Topic: Miyamoto Discusses Zelda in Japan, Making Halo

[Kairon]

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Originally posted by: Ian Sane
Their creative energy is being used to target a new group of customers while their same old IPs are going to the traditional gamers. They aren't making much effort to get this old group interested again, just to get the new group in. They think everyone got bored of the same old stuff that THEY are creating because we're bored with games but that's not necessarily the correct conclusion. The sales may be slipping because those old IPs are stale and Nintendo is making no effort to make new ones.

I don't think that Nintendo isn't pushing innovation and new spiffy things in hardcore/traditional/epic games. I see a lot of their energy going that direction, actually!

Look at Super Paper Mario! Look at Donkey Kong Jungle Beat (and its spiritual sequel Mario Galaxy)!!! Look at how they've bankrolled third-person-action-squad/RTS Battallion Wars, or (the failed FPS effort) Geist! Look at Disaster: Day of Crisis, or Project H.A.M.M.E.R.

And look at the other hidden strength of Nintendo's influence: hardware. Look at the revival of adventure games with Phoenix Wright leading the charge. Look at the birth of new IPs AND new hardcore gameplay in Trauma Center. Imagine the results once the gameplay lessons from ports like GodFather and SSX Blur become encapsulated in full-fledged ground-up titles. And anticipate the next Zelda.

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Originally posted by: Ian Sane
The true company that "saves" gaming will be the company that proves Nintendo wrong and innovates without resorting to g!mmicks.

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"gimmick." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 08 May. 2007. <Dictionary.com

gim·mick       (g?m'?k)  Pronunciation Key
n.  

  1.
        1. A device employed to cheat, deceive, or trick, especially a mechanism for the secret and dishonest control of gambling apparatus.
        2. An innovative or unusual mechanical contrivance; a gadget.
        3. An innovative stratagem or scheme employed especially to promote a project: an advertising gimmick.
        4. A significant feature that is obscured, misrepresented, or not readily evident; a catch.
  2.
        1. An innovative stratagem or scheme employed especially to promote a project: an advertising gimmick.
        2. A significant feature that is obscured, misrepresented, or not readily evident; a catch.
  3. A small object whose name does not come readily to mind.

I see innovative used THREE times in the definition of "g!mmick."

But anyways, until that company arrives on the scene, Nintendo will keep their seat warm.

~Carmine "Cai" M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Ian Sane]

"Given that new IP's have a success rate of LESS THAN 10% in the traditional gaming market... I'd think it's safe to assume that most traditional gamers want more of the same."

I think part of that stat is skewered.  By releasing so many sequels game companies train the buying public into only showing interest in sequels.  Plus the huge amount of sequels can turn away those looking for new stuff entirely so they aren't included in the statistics.  Often sequels receive a bigger marketing push as well thus giving the impression that the new IPs are the b-titles.  Nintendo released a handful of new IPs on the Cube but were any of them given a marketing push that tried to establish them as flagship title?  No.  Established IP like Mario, Metroid and Zelda got the big push giving the impression that something like Pikmin was a b-title, and not one of the console's top games.  Meanwhile MS gave a new IP like Halo a big marketing push that established it as an a-title for the Xbox and it sold appropriately.  Nintendo didn't even TRY that so how can they determine that gamers just want sequels?  It seems very much like Nintendo doing something poorly and then using the inevitable failure to justify not doing it in the future, which is something they do a whole lot.  The Gamecube was Nintendo's most IP milking cookie-cutter console yet and it was the least successful.

Plus Nintendo feels that innovation will help sell the Wii.  Well why does this innovation have to be so non-gamer focused?  Why is all talk of innovation towards bringing in new customers?  Why don't they have the same commitment of innovation for their traditional customerbase?  Why don't they attempt to innovate within epic games?  Instead Miyamoto is worried that Zelda is too complicated for non-gamers.  He's less worried that it's stale or that Nintendo needs new IPs that target gamers that like Zelda but rather that Zelda isn't popular with non-gamers.  Why does Nintendo's innovation only seem to involve dumbing down games and removing depth, complexity and challenge?  Nintendo is noticing that traditional games aren't selling but their only response to this is to make games for non-gamers.  Why don't they also try to make tradtional games more interesting?  They aren't saving gaming.  They're letting it die and are trying to establish something else to rely on when gaming dies.  As traditional gaming is growing stagnate Nintendo is not really making any effort to prevent that.  They're merely abandoning group A in favour of group B.

[that Baby guy]

No, Miyamoto is worried that games like Zelda don't appeal to Japanese gamers anymore.  This is evidenced by lower sales of Twilight Princess in Japan.  They are obviously trying to maintain the appease that they have had of Group A up until now.  Have you been following what's been said about Zelda?  Sure, you may like where the Zelda series is now, and so might several Americans stuck in the sequel mindset that you seemingly desire and despise at the same time.  However, with even the powerhouse that is Zelda, Japanese interests in the game are dwindling.  Sure, they aren't astronomically low yet, but the sales are dropping, which means people that were interested in Zelda are not interested any more.

Anyways, Nintendo is offering both new IP for new audiences, and sequels for those that consider themselves "hardcore," so I don't see what there is to complain about, especially seeing their upcoming line-up.

[Ceric]

I'm going to say this and be flogged later.  If a game does well in America and Europe it could make more then doing Superb in Japan.  In fact doing Superb in either one of those bigger markets could net them more.

I think the mindset that Japan is everything is terrible.  There/their/they're is plenty of games that are never released beyond Japanese shores because they are believed to not have a market anywhere else in the world, dating games or novel games come to mind.  Then why can't there/their/they're be games that can just be for one region and not Japan?

