Nintendo/Iwata's Bias Against The West

[Jumpin]

Soundwave said:

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. 

The issue I take is that you are assigning blame to Iwata when he had absolutely nothing to do with any of that. It was Yamauchi who began dismantling relationships and investments with Western studios in the mid-late 1990's. Yamauchi's specific reason for cutting off the partnership with DMA/Rockstar North, was specifically because they were not developing games that would appeal to the Japanese market. It was Yamauchi who turned down the Stamper brothers to purchase Rare, whether or not Rare wanted to continue. It was LucasArts decision for Factor 5 to develop for other Platforms because they felt the GameCube was a weakly performing Platform, and they bet against the Wii. Similarly, Dennis Dyac broke off the relationship between Nintendo and Silicon Knights because he bet against the Wii. Iwata was the one who arranged for Silicon Knights to develop a Metal Gear Solid game on GameCube.