Topic: Nintendo Development Studios

[Kairon]

Well, it could be said that third-party support was doomed from the start (N64, GC) and they tried to do something to improve the situation that didn't work out to our satisfaction.

[Luigi Dude]

Yeah I guess "sabotage" isn't the right word.  I don't think they tried to screw up third party support (though they might have realized it was a potential issue and decided that having cheap hardware was more important).  The problem is self-inflicted anyway.  They created a situation where third party support was doomed from the start and it would be impossible for things to turn around on the same system.

Once again though

NES - 62 million

SNES - 49 million

N64 - 33 million

Gamecube - 22 million


Is this hard for some to understand why the Wii was underpowered?  If the Wii was as powerful as the 360/PS3 and it sold worse then the Gamecube it would have cost the company billions.  The choice was either loss several hundred million if the Wii failed or loss several billion if it failed.  After going through three generations in a row of home console decline, it's not hard to see why they chose the much cheaper option.

[Ian Sane]

So the Wii is underpowered because Nintendo were chickenshits that played to not lose instead of to win?  Gotcha.  But even that seems odd because without the casuals the underpowered Wii would have been CREAMED.  There's no way that would have succeeded with just the old core market.  So it's actually an insanely risky move.  I don't even know what Nintendo's plan was.  Were they thinking they were doomed so they might as well not spend much money on their next console?  Surely they didn't plan specifically on the casuals bailing their ass out.  Did they think the Wii would do well with the then existing videogame market?

The more I think about the more I think they didn't really know what they were doing and stumbled into it.  The company that made the N64 and Gamecube had NO CLUE what the hell they were doing.  This is a company that would spend all day pushing on a door clearly marked "pull".  They screw up the most obvious utterly avoidable things on a regular basis in such a baffling way.  Yet THIS company suddenly turns it all around with the Wii, despite the system having the same sort of annoying avoidable goofs the company has become known for?

Nintendo has no idea why the Gamecube didn't do so well.  None.  The Wii was like they thought the situation was hopeless so they either went with a cheap system to minimalize the impact of failure OR they specifically went for a new market because the old market were a bunch of meanies that seemingly hated them for no reason.  Or both.  But the whole thing reaked of giving up ("we're not competing.  We're inventing our own sport that we'll be the champions of!")  If they knew what they were doing wrong since the N64 days, they would have more confidence in the Cube successor because they would know what needed to be fixed and would fix them.  The solution to Nintendo's problems was never any more than "stop doing all this stupid ****".  Nintendo was always who beat Nintendo.  If they stopped tying their shoelaces together before each race they would do fine.

The Wii is both so conservative and yet so insanely risky.  It's a really weird system.

[Stogi]

The Gamecube didn't fair well because it was too similar to the other consoles. Period.

Now how do you fix that?

[Spak-Spang]

Well, Nintendo took a gamble.  And business wise it made sense.  Look nobody knew if the motion controls would catch on...in fact the controller wasn't even perfect until Motion +....so I completely understand Nintendo creating a cheaper system.

And you know...Nintendo made money...in fact Nintendo made enough money to survive another console generation and begin designing something new and cool again.  The Wii U is awesome, and it is something only Nintendo would have thought about creating...

[Louieturkey]

Nintendo knew what they were doing.  They didn't want to continue this slide of systems that sell less than their predecessors.  So they took a gamble and went with a game interface upgrade rather than a power upgrade.  It was a purposeful choice that they knew would be controversial.  They wanted to try to open up to a new market.  They looked at HDTV sales and saw that only about 15% of tv households at the time even had HDTVs so it'd be a slow crawl to gain sales in the HD world with them pretty much being the third wheel. So they created a new market and a new demographic that paid off big time for them.  Unfortunately, that new market was not as sustainable as the core gamer market.

I think with the Wii U, they are taking another gamble and trying to meld the casual and the core gamer markets.  It'll be tough, but they definitely have the resources to attempt it this time around after the Wii's success.

[Chozo Ghost]

The Gamecube didn't fair well because it was too similar to the other consoles. Period.

Now how do you fix that?

Considering the Gamecube lacked (for the most part) online support and it used those tiny rinky-dink micro DVDs with like a third the capacity, and of course no hard drive I don't think its accurate to say it was too similar to the other consoles.

The Gamecube set itself apart from the other consoles by being purple and shaped like a lunchbox. So it definitely stood out in that respect, and was ridiculed for it.

