WARNING: MASSIVE ARTICLE AHEAD. Please do not post if you don't intend to read it through all the way, and think about what it means. If you post less than ten minutes after this got posted, you obviously didn't read it. If you posted less than twenty, you obviously didn't think about what you read...
While the points it makes are highly flawed in my opinion, I do think it's necessary for Nintendo fans to have this discussion. Nonetheless, I'll let you guys draw your own conclusions.
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http://www.edge-online.com/magazine/nintendon%E2%80%99t-care-about-hardcore?page=0%2C4
You can tell a lot about a company by the way it chooses to talk to its customers. In 1985, all Nintendo needed to say to conjure up the exciting world of home videogaming was the boyishly simple ‘Now you’re playing with power!’ By 2006, one of the taglines chosen to introduce the company’s latest multimillion seller was the catchy ‘Can you remember what you had for lunch the day before yesterday?’ It’s the kind of approach you might expect from a dentist or a dietician more than the legends who rule the house of Mario. It’s just one indicator among many. Nintendo has changed, and it has the bank balance to prove it.
But, as with all transformations, this rebirth has come at a price. There may have been glowing write-ups in tabloid newspapers and lifestyle magazines, but there have also been rumblings of discontent from deep within Nintendo’s traditional heartland. Many lifelong videogamers are not pleased by the firm’s new success – they’re feeling forgotten.
A look back at a little history proves just how unexpected Nintendo’s new success has been. The company’s recent, dramatic upswing in fortunes is the result of a strategy that may have been percolating deep behind the serene white façade of the firm’s Kyoto offices for some time, but the first observable signs that the name behind hardware such as the Power Glove and Virtual Boy was feeling revolutionary again came with the release of DS, the handheld that became a cultural phenomenon. Looking back, the success of the console seems inevitable, but the simple truth is that few outside of Nintendo thought it was going to make quite such an impact. Most industry pundits thought the sleeker PSP was going to flatten this underpowered oddity with its strange mish-mash of features and bulky casing. Sony’s hardware has turned out to be far from a failure, of course – it’s just that the astonishing success of DS sometimes makes it look that way.
Observers were cannier by the time Nintendo fully revealed its Wii strategy at E3 2006, but only slightly so. The odd choice of name was still provoking suggestions that the company had gone quietly insane, and Microsoft was so certain of the device’s inability to compete with Xbox 360 that it took the unprecedented move of suggesting that its userbase might like to buy a Wii alongside its own console. Microsoft is not suggesting that any more. As Wii hardware shortages continue, Nintendo’s sales figures have sailed past Microsoft’s own, while Xbox 360’s interface is undergoing surgery to bring it more in line with Nintendo’s vision. Not bad for a console that once struggled to shift its perception as a GameCube in a different-shaped box.
But, as long-time fans might grumble, at least the company was still showing games back then. Come 2008, despite an outing for Shaun White Snowboarding and a new Animal Crossing, Nintendo’s E3 press conference painted a picture of a company on the brink of becoming a fully fledged lifestyle company, each new reveal almost as likely to be a new kind of lawnmower or innovative smoothie-maker as a videogame. That the climax of the event was not a new Mario, a Zelda or even – as some more optimistic types had dared to hope – some new incarnation of Kid Icarus, but Wii Music, a digital toy with little, besides the format, to tie it to the world of games at all, spoke volumes.
The content of the conference was perfectly acceptable – it was just directed at the wrong audience. These were messages for the mass market rather than an increasingly jaded videogaming community. It became clear that Nintendo had manoeuvred itself into a position where E3 no longer puts it in touch with the audience it is truly trying to reach.
For over two decades, Nintendo has been synonymous with the best in videogames. But now that it’s back on top, it seems unable to please the very people who once cheered for it when it was being written off. With mainstream consumers forming lines around the block, why is Nintendo now struggling to satisfy hardcore gamers? Here, we look at ten factors that lie at the heart of the issue.
1. Shigeru Miyamoto is no longer the man who made Donkey Kong
One of the most instinctive game developers, Miyamoto is also among the most autobiographical, capable of turning childhood memories of cave exploration into Zelda, or a neighbour’s terrifying dog into a Chain Chomp. His importance to Nintendo cannot easily be overstated. While many claim that he is now more figurehead than designer, he remains the creative driving force behind most of the company’s big ideas. “He is empowered to cancel or demand a complete remake of any NCL project,” explains one source with close ties to Nintendo. “Projects often spring off the back of a single simple suggestion of his, quickly turning into a fully fledged and big-budget development, either in-house or from a second party. There are few such individuals that I am aware of in the games business. That he has this respect and power undeniably gives him a huge influence on the direction of Nintendo as a whole.”
