Is Miyamoto losing his touch?

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globalisateur said:

Norris2k said:

I agree a lot about what Nintendo should do, but their current trend is not their tradition. Back in they day, Zelda, Donkey kong country, Starfox, Mario Kart, Mario where AAA, top noch games in every aspect. Zelda didn't have any nostalgic feeling, it was best in the genre in term of everything graphics, musics, effects, gameplay, length, running on a very efficient hardware. I mean it would take someone like Carmack to prove that a PC was capable of doing a scrolling as good as Mario.

So, anyway for me Miyamoto (can't tell if he changed, if the company changed, or if he changed the company) lost it when he stopped doing the best games, stop competiting and started focusing on niche markets based on "new gameplay, new idea" (which also mean tight budgets, low risk, potential high rentability games). I believe it is around the N64/GC failures, more than 10 years ago.

This is exactly how I see it (and most people don't understand this). Thank you for this post. Back then when they released for instance Mario 3, A link to the past, Yoshi's story, mario 64 or Ocarina of time, they were indeed producing top notch games in every categories: innovation, gameplay, graphics (with big and open levels), sound, etc. They produced ambitious games in all categories.

Back then when Ocarina released it was one of the best looking 3D game out there, even comparing with PC games. A bit like now when we compare UC4 with PC games running at 4K.

It all began with the Gamecube IMO. Because of their unwillingness to adapt to modern gaming development. I still remember Tachikoma posting about how backward their software teams were in pretty much all aspects of modern videogame development. 

And we know better understand why: Because modern videogame development of AAA games is VERY expensive. Even if some of the heads are genuine creative guys Nintendo as a greedy corporation want easy money like what they did with the Wii (which was an overclocked Gamecube). But it won't work again.

I agree.

I think in the Wii days we had some exceptions like Mario Galaxy and Xenoblade Chronicles. Although both are great, they're not really innovative. Mario Galaxy is just a super fan and stunning game for a non-HD game and XC has a spectacular world and wonderful story.

But we've got nothing like the N64/GC days. GC was a bit odd as a console but it still had games like Metroid Prime and great versions of Resident Evil and others. I think GC was the last time Nintendo tried to compete. After that, they just left the industry to do their own cheaper stuff.