console I'm sure of getting.

 

[WeepingAngels]

The NX is pretty much the only next gen console I'm sure of getting.

Why? What do you know about it that makes it a must buy?

 

[Metalix Knightmare]

But then why even have said system to begin with?

Because the Nintendo games that people tend to love, Your mario's, your Pokemon, ETC have this funny little tendency to be pretty big sellers (or at least healthy sellers) and NOT be 3rd party games. You want em? Gonna need a Nintendo console.

Consoles should only exist when they bring something neccessary for the games on those consoles. Having arbitrary hardware to run software should have good reasoning...otherwise it's like having a toaster that only toasts a specific brand of bread and refuses to toast anything else.

Then by virtue of this argument the Xbox One and PS4 have no reason to exist. My PC can do pretty much anything they can do, but it can do them better. (Hello Nexus modding community, why yes I WOULD like to put a suit of Institute themed power armor in my game.) Heck, this goes double for the XBone. Most of the games there are also on PC!

If Nintendo keep holding onto their age-old stance of "games exist to sell consoles" then they won't be around for much longer. The Nintendo generation has grown up and they are not attracting the modern core gamers whatsoever with their shit consoles, gimmicks, and endless remakes of Mario/Zelda/etc.

Citation needed. Also nice to see you don't really play Nintendo games. Yeah the stories are pretty much copy and pasted but the only games that could be called remakes are the actual remakes. The Zelda games in particular are CONSTANTLY messing about with things to come up with new dungeons and tools. Heck, by the looks of things even Pokemon is trying something new with the gym battles!

Also, gimmicks? It's more experimentation. You know that vibration function that's pretty much standard with videogame controlers today? Yeah.


That "Gimmick" is now an industry standard.

Just because they aren't reinventing the wheel doesn't mean they're resting on it. Sometimes things work, like with said Rumble Pack, sometimes they don't like the Wii-U game screen.

 

[Sonmi]

The NX is pretty much the only next gen console I'm sure of getting.

Why? What do you know about it that makes it a must buy?

Supposedly, it'll have an updated port of Smash 4, that's enough for me.

Whenever lads are at the flat, beer + Super Smash is pretty much the go-to activity, an update won't hurt and "party games" are so rare nowadays. I'm pretty satisfied with Nintendo's core titles too.

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

Second, it's their very conservative Japanese attitude toward the Internet and the digital space. Same reason the anime industry holds digital distribution in very low regard while still trying to charge ludicrous prices for physical media. (The irony being that with regard for anime, it actually works out for foreign consumers who are okay watching subs because anime companies sell digital rights for a song)

Said conservatism has made Japan the second biggest market in music sales. It is not a bad strategy if you are trying to combat piracy and maintain a loyal purchasing base at the same time. They do not share the same open minded approach to free entertainment media like Korea and China for a very good reason.

Two words: Johnny's Entertainment, the biggest boy band label in all of Japan. The reason why they held on to the monopoly for so long is because they invest heavily in combating piracy by ensuring the fandom do not have any means to easily pirate music as well as a strong business link with the big media giants like Asahi and Toei.

Nintendo operates on the same strategies as Johnny's and they will endure.

I say Kimishima's strategy is to rebuild the bridge between the media and Nintendo, by catering to them review wise they had at least bought themselves some breathing from the same old Nintendoomed talk.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Aside from the Virtual Boy, their failures have all been caused by not being "gimmicky" enough. The Wii U failed because it tried penetrating the market dominated by PS4/Xbox One and PC, not because it had a second screen.

The Wii U was selling poorly long before the competition launched their own consoles, and then Nintendo went on to announce their next console so soon that most consumers lost whatever trust or interest they had for the current one. The Wii U's failure is a product of bad naming, marketing, timing and relative pricing, as well as poor online, launch lineup, third party support and hardware (anything from the lack of internal hard drive to games retro-fitting the dual-screen, motion-control gimmick). Even here I'm simplifying the issue, just ask your search engine "Why did the Wii U fail?" and you'll come up with any number of lists and "long reads".

 

[McMarbles]

"Yup, Nintendo should be going out of business any day now."

-NintendoSux957, October 19,2015

(and October 19, 2014)
(and October 19, 2013)
(and October 19, 2012)
(and October 19, 2011)
(and October 19, 2010)
(and October 19, 2009)
etc.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

"Yup, Nintendo should be going out of business any day now."

-NintendoSux957, October 19,2015

(and October 19, 2014)
(and October 19, 2013)
(and October 19, 2012)
(and October 19, 2011)
(and October 19, 2010)
(and October 19, 2009)
etc.

Pretty much, yeah. The moment they're not on top it's a bunch of "Nintendo is fucked" from the world. Of course, the Wii U did have a huge issue with keeping up with the competition, for many reasons listed above by others. Nintendo isn't really helping themselves by keeping the NX so quiet. People can only speculate for so long before they start to question what's going on. Even when they do reveal it, I don't imagine the marketing is going to go to well... again

 

[Yoshi178]

I miss when Nintendo was actually competitive with their tech. The SNES, N64 and Gamecube were powerful consoles. Then again, it wouldn't make a difference, since I've known their flagship games for twenty years and am sick of them. Until they stop milking their same old cartoon games and make a big push with new IPs, I'll keep ignoring them.

N64 and and Gamecube were both more powerful than the PS1 and the PS2 and got trumped in sales by both of them.


lesson is just because you have a powerful console doesn't mean you will win the sales war. which was proven YET AGAIN when the Wii completely trumped the 360 and PS3 in sales

I don't care. I'm not a businessman, I'm a consumer. The reason could have been that the PS1 and 2 offered more variety than Nintendo and had a lot of games aimed at older players. I'm partially assuming, since I didn't have a PS1 and didn't play most of the popular PS2 games, but that's what it seems like. Also, the PS1 had much more storage for games, since it didn't use outdated cartridges like the N64. This meant they could do more FMVs, higher res textures and better audio, which people probably noticed. The Gamecube was behind again with discs that stored only 1.5 GB, versus the 4.7 on PS2. And people also bought PS2s to watch DVDs, which the Gamecube couldn't do. The Wii was appealing for its motion control gimmick at the time. If they scrapped the expensive tablet controller for the Wii U, that most people didn't want, they could have released a more powerful console. The new Zelda looks pretty dated.

oh you mean like how the Remasterstation 4 is only appealing at the moment because of it's low costing VR gimmick?

 

[Rangaman]

Leave it to Nintendo to make this thread redundant four days after I wrote it.

There are two little problems with this argument. First it assumes that the people who play in smartphones is the same audience that would play in a 3DS if smartphone games didn't exist. And second, it is false. Smartphones outshine the 3DS in Japan too. Why do you think Nintendo is releasing a Super Mario running game in iOS?

a) The point of the argument is that people who want to play games on the move would rather have a smartphone as a gaming platform.
b)To boost their profits over the lake (although you do make a good point).

Out of curiosity, is that Sony as a whole, or just the gaming division? Because their other areas of business are really dragging them down. It's been a rough time for the company. Some of it was deserved (ghostbusters) and some was not (the interview). I think it's safe to say that their game division has spanked Nintendo rather soundly.

Sony as a whole. If we are just talking about the gaming division (and nothing else) then yes, Sony's profits are skyrocketing. But the movie division has run into shit, and the less said about the mobile division the better.