
Miyamoto Admits Nintendo Underestimated The Switch To HD - scholia
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/07/08/miyamoto-admits-nintendo-underestimated-the-switch-to-hd/
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jug6ernaut
Of the big three i easily have the most faith in Nintendo. Why? Because they
know how to make games i enjoy, and have been doing so for well over 2
decades.

Nintendo put themselves in a tough spot, with dwindling Wii sales they were
left with the choice of having no Console choice or having one with no
games(very few). It can be argued which is the better option, obviously both
suck.

I do not consider Nintendo in trouble, there base(as has been proven time and
time again) will always be there(mainly because they stick to there guns, for
better or worse). Point & case of this is the 3DS, when this was release for a
good 7-8 months it was considered a horrible console, with its best game being
a remake of "The Legend of Zelda OOT"(arguably). Look at it now it is
considered to be the best running console available. Granted it some good
games in this 7-8 month period, but not much.

My point is, when it comes down to it, games sell consoles, and the WiiU has
no games, at all really. Once they come, and they will, the console will be in
at least fine shape. I personally have not bought one, but it is on my list
above both the xbox1 and the ps4.

My 2 cents...

~~~
macspoofing
Are you kidding? Of the big three, I consider Nintendo dead-man walking. The
reality is that the console business is a big company game, and Nintendo is
just too small. You need to sink billions of dollars to develop and subsidize
the console, be willing to lose money for years and then do it all over again
6-10 years later. Microsoft can do it, and Sony can do it, Nintendo can't.
They need to make money because unlike Microsoft and Sony, they don't have
other revenue streams. This necessities them releasing under-powered consoles.
They got lucky with the Wii. They are not so lucky with the WiiU.

They are still the king of mobile console gaming ... sort of. Tablet and
smartphones are eating away their bottom line, and the trend will continue
(the minute that Apple and Google decide to focus on mobile gaming in earnest
will spell the end of Nintendo). The problem for Nintendo is that mobile
gaming is an afterthought for Apple and Google. They don't _need_ to do well
in that area to survive, however every point of marketshare that Nintendo
loses because little Johnny is fine enough playing games on his iPad instead
of buying a 3DS hurts Nintendo incredibly. Everyone will have a smartphone or
a tablet, so justifying a 3DS purchase is that much harder.

They make good games, yes, but it won't change the fact that they are in a lot
of trouble.

~~~
Keyframe
People have been saying they're good as dead since N64. It seems to me they
are doing just fine.

~~~
jamesaguilar
IMO, net income falling for five years with no end in sight is not "doing just
fine." Just because people have wrongly claimed something in the past does not
mean that they can't be rightly claiming it now.

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mkr-hn
That fall is from the high of the Wii's unprecedented success.

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ekianjo
Mouhaha. "unprecedented success". They just managed to sell a lot of boxes
with ONE game per system. The Wii is probably the first console where you have
the lowest number of games sold per unit on average, because so many casual
gamers bought it and left it lie in the dust after playing with it a couple of
times.

~~~
jamesaguilar
Hell, I'm a hardcore gamer, and all I ever used my Wii for was to play Metroid
Prime with a gamecube controller, since I never had a gamecube. (My wife won
the thing at a raffle.) It's sitting there gathering dust.

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smackfu
Seems pretty inexcusable to me. Nintendo was able to coast through the entire
last-gen not doing HD games at all. Now they have to do HD on their new
console, and it was perfectly clear they were going to have to do HD, and it's
too much work for them to get games out on time??

~~~
roc
That's just Nintendo being Nintendo. They (seemingly) don't ever watch their
competitors or consider the lessons their competitors are learning.

It's not so different than their being dragged kicking-and-screaming into
connected services and then introducing initial offerings that look and
function as if none of them had ever even seen the Internet before, let alone
used any connected services that had been on offer from the industry.

Also: their games are always slow to materialize. Despite SD resolutions, the
Wii was a similar-scale software-wasteland for at least its first year. (or
longer - depending on how generous you're feeling)

The only real difference is that its launch titles retained novelty and
popularity as more and more people were being first-introduced to waggle-
gaming. Now that it's old hat, and every visitor isn't demanding to try it
out, no-one's logging a hundred hours on a launch title and the lack of
software is more glaring.

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mkr-hn
Nintendo being Nintendo has served them well for decades. It's not reasonable
to expect them to throw their entire corporate identity out just because they
have a huge Wii-shaped bump in their stock chart.

What makes Nintendo unique among console makers--and what carries them through
each generation--is focusing on making fun games, not abiding the latest
trends. Nintendo does roughly what Apple does: let the competitors make all
the big mistakes and take the PR hits, then come behind and release something
that gets it right on the first try.

