The Malstrom thread 2: Revenge of the Lapsed Gamer

[Rhonin the wizard]

Email: Gamers don’t read manuals anymore

Email: The 3DS has PSP qualities

All in all, this is the N64 curse Part 2. What old school gamers kept complaining is how all games ‘had’ to be 3d because the hardware supported it. It was said at the time that ’2d games no longer sell’. What we see with games like Mario 5 is that they most certainly do sell. The reason why the games you and I want are not made is not because they won’t sell but because the producers at Nintendo (Miyamoto, Aonuma, Sakamoto, etc.) do not want to make them. What we get instead are the lame ass formulas Nintendo keeps using for every generation that is interesting from a production standpoint but not from a gameplay standpoint or from a consumer standpoint. The reason why Nintendo’s audience trends younger is because the young are experiencing the formulas for the very first time. And after each release of a game, the developers will have tea with Iwata at an Iwata Asks interview where they congratulate each other on how creative they are.

Yes, the 3DS is disruptive to Sony’s 3d gaming push. But the problem is that you cannot disrupt a market that does not exist. There is no 3d output gaming market yet. Nintendo is disrupting a mirage. Nintendo did this with User Generated Content because they knew Sony was going User Generated Content so Nintendo put the pedal to the metal and went full out UGC and had the flagship title of Wii Music to lead it.

The true purpose of the 3d technology is to lock the market so software developers get used to developing for it and do not develop for other platforms. That is the 3DS in a nutshell. Nintendo’s success in handheld gaming is thanks much in part to how Nintendo blocks potential entrants before they can gain any foothold.

The 3DS is N64 deja vu to me. If it appeals to you, more power to you. But I am getting off the bandwagon. I won’t purchase the 3DS. Not even a 2d Mario can draw me in at this point with the controller.

Nintendo is contradicting itself. When the Wii was introduced, Nintendo said the new controller is to correct the mistake of the complicated and frightening typical game console controller. So what does Nintendo do? They slap it on their latest handheld. Do they really expect people like me who refuse to buy any game console with such a control scheme (N64, Gamecube, even the PlayStations and Xboxes) to pick up that contraption? Not even the Virtual Handheld with gameboy games can draw me in because why the hell do I want to play classic Gameboy games with inferior controls? I’d rather play it on my original Gameboy where the D-Pad is in the correct position.

What is going to happen is that the 3DS will start out with strong sales. But then it will wane. Nintendo will put out ‘innovative’ software and sales will still wane. A big reason why is that the original Nintendo customers will not be pulled into the 3DS. If Nintendo cannot get former customers, they will be unable to reach new markets. The ‘Game Industry’ and its critics will not understand what is going on, as they never understand anything going on, and will say the decline in sales is due to some mystical ‘console war’ somewhere and blame the decline on cell phone gaming or even iPads.

I don’t think Nintendo understands the difference between video games and 3d technology as they think they are the same. This misunderstanding of what gaming is has delivered Nintendo N64 sales, Gamecube sales, and Wii sales collapse.I suppose in 20 years, they will understand this as it took them that long to realize their previous mistakes. It goes to show that time, not reason, is the only thing to thaw arrogance.

Email: 3DS, what will it be?

I’ll try to be more clear, what makes me suspicious is not the potential of the console, which is unbelivable indeed, but the “games” that will be made for it; indeed something i noticed (and maybe you have noticed too) is that Nintendo has some kind of “cycle” since the end of the Snes era, something like this: New console -> Mario -> Zelda -> Mario Kart -> Smash Bros -> Metroid -> Donkey Kong -> new console -> Mario…

And what i’m thinking right now is that the cycle is going to repeat with the 3DS too, including the “poor third party games support”, not much because of the console itself, but because of something that i resume in a phrase like “Nintendo consoles are innovative but Nintendo is not”. I’ve taken this quote from a my friend, but if you think for example that although the N64 was a more powerful console than the PSX, the second one had more games and with better quality too even if the platform was “weaker” in terms of performance, and something similar happened with the PS2 against the gamecube.

