Rank the Presidents of Nintendo

[bdbdbd]

TheMisterManGuy said:

bdbdbd said:

I get your point, but what else they could have done with that schedule. In retrospect it was stupid decision for Sony to include the motion controls in the original controller, but it did make sense from the information they had back then. Wii was never about the controller but all about the games using it. However, Sony had incredibly poorly documented dev tools for third parties, who had to guess what the system could do and what it could not - and how to do it. This was mainly on PS2, but apparently PS3 aswell. So, you're correct in much more ways than you wrote about, just that given the schedule I don't think the controller was the issue, but actually everything else.

It's not that SIXAXSIS was a bad idea for a new feature. The problem is, Sony shoved it in to the console as a last minute addition after Nintendo showed off the Wii Remote, without consulting any of its first party teams or third party devs about the new tech. With later PlayStation hardware, hardware features would be researched, demonstrated to WWS teams, then iterated upon with tech demos and refinement. The motion controls and new gimmicks of PS4 and PS5 feel less intrusive because they feel like Sony actually gave their devs time to explore the new hardware.

And of course, as you said, Sony's dev tools and documentation for third parties in the early PS3 days were really bad, and a big reason why the console had mediocre third party support in its first few years.

bdbdbd said:

I think you're right. I believe Nintendo was pushing too hard the "competing without competing" -mantra and weren't pushing the core games to people. They did a lot of things incredibly right with their own core games on Wii, just that in the end they were left half way after a great start. When the Wii U was out, they did a complete 180 turn and suddenly it was a system for core gamers that had virtually nothing for the Wii audience to upgrade to - even the colour scheme was idiotic, you had the white shitty system and black "good" system. I bought my Wii U for christmas 2015 because kids wanted it (and I wanted Hyrule Warriors) and had bought the system earlier but wanted to wait for the 32 gig white version. I did buy the black one as the 8 gig model made absolutely no sense at all.

I still remember all that PR about how the Wii U would "bring the hardcore back". I feel like Nintendo bought into that nonsense too much during the Wii U's pre-launch that it left the Wii U without any real direction. It's too expensive and confusing for the casuals who owned a Wii, it was too under-powered and lacking in games for the hardcore. By comparison