~~~
roc
There's a difference between chasing trends and actually doing research into a
problem-area before releasing your service.

And the bit where you claim they release something that gets it right on the
first try? That's the exact opposite of Nintendo history. Friend codes, the
Wii shop, the Netflix-app-disc situation -- these were not examples of
Nintendo "getting it right". These are counter-examples.

That said, I wasn't speaking to whether Nintendo-being-Nintendo was good or
bad for them. I was just pointing out that the Wii U's situation isn't
particularly surprising.

~~~
derefr
I would completely disagree about friend codes--Nintendo fundamentally makes
consoles and portables, and games for same, that it's "safe" to hand over to
your five-year-old without all that much supervision. Friend codes add network
connectivity to that mixture without sacrificing five-year-old safety. Any
sort of a "lobby" system, on the other hand--especially one that allows chat--
instantly sacrifices five-year-old safety (and will teach your kids several
new words!)

~~~
roc
I should have been more clear: per-game friend codes were the most egregious
problem. Per-account friend codes are a reasonable-enough precaution, given
their target market.

Even still: allowing some mute matchmaking and play, with friend codes
required for anything involving trades or chat, is a superior solution to the
same problem that was already available in the market to be co-opted [1], if
only Nintendo ever considered what others had done and learned.

[1] basically what ToonTown Online was doing in the same space, for the same
reasons, since 2003.

~~~
derefr
Really, I think this is a difference in outlook between the American and
Japanese markets. Look at Pokemon, for example: in western markets, it was
seen as a "you mean I have to buy two versions to 100% the game!?" cash-grab;
in Japan--which is much denser, geographically--you were actually reasonably
likely to have _multiple_ people to trade with for _any_ game with such
features.

To put it another way: Nintendo basically expects people to want to play with
their "real friends" over the net--as an extension of their older "sit around
a console in the living room together" dynamic--and sees no benefit in letting
people play with/against strangers. They assume that if a kid wants badly to
find someone to play a game with, they'll go and find someone in the real
world, convince them [to convince their parents] to buy the game, and play it
with them. This also, as a side-benefit (from Nintendo's perspective), shunts
the work of "moderation" in these games to the parents: deciding whether to
let your child hang around with some other child is already a well-established
thing that parents do, and making it a prerequisite to establishing a game-
play link means that parents can't complain to Nintendo for exposing their
children to "the wrong sorts"\--the responsibility was effectively passed back
to them.

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afreak
> It remains to be seen if Nintendo?s laundry list of beloved exclusives can
> carry them for another console generation. I recently asked Xbox loyalists
> if Microsoft?s continued employment of Master Chief and Halo was enough to
> keep them excited about the console. Most said no, and I wonder if the
> numbers will finally start to turn for Nintendo as well.

I think that this part misses the point about the differences between Halo and
Mario. Halo is and always has been aimed towards the types that have been long
term gamers and has only been recently usurped by the likes of Call of Duty et
al.

Mario and its entire universe has brand value with parents and is geared
towards practically anyone who can figure out a d-pad.

While I think that most of the Mario franchise is just a rehash of a rehash
(Mario Bros. Wii being the last rehash I liked), for as long as parents see
the games that way, Nintendo can keep pumping them out.

~~~
GVIrish
True, but how long can Nintendo stay afloat with only the strength of the
Mario franchise to lean upon. 3rd party developers are giving the WiiU no
love, and the WiiU doesn't have the hook to attract casual gamers the way the
original Wii did.

