bunchanumbers said:
It worked for a little while but it pretty much shattered 3rd party relationships in the west. Howard Lincoln had it figured out. He even had exclusive baseball game deals to get Ken Griffey Jr Baseball on N64. Hell Madden 64 didn't even have the NFL license and EA still made it happen. Nintendo doesn't do anything like this anymore and it is to the detriment of the company and consumer confidence. Yes Wii was a hit and yes DS were miracles. But they shouldn't have sacrificed NA deals that kept the N64 afloat and kept the GCN in western support. I think neutering NOA was the worst thing Iwata did. |
I think really in a way there was basically a "coup" inside of Nintendo where the Japanese development side took over and largely undid all the good things people like Howard Lincoln and Minoru Arakawa did. I suspect some people at Nintendo in Japan on the development side were also jealous of Rareware and wanted them out of the picture.
Couldn't have a Western studio being Nintendo's flagship studio.
In 2000, Nintendo had good balance between Japanese and Western development, when Arakawa/Lincoln stepped down (or thereabouts). By 2003/04 everything about that would largely be wound down, it was doubly disastrous too because this is when Western developers became much more important.
