
Is Nintendo hitting the skids? - aaronbrethorst
http://nohighscores.com/node/982
======
gfodor
Every major announcement Nintendo makes is met with this type of cynicism. The
truth is that Nintendo is the only company who has the balls to try something
new, and is willing to fail in order to bring gamers fun new experiences they
couldn't have before. The fact that the Wii caused the competitors to react by
incorporating motion controls into their games makes it pretty clear that we
should expect to hear about Sony and Microsoft's amazing new touch-screen
based controllers sometime in 2014.

~~~
int3rnaut
I think the big cause for concern isn't Nintendo's innovation, it's the fact
that they can't inspire third party developers to really innovate on their
machine. As Gimicky as the controls were on the Wii, it was and is a decent
system (granted mine has collected dust for 2 years) but it just didn't have
the support to make it a gaming system worth mention in the mind of
traditional gamers.

~~~
seanalltogether
Nintendo originally assumed that their slimmed down hardware would be
attractive to 3rd parties because they wouldn't have to change their
toolchains. Unfortunately the industry was already moving on and dropping the
Wii meant less complication in the workflow.

------
seanalltogether
I'm discouraged to see that Nintendo is going to continue using physical media
as the primary channel for sales. Sony and MS are already experimenting with
full game downloads on the current generation, and it's not too much of a
stretch to think that the sales distribution for their next consoles will
heavily favor downloads.

~~~
chollida1
How do you sell downloaded titles on the secondary market?

It might just be the games I've purchased but on the PS3 I haven't gotten any
discount at all by purchasing a new game via download.

With physical media I can buy it, play it and sell it back for almost half
price when I'm done, I don't keep games for very long.

With a download, i'd have to pay half the price to make it worth my while.

Though I'll admit i like to browse video game stores so I don't really put in
a value for the time it takes to go and purchase the game since i'm going to
be at the store anyway. I guess this may be different for others.

~~~
seanalltogether
I'm ok with sacrificing the second hand market on the alter of digital
downloads. Getting away from the constraints of physical distribution has
opened up so many options for pricing on services like Steam, and it's
allowing startup companies like Runic Games to really thrive. The future of
game companies is going to be so much leaner then they are right now.

~~~
chollida1
> I'm ok with sacrificing the second hand market on the alter of digital
> downloads.

I am as well, as long as it works out monetarily in my favor. Under my current
scenario all downloaded games must be about 50% cheaper to make it worth my
while.

Otherwise there isn't a value proposition there for me.

------
mrcharles
The reaction from the game industry as a whole, even including the fringe
elements, has been pretty lukewarm. Another gimmicky peripheral, unknown
hardware capabilities, and it sounds like Nintendo hasn't locked down silicon
yet, meaning that next year will be all first party titles and it'll launch,
again, without third party support.

And then you get response from people like the developer of Superbrothers:
Sword & Sworcery EP, which highlights exactly what a lot of people are
thinking:

<https://twitter.com/#!/the1console/status/81023029114699776>
<https://twitter.com/#!/the1console/status/81023726652624897>

Couple that with Nintendo's level of hostility against indie devs, and their
complete failure to grasp what it is that is making iOS such a threat to their
gaming business (hint: it's the app store, not the touch screen), I can't help
but think that Nintendo has peaked and is now on the way back down.

They may still make a lot of bank off of their wacky controller and kid
friendly gimmicks (though I wonder how friendly it will be in a group of
children and only one of them gets to use the special controller), but their
days of influence in the game industry are coming to a close, methinks.

~~~
T-R
They seem to be trying to position themselves so that they're not viewed as
competing with App Store games. Granted, they still, to some degree at least,
have to compete over developer resources, and their attitude toward indie
developers is incredibly ill-advised.

I really don't see the controller as gimmicky, though, at least in the sense
that touch screens in general aren't really seen as a gimmick anymore, and
other aspects of the controller have been done before. Moreover, someone
upgrading this time would actually have to buy _fewer_ peripherals than for
previous systems.

Harsher things were said of the Wii, and it was ultimately pretty successful.
I'd wager Nintendo will stay relevant precisely long as it continues to
produce quality first party titles, but not a moment longer.

~~~
9999
If the only thing keeping Nintendo relevant is their first party software, I
would expect them to go the way of Sega fairly quickly. I don't think Nintendo
will be in the hardware business in 15 years unless they dramatically change
their corporate culture and attitudes towards third party development. That
means everything from who they allow to develop titles to what tools they
provide for development. Given the overall level of enmity they've created
amongst the indie development community and the large third party devs (thanks
for telling everyone about the motion plus about half a year too late, jerks),
I strongly doubt they'll win any hearts and minds. The only reason any third
parties even bother with Wii dev now is because of the marketshare, even then,
that marketshare has not resulted in the expected returns for most third
parties.

~~~
T-R
Not insignificantly, though, Sega dropped the ball on their (already limited
selection of) first-party software before they dropped out of the hardware
business. Nintendo has multiple franchises that are all at least as strong as
Sonic was in the Genesis days. Nintendo's console sales have always been held
up by first party franchises - they burned bridges with 3rd parties long ago
by charging extortionate license fees on the SNES. It'll be interesting to see
how far they need to go to tip the scales against them.