[TJ Spyke]

The PS2 didn't really have a hard drive either, and the one Sony did release barely had any support (and the PS2 Slim couldn't even use it). Nintendo took the same online approach as Sony in that they left it up to publishers to do whatever they wanted, the only difference is that Sony also released online games while Nintendo didn't.

[Ian Sane]

The Gamecube died the death of a thousand cuts.  If you did a list and compared every feature of the PS2, Xbox and Gamecube the Cube was often the worst and rarely the best.  Nintendo went in with everyone having already counted them out with the N64, played down to their detractors' expectations, and screwed up almost everything in some little way.  If you want to see how numerous minor avoidable mistakes can add up to a seriously flawed result, look at the Gamecube.  At that point Nintendo also couldn't market porno to sex addicts so that certainly didn't help either.

[Luigi Dude]

The Gamecube died the death of a thousand cuts.  If you did a list and compared every feature of the PS2, Xbox and Gamecube the Cube was often the worst and rarely the best.  Nintendo went in with everyone having already counted them out with the N64, played down to their detractors' expectations, and screwed up almost everything in some little way.  If you want to see how numerous minor avoidable mistakes can add up to a seriously flawed result, look at the Gamecube.  At that point Nintendo also couldn't market porno to sex addicts so that certainly didn't help either.

But that's kind of the point with why they did something different with the Wii like they did.  Because of all the Gamecubes failures, it hurt Nintendo's home console reputation.  Look at the Dreamcast, Sega fixed most of the flaws that killed the Saturn, but because of the damage the Saturn did, most people still ignored the system.  Yeah people will say the PS2 was overshadowing it, but that's because the Saturn killed Sega's reputation leading to people not having much interesting in Sega systems anymore which allowed the PS2 to overshadow it, despite how strong the Dreamcast strength in 2000 really were.

This is why Nintendo took a different route to get people attention again because going the previous system done right route doesn't work when you've already lost most of your market and people's attention like Sega learned.

[Chozo Ghost]

the Saturn killed Sega's reputation

Actually, it was the 32x that killed Sega's reputation. Had the 32x never existed and everything else played out exactly the same as before, the Saturn probably wouldn't have failed. There would still be the issue of the Saturn hardware being expensive and difficult to develop for, but I don't think those issues would have been fatal by themselves.

[Ian Sane]

I'd argue that post-Wii Nintendo's reputation has never been worse.  Yeah the Angry Birds crowd thinks well of them, maybe, if they remember who the "Wii guys" even are, but with the rest of the market they're the casual guys.  With the core market they've never faced a tougher battle.

I think the real problem with the Dreamcast was that Sega didn't have the finances to handle any initially slow years as they built momentum.  Nintendo was not in the situation and isn't in that situation now.  They didn't need the Cube successor to be an overnight success or to become the market leader.  They just needed to build and improve and work their way up and try to "win" in the future.  The Xbox lost money and the Gamecube didn't and neither of them came within sniffing distance of the PS2.  Yet the Cube is seen as a failure but the Xbox is not.  That's because the Xbox built momentum.  They were a newcomer and they beat an established player in Nintendo and built momentum for the future.  They didn't win but the gen ending with the Xbox brand trending upwards.

I'm sure Nintendo could have easily had a gen where they just built up good will and improved for the future.  They weren't broke like Sega and unlike Sega they have a successful handheld to help them out.  Give Sega those kind of market conditions and I doubt the Dreamcast dies prematurely.  That system was just so damn competent.  You'll never convince me that making a good product is a bad move.

Besides even if Nintendo keeps the casuals it's just a matter of time before they poison their image with them, too, if they don't address their shortcomings.  They've never done the Dreamcast-style "fix all the stupid **** we're doing" routine.  They didn't learn anything from the Cube gen, they just found a new market who didn't notice their ****-ups.  Well someday that market WILL notice their ****-ups.  They can't just "hide" this forever.  Someday they have to get their act together or they're dead.

[tendoboy1984]

I'd argue that post-Wii Nintendo's reputation has never been worse.  Yeah the Angry Birds crowd thinks well of them, maybe, if they remember who the "Wii guys" even are, but with the rest of the market they're the casual guys.  With the core market they've never faced a tougher battle.