And, as Miyamoto ages, his preoccupations, and therefore his influence on Nintendo, also change. Pikmin – an RTS game based on the distinctly un-childish joys of gardening – was the first sign that his focus may have been shifting, and since then we’ve had the chance to enjoy the fruits of his other emerging interests: pet dogs, exercise, and now music. And naturally all of the time Miyamoto is spending turning his grown-up interests into Nintendo software is time he isn’t spending overseeing development on the new Zelda and Mario titles Nintendo’s more traditional fans demand.
2. Nintendo is not, actually, a videogame company
Or, to put it another way, by leaving hardcore gamers behind, Nintendo is being entirely true to a 120-year-old strategy that has seen it move from making playing cards through to running taxi companies and TV stations, and selling instant rice. In one respect, this is a company that owes its audience another Mario game no more than it still owes the denizens of Japan’s gambling dens fresh decks to play with. Nintendo’s ability to switch directions and innovate, which has made it the gamer’s darling for so long, is also the same quality that sees it moving on periodically, and drastically reinventing what the company is about. Nintendo’s is a history rich with opportunism, in which making the world’s most brilliantly endearing games is, in some ways, just another business interest.
This should hardly be surprising. Nintendo has been careful to distance itself from the term ‘videogame’ before, crafting the delicately ambiguous name for the Nintendo Entertainment System after the arcade crash of 1983. By bypassing the controversial subject of videogame violence and the whims of an overly critical specialist press, and heading straight for the rarefied world of daytime television and health endorsements, Nintendo can continue with a more serious mission: giving shareholders a return on their investment.
The ultimate proof that Nintendo is moving on again may lie with its branding. The average Nintendo advert now looks like a BUPA infomercial, and is just as likely to be tucked in among the leg waxes and perfumes of Cosmopolitan than the orcs and space marines of a gaming magazine. Brain Training has even made it into the pages of the
Daily Mail, where videogames are most often discussed in terms of how they are proving to be negative influences on modern youth.
Our insider observes: “It seems very obvious with hindsight, but from the SNES through to GBA, Nintendo were essentially feeding their own fans and no one else. Whilst projects like the GB Pocket Camera, Mario Paint and the N64DD all seemed to be outside of the norm, they were still aimed squarely and exclusively at the standard userbase. That can’t be said of the Wii or DS.”
3. Making Nintendo games for hardcore gamers is difficult
It’s especially difficult given Miyamoto’s habit of, as they say, ‘upturning the tea-table’ and scrapping projects at a relatively advanced stage. (“The tea-table thing has become a bit of a running joke in recent years, but it definitely still goes on – metaphorically, at least,” says our source, before conceding: “It’s difficult to feel aggrieved about it when it happens, of course, considering it’s always in pursuit of a better game.”) The big, lavish, surprising Nintendo games fans demand take enormous investments of both time and money. Super Mario Galaxy’s development began in earnest in 2004, but it was based on work that went back to the birth of GameCube. And, after all that, the game failed to sell in the numbers Nintendo projected, while Twilight Princess’ sales also came up short of expectations.
But time and money may be only part of the problem. The staggering size of its past successes, coupled with the nostalgia-space it now holds in the folk memory of an entire generation, means Nintendo has to walk a difficult line between the innovation fans demand from a title, and delivery of the traditions those same fans want even more. In circumstances like this, the repeated criticism aimed at some of Twilight Princess’ mechanics and set-pieces – that they were beginning to feel a bit musty – should have made Nintendo’s internal dev teams jumpy. With familiarity finally starting to wear thin and extreme reinvention costly and exceedingly dangerous, it must be hugely tempting to try something totally different. After all, when you’ve had to shoot Mario into outer space in order to find a new spin on the formula, where do you go next? Suddenly Wii Music, centred as it is on a topic with supremely broad appeal, makes more sense.
4. Making Nintendo games for casual gamers is easier
It’s ironic that a title with so much maths in it should lead to such a simple calculation for Nintendo. Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training took a team of nine developers 90 days to make, and since 2005 has sold over 13 million units. Taken in isolation, Super Mario Galaxy’s six million sales stack up nicely, but when you actually sit down to do the sums, Brain Training is what some would call the no-brainer. Given the data, if this were any company other than Nintendo, the prospect of it never again going through the pain of a big-budget title would make a great deal of sense.
