Nintendo earnings net loss 43 Billion yen, 3DS still sold at loss (until approx August '12)

[Mr Khan]

Soleron said:

Mr Khan said:

Soleron said:
This is awesome. Glad to know that MK7/3D Land can't save the 3DS.

How many quarters of losses can Iwata survive?

Who would they replace Iwata with, hmm? The "down with Iwata" crowd needs to think long and hard about that. Iwata's part of a generation of gaming executives that no longer exists, and frankly the longer he sticks around the better, because the only people you'll find to replace him are going to be pure "artist" or pure "bean-counter," either of which would be disastrous.

Replace him with any businessman, preferably someone who has no experience in videogames and doesn't have a personality like Reggie.

He'd look at the sales charts and go, why don't we do exactly what Wii and DS did (and their best selling games) but more of it? And look at the 3DS and the stupid tablet thing and go, why don't we do much, much less of that? Nintendo's studios waste so much time, they could produce a reasonable and polished Wii Sports or NSMB entry once a year. No creativity would be fine if they kept up the pace (see: Call of Duty).

I'd trade the niche games I like but make no sense to produce (Advance Wars, 2D Metroid) for seeing Nintendo survive as an independent entity.

A businessman with no experience in video games would ask one question: why no iOS? And then would just start dumping classic Nintendo IPs all over the app store, likely dissolve either the console or the handheld entirely (the strength of the handhelds in Japan being reason to keep them alive, i suppose).

You need someone with a degree of vision that stands beyond strictly what the market dictates, but at the same time you need someone who wasn't raised in "the industry" and doesn't think like the ego-dominated games-industry does. Iwata predates the industry but comes from a developer background, which is the ideal leadership figure for this kind of business, because you need someone who can recollect a time when the business looked nothing like what it does today, and yet who has a history of helping to make the business look like how it does today.

A businessman would just tear down what makes Nintendo, Nintendo, since we can see what all the "businessmen" want Nintendo to do from all the analyst chatter, and it isn't pretty.