I'm friends with Bob. He was my team lead, twice, at EA. He's a talented developer and a great boss.
Nothing at all surprises me about the mixed reaction. Some people are mad because they love Nintendo. Some are mad because they hate EA. But I haven't seen a lot of people mad because they disagree with his message -- because he's speaking the truth. Nintendo's platforms are disappointing and underwhelming. Just do a search for "Nintendo Wii U sales". It's a fact. (Yet at the same time, like Bob says, Nintendo makes great games -- it's strange how that particular comment seems to have been lost in the noise!)
It's hard to tell the truth sometimes, but especially in the games industry. Gamers get emotionally attached (or opposed) to companies, platforms and games more intensely than anything else in life. Any time you say anything about anything you're risking the digital mobs coming out with the pitchforks and the torches.
And we know how mobs always take the time to pause and reflect.
His only mistake is not being Linus Torvalds talking about Nvidia.
Nintendo has been "dead" a few times now, but they've been going since the 1800s or something when they made playing cards. They also have the capacity to come up with crazy new stuff nobody ever expected. Maybe they're not doing well right now, but I have a hard time believing they're "dead."
On the other side, we have EA, best known for insulting people and lying about DRM, including their ex-customers, who they like to imply are homophobes. They haven't managed anything more inventive than tired Madden retreads and they're best known as a company for having their devs toil away in the EA slave mines, where they make minor stat tweaks to Madden for 26 hours a day.
As a gamer, I know which company has more credibility with me. It's not EA.
The thing about sales figures is they're facts, not opinions. Finding Nintendo "more credible" than EA is an opinion that doesn't change the fact that Nintendo's platform isn't selling very well.
Furthermore, you seem to be conflating two different topics. I'm not a fan of EA's DRM schemes any more than you are, but that's just not relevant in this discussion.
I'm not disputing whether or not their business is doing well, just whether or not I think they will go out of business anytime soon, which is what "walking dead" means to me. To that effect, I have pointed out that they have a long history, have "died" several times, and have proven resilient even when various people imagine them "dead" or anything like that.
It appears that EA is looking only at quarterly revenue and not taking anything else into account. It's exactly what I would expect of them. It's one of the many reasons I mistrust them. People play games to have fun. Dealing with assholes is not fun. If I played EA games, I'd have to deal with EA. So the only winning move is not to play.
>Nintendo has been "dead" a few times now, but they've been going since the 1800s or something when they made playing cards. They also have the capacity to come up with crazy new stuff nobody ever expected. Maybe they're not doing well right now, but I have a hard time believing they're "dead."
Yup, 1889 to be exact. [1]
They made "Hanafuda" cards, which are a very old, traditional set of cards, sometimes used for gambling. Comparing it to poker I think is a somewhat inaccurate yet simultaneously fair comparison [2].
> I haven't seen a lot of people mad because they disagree with his message -- because he's speaking the truth. Nintendo's platforms are disappointing and underwhelming.
There was nothing factual about any of Bob's comments. Had I been ignorant of his resume I would have assumed that series of tweets came from a teenager; pissed off because he can't play Mario on a machine he and his circle of friends deem sufficiently "adult".
I wish somebody would explain to me what technical sin Nintendo has committed for WiiU to be regarded so poorly by western developers. As far as I can see the machine is more capable than what the competition has available right now.
I interviewed for a job with them (Nintendo of America), and also did some freelance work over the past couple of years, and I got the feeling whatever they may have been in the past, they currently run on a fairly bureaucratic model, and are not the kind of place that inspires or rewards innovation and creativity.
They had video games in the lobby, but the recruiter warned me "Don't play them!" She told me a previous candidate she took there got a job, but was later fired for playing a video game on company time.
> I got the feeling whatever they may have been in the past, they currently run on a fairly bureaucratic model, and are not the kind of place that inspires or rewards innovation and creativity.
You could say exactly this about most Japanese companies these days. Now what's interesting is that change may be in the air. The current prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has managed to line up the incentives correctly in the Japanese government's notoriously intransigent bureaucracy and started massive economic reform (often referred to as "Abenomics"), a topic that is the cover story of this week's issue of The Economist[0,1].
What Abe has done so far cannot create permanent change by itself, but if he is able to follow through on his other goals and make lasting structural reforms to the Japanese economy and society, then we may see an economic resurgence in Japan. That's something that the West should be looking forward to and supporting, given the need for a stronger counterweight in the Asia-Pacific region to China. It was previously believed that India would take this role, but things haven't progressed there as fast as people had hoped a decade ago[2].
The problem is that the structural reforms are the one thing that actually would make a difference, and they're also the one thing that not only hasn't happened but hasn't even seen a plan put forward.
