| Soundwave said: Their achilles heel is basically their old fashioned, stubborn Japanese management. The studios are great, the games are great, they are held back by a management group that moves as slow as the Titanic. If Nintendo had a great Western division to help out the Japanese side, they would be doing fine right now but they don't unfortunately. Even though Rare wasn't perfect, they were a very good sidekick that could fill in for Nintendo with a good number of games for example and Nintendo has never really replaced that lost output. |
Precisely, the market has taken a turn towards Western centric development and design and Nintendo are refusing, as always, to follow the movements of the market and instead insist on trying to dictate it and breach with "unique" design and features and they refuse to attempt anything grand outside of the usual suspects for their big budget efforts. Being timid, or at the very least cautious, when it comes to business can go both ways, they are now seeing which way it's going and it was time to respond a couple of years ago and they still haven't. Being timid when it comes to creative design is not good at any one time; Nintendo's vast talent and massive experience could produce amazing games the likes of which we've never seen (let's face it; even though their games currently are amazing, we have see it all before), on the same, or similar, premises as other developers (i.e; Nintendo could beat almost anyone in their own game, in a double meaning), it frustrates me that they are still clinging to Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong like a mariner to a flotsam.
They need to be more proactive, or at the very least; immediately reactive, and join main movements as they begin, not half a decade or more after it starts, just look at them delaying almost every title due to lack of knowledge on HD development and a lack of a now globally embraced standards in dev tools and methods and look at their inferior, fledgling social integration and online components compared to the competition. I think they'll keep on desperately looking for another Wii though; a phenomenon that allows an encased environment free from outside influence and that would serve well as a platform to maintain the stubborn development paradigm they've stuck with.
