Soundwave said:
opcode said:
IamAwsome said:
The problem isn't Nintendo of America/Europe, the problem is NCL in Japan micromanaging everything related to marketing and PR outside of Japan. I bet they also handle E3 as well (which explains why their conference was downright crappy). The fact is, they DON'T know what people in the west want. The Japanese ads went straight to the point, and made the whole "next gen console" thing understandable. According to some employee reviews of Nintendo of America, NCL doesn't trust their European/Amerian divsions at all.
One thing that I have noticed is that they haven't had a partnership with a studio in Europe since Rare left, and they only have a couple of studios in NA. There are so many hardcore Japanese game released on the 3DS, but what about the west? For Nintendo, Japan is their first priority, but nobody else gets anything. This is Nintendo's main problem right now, and they won't get the hardcore in NA until this changes.
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Finally someone with some sense. I agree 100% and have been saying that for a while. Unfortunately Iwata is a bad thing for Nintendo. Before him NoA had some independency, was publishing games that made sense to the western audience. Now it is a mere distribution arm.
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Yeah as much as I like Iwata's personality and his appearances in Nintendo Directs and Iwata Asks ... the guy is completely out of touch with the Western market (perhaps purposely so).
Retro Studios itself probably wouldn't even exist, that was Howard Lincoln's brainchild and idea, Iwata just got saddled with them, so that's really the only reason they're still around. And they're kept on an extremely tight leash ... one game at a time and they only get to work on Nintendo IP (Metroid, now DKC and Mario Kart). Everyone else ... Rare, Silicon Knights, Factor 5, gone ... NST has basically done nothing the last 5-6 years.
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Not just that, Iwata is clearly undermining Nintendo creativity and ability to create new IPs. Worse, he is overusing existing IPs to the point of saturation. When did we get the last significant new IP from Nintendo? Pikmin perhaps? That was before Iwata. As Nintendogs and Brain Age proved on the 3DS, those are fads, not new franchises. I mean, Nintendo was even reluctant to give Xenoblade a proper worldwide release. Japan at least got a few more experimental and more traditional games during the Wii years, while they relegated NA to casual territory. The damage Iwata caused to the Nintendo brand is considerable IMHO. I am all for expanding the video game populace, but not at the expense of the code audience, that is just dumb. Hopefully a second back to back annual loss will get the guy out of there...