'Abenomics' is forced inflation (which is drawing more and more concern from the G8 since it's going to become a problem for the rest of the world soon) accompanied by massive public works spending (which was a failed previous LDP platform that they can't seem to get past) that provide absolutely no change, and only work in the short-term, if you can even consider this "working," as it's creating no lasting change.
i understand that structural reform is the 3rd phase in the "3 arrows" agenda.
printing money / pork is obviously easier politically. if there is to be any significant reforms, my guess is it will not kick in until well after the upper house elections.
edit: worryingly the gov appears far more interested in nationalism then economic reforms... so my hopes are not high.
Exactly my point. Structural reform is a nigh-impossible problem, upper house elections or not, in any country, and Japan has a well-established and deeply-rooted history of "change is bad."
In that culture of consensus, change simply has no chance. I have many friends in Japan, and my fear for them is that their government is even more obstinate than others, despite their situation being even worse. The thing that makes this problem intractable, though, is that their people are the same as people everywhere: They'll swallow the propaganda, they'll believe in the radical, just as long as the radical doesn't require they change their lives.
No one wants to change, and the current administration in Japan knows that. They're playing on it, just as the last administration did, and as the next one will. No one will do anything until it's too late; change is too hard, too expensive, too invasive, too inconvenient.
I hope things work out for Japan. I just really, really worry that if the current political movements go through and amend the constitution in the ways proposed, Japan will go from a traditional and slightly stilted democracy to an oligarchy in all but title, run by reactionary nationalists without their people's interests at heart.
[edit: This is a problem that's playing out in many industrialized nations and will play out in many more; Japan is just seeing more and different parts of it more quickly due to its unique situation.]
A cow-orker of mine interviewed there a couple of years ago. He said it was pretty bad, too.
One of his standard questions (he's kind of a snarky guy:) "How many of your co-workers should be fired?" He generally gets answers in the range of ten percent. At Nintendo, they were saying "fifty percent."
Damn, even when Atari was screwed up, it wasn't frowned upon to play games. That's /really/ bad.
> Damn, even when Atari was screwed up, it wasn't frowned upon to play games. That's /really/ bad.
I dunno. The issue here seems more one of culture-shock than right- or wrong-styles.
I think the problem is that people see "game company" and they think "wacky-and-crazy-everybody-chillin'-in-t-shirts-and-playing-foosball-while-shooting-nerf-guns-at-the-boss-woohoo-caffeine!" American-style game company.
Nintendo isn't like that, and never has been. They're a large Japanese company, and one which has always been sort of conservative and traditional (even by comparison with other Japanese companies).
If you want to work for a wacky-foosball company, then I suppose Nintendo probably isn't for you, but it's pretty clear that good games can be made under either model. Whatever the opinion of some EA dev on the wii-u, and regardless of how "good" the wii-u is, Nintendo has had more influence on the gaming world than EA ever will.
Even the accusation of "bureaucracy" in the original post, which while certainly true—Nintendo is a large company, and large companies tend towards the bureaucratic—seems a bit off the mark. I don't think it's an issue of bureaucracy, I think it's an issue of culture.
I also think first impressions can be somewhat deceiving. I work for a very large Japanese company, which is crazy bureaucratic, and while this can be very annoying, there's also a lot of loyalty and flexibility at the small team level. That sort of thing is hard to see from outside.
This is ridiculous. Any company that expects to turn a profit can't have employees spending significant amounts of time playing video games when they're supposed to be working.
This is why the "hey, come work here, we have XBoxes and Playstations" model is crap: You don't get a job to play video games, and people don't hire you do play video games (unless you're a playtester, then you'll play them til you hate them, if you can really call that playing).
I bet those guys at Mojang and Valve never, ever, play video games. I know this because their profit per employee is so high. I is clear and a logical conclusion.
/sarcasm
If I had a game company and I had an employee that was not spending at least 25% of their time playing our game and other games and telling me how to make our games better, I'd fire them.
EA's greatest games were done on systems far older and less powerful than the Wii U. If all they want to do now is sell pretty pictures to easily-manipulated fratboys, then yeah; maybe the Wii U isn't for them. But then, maybe EA isn't for me.
While I agree with part of your comment, it sparks of victimisation rather than anything.
In today's multi-platform market, shoehorning a game into a system that's weaker than existing consoles is going to be painful. The fact that Nintendo's market particularly exists just for first-party games doesn't motivate 3rd party devs either.
If one were to develop a modern console game with proper online functionality (multiplayer, leaderboards, dlcs, etc), doing so on Nintendo hardware would require extra efforts. It isn't as easy as getting it done on PSN or XBL. Nintendo's online system needs a much needed overhaul.
I thought the Wii was ok, it was kind of cute that an underpowered device was outselling ms and Sony for a while. But it was clearly not going to work a second time, especially after the novelty factor of the original had fallen away. Now with Kinect especially, nintendo really needed to address performance issues and come up with something more than wii 1.1
Am I the only one who thinks that the tablet thing was incredibly gimmicky? It doesn't add anything and just increases the price of the console. Nintendo could've delivered a console that was significantly more powerful than the current-gen a year ago and yet would be much cheaper than the next gen.