I think the real problem with the Dreamcast was that Sega didn't have the finances to handle any initially slow years as they built momentum.  Nintendo was not in the situation and isn't in that situation now.  They didn't need the Cube successor to be an overnight success or to become the market leader.  They just needed to build and improve and work their way up and try to "win" in the future.  The Xbox lost money and the Gamecube didn't and neither of them came within sniffing distance of the PS2.  Yet the Cube is seen as a failure but the Xbox is not.  That's because the Xbox built momentum.  They were a newcomer and they beat an established player in Nintendo and built momentum for the future.  They didn't win but the gen ending with the Xbox brand trending upwards.

I'm sure Nintendo could have easily had a gen where they just built up good will and improved for the future.  They weren't broke like Sega and unlike Sega they have a successful handheld to help them out.  Give Sega those kind of market conditions and I doubt the Dreamcast dies prematurely.  That system was just so damn competent.  You'll never convince me that making a good product is a bad move.

Besides even if Nintendo keeps the casuals it's just a matter of time before they poison their image with them, too, if they don't address their shortcomings.  They've never done the Dreamcast-style "fix all the stupid **** we're doing" routine.  They didn't learn anything from the Cube gen, they just found a new market who didn't notice their ****-ups.  Well someday that market WILL notice their ****-ups.  They can't just "hide" this forever.  Someday they have to get their act together or they're dead.

Everyone knows who Nintendo is. Nintendo has ALWAYS had a strict philosophy towards game development, and they've catered to the same family-friendly crowd ever since they made Donkey Kong Arcade.


Remember back in the 1980's when they'd ban NES games if they contained violence or religious themes?


Or when they forced Midway to censor Mortal Kombat for the SNES because it contained too much blood?


Or when they'd force NES developers to make only 5 games a year, so the console wouldn't be cluttered with shovelware?


I could go on, but hopefully you get the point.

[Chozo Ghost]

Remember back in the 1980's when they'd ban NES games if they contained violence or religious themes?

Link's shield in the original NES Zelda had a Christian Cross on it. I'd also say slashing things with a sword or stomping on Goombas and killing them is pretty violent. NES games were really violent. Where Nintendo drew the line was on blood and gore it seems like... but seriously what NES games didn't have some measure of violence? Tetris is the only one I can immediately think of off hand.

[Kairon]

Those, poor, poor, tetrominoes. Sent to their deaths, sometimes one line at a time.

[Chozo Ghost]

Dr. Mario could be considered a violent game because unlike Tetris where you are destroying inanimate objects you are going after living creatures which even have faces. And of course we all know about Pikmin, which involves borderline slavery and genocide.

So is Nintendo really against violence in their games? They are against blood and gore, there's no doubt about that, but killing and death are actually quite common.

[Kairon]

The viruses in Dr. Mario may have faces, but technically they're not alive. Public humiliation by a seventh grade science teacher has burnt this fact into my mind.

[Chozo Ghost]

Public humiliation by a seventh grade science teacher

Is your avatar an accurate depiction of your reaction to this public humiliation?

7th grade science teachers don't know everything. I had one who told the class that glass is actually a really slow moving liquid and not actually a solid. It wasn't until some time later that I found out that was a myth and was false, but that's what he told the class... so teachers don't know everything.

As for the viruses, I think its debatable whether they count as a life form or not. There are some who will say they are the most simple and primitive form of life, and then there are those who disagree on them being alive at all. Who is right? There is no right or wrong answer there. It just depends on who ask because its very subjective. So I think both you and your teacher were right, and he shouldn't have publicly humiliated you.

But to get this back on topic, I don't think real world arguments should apply in video games. Regardless of what viruses are or aren't in real life, in Dr. Mario they have faces and look like animated creatures... it seems like just the sort of thing PETA would want to throw a fit over.

[TJ Spyke]

Viruses are technically alive (just not sentient), but are not animals (which is the focus of "People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals").

[Chozo Ghost]

Viruses are technically alive (just not sentient), but are not animals (which is the focus of "People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals").

You miss my point. I'm not talking about viruses in real life, I'm talking about those in Dr. Mario which are depicted with faces.

[BranDonk Kong]

If you go on the basis of what is required for something to be alive, then no, viruses are not alive.

[TJ Spyke]

If you go on the basis of what is required for something to be alive, then no, viruses are not alive.

That depends actually. It seems most scientific organizations tend to either say "yes" or "maybe they are" and that they are basically in a gray area. Here is a good article on it: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=are-viruses-alive-2004