creativity
selling one game for 30 years
And their refusal to listen to what the fans actually want.
And frivolous patent lawsuits on mechanics that they don’t use themselves. Or patents they made after said prior art came out.
And sending their lawyers after streamers and content creators.
And killing fan games that improve on their failures.
And artificial digital scarcity.
Their arrogance will be their downfall.
Except it won’t be. The number of people who actually follow their bad practices and care is a rounding error. It was the same with EA and Activision. They treated their customers like scum and people are still on their knees asking for more. It will be no different for Nintendo.
And their refusal to listen to what the fans actually want.
It has worked well for them, Apple, etc. Customers are absolutely happy to support companies that provide a consistent experience.
Normally I don’t like that, but Nintendo does a fantastic job on quality control, so I’m happy to support them in a world where tech companies (esp gaming companies) use their customers as QA. I hate their legal department, refusal to sell on other platforms, and innovate with the Pokémon IP, but if they have something I’m interested in, I’m going to pick it up because I know they’ll deliver.
If I could make my dream game company, it would certainly include Nintendo’s QA department, and certainly not their legal team.
They seem to be mostly listening to their paying consumers, which seems reasonable as they are a high-end toy-making business that intends to continue making money.
Isn’t that also selection bias as the fans that they aren’t serving will stop being paying customers?
It’s up to Nintendo to determine how to run their business best. Nobody needs luxury toys to live. But I will argue that you wouldn’t like Nintendo that releases their games on PC and sells them for $20 5 months after release.
Everything Nintendo does serves philosophy of valuing own work. Nintendo that doesn’t need to figure out how to do cool things with cheap hardware isn’t the same Nintendo that won’t release a new entry in their prestigious franchises unless there’s new kind of gameplay. Nintendo that doesn’t go after pirates has to look for other sources of revenue and people generally don’t like microtransactions and ads. I could go on but I think Nintendo is the only console manufacturer ready to weather upcoming storm in the industry.
But I will argue that you wouldn’t like Nintendo that releases their games on PC and sells them for $20 5 months after release.
Don’t threaten me with a good time. I don’t like the Nintendo that doesn’t do that, especially now that we’re in an era where walled garden, specialist gaming hardware makes less sense than it ever has.
Selling a $30 alarm clock for $100 because it makes coin noises
Sold out in a week
“Creativity” was actually just a poor translation. What they meant to say was “enhanced legal department”. Easy mistake.
Miyamoto is not the current president of Nintendo and hasn’t been for a while. These days he’s a guy who walks into your office to see what you’re doing with the characters he created 35 years ago and says “good job” or “nah, I don’t think that fits the spirit of the series”. Blaming him for corporate policy is somewhat nonsensical.
He also mentors the new class. From the New York Times:
Shigeru Miyamoto has been making the same request of all new employees at Nintendo for at least the past decade: For the love of all things Super Mario, please design games that might sell 30 million copies.
Afaik he was never the president unless you count a couple of months after iwata died as co-interim president
Legal action also requires a lot of creativity
“We have decided we own balls.”
Instead of creative new games they come up with creative new ways to sue the people making the games Nintendo refuses to make.
Maybe their Pokémon studio could be gifted some of this creativity?
They have one of the biggest franchise in the world and they still produce the same uninspiring game time after time.
You have all these crazy pokemons, and all these adventures in the anime, and yet the games are bland.
The main reason I never got into the Pokemon games (but was huge into the anime) is because by the time they came out with Red and Blue, I had already been playing major RPGs like Final Fantasy, Baldur’s Gate, etc. Compared to these, Pokemon just felt like an RPG for babies with the primary gimmick being a collect-a-thon. Minimal options in combat, bland and rather boring story with short, easy to read dialogue…
It’s pretty sad that they never evolved from that, considering evolution is a core concept of the game.
Edit: Just wanted to add that this is not necessarily to shit on the games. They’re made under Nintendo, whose entire ethos of game design is accessibility. They are primarily for younger people and people who don’t play games. So they are much simpler on purpose. My only real complaint is that they don’t even have, like, a side company meant for older players who are heavily into games. Because most of us still got started with Nintendo games.
You mean like Monolith Soft?
whip-crack
“NO.”
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