Everything about the marketing was just bizarre. I don't know of anyone who has it or even wants it.
Have you played on one? Everybody I know that's actually used one likes it a lot, and it allows gameplay possibilities that have never really been possible before. (That said, it badly needs more games.)
I think it would be holding a lot of people back from buying. Maybe it is great once you start playing, from images online though it looks weird and awkward to use.
The Wii's 'remote' was deliberately designed to make the console more accessible. Non-gamers were still confused by games controllers, but the Wii's controller looked a bit like a TV remote - something everyone could understand.
If you extend the thinking to the WiiU then you see that because more people are familiar with tablets and touch screens these days, and in fact a huge number of gamers are now on tablet devices. Adding a tablet controller would surely make the WiiU more accessible to non-gamers. You can kind of see some sort of logic there, though it doesn't seem at all inspired or with any foresight.
Remember too that both Sony and Microsoft are pushing their own second screen technologies very hard this generation.
Up until recently, I still thought that Nintendo might have had a very solid chance to recover from the tepid Wii U launch because it only takes one or two amazing, must-buy games to get a system flying off the shelves. Nintendo has had some great first party titles in the past and is certainly capable of creating some amazing experiences when they put their minds to it.
But I think its become very evident that the suits, not the real creative gamers, are now running things at Nintendo. The recent Let's Play debacle where Nintendo monetizes user created YouTube videos is a relatively small example, but its a symptom of a dumb, bureaucratically led company that just doesn't get it.
Most businesses DREAM of getting their customers to make free advertising for them, and Nintendo is going out of their way to stifle any incentive to create that free advertising for what amounts to pennies for a business of that size. That's something that really kills off any goodwill and support that a lot of people had for them. That's just one small example that really illustrates how far gone Nintendo is right now.
PS: While the Wii U has a number of pros and cons, the console's relative lack of power is almost completely irrelevant to how fun the actual games are. That's one criticism from the article that I still argue that most people don't care about. Maybe game developers care about it, but as long as the games are fun most average people don't notice or care.
It is a matter of perspective ... WII U seems to be having problems, and most of the Wii-s I know about seem to be used only as a dust gathering devices.
I didn't even know it existed up to a month or two ago. Add into the mix the fact that Japan is no longer the gaming manufacturing powerhouse it once was and I won't be much surprised if they have rough time ahead of them.
How open are nintendo to indies? Most of the fun stuff happens there and it seems like a natural fit to me.
Absolutely not at all. The only way for joe schmoe indie developer to make games for a nintendo platform is to crack the console and make homebrew games that only work on other cracked consoles.
edit: looks like someone needs to be reminded what the downvote button is for. Everything I said is factually true, and the fact that Nintendo shows "interest" at a convention or allows some of the top selling indie titles onto their platform doesn't change how hostile they are towards the homebrew community.
This is completely wrong. I am part of an indie team and Nintendo has offered us much more than Microsoft or Sony.
They have changed their stance towards indies significantly in the past 12 months.
No one is really friendly with homebrew communities because those communities have a lot of ties to the hackers/crackers that reverse engineer their consoles. Indie devs != homebrew community. There is some crossover but we are talking about 2 different groups.
They generally only take more famous titles IIRC, but saying they hate indies is not true at all, especially with their presence at that conference recently.
As a gamer, I have felt this way about Nintendo at least since the wii. But it's hard to argue with results. That said, their recent results haven't been so great. It wouldn't surprise me if the company went the way of sets eventually, producing games for other consoles rather than making their own.
Can't disagree the Wii has been pretty successful for Nintendo, and their handheld business has always been immensely profitable. I'm not very optimistic about the future of the Wii U though, IMO they are really to far behind with their hardware this generation. Nintendo consoles have never been about the best specs, but the Wii U is just barely matching 6 year old consoles at the end of their life cycle. Not a problem for many games and a large part of Nintendo's target audience, but with tablets and mobile hardware/software based devices getting more powerful each year, in 2 years or so we could have an Ouya 2 or an Apple TV with app store that will take care of the 'lighter gaming' segment that Nintendo pretty much depends on. If Nintendo fails to attract serious games and serious gamers because the hardware is too weak, and loses the light/casual segment to other players, they will have a hard time staying relevant in the console hardware business.
"Quite well" is an interesting view, considering they just returned to profitability after some horrible years.
They were actually doing pretty horrible.
Look, just because it takes someone with many billion dollars a long time to run out of money doesn't mean they aren't going down.
Well the 3DS seems to have picked up steam (fueled by 3DS LL?) but I can't see Wii U being much of a success.