------
T-R
I don't really understand all of the characterizations of the new controller
as "novel", "risky", or even "innovative", for that matter. It's essentially
an application of the concepts behind the (very successful) DS, and the idea
of having a separate screen for one player has been done before on a home
console with the Gamecube's Gameboy Advance connectivity - which mostly only
seemed unsuccessful because it was non-standard (Pac Man Vs. was great, but no
one had all the hardware to play it).

The concepts aren't new - the same is essentially true of the 3DS (aside from
the occasional game that uses Augmented Reality, which hasn't, as far as I've
seen, been heavily advertised). The bottom line is - are customers ready to
shell out for a hardware upgrade, and does the ratio of price to
quality/number of good games convince them to do so? So far with the 3DS the
answer has been "no", but whether or not the same will be true for the WiiU is
anyone's guess.

------
golfstrom
"More and more, Nintendo is looking like a lumbering, hubristic giant
overconfident in their brand identity and almost unresponsive to industry
trends and changes."

Nintendo reminds me a lot of Sony. A Japanese company used to winning by
always doing things its own way. Wii was an incredible success, but it all
seemed so random, the product of a cool novelty coinciding with an economic
boom. Nintendo has coasted for a long time on the considerable goodwill/might
of their brand and properties. The marketplace never really cared about a lack
of genuine innovation or progress, so long as there was a new Mario or Zelda
around the corner - consider that even now they are releasing a console whose
tech will only be on par with consoles released 6 years before it. In a way
it's refreshing because Nintendo is a game company that just cares about
games.

But I really think Nintendo is in real trouble now. There are ridiculously
cheap (and very good) mobile games for the smartphones everyone already has,
while consoles now live and breathe with rich internet-based ecosystems (which
Nintendo couldn't have cared less about with Wii). I'm very curious to see how
Wii U will sell considering 9% unemployment and the Wii paperweights currently
sitting in living rooms across America.

------
r00fus
Things that have changed:

1) Xbox+Kinnect outclasses the Wii/mote in a pretty incredible way.

2) iOS is eating into DS sales and making even $10 games look "expensive"
(good $.99 apps are smaller but have updates/new content which makes them seem
like amazing deals).

3D was a foolish key-feature to tout in their new handheld, they should have
copied Apple's AppStore (which they tried to do with the DSi but it compares
poorly).

~~~
parfe
1) Nintendo Wii release date: November 19, 2006 Kinect release date: November
4, 2010

I should hope the Kinect outclasses the Wii. But Nintendo is already moving on
so I'm not seeing a point here.

2) You made this up? The release of the Iphone (June, 2007) had no affect on
DS sales. <http://i.imgur.com/Z7kkd.png> I couldn't find breakdown stats for
game sales but I don't see why people would continue buying DSes but not buy
games. Also Nintendo doesn't loss lead their consoles so every sale is profit,
unlike launches by Microsoft and Sony.

~~~
r00fus
Note: I said iOS, not iPhone. The competitor to the DS is the iPod Touch (all
my friends kids' of about 7y+ have one now - 4 years ago it was DS/PS3/Wii).
The last kid-friendly home party, the kids weren't crowded around a Wii/PS3
like years before, but an iPad.

Check out their stock price over the past 5 years:
[http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1...](http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1308172232657&chddm=494615&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=PINK:NTDOY&ntsp=0)

Their precipitous decline (and lack of recovery) pretty much coincides with
the debut of the Apple App Store (mid-2008).

