Jumpin said:
The original post is full of incorrect information, people should do their own research:
1. You claim Iwata sold Rare. Iwata didn't own Rare. The Stamper brothers owned Rare and they sold a majority share to Microsoft. Rare did attempt to sell to Nintendo, but it was Yamauchi's decision to turn them down, not Iwata.
2. You claim Iwata had nothing to do with Retro studios. Miyamoto was the one who made the decision to give Retro a shot with the Metroid license. Retro was purchased by Nintendo in May 2002 and invested heavily in the company.
3. You claim Factor 5 was cut loose by Iwata. The fact is that Factor 5 was not in any way owned by Nintendo, but by LucasArts. Factor 5 began developing for other consoles because the GameCube flopped and LucasArts wanted to expand the profitability of the studio in order to sustain them. It wasn't Iwata's decision, it was the decision of LucasArts and Factor 5 based on the failure of GameCube.
4. You claim that Western Studios began leaving under Iwata when it is a fact that they began abandoning Nintendo during the N64 era when Western studios began focusing on Sony consoles instead of Nintendo consoles. Unlike some of your examples, some of these departures are directly the fault of Nintendo prior to Iwata. A huge example is Nintendo second party DMA/Rockstar North. Nintendo had a deal with them to be the studio's publisher. DMA developed Uniracers, Body Harvest, Space Station Silicon Valley, and Grandtheft Auto - Nintendo during the N64 era dropped them as a studio, opting out of publishing their games because they would not appeal to the Japanese market. This was not Iwata, but rather the previous leadership. Iwata never, ever dropped a studio because the games wouldn't appeal to Japan, but the previous leadership did just that with one of the most important studios of the past 20 years.
5. You claim that Nintendo "stripped NoA of any real power" but there haven't been any such moves at all. What power are you talking about? When was it stripped away? NoA is simply Nintendo's publishing and localization office for North America, it is the equivalent of NCL, NoE, NoK, etc... If Iwata was biased towards Japan in regards to NoA, then NoA would have a Japanese CEO, not an American one. All of the other International offices are run by Japanese presidents, except NoA, which has been run by Reggie Fils Aime since he replaced Kimishima in 2006.
|
You need to go back and study what NOA was like in the 90s. They certainly had (sometimes very broad) power to greenlight game projects on their own.
Most of Arakawa/Lincoln's work in the 90s was quickly undone after Mr. Iwata became president (offically in May 2002, though really he was already operating in that position for some time before that, Yamauchi basically effectively retired from day to day operations in 2000). I attribute much of this to Iwata, but also probably to the general Nintendo seniority (Miyamoto and others at the top are probably responsible for a dramatic shift in Nintendo's strategy to move away from Western devs).
Iwata and the Nintendo today is biased IMO. If Hideki Kamiya was Henry Kelly, a developer in California or something, IMO Nintendo wouldn't give him the time of day in financing any type of title.
We know studios like Factor 5 and Silicon Knights wanted to continue their relationship with Nintendo. So did Rare. Nintendo is the one that ended those relationships. We also know they haven't been very proactive in replacing much of this lost production either.