Nintendo dislikes the terms ‘hardcore’ and ‘casual’, focusing instead on the ‘core’ and ‘expanded’ audiences, and the success of games like Wii Fit and Brain Training – which sell consistently well, fitting into the so-called long-tail model – suggests that this expanded audience may ultimately provide a more stable audience basis than the smaller numbers of core gamers, who move in packs and continually crave the new.
With DS and Wii, Nintendo has proved an important point – that graphics don’t matter much to its newly expanded audience. At its most dynamic, Brain Training looks like clip art, but it has outsold the spectacular-looking Crysis many times over (let’s not get into the PC piracy debate right here). Complex gameplay and groundbreaking graphics can be expensive distractions – but without them you’re less likely to keep the people happy who once bought 16bit Super Nintendo consoles because they did such convincing jobs of performing like £1,500 Street Fighter II coin-ops.
5. Even Nintendo’s ‘hardcore’ games are no longer hardcore
Nintendo would perhaps say that it is making its games more accessible. Others would say that it is dumbing them down. However it’s expressed, it is a common theme that runs from New Super Mario Bros to Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. This stripped-down approach can’t be entirely explained away by the fact they were made to be played on the bus. No, they were made to be played by an audience who may not be entirely familiar with the evolved mechanics and deep traditions of two extremely long-running series. The results? Both games left most serious fans of the two series feeling a little empty. And both games sold extremely well, especially in Japan, and especially, according to Nintendo, to female DS owners.
Consider Nintendo’s biggest hobbyist-focused release in recent months: Super Smash Bros Brawl. Here is a game that Nintendo has been offering as an in-joke-riddled love letter to the hardcore audience, but which even its own creator concedes is a button-masher if that’s what you want it to be. And how much easier than Mario 64 was Galaxy?
6. Focusing on hardcore users didn’t work last time around
It’s true that Nintendo never loses money on hardware, but it does sometimes lose market share. While Sony’s PlayStation proved to be a pretty convincing victor over Nintendo 64, the really brutal battle was reserved for the next generation, with Nintendo losing out to both Microsoft and Sony, as exclusives dried up, third-party support disappeared, and the sweet-natured purple box that was GameCube suddenly seemed very out of step with the times. With its competitors ready to invest in even more expensive technology and continue the fight over a dwindling, critical, and often highly erratic hardcore market, Nintendo surely needed very little further temptation to explore where else it could take the industry. It was only when the company made a conscious decision to strike out on its own terms that things turned around, and it’s hard to escape the impression that Nintendo will never again make the mistake of letting its competitors decide the rules of engagement.
7. Nintendo is not giving fans the IP they keep asking for
You’d expect a 120-year-old company to have its fair share of traditions, and while Nintendo may wallow in nostalgia and bust out the photo album when it comes to family gatherings such as the Super Smash Bros and WarioWare series, it’s been strangely reluctant to mine its back catalogue more substantially of late. Whether it’s out of tiredness with the same old formulas, or fears at spiraling costs of standalone game development, Nintendo remains deaf to the internet screams for another Kid Icarus or PilotWings. Ultimately, the reason may be simple: even though there are guaranteed sales for even the less well-known characters in the Nintendo’s history, why take the risk on a game aimed at such a limited demographic when the market you’re steadily getting better at reaching doesn’t even know what an Ice Climber is?
8. At Nintendo, online is an option, not an essential
Mario Kart moved online with both DS and Wii, and games like Tetris DS and Advance Wars: Days Of Ruin have proved that Nintendo can provide stable hosting environments, but the company seems more interested in the internet as a means of providing delightful oddities like the Mii Contest Channel and performing veiled market research than for creating forums for capture the flag. Nintendo’s infuriating Friend Codes are said to exist because of the company’s concerns over online identify sharing, and its focus on family based gaming is behind its reluctance to follow the markers laid down by Xbox Live. Ultimately, the Wii download service and online environment are an awkward combination of the overly simplistic and the unnecessarily fiddly when compared to the relative seamlessness of Microsoft’s and Sony’s services. And how important are Xbox Live and PSN to console gamers nowadays? Very.
