After my most recent posting about that article over at N-gamer.com entitled "Nintendo´s missing mojo", I got a lot of responses from you people here in this forum. Well, I want to throw the ball once more with yet another new topic, because I think that it is important with yet more brainstorming over the issues that relate to our favourite, but currently more or less besieged gamescompany.
Yes, that article contained many true points, and yes the situation is alarming for Nintendo. That is why I posted it in the first place. Perhaps many people here have already read a ton of such information. But has anybody taken the initiative to bring that same information to the rest of the Nintendo community (Nintendo gamers)
One thing is to see and read something individually, quite another to read it collectively. The more people who rally behind a cause, the more power to change things there is! So instead of fighting over what we all think about Nintendo´s current situation, why not find the points we can all agree on and in unison knock at Nintendo´s door (i.e. flood them with e-mails about it) so they know what is going on? If no response there, we can just have fun talking on our own and maybe they will sneak peak over here at the forum and find out what their fans are talking about! So let´s get to it (replies welcome, but no fanboy rants, OK? This is a serious discussion!):
1) I hold that Nintendo should not compromise the quality of their first-party titles to give time to attract 3. party software and hope to garner more gamers that way. The three most important games for Nintendo right now to NOT compromise the quality of, or forget the high expectations to is: Mario (considerable numbers of articles, editorials and direct complaints over it has filled the media for some time now) and Zelda (-same here) and Pokemon! These are the three games that most people associate Nintendo with. Metroid is not so well-known right now, as there hasn´t been one since the SNES days. Whether it is Mario first or Pokemon first I don´t know, but these two alone needs serious updates on GCN, with the latter never making an appearance there so far. Take, the Nintendo 64. Mario appeared there from the word go and it was a phenomenal success, causing the N64 to outsell the PSX for a long time. They didn´t make a sequel due to internal issues. But they saw the power it had and did nothing about it. Had they included a Mario 64 2, as they in fact promised was in the making a lot of times, the N64 would have benefitted tremendously. Pokemon arrived a long time in the N64´s lifecycle, and by then only coregamers were left to care. Then there is the Zelda´s, with first OOT arriving and knocking down everything in sight, with an expected sequel never making it because we got MM, which they admitted was merely a side-quest.
You can´t hook people on something, and then forget them later. Regardless of the reason. There i s no legal reason. You´re either in the game or you´re out! And you have to obey the rules of it if you´re in!! This is not a kindergarten where you can run to and fro doing what YOU like, this is a gamesmarket worth billions of Dollars and still growing!
2) I hold, that Nintendo´s competitors are doing way better than itself. Playstation 2 aside (with all it´s pirated software bs that naturally has people with low morality jump on that bandwagon), I will mention only the X-BOX. This machine appeared in the market recently hoping to get a share of that market and what is it doing to achieve it? It is doing what it should! It is supplying the market with the goods that the market wants. A constant flow of games, of very varied content and -gameplay to suit everyones needs. But most importantly: it is giving the first-party games and proper sequels to those games that people want! Voila, their userbase is growing fast!
HALO 1 was a great success, so they make HALO 2, which is even more jawdropping in quality (as people at E3 this year witnessed). Project Gotham Racing was a great success too, and it too is getting an upgraded sequel in the form of Project Gotham Racing 2! I can mention Dead or Alive 4 from Tecmo. SEGA will drop Virtua Cop 3 on the platform too, and there are many developers who pump out the sequels in a never ending line of games. Nintendo is admittedly trying to do the same, to get as many third-parties to publish games on their platform. But they see that more and more of them drop out and stay making games for the remaining two. Why? Like I have already said: because they dissapointed with the first-party titles at the launch of the GCN. The first-party titles are their bread and butter and they fling gamers around from one akward sequel to the next. No wonder people leave for the other consoles (Sunshine was uninspiring and too difficult with downright ugly textures and a strange, limited setting/Zelda was not just cell-shaded but strange too and foreign in the gameplay as well...Zelda in a boat (what´s the next thing they´ll invent? Zelda in a rocket?)? On an ocean that´s downright boring to explore? Islands that are too small to warrant proper exploration? I would pick Hyrule Field or similar settings any day! Plenty of lush greenery, wide open expanses leading to mysterious mountains, deep dark caves...just love it. Know that a lot of people do too.
What Nintendo must never do, nomatter how hard they try to widen their userbase and attract the mainstream gamer, is to lower the EXPECTED standard of setting and gameplay in their first-party titles! No wonder the developers fear for the sales of THEIR games on the console! Do you think I sound like a Nintendo hater? I´m not! But I can see what´s going on. You can´t say that Microsoft dissapointed anyone at the launch of the X-BOX. There were 4 jaw-dropping games at launch there, the GCN had maybe one. And it wasn´t Mario. We had waited 6 years for the sequel, but it didn´t show.
Nintendo has stated that they don´t want to follow the current trend of realism in the games, that they want to follow their own way and do what they like and inspire others to get creative and widen the market from there. They said that if suddenly the market changed away from cell-shading, they would go towards realism. So they say they want to oppose the market trend. How do you widen the market you serve, by opposing it? They see what they get, I´d say! Or do they? I think I will try to tell a lot of customers in a shop I know, that I am the new shop-owner and that I am going run things very differently from now on. Tell them they can´t get their favourite goods there anylonger, because I "know better". I will tell them I am going to import beans, eggs and flour from outer Mongolia, because "the environment out there is better for the growth of such beans, better for the chickens (stone-cold, though, but don´t "mind"), and with huge open expanses of open ground to grow wheat (no mention of extreme, unfriendly weather) and that they can look in the yellow pages for the things they used to get and still want! Because "I know better". Pretty soon, I will be wondering where all my customers w-e-n-t...!
3) I hold that Nintendo has gone from being a friendly, open-minded company to a company that is arrogant and narrow-minded. And I am not meaning to drop inflammatory posts here just like that, I simply state how I feel as a very dissapointed gamer. Of course, I could just buy an X-BOX or a Playstation 2. But, I wont! Know why? Because I love Nintendo, want them to succeed and therefore urge them to change their current direction! Nintendo these days is like a friendly, but strict parent who will give the children what is deemed best for them. The only problem here is that they must be able to see with the eyes of the same child, to know what´s better for the child. And they don´t do that! They see with their own eyes, and forget the child. So they go from being caring and friendly, to uncaring and arrogant! And the child (gamers) suffer!
Do you think anyone believes in a company that goes against the modern day trend of interactive entertainment? Who would go against the realism in the games, which give people the freedom to be in any world, any place, any time they choose and have a direct influence of the outcome in those very surroundings? Why do you think that the gamesindustry in surpassing the movieindustry in annual revenue? Because of realism in games! Because they are the next level from the movies and up: to go into the screen and be there to do what you want! Explore, shoot, race, climb, dive etc. in surroundings that they can associate with...that look like the movies they love, but where they can have direct implication on what happens next and so love even more! Behind the salesfigures there is an explanation! Also, concerning Nintendo´s own sales figures. Time to wake up, Nintendo! Q: Hello, is anyone there? Miyamoto-san, are you listening? A: ZZZZZZZZZZ...
Gamebasher.
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