The_Liquid_Laser said:
VideoGameAccountant said:
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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We are talking about strategy here. Strategy is about planning things out in the future. That is why Iwata had nothing to do with Gamecube's strategy even though he became CEO while Gamecube was on the market. It was already too late to make an overall strategy at that point. On the other hand Iwata put a lot of focus and energy into consolidating all of Nintendo's software development onto one system. The Switch was first and foremost his strategy.
Also, you said in a previous post that Iwata was a bad strategist, because he got his ideas from books. What kind of weird logic is this? Reading books on strategy makes one a better strategist, not a worse one.
Lastly, you are starting to turn the argument from strategy to execution. Perhaps he isn't the best at execution? But when he comes to gaming strategy he is unparalleled. The DS, Wii and Switch were all big risks, because they were so different from what came before. They were successful because the fundamental strategy behind these systems is solid. And none of these systems would have existed if Iwata wasn't the CEO.
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Your point about the Gamecube is not the same as the Switch wasn't out or even close to out when Iwata passed. Again, Iwata passed in July 2015 but the Switch didn't launch until another 21 months. They may have had an overall strategy or idea for the system at that time but a lot can change in roughly 2 years time. What you and others are assuming is that nothing changed from the inception to Iwata's depth and Kimishima did absolutely nothing but follow the plan. The actual launch and the solftware line-up is what you have to give credit to Kimishima for as he was president at the time. But you all don't want to give him that credit because he's not a sacred cow.
When I say he's a bad strategist unless he uses a book, what I mean is Iwata can't run a business unless he's using someone else's gameplan. The minute he goes off script the company goes off a cliff and has some of their worst loses. Iwata had to rely on those books because he had no business sense of his own. The success of the Wii and DS shows that 1)Those business books are good and 2)Nintendo makes good games. However, it doesn't really prove Iwata was skilled at what he did as, again, those were the only successes he had. When you consider that, it's clear that the books carried him, rather than Iwata's keen business sense leading the company to success.
Iwata was someone who should never have been moved into the position he was in. He was a programmer without parallel and that's where he probably should have been. As a CEO, his results are mixed. I'll end on this. When Nintendo becomes incredibly successful after someone takes Iwata's job, it's hard to say he was a good businessman.