9. Third-party publishers like Nintendo just the way it is
With an emphasis on younger players, and a slower marketplace that doesn’t see triple-A titles emerging on its platforms every other week, Nintendo has created the perfect environment in which lower-tier games can sell – and sell well. Carnival Games would have fallen out of the charts by now had it been an Xbox 360 title going head to head with titles like Ninja Gaiden II and Mass Effect – but up against Cheggers’ Party Quiz and Fruit Fall, its star continues to twinkle. Selling to a wider demographic, which includes young girls and tweens, means that simpler, cheaper titles with the appropriate licences bolted on can enjoy more space – and life – on the game store shelf. Having been delivered this new, lucrative audience, what publisher in its right mind would want to work again with the old Nintendo?
10. Nobody else does Nintendo games as well as Nintendo
While it may be nothing more than simple sums and a little light reading, there’s no escaping the fact that Brain Training is also a classic piece of design – intuitive and smart in its presentation, charismatic in its interactions, and full of clever little touches that make users feel at home, keep them coming back, and even convince them to spread the word. The truth is, even if you don’t like Nintendo’s new definition of videogames, it’s still making some of the most polished and intelligent examples around, and it’s telling that other companies have found it difficult to replicate the success, even when the template is as simple as Dr Kawashima’s textbook world of stickmen and Sudoku puzzles. When it comes to production values, the new gaming demographic may not have the demanding tastes of those who’ve been playing for years, but Nintendo does not believe that games made for this audience should be simply cobbled together.
Then there’s the fact that star designers tend to want to work with more powerful hardware, anyway, along with the age-old issue that other companies struggle to understand Nintendo’s technologies as well as the Kyoto company does itself – particularly when they’re as woolly as Wii’s or as packed with options as DS’s. There have been a few notable exceptions, as proved by games like No More Heroes, Boom Blox and Zack & Wiki, but by and large, third-party developers struggle to achieve the sort of results Nintendo seems to pull off so effortlessly. Furthermore, those notable exceptions all have one thing in common, and that isn’t a placing at the top of the charts.
In an E3 interview with Edge in 2004, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata admitted that the Wii controller could be difficult for hardcore gamers to get to grips with – and he didn’t seem too bothered by that. No one can fault Nintendo for ambition: it planned nothing less than to disrupt a videogame market in which its own share was suffering, and replace it with one of its own devising; the true story of Nintendo’s falling out with hardcore gamers is just how staggeringly successful it’s been in doing this.
How much of videogaming’s current obsession with simplicity – seen everywhere from Cliff Bleszinski’s assertion that the next Xbox controller should have fewer buttons, or the success of smaller, downloadable titles, or Peter Molyneux’s aim to create, in Fable II, a game that everybody will be able to complete – has come from Wii and DS, and the brilliantly capitalist equality they’ve brought to the gaming landscape? By repositioning gaming as something that fits into the average person’s life – something that more often than not could bring benefit to the average person’s life – Nintendo has finally found a way into the average person’s wallet, and burst out of the confined, if high-spending, traditional market of “geeks and otaku” (to use the revealing phrase of Nintendo Europe’s senior marketing director, Laurent Fischer).
Nintendo has unarguably reached a new audience, whether you believe it knew what it was doing from the start – and a speech on ‘disrupting development’ that Iwata gave at GDC ’06 suggests the company had a pretty good idea – or whether you think it simply reacted brilliantly to a lucky fluke. Either answer should terrify the competition.
And it clearly does. With both Sony and Microsoft struggling to catch up to Nintendo’s powered-down vision, there’s a real sense that an industry betting on income from hardcore gamers who wanted either bloody FPSes or complex RPGs has suddenly realized that it may have been battling over the table scraps all along. If, in order to bring this kind of change, Nintendo has had to step away from its traditional userbase to a certain extent, it’s ultimately no different than its decision in the 1950s to abandon Hanafuda cards as its main source of income and try something else. And the most interesting question, now, as then, remains: with a company as wily and brilliant as Nintendo, after this new incarnation has run its course, where will it go next?
Nintendo wasn’t available to discuss the content of this article, but it did provide a statement from its Japanese HQ. For the sake of completeness, we’ll conclude with it here: ‘Nintendo has never lost its passion for core gamers. Nintendo would like to bring smiles to as many different faces and produce games which appeal to mainstream and gaming audiences worldwide. We have never neglected our core gamers. We still have developers working on popular core gaming franchises but we need longer to complete these games, approximately two to three years. These games are not ready to launch in early 2009 but are being worked on by all development teams. Recently launched popular Nintendo gaming franchises have included Super Smash Bros Brawl and Mario Kart for Wii. Wario Land Shake Dimension, a true return to the classic 2D platform adventure, will be available for Wii in September of this year. There is also a vast array of third-party core gaming titles available for the Wii console’.