I think parents will still choose Mario, but that number is going to get
smaller and smaller as time goes on. Why spend $300 for a console that only
has Mario games? That's not a good way forward for Nintendo.

~~~
aclevernickname
> True, but how long can Nintendo stay afloat with only the strength of the
> Mario franchise to lean upon.

Perhaps we can ask Disney the same question about Mickey Mouse.

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parfe
Lot of doom and gloom about the only gaming company that doesn't dump their
product on the market at a loss. Sony and Microsoft piss away literally
billions of dollars for years waiting for their consoles to become profitable.

And here's a redditor putting the Wii U game library in context:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/wiiu/comments/1gurfs/is_nintendo_pre...](http://www.reddit.com/r/wiiu/comments/1gurfs/is_nintendo_preparing_for_a_n64_style_generation/cao1kvm)
The Wii U receives slightly better than average third party support vs other
Nintendo consoles.

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Nursie
That's OK, been playing my Wii games in HD for ages on Dolphin...

No seriously, my only complaint about the Wii graphics was that they weren't
very smooth on a 50 inch screen. They didn't need to be photo-realistic, but a
bit less blocky would have been nice. Hence Dolphin.

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programminggeek
Here's something people easily forget... The gamecube wasn't that successful
either and the Wii was derided in the press for having a dumb name initially.
Even the hardcore didn't quite "get it" at launch.

It wasn't until Wii Sports created this group gaming that was accessible to
everybody in the family that it really took off.

The place where Nintendo is not going to lose to Sony or Microsoft is the
family friendly entertainment that you just can't get on the PS3 or 360 (or
PS4 or XBOne). I've got young children and I can't play Left 4 Dead, Call of
Duty, Halo, etc. in front of them if I don't want to expose them to graphic
violence, blood, etc.

Nintendo games biggest challenge is going to be on the dealing with "app" type
consoles filled with tons of casual games that are cheap or free to play.
Think Ouya or Apple TV or some other console with F2P or $1 games like Sonic,
vs mario for $50+ and I think Nintendo's ability to create experiences people
will pay a premium for is going to be harder, but not impossible.

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Millennium
There are three things Nintendo understimated: how much HD would add to the
cost to create a game, how little HD would add to the value of a game, and how
badly third parties would insist on it anyway.

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m_st
I think Nintendo, but also Sony and Microsoft will have a hard time convincing
people to buy a console or portable once Apple releases iOS 7 with the rumored
game controller support. You can be sure controllers will be made available
for other popular phones too and in about a year there'll be plenty of good
games on the market, for much less than classic console and portable games.

If you can get such a controller for less than 50$ and already have a
smartphone or iPod touch like device, then I just don't see why you'd want to
buy yet another gaming device.

Now give me a good and comfortable controller for my iPad and I won't buy any
console anymore.

~~~
GVIrish
Look at the top selling games on consoles. Grand Theft Auto, Mario games,
Halo, Call of Duty, Madden. How many of those games can be done on a tablet or
phone? Zero.

Home console gaming currently offers gaming experiences that cannot be done on
mobile devices. Mobile devices are only a threat to mobile consoles.

~~~
ameen
GTA / Madden | Fifa / CoD | Battlefield / Mario-like platformers are on iOS
right now. Most of them quite decent. They'll get better if an official
Controller (or) an API is launched. I think there's an opportunity for a
proper platformer IP exclusively made for mobile seeing as how its exploding
onto traditional consoles (Ouya/etc)

Remember Nintendo's investors threatened the board and wanted them to release
Nintendo IP on Mobile appstores [1].

[1] [http://www.idownloadblog.com/2011/09/15/nintendo-no-games-
ap...](http://www.idownloadblog.com/2011/09/15/nintendo-no-games-app-store/)

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chaostheory
I think the only console manufacturer, in this generation, that focused on
ease of programming from the hardware side was Sony; to make up for the
mistakes they've made in the past with resulted in PS3's Cell. That said, I
didn't hear anything about Wii U having a weird architecture like PS3's Cell.
The only thing I keep reading is that the Wii U's specs are actually even
weaker than the Xbox 360's hardware.

~~~
talmand
But the PS4 and the Xbox One have weaker specs than my one-year-old PC so I
guess whatever point you're making about the Wii U applies to those consoles
as well.

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chaostheory
Not really. Both PS4 and XBox One pretty much sport near off the shelf PC CPUs
and GPUs. They're a lot closer to a PC architecture wise than a Wii U is. Well
the Xbox One is a little harder to program for since it doesn't have unified
memory.

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talmand
Sure, off the shelf parts, but not the latest and greatest. I'm just expanding
on the thought that if a console has weaker specs than other consoles then it
couldn't possibly have good games. Consoles are always behind gaming PCs so
therefore the logic dictates that you can't have good games on any consoles.

Which, I'm hoping it comes across that I don't agree with said logic.

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bitwize
Feh. If they think HD is hard, just wait until everybody switches to 4K in a
couple of years. (The true videophiles will have 8K or 16K.)

~~~
AndrewDucker
Unless you're sitting within 7 feet of a 70" screen 4k is completely
pointless:

[http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter/](http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-
matter/)

~~~
sliverstorm
THANK YOU. We might see 4k screens take off for computers, but they don't make
sense for TVs right now.

~~~
AndrewDucker
Yeah, my 22" monitor is 1680x1050 - which
[http://isthisretina.com/](http://isthisretina.com/) tells me is retina at
38".

As it happens, I'm sitting about 26" from it - so I need about 50% more pixel
depth. Even then, that only makes it 50% of 4K resolution.

A 4k screen at 22" is a retina display at 17". That doesn't sound comfortable
- although I haven't played with an Oculus Rift yet...

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rschmitty
Really good book for those wanting more on Nintendo history:
[http://www.amazon.com/Super-Mario-Nintendo-Conquered-
America...](http://www.amazon.com/Super-Mario-Nintendo-Conquered-
America/dp/1591845637)

I just finished the audio version during workouts, while it was not
_thrilling_ it was definitely interesting