Another reason why i think that the 3DS could be a trap is a phrase a my friend sayd long ago, when he was supposed to choose between N64 and PSX, he sayd “I get a N64 because is more powerful”, with the result that when i bought a PSX he was costantly at my home playing with it saying “N64 has shitty games”, and this is something that, as you sayd in a your article, makes me somehow think about the 3DS like the N64. My thought is that even if very powerful, it will not least for too long because of the “mind” of it’s producers, making maybe nice games but only for the first year to then drop down in creativity and “making games supposed to be just sold for the trademark” as i say, but i’m not an expert in marketing, so i would like to listen to your opinion as you seem more expert than me in this “field”

 I agree completely with your N64 reference. The 3DS is going the way in spirit as the N64 did. It is not an inclusive console. Just as the N64 cut off people like me, the 3DS is going to be cutting off DS and Gameboy users.

One of the bedrock ideas of disruption is what is called ‘overshooting the market’. Nintendo realized the N64 was overshooting the market when they released the Wii. “Make simpler games,” they said. Now, what is the 3DS but overshooting the handheld market? I don’t need all this stuff in a handheld. I need simple games. 3d games were a failure on the DS, what makes anyone think that they will suddenly be in demand in the handheld market?

Now, the 3DS is having a better launch than the DS did. The DS was, after all, rushed. There is much better software for launch for the 3DS than the DS which is probably a big reason why Nintendo doesn’t feel worried.

It is not that I do not think Nintendo realizes they are overshooting the handheld market. It is that I do not think Nintendo cares. Nintendo is obsessed with 3d technology, and their view is that the software developers will do whatever the hell they please and your role, as the consumer, is only to go along for the ride. The bigshots at the software side are very unhappy with you, the consumers, for not going wild over 3d Mario (despite what form and how easy they make it), for not wishing Metroid: Other M be the full replacement of the Metroid series, for still demanding more 2d games, and not being excited about Aonuma designing Zelda games for his son’s entertainment.

The 3DS reminds me very much of the N64. Tons of Industry and hardcore gamer excitement over it with a silent, but large, slice of the userbase being disinterested. However, a big difference between then and now is that the 3DS, unlike the N64, doesn’t have intense competition. But when something overshoots the market, it creates opportunities for competitors.

Email: Something about 2d Mario

Nintendo does not see its franchises as ‘worlds‘. They see them only as ‘characters‘. It doesn’t matter if the Mario universe is scrambled in the Galaxy games or non-existent in Sunshine. All that matters is Mario the ‘character’. Every Zelda fan has the same complaint about recent Zelda games: the world sucks and seems flat and dull. This is because Nintendo does not see Zelda as a ‘world’ but only as a set of characters. This is why Nintendo can put out a Zelda game that completely and bizarrely reconfigures the game world to suddenly use trains because Zelda is having tons of dialogue now that reveals her character (“she is scared of mice, LOL!”).

Nintendo sees their franchise progression as ‘character progression’, not ‘world expansion’ which we, in the audience’ want. Sakamoto is a great example of this. In Sakamoto’s world, the Metroid universe is constantly a dull space station that has holograms of various environments. The only thing important in Metroid’s universe is Samus Aran’s feelings. If you ask a Metroid gamer what Metroid is, they will describe the rich world that is Metroid and its atmosphere and its labyrinth.

Why Nintendo only sees “characters” (which they shouldn’t see at all for these ‘characters’ serve only as the player’s avatar in the game) and not ‘worlds’ I cannot say. I am as flabbergasted at this as you are. The only explanation I have is that elder game developers have been making games so long that they have gotten out of touch with common sense and audience expectations. The fact that Nintendo developers defy Miyamoto to secretly inject story into a Mario game, for crying out loud, gives me no hope. If Miyamoto cannot stop them, you know they won’t give a damn what any of us lowly consumers say.

The future of Nintendo software will likely resemble more of the Gamecube type stuff. Nintendo thinks the audience moved away because they didn’t “understand” the material because it was too difficult. But the audience moved away because of the content, because of the substance Nintendo was presenting. Using Sakamoto as an example again, I think he is literally shocked that people are reacting negatively to his game’s content. Nintendo is not used to people reacting to their games in this way.

Email: About gameplay fundamentals

Music# 66 - Double Dragon