Good read.
I was not aware GameCube was sold at a loss at launch as I was always led to believe otherwise.
Count me in the masses who believed Nintendo didn't want Rare anymore. The pieces fit. Rare's IPs still held value; Nintendo knew this. Rare probably wouldn't have fallen off under Nintendo because one thing Nintendo has shown to be pretty good at is making the most of popular IPs. The following is quite telling:
Microsoft had jacked up the bidding price so high that Nintendo would be forced to decline the offer. Employees at Rareware seemed happy with the buyout since Microsoft’s ownership would mean financial stability for the studio. But that financial stability would come at the cost of killing creativity and cancelling projects.
A Rare employee told Gamekult, “Several of us just got fed up, so we left. Beating down our creativity was definitely part of it, but it’s more than that. It’s more like having a strict parent telling you don’t do this and don’t do that. It’s just the environment there. Guess we should have been careful what we wished for. I guess we saw the grass as being greener with Microsoft coming in. Nintendo had always been strict with our compliance to their ideas or standards as they would call it. We figured things would be better after the deal went through,” the employee continues. “Microsoft is much stricter, the my way or the highway type. Nintendo was more of the this is how you should do it. You don’t have to, but we highly recommend you do. Highly recommend.”
Not that surprising. We always kind of just assumed Nintendo brought the hammer down (e.g. changing Dinosaur Planet, making Metroid Prime a first-person game), but Microsoft, not Nintendo, released the edited version of Conker.
Balking at the ridiculous asking price is standard for predictably frugal Nintendo. Still, Nintendo most likely would have made back that $375 million eventually by getting a lot more out of Rare than Microsoft has so far. In an alternate reality where Nintendo bought Rare, Nintendo probably would have cleaned house like they did with Retro Studios then slowly gotten them to the point where Rare wouldn't need to be micro-managed, also like Retro Studios. More importantly, they probably would have left Rare alone creatively. Ultimately, Microsoft's strategy worked. They had Rare's games and Nintendo did not. Even though Microsoft hasn't capitalized on the acquisition, GameCube suffered with Nintendo losing an entire contributor.
Otherwise, this supports a lot of things we already knew. I'm glad Ms. Rogers dug up some old quotes to show just how far back Nintendo has railed against the push for higher specs/realistic graphics. I kind of miss Yamauchi's delightfully grumpy comments.
Seven months before GameCube’s Japanese launch, Hiroshi Yamauchi criticized the industry for focusing so heavily on pretty graphics and power. ”Software companies have run out of new ideas, so now all they strive for is more graphics and more force,” said Hiroshi Yamauchi.
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“Every game developer is shooting for nothing but realism and flashiness, so we’re seeing an overflow of games that look exactly the same,” said Yamauchi. “What does realism and flashiness have to do with fun? If more games with new types of gameplay and fun come on the market, the market will expand, companies will have more support, and there’d be a business to work with.”
Yamauchi also highly criticized large-scale AAA games and said companies who make these kinds of games will eventually go bankrupt. ”Large-scale games are done for. If they continue to be made, then companies around the world will go under,” said Yamauchi.
Wii was Nintendo finally going all in with this philosophy, but it's something they've always kicked around. I actually agree with Yamauchi (minus the hyperbole); I just don't agree with their approach. Keep making games under that philosophy, but don't intentionally disregard your own hardware roadmap. People like to blame Iwata for that, but I don't think it would have been any different had Yamauchi not retired. Yamauchi understood gaming. He knew what the industry wanted and simply displayed a shrewd unwillingness to play ball because he thought his way was better.
This article also reinforces the idea that Nintendo wishes to exist in its own bubble. For the most part, they never did and still don't approach third parties for support. They target specific creators and games rather than that company as a whole. This isn't even Nintendo not knowing their place. They just have a honey-badger-don't-care attitude about it. They want third party support and they'll take it if given, but they typically won't go out of their way for it.
I used to think Nintendo just had their head in the clouds. However, they have a great deal of self-awareness.
“We are a very small game company. We do not have the resources of these others.”
I think a lot of it was that Yamauchi cast a large shadow over the company even after he retired. As Nintendo's largest shareholder, he still held some power and influence. There are things Nintendo won't do, but I wonder if these will change at least a little bit with Yamauchi gone.
Topic: Interesting article about the Gamecube (Read 2609 times)