Nintendo even recognizes the fact: [http://www.businessinsider.com/nintendo-
execs-admit-apple-is...](http://www.businessinsider.com/nintendo-execs-admit-
apple-is-the-enemy-of-the-future-2010-5)

~~~
parfe
More like the release of the app store caused massive growth for apple

[http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1...](http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1308180283329&chddm=567174&chls=IntervalBasedLine&cmpto=NASDAQ:AAPL&cmptdms=0&q=PINK:NTDOY&ntsp=0)

Comparing the two it's obvious to see Nintendo ran into the same trouble apple
did, followed by apple creating an entire new market segment for itself to
grow into. Nintendo on the other hand has reached market saturation and is
trying to up-sell DS owners into a new model. I find your analysis lacking.

And yes, obviously now that Apple is selling games Nintendo sees them as a
competitor.

------
dorkitude
Didn't people just like this say the first Wii had behind-the-times hardware,
and that it would fail from lack of DVD support? It's like all the tech geeks
who've spent years trying to line up the specs-to-price ratio of Apple vs. PC
products, and are bewildered that so many people prefer the former, applying
math where intuition is needed instead.

You may be impervious to design, but I assure you, users are not.

------
ChuckMcM
I'm interested in the hand wringing motivation. This is the company that had
the 'GameCube' if you will recall and completely _missed_ participating in the
generation of consoles before the current one.

So while current technology is long in the tooth as it were and market
saturation is cutting into sales. That doesn't mean they are dead unless they
are mismanaged (see Sega, Coleco).

Somehow I don't expect really creative changes like we saw with the Wii and
its controller technology coming from Sony or Microsoft, in that I think it
seems to be outside their risk profile. Of course the new crop at Microsoft
seems to be a bit more aggresive. (I believe that because Kinect was a much
more interesting response to WiiMotion than the Move was).

------
larrik
"Yeah, we all know that Nintendo's first party development is the best in the
business"

Is it, though?

Microsoft makes Halo and Gears of War, plus others. Sony makes God of War and
Team Ico's awesome games (Shadow of the Colossus, etc.), LittleBigPlanet, etc.
(I know both make even more than this, but I'm not a big gamer anymore)

I think "Nintendo makes the best first party titles" just isn't true anymore.
At least in a "we all know" sense. I'd say it is at best debatable, and at
worst simply untrue.

(Zelda and Metroid ARE really awesome, though.)

------
scythe
>Particularly in light of all that promise and potential that was squandered
(or possibly illusory) in the Wii's original incarnation.

...the what?

What exactly was squandered in the Wii's original incarnation?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii>

>As of June 2011, the Wii leads the generation over the PlayStation 3 and Xbox
360 in worldwide sales,[7] and in December 2009 broke the record for best-
selling console in a single month in the United States.

What more could you possibly want?

>When I saw the controller, my first thought was "$500".

Probably not. Nintendo has never launched a console at $500. The Wii was noted
for being cheap, and I really, really doubt they'd launch this without being
able to make it at a similar price point to their previous offerings.

>Sure, the Wii U looks impressive. But no Blu-Ray or DVD support? Really?

I sure as hell hope not!

...okay, maybe not that emphatically. Still, there's a Blu-Ray player built
into my TV, and as far as I can tell that's becoming common. I don't need a
peripheral to do that for me, and I certainly don't want them to tack on an
extra $50 for a capability I already have.

Besides, who uses DVDs anymore? It's all about Netflix.

>As Microsoft and Sony move ever closer to evolving into that mythological
set-top box that does it all, how do you justify buying a presumably expensive
console that does just one thing anymore?

Because _I don't want a set-top box that does it all_. It's bad enough (but
acceptable) that video games are closed-source; hopefully my media doesn't
have to be the same way.

>Mario and Zelda brands no longer sell systems in the long term when the
competition is so stiff,

...alright, my Zelda fanboy is showing, but Skyward Sword is probably going to
make me shell out for a console and I haven't bought one in a decade (I
habitually use my friends' consoles, though).

>They know this, which is why they bend over backwards to assure everyone that
they have the support of firms like EA, Activision, THQ, and Ubisoft. But when
you're releasing behind-the-times hardware that has features and peripherals
completely different than competing platforms, it makes the prospect- and
return on investment- of developing much riskier.

This I agree with, but on a slightly different point than the author.

Last I checked it wasn't close to easy to get a license to develop games for
the Wii or 3DS. You have be a big company to afford a site license for the dev
kit and you need specialized hardware to load your stuff onto the system.
Nintendo doesn't need EA and Ubisoft; for one thing, EA sucks. Nintendo really
needs to open up to independent developers. This is where Microsoft really
shined with the Xbox ecosystem, obviously bringing some of their desktop
expertise to gaming.

Forget weirdness worries -- indie devs _love_ developing for unique hardware
and odd platforms. Independent game developers thrive on the iPhone App Store.
They also built the Facebook application ecosystem. By contrast, large,
established firms shy away from developing for unique hardware, because of the
uncertainty involved.

The proper strategic direction for Nintendo is to stop chasing EA and learn to
open up to independent game developers. Even Apple, the infamously elitist
company's infamously elitist company, has figured that out.

Incidentally, as one other commenter has pointed out, Apple and Google via iOS
and Android seem to pose more of a threat to Nintendo than do Microsoft and
Sony. Nintendo had an unshakeable stranglehold on the handheld gaming market
until the iPhone came along.

~~~
T-R
I wholly agree with you, though I think what he may have meant by "squandered
potential" was their decision to target their marketing (and many of their
first party titles) at more casual gamers, seemingly abandoning their core
audience.

~~~
mdg
I interpreted "squandered potential" to the motion-based controls being
relegated to cliche or uninspired gameplay.

~~~
T-R
Good point. There was an absolute dearth of games where mouse-like control
would make sense, which is what the controller was actually good at. A few
mediocre FPSs, a port of Pikmin, and I don't even remember any Tactical RPGs
or RTS games.

------
stcredzero
_the generation's top titles either pass you buy_

Or get better editing.

------
napierzaza
I don't know. I've had some of my best gaming experiences with the Wii, but
they're all Nintendo games, and they are widely spaced. Too widely spaced in
my opinion to really justify getting a Wii again. There really wasn't much of
any other developer on the console.

It's sad that Nintendo is starting off the next generation by continuing with
a disk based system. Every console now has an online store, why not keep it to
that? Why not open up with an Apple like app store (but don't call it that)
and get more developers involved?

Nintendo is just lumbering forward until AppleTV finally supports the app
store and kills whatever Nintendo was thinking about.

All you need is an app store on the AppleTV and you can have a iPad or an
iPhone controlling the system. What does Nintendo bring to it? The balance
board?

