This pains me to say, because the last thing I want to do is gas anyone up about the quality of either of these studios' games. I still think they're both extremely overrated. Still, there is something to be said. Both studios are extremely talented, and both studios make great games. But Naughty Dog did something very important for Sony and the PS3 when they made the first Uncharted. No one ever had any problem thinking that Playstation was a mature brand before, but Naughty Dog's shift to Uncharted was symbolic of the over all Playstation's shift in brand.
I think Nintendo needs that shift, bad. Nintendo are doing a lot of things right in the background so far. Dropping Club Nintendo for something more unified was good. Buying DeNA was good. Having a unified platform is good. But Nintendo does have a software problem, and it's not just quantity. Nintendo has largely become a niche brand in the West. Many people will lead blame to that on poor third party support, but the issue is more complicated than that. Such a simple perspective leads to the absolutely rediculus idea that Nintendo has no chance of regaining third parties on future hardware.
One of the biggest, but far from the only, issue with Nintendo's output of games if that they only make what they want to make. Now that's great for hardcore Nintendo fans, because they like the games that Nintendo wants to make, but it is clearly alienating the overwhelming majority of gamers. At this point, many people will assume that I am referring to the idea that Nintendo only makes "kiddie games." They will then point out games like Xenoblade Chronicles X, Fatal Frame, or Bayonetta 2 as games made for older audiences that are Nintendo exclusive.
While I do think that this "kiddie" perception is part of the problem, that's not really what I'm talking about here. What I'm really referring to is Nintendo's complete lack of western games. Specifically, western exclusives. Nintento's most prominent western studio, Retro, has only done Metroid games and Donkey Kong games; two Japanese franchises. I think it's time Retro makes their own game, and I think it's time it's not apart of any franchise. Don't get me wrong, as a player, I couldn't give a flying rats ass about how little Nintendo caters to the west; I'd rather Retro make a sequel to Diddy Kong Racing or a 3D Donkey Kong game.
But as a company that seriously needs to realize that most people don't want a "secondary console," and that most people in the west simply don't feel like Nintendo consoles offer games that cater to their tastes, Retro seems like the clear studio to spearhead a new direction for Nintendo's western game division. I'll say this now, I don't know how much faith I have in a unified Nintendo platform with kind of line up they have now. I don't think that their niche is big enough. Nintendo can have the most forward thinking infrastucture in gaming with the NX, but without the west, that system isn't selling.
I think that one franchise from Retro is obviously not enough, and they need to vigorously expand their gaming division in the west to create more games, but symbolically, I think that Retro needs to make that first step on the Wii U. No more Donkey Kong. No more Metroid. No more established Nintendo IP. This isn't simply a "Retro should work on new IP" talk. It's why. Naughty Dog went from Crash to Jak before they finally made that major shift to Uncharted. Now not to discredit ND, but I think that most people would agree that the Prime and Returns series pretty handily shit on Crash and Jak.
(Concept art for abandoned Retro Studios project "Raven Blade")
If Retro's first two series are of such a high quality before that "shift," imagine what their Uncharted would look like. I think Nintendo needs to let Retro make that game. Nintendo needs to have a mascot that is western, and that caters to those gamers. They need a franchise that signals a significant shift in how they market themselves. Right now, they look like "that weird japanese company that makes toys for kids." I'm fine with that. I'm an adult. I don't need an M rating on my games to prove that. But as a product to sell over here, that's clearly not what people want to buy.
In the west, it's games made in the west for the western, older gamer that sells. GTA V, The Last of Us, Destiny, Bioshock: Infinite, and COD: Advanced Warfare are what's selling here. Put aside your opinions on the quality of these games for a minute, as I've put aside mine; reguardless of quality, it would be petty and cynical to pretend to wonder why these games are selling well here. These are games created by people who understand their demographic. Nintendo of Japan can't make games like these. They don't have the experience. And this isn't a "well obviously the Mario team wouldn't know how to make a mature game." But they simply do not have an understanding of what that particular demographic wants from their games.
The people working at Retro is that demographic. The point isn't that they're talented; it's that they're western and talented. They play these games, and they probably like these games. They live in that ecosystem and they understand that market. Theirs no way an idea for a game like that hasn't cropped up to them. It's time they realise it. It's time that Retro Studios makes the shift that Naughty Dog made with Uncharted. I shouldn't have to say thing, but let it be known that I'm obviously not saying that they pull a Tomb Raider; I'm not saying that they should copy someone elses formula.