[that Baby guy]

I agree, Ceric.  Realize that Twilight Princess was made entirely with American gamers in mind, too.  However, while Nintendo is a company, one that desires profit in every venture, recognize that the company is one made up of artists, artists who all want to see proper respect from the people around them for their work.  If they make a game that no one will buy in Japan, but will sell out else where, sure, they will have money, but they won't have the respect of their family and peers.  That's why several Japanese developers are hesitant to work on 360 games.  They know the game could sell well, but no one around them will buy it, and their work will wind up unrecognized.

That's my reasoning on why Japanese developers focus on making games for Japan, instead of looking directly for profit.

[IceCold]

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Realize that Twilight Princess was made entirely with American gamers in mind, too.

Bingo.

There was an Aonuma interview years ago (really!) where he explicitly stated that they were making Twilight Princess specifically for the North American market. Nintendo knew from the getgo that it wouldn't do as well in Japan, so they aren't surprised with the results.

[Kairon]

Actually, have you guys SEEN Zelda sales in Japan? I don't think Wind Waker even broke a million there. Zelda hasn't been big since the N64 there, and is exhibiting early stages of Metroid syndrome, perhaps better known as Metal Gear Solid syndrome (i.e. the Americans will buy it, but the Japanese won't). Hopefully the Big N finds a cure...

I don't think anyone considers Japan the be-all-and-end-all (especially not Microsoft). And of course, Capcom's heavy X360 support can be placed directly on that particular Japanese company's belief of this tenet.

But Nintendo is operating under the assumption that Japan is a sort of accelerated canary for the rest of the world in game habits. Traditional game sales in Japan have shrunk and shrunk, so Nintendo unleashed the market disrupting non-game trend there that's reinvigorated it. With Europe and America buying up Nintendogs and Brain Training at lesser but impressive rates, I think there's a little bit of weight to that estimation.

But, let's forget all that. I WANT to see innovation in hardcore games too. I have a hardcore gamer's tastes, if not their zeal. But I don't think that Nintendo is abandoning me. I think they're enabling a whole new explosion in hardcore game innovation, and from a multiplicity of sources.

I believe that their essential improvements in user input really HAS put us one step closer to virtual reality (still a loooong ways to go), and will spawn more immersion, more interactivity, and new forms of interactive gameplay.Sure, more processing power is nice too. But eye candy can always come later: what's more important is expanding the FREEDOM that a player has to interact in their world...

That promise hasn't been fulfilled yet (where's my Wii Oblivion clone gol'darnit!!!), but it's still a promise I hold dear.

~Carmine "Cai" M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Ian Sane]

"Anyways, Nintendo is offering both new IP for new audiences, and sequels for those that consider themselves 'hardcore,' so I don't see what there is to complain about, especially seeing their upcoming line-up."

No that is what's worth complaining about.  The new IP is for the new audience.  Where is the new IP for the hardcore gamers?  Why do we only get sequels?  That is what suggests that Nintendo is focusing more on the new audience.  If Nintendo only gives hardcore gamers sequels then eventually anyone with hardcore tastes that is not interested in non-games is going to get bored of the same old stuff.  I want to play games like Pikmin (new IP, total gamer-game).  I don't want the bulk of Nintendo's new creative ideas to be in non-games that I have no interest in.

[wandering]

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Originally posted by: BigJim
"I think a lot of people who bought the Wii are not necessarily the types of people who are interested in playing that kind of game."

Finally an official acknowledgement that it's not the "system for everybody/everything" that some fanboys insisted it was. [snip]

I still believe the Wii is a system for everyone, and I'm pretty sure Nintendo does too.

[darknight06]

Hmmm, looks like someone at Bungie took offense to the Halo question, here's a snippet...


"Joystiq: One final question: last week, Shigeru Miyamoto said in an interview with Geoff Keighley in Entertainment Weekly that he could make Halo.

Frank: Yeah, well. I just want to go on the record and say that Bungie is hard at work on a side-scrolling platform game featuring some plumbers — I’m not going to say what their ethnicity is, it’s none of anyone’s business — but we took that as a gauntlet, a sort of glove slap, and we’re going to respond in 2D scrolling style. That’s all I’m saying."

[that Baby guy]

Are they...are they...German plumbers?

[GoldenPhoenix]

Poor Bungie, they can't help but throw a hissy fit because they know it is true.  

[mantidor]

Its a sad day when someone, even if its just a joke, compare what Super Mario Bros did for platformers (and games in general for that matter) with what halo did for FPS.

[KDR_11k]

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Originally posted by: thatguy
Are they...are they...German plumbers?

What, finally a decent Werner game?

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Its a sad day when someone, even if its just a joke, compare what Super Mario Bros did for platformers (and games in general for that matter) with what halo did for FPS.

I think what he's saying is that it's easy to make a game once you've seen it done by someone else.

[GoldenPhoenix]

No I think Bungie got offended because Miyamoto said he could have created Halo, which could be interpreted in various ways. Instead Bungie, who has an obvious confidence problem, thought Miyamoto was saying it would be easy to create (as in the game itself isn't that impressive). Granted I do think Halo is an uninspired, poor man's FPS for consoles, so perhaps Bungie does have the right to be offended.

[S-U-P-E-R]

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Hmmm, looks like someone at Bungie took offense to the Halo question

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Poor Bungie, they can't help but throw a hissy fit because they know it is true.

It was a joke, lol. Ugh.