
Former Nintendo Executive Discusses Nintendo’s Culture - aaronbrethorst
http://www.dromble.com/2015/01/21/former-nintendo-executive-dan-adelman-discusses-nintendos-culture-third-party-support-and-much-more/
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mrschwabe
_Nintendo is not only a Japanese company, it is a Kyoto-based company. For
people who aren’t familiar, Kyoto-based are to Japanese companies as Japanese
companies are to US companies. They’re very traditional, and very focused on
hierarchy and group decision making. Unfortunately, that creates a culture
where everyone is an advisor and no one is a decision maker – but almost
everyone has veto power._

If you read Patrick McKenzie's recent article on "Doing Business in Japan" you
can get some better context of just how rigid these 'Kyoto-based' must be:

[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-
japan/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/)

~~~
hkmurakami
I have trouble even listing large Kyoto based companies other than Kyocera and
Nintendo. (Hatena is the only prominent web services company there, but it is
much smaller).

The reputation I heard from inside japan when I lived and worked there wads
that of "weirdness" rather than being necessarily more heirichical. I don't
think it's a linear "even more Japanese compared to USA standards" thing going
on. They're known for being more cultish and wacky in their own ways, like
Kyocera employees' fanatical effort into their annual all company sports
tournament.

I can see how this weirdness and cultishness might be seen as being "more
hierarchical" from a non domestic person's eyes though.

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ekianjo
You never heard of Aiful and Wacoal? Sagawa express, too.

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kderbe
A fair amount of the interview is dedicated to Nintendo's eShop and how its
pricing, release schedule, and promotions are determined by Nintendo's market
research--as well as company culture. It also brings up a study I'd not heard
of before, that says game demos significantly lower sales (
[http://www.computerandvideogames.com/416824/](http://www.computerandvideogames.com/416824/)
).

I think it's an interesting read for anyone involved in digital marketplaces
or who offers free trials of their product.

~~~
skuhn
I also found the assertion about demos interesting, and it seemed somewhat
unintuitive to me. I can think of two possible reasons for the correlation:

    
    
      1. Demos provide enough of the gameplay to satisfy your curiosity
      2. Demos let you discover that you won't like a game without buying it
    

However, I'm not convinced that the sales study actually includes enough data
to establish correlation at all. Simply breaking down sales into groups
(trailer/demo+trailer/demo/nothing) overlooks other differentiators that can
have a major impact on sales.

The biggest one to my mind is simply the budget of a game. An indie game has
no chance of selling equivalent units to a AAA game with a giant marketing
budget. A demo may seem more prudent to an indie developer (or not), since it
can be done on spec rather than requiring money to actually change hands. Yet,
demo or not, it will never touch the sales level of a trailer-only AAA game. A
more informative study would account for these factors.

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hvidgaard
For that data to be even remotely useful, they need to look at how long time
do people spend playing the game, and customer satisfaction. I do not doubt
that proper demos make people buy less games, but on the other hand you have
less disgruntled customers because they didn't spend 60€ on a game that isn't
very good.

I seriously cannot understand why any console maker doesn't go all out and
focus on the customer. Tell publishers to either make a reasonable demo, or
accept that people buy the game and can get a refund if they've played it less
than an hour.

~~~
pandaman
>I seriously cannot understand why any console maker doesn't go all out and
focus on the customer. Tell publishers to either make a reasonable demo,

Ouya used to require every game to have a demo or to be free-to-play. They
ditched it[1]. I believe MS still has the mandatory demo on Xbox live arcade
(digital only games) but only for the 360 titles, they allow publishers to
decide for the XB1 [2]. I cannot possibly know their reasons but my guess is
that demos are expensive to make. Giving a refund has not been tried as far as
I know but Sony had something similar with one hour limited full games for
free. I believe they stopped releasing these few years ago. Again, I don't
know their reasons but my guess is that it was not driving a significant
number of additional sales.

Right now you can Share Play on the PS4 and watch game streams everywhere so
the utility of demos is even less than in the 7th generation consoles.

[1][http://www.computerandvideogames.com/455402/ouya-ditches-
fre...](http://www.computerandvideogames.com/455402/ouya-ditches-free-to-play-
requirement/)

[2][http://www.nowgamer.com/xbox-one-demo-policy-hasnt-
changed-t...](http://www.nowgamer.com/xbox-one-demo-policy-hasnt-changed-
there-will-be-more-demos-as-platform-goes-forward/)

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pikachu_is_cool
The lack of comments surprises me

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ekianjo
It's usually proportional to the lack of contents, or the lack of controversy.