But I think they have ideas for games that would appeal to an audience that Nintendo just isn't appealing to with Nintendo IP. Games that the western gaming populace would "take more seriously" than something like Mario Kart 8. The type of game with realistic characters that "push the medium forward" and shit like that. Whatever the game is, it's something that Nintendo would benefit a lot from owning. The kind of big budget blockbuster that the primary console gaming markets of the U.S. and Europe want right now.
Now obviously one game isn't enough, but I think it's a very needed start. I don't think that Nintendo will ever be able to dependably retain 3rd party support without a significant western first party division pumping out quality western first party IP. I always say this, but Nintendo needs to cultivate an audience at home first before they can invite friends over later. If Nintendo wants western 3rd parties to stick around, and they do, 3rd parties need to know that there will be people there to buy their games. I don't have much faith that launching your next console with just NSMBNX will instill that confinence. The audience buying Mario Kart and Smash are primerily not the audience buying GTA V, and without that audience there to start, no one's supporting your console long term.
Don't get me wrong, however. I don't think that this game will be making a bunch of people buy a Wii U. It's too late for that now. But what it does symbolically is much more important. Making a game of Retro Studios quality that hits the mainstream and shows that the Nintendo houses experiences if franckly shunned before would be a big step in the right direction. Imagine, for a second, that The Last of Us was a game made by Retro for the Wii U next summer. That's the kind of impact I'm talking about. The kind of symbolic gesture I'm talking about. If Nintendo had a first party game like that, there would be a whole lot of people that would look at the soon to come NX system more seriously than they had otherwise.
Once the NX comes out, that it would be up to Nintendo to follow this up by launching the NX with another western exclusive franchise. I think Nintendo clearly dropped the ball in this reguard with ZombiU, but the idea was right. The fact is, Nintendo doesn't have many western studios, and it's unrealistic to think that they'll have one ready to launch another western IP at the launch of the system. Hiring a western studio to make an exclusive game is a good idea, but not from a big publisher like Ubisoft. Even disregarding the quality of their games, ZombiU doesn't become a Nintendo IP, and Ubisoft doesn't need to care about the quality of the game because they have their own franchises to support.
Instead, commissioning this job to a independant studio like Insomniac (I'm not actually suggesting them specifically) is the better way to go about it. First, Nintendo can own the IP far more easily. Second, being independant likely means that they're focused. Third, with Nintendo as the sole publisher, they'd have more direct infuence on the quality of the product. Commissioning western projects like these for IP that Nintendo would own is a great way for Nintendo to build that momentum while building more inhouse western studios behind the scenes that could.
And that's the main point. Nintendo's image right now is that they are at best niche and at worse for children. Retro breaking out of its current mold of the studio that only works on retro Nintendo IP needs to happen with this next game to symbolically fly in the face of both extremes. This is not what a lot of people want to hear, but Nintendo needs to start catering to the mainstream, and a lot of that means catering to the audience that bought the PS4 for TLOU:R and Uncharted 4. The people who were excited to buy a PS4 at launch for Killzone or Infamous, even though most probably never played an entry in either and never even heard of those franchises until then. Anyone can look at those games, and understand why they were good "launch games," from a marketing perspective at least, for the PS4 in the west. It's far more difficult to understand the same things about Nintendo Land or Pikmin 3.
I don't think it would have been difficult to fool yourself into believing that the Wii U's 3rd party support would have lasted back when the system launched. But the fact is that Nintendo did a terrible job of cultivating and audience that would want to buy those games. They launched the system with ZombiU, which not only looks and sound like shovelware, but still is niche. If you're not into horror games, you weren't buying the Wii U for that. With nothing from the Wii's lifecycle telling you that you'd be getting any exclusive games that fit your western tastes, what did you do? You waited for one. Maybe it's a big third party multiplat or maybe its an exclusive western IP from Nintendo. But at the moment, the Wii U couldn't have offered anyone outside of the niche Nintendo fanbase a reason to buy it, and as time went on, that audience would continue to wait for a reason to buy it that would obviously never come. With out the audience, the third partie games sold worse and supported less, giving their audience less and less reason to bother.
That's why Nintendo needs to start now with what they have, and what they have is Retro Studios. There's nothing wrong with making games for their niche audience, but Nintendo needs to expand. It needs to be more than just that. Retro making the same shift that Naughty Dog did when they announced Uncharted is the first, and most critical step.
