UncleScrooge said:
@ Rest of the thread: What are you guys talking about? Nintendo is not fine, both their console and handheld markets are in severe decline and Iwata, being the CEO and responsible for Nintendo's operations, is to blame for this. Iwata was really smart using Blue Ocean strategy and making their next console a disruptive one - his analysis of the video gaming market in the early 2000's was spot on and his actions well thought out. But after that things just went downhill in every possible regard. Here's some blatant mistakes Nintendo made under Iwata's lead that any mediocre CEO should have been able to avoid:
- Not following up the first waves of mass market games on the Wii with new titles, thus letting the Wii die
- Completely abandoning the mass market with the 3DS
- Pricing the 3DS insanely high just because Iwata himself thought they "could charge that price"
- Not providing a decent line-up in the first year of the 3DS
- Pushing numerous games back in the west and right now acting all surprised the console isn't selling (!)
- Abandoning the customers of the Wii with the Wii U because they wanted to focus on "the core gamer"...
- ... which equals going back to the business strategies that almost bankrupted the company some years ago
- Not providing a decent launch line up for the Wii U despite claiming to have "learned a lesson"
Other things include:
- Not following up Nintendo's growth with the acquisition of new development studios
- The Fallout with EA which will strip Nintendo of any serious EA support for years
- The inability to keep his own developers in check (5 years of Zelda dev cycle, 3D Mario, Pikmin 3 announcement)
- His inability to make sure deadlines are being met (like 50% of the Wii U Q1 line-up was pushed back!!)
- Repeatedly (!) overestimating demand for Nintendo systems in their FY forecasts
- The inability to create an account system for their consoles and the resulting "data transfer" fiasco
--> To sum it all up Iwata (and some of Nintendo's managers and developers) got full of themselves, which is the only possible explanation for some absolutely mindboggling decisions the company made over the last few years. As CEO Iwata's job is to run the company and he's responsible for all of this. Nintendo is looking more and more like Apple did in the 90's: Continuously making questionable business decisions while sitting on a gold mine.
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There's little here I could disagree with.
hunter_alien said:
Its not Iwatas fault, I allways believed that he is ready to make Nintendo more flexible, but the rest of the leadership is bringing him down.
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Iwata's in charge. If there are obstacles, it is his job to deal with them. You can't even use the "Japanese companies are different" excuse, because no one short of God would have ever stopped Yamauchi from doing what he wanted.