Obviously any talk of Nintendo being 'dead walking' is nonsense, if their hardware business would turn really sour they could do extremely well by just making games for other companies hardware given that it's their games that is selling their own 'often not particularly stellar compared to the competition' -hardware.
Things like them demanding to get all ad revenue of videos of Nintendo games on Youtube makes me shake my head though, hardly the signal you want to send to fans.
Really? Much anticipated titles such as Rayman (a previous exclusive) were just pushed to Q4 2013 for launch parity with other consoles.
Wii U sales aren't great, they're decent but not great. Almost every console manufacturer makes money through software sales, but when there isn't much successful third party software sales, the investment required to develop for the WiiU can't really justify the pithy returns.
Time will tell. They do have quite a robust first party catalog, but I don't see nintendo being a major player in the console market for this generation. Outside a few loyal first party gamers, not many will buy the wii u. Everyone I know that bought a wii doesn't plan to get a wiiu.
I will get a Wii U for Mario, Zelda, Metroid and Smash Bros. Plus probably a few others like I did for the Wii (Xenoblade, Last Story, Paper Mario, etc.)
Who knows if Nintendo can survive ~5 more years with that sales model though as I am pretty sure in 2 years time they will begin to feel the pain from phones and tablets a lot more for the casual gamers that they won over with the Wii.
I think the WiiU has some great features. Playing new Mario for example looks great in HD, and at the end of each level you can post messages that other players will see. This creates the feeling that you're not in a vacuum. The WiiU is not a sales disaster; if they well only to fans of nintendos games that's still a business. EA Sports relies on flashy graphics and large US install base, so I can see why they would avoid WiiU. Professional developers need to remember when tweeting about platforms that they represent their companies.
Ad hominem. Further the comment is repeated only because it confirms something widely believed.
The Wii was in a similar situation but got a reprieve via novel controls, but of that generation while countless 360s and PS3 units are still in heavy service, the Nintendo devices gather dust (mine never got unpacked after moving. Non-HD just destroys it in an HD world). The WiiU novelty seems to be a nonstarter. The device has the stench of a serious failure.
Stop misusing the term "ad hominem". I didn't say that EA was wrong in that post (which is an essential component of that kind of argument), I said they were being hypocritical. Pointing out hypocrisy/irony is not an ad hominem argument.
Anyways, the U's launch library is admittedly abysmal, but it seems they've finally got their head around online services that don't fail completely. It only took 2.5 console generations, but there you go.
I'd compare it to the early PS3 launch if anything. Critically panned, overpriced, bad launch library.. give it some time, and I've got a good feeling the situation will improve. PS3 turned into one of the better consoles of this generation, despite Sony's best efforts to the contrary.
Also, complaints about underpowered hardware go to the bit bucket, Nintendo has pretty much always lagged behind the cutting edge on tech, any buyer/developer who doesn't understand and expect that at this point in time is not paying attention.
The charge of hypocrisy is generally an ad hominen argument when you are responding to a specific point someone made.
It isn't EA making the point about the Wii it is a developer at the company. So how is the developer being hypocritical? Furthermore, hypocrisy is taking different positions on similar issues. I'm not sure EA's position is that it is okay they are (hypothetically)a poorly managed company.
Your post was the very definition of an ad hominem attack -- you sought to cast aspersions on the speaker, having nothing, whatsoever, to do with the actual argument. And to humor your points, there is nothing whatsoever hypocritical or "ironic" about an EA developer criticizing a hardware device when their own organization is seeing a financial downturn (or at least they were...their last quarter was quite a rebound), and I'm perplexed how you think that is relevant.
The PS3 succeeded because it could be justified as a superlative blu-ray player, at the perfect time that people started looking for blu-ray players. The WiiU has no such advantage. The WiiU has done dismally in reviews, has little software (and little hope of much to come, given that a growing number of game makers have declared it a non-starter), and is widely anticipated to be destroyed by the soon-to-be-announced next generation of consoles. It is DoA, given that its sole opportunity was a first mover advantage but that didn't pan out.
Also, complaints about underpowered hardware go to the bit bucket
Nothing at all surprises me about the mixed reaction. Some people are mad because they love Nintendo. Some are mad because they hate EA. But I haven't seen a lot of people mad because they disagree with his message -- because he's speaking the truth. Nintendo's platforms are disappointing and underwhelming. Just do a search for "Nintendo Wii U sales". It's a fact. (Yet at the same time, like Bob says, Nintendo makes great games -- it's strange how that particular comment seems to have been lost in the noise!)
It's hard to tell the truth sometimes, but especially in the games industry. Gamers get emotionally attached (or opposed) to companies, platforms and games more intensely than anything else in life. Any time you say anything about anything you're risking the digital mobs coming out with the pitchforks and the torches.
And we know how mobs always take the time to pause and reflect.
His only mistake is not being Linus Torvalds talking about Nvidia.