RolStoppable said:
If he doesn't change, then yes, he's the wrong man for the job. But most of the things he did are right, it's just that not keeping the developers in check creates a snowball effect. It alters Nintendo's software output which impacts sales negatively. The big question is who should run Nintendo as a company, if Iwata were to step down? Someone who is already inside Nintendo might not bring any significant changes. Someone from the outside might make the crazy decision to put Nintendo games on smartphones. Like you said, Nintendo could be managed better. But it also could be a lot worse. |
That's exactly what i'm talking about. In Iwata, and game-industry folks from Iwata's generation, you have a rare breed. These are folks like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, who not only have a head for doing the technical stuff required of their business, but remember a time when their business wasn't a business, a humbler time when making computers with your buddies in your garage or making computer games meant that you were a loser.
Now, the computer business is a little different because people are always going to need computers (and they're more tool-like anyway), but people don't need video games, especially full-sized video games like your Grand Theft Autos or Super Marios, or yes, even Pokemon or Call of Duty. The industry can't afford to assume that the market just exists and that they'll buy whatever they sell, and folks like Iwata get that.
On the flip-side, Iwata and his ilk were still developers in their beginning, so they understand the business of making games from the creators' perspective. They know what developers want to do, and what they need to succeed. And from coming from a time where you *had* to make games people really wanted to buy or go find a job in some other industry, they also understand that it's the developers job to make games for the mass market.
People in the game industry don't incorporate both of these qualities anymore, or at least they are very rare. When the video game industry (made by people like Iwata or, say, Trip Hawkins) became a "legitimate" business, it attracted the Money-Men, shortsighted corporate raiders all too common in business; they're the bean-counters, the sequel-makers, those who might be wizard-like in their ability to keep a balance sheet clean in the short run, but fundamentally have no passion or knowledge for the specific business they're in, they're just in "business."
On the flip-side, you have career developers, who just want to make the games they want to make, and treat it like it's the publisher's job to figure out how to make people buy their game, when in reality it's their job to make a game people want to buy.
Imagine Sakamoto or Bobby Kotick running Nintendo, because those are the kinds of people you're going to have to choose between. Someone who would give Nintendo developers complete creative control to make their ideas, however impractical they might be, or someone who will flood the market with cheap Nintendo titles of yesteryear, make it so that no franchise other than Pokemon, Mario, and Mario Kart ever saw the light of day on an actual console, and likely kill off many franchises like Fire Emblem or even Metroid.
Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.
