mii-gamer said:
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.
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Let me add to your wonderful comment!
From OP:
" Under Iwata, Retro is stripped down to one team and kept under an extremely tight leash where they only work on Nintendo IP. The same is basically true of Next Level Games (one game at a time, on a Japanese Nintendo IP only). Nintendo does work with a very small handful of Western companies, but basically only lets them work on Japanese IP that they're too busy to do themselves."
Retro's games:
- Metroid prime trilogy sold best in the west, while performed abysmally in Japan.
- Donkey kong duo: Sold best in the west compared to japan.
Next level games for nintendo:
- Mario strikers duo for the GC and Wii sold best in the west
- Punch-out sold best in the west
- luigi's mansion sold best in the west.
It's quite obvious why he did not provide any example of these Japanese IP's or even defined what a "Japanese Nintendo IP" is. There is so much reaching in the OP, i just can't take it seriously. Then again, I am not surprise one bit at all.
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Virtually every Nintendo game sells better in the West than Japan. There's only a few exceptions. Nintendo can barely even sell mainline Zelda games in Japan anymore.
Which actually doesn't do much to dissuade my point ... if the majority of software sales (and hardware sales for that matter) are in the West, why is Nintendo going backwards and becoming even less Western-development oriented than they were in the 90s?
It makes literally no sense.
The Japanese aren't even buying these "Japanese games" that they continue to finance ... Wonderful 101? Bomb. Bayonetta 2? Likely to bomb. Hyrule Warriors? Nothing impressive sales wise. The Last Story? Not a big hit. Devil's Third? Don't expect the Japanese to support this at all. At Western consumers actually by and large bought Western games like GoldenEye, Banjo-Kazooie, many Star Wars titles, NBA Courtside (at least on the N64), Ken Griffey Jr., Killer Instinct, etc.
Why not finance say a game from the Darksiders developers or something? It's just kind of baffling to me, it's almost like they are greenlighting the above Japanese titles as favor to the Japanese dev community.
