PAOerfulone said:
Still doesn't change the fact that the Wii (100 million units sold, best selling Nintendo console) and DS (154 million units sold and 2nd best selling video game system ever) was, by far, the most profitable period in Nintendo's history, under his watch. Even if it was followed by their worst earnings in history, it barely put a dent into their overall savings and earnings they gained from the prior generation. And it only lasted for around 3 fiscal years before they were making profits again. Now they've made back all the money they lost and THEN some. And the 3DS struggling to reach the GBA's levels of has a lot more to do with circumstances that were beyond Iwata and Nintendo's control. The rise of the smart phone/mobile game market that exploded in the early 2010s evaporated the handheld market incredibly. We went from ~235 million DS and PSP units to just ~92 million 3DS and Vita units. A whopping 143 million units *snaps fingers* gone, just like that. And even if the 3DS got off to a bad start, it eventually became profitable and did respectably well. And as for the Pokemon Company. Created the structure of the Pokemon Company which lost the company billions in potential profits? Dude, you're seriously going to ignore or forget about Pokemon GO? He was one of the key people behind that. Which has led to Game Freak and the Pokemon Company making the most money they have made since the late 90s when Pokemon was on top of the world.
And I can't help but notice you didn't address Liquid's point about the Switch. That's Iwata. He served as the head developer up until he died. It was his last project, basically. https://kotaku.com/satoru-iwata-put-lots-of-thought-into-the-nintendo-swit-1792378208 And look at what the Switch is doing now. So, he's got 4 home runs, (Wii, DS, Switch, and Pokemon GO), a single (3DS), and one strikeout (Wii U). I'm not sure how familiar you are with baseball, but that's a 5 for 6 night, with 4 HR's and batting .833. You know how many baseball players would kill to have a night like that? To call him a terrible business strategist is just completely absurd and straight up delusional. The facts and the history just proves you wrong. He had one failure, one "meh" average project, and four winners under his belt. The fact of the matter is, Nintendo was/is in a much bigger and better position during & post-Iwata than they were pre-Iwata. |
First, giving Iwata credit for the Switch is disingenuous. Iwata died in July of 2015 and the Switch came out in March 2017, a year and a 3/4th later. Essentially, Iwata had little to do with the console. Moreso, the only game on the Switch Iwata is credited for is Breath of the Wild. Every other title was made after his death. And even then. Breath of the Wild likely went through many changes afterwards as the game was originally slated for Holiday 2015. Kimishima was the president who marketed the switch, oversaw its launch and was the sole Executive Director on all the Nintendo Switch titles save Breath of the Wild. The Switch is a Kimishima success. Not an Iwata.
To say the 3DS failed because of smartphones is also silly. The system failed because it had no titles at launch and had a 3D gimmick which increased the cost of the system and sacrificed battery life. This is why they had to cut the price from $250 to $180 because the system was doing so bad. What you don't consider is the importance of Nintendo's handheld line. Even with the Gamecube doing poorly, the GBA kept Nintendo going. The system sold 80 million over 4 years. The 3DS sold about 70 million over it's 7 years. This is in addition to the Wii U which sold worse than the Gamecube. Iwata put Nintendo into a dire situation that it didn't need to be. You gloss over that period of time and say "Awww they made the money back," but ignore that Iwata dug a huge hole for Nintendo that, essentially, Kimishima got them out of.
And what I think this comes back to my first point on the Switch. You want to give all the credit to Iwata because he came up with the idea (maybe), but you forget execution. The DS and Wii were killed far earlier than they ever needed to because Iwata thought "We have to have a six year lifespan" when Nintendo clearly needed another year to get the systems ready (remember the awful droughts that pledged both systems?). The beauty of the Switch was Nintendo made sure there wasn't a drought, and we had games after game every 2 months or so. Theres no saying Iwata would have pulled that off, and he may have easily just released too early and lead to similar droughts.
Last, on Pokemon, you don't understand what youre talking about. Nintendo now only owns 33% of Pokemon. In fact, one thing that hurt Nintendo's stock rally with Go was investors realized Nintendo only gets 33%. If Iwata was not an idiot, he would have bought out Gamefreak and made The Pokemon Company a wholly owned subsidiary of Nintendo to manage the licensing. Now you have your cake and eat it too. While there would have been more upfront cost, Pokemon has made billions and now Nintendo would have gotten the other 66% of the games. Iwata left billions on the table because he didn't know how to structure the deal.
I think the issue is you all want to give Iwata credit where credit isn't due while simultaneously ignoring his faults.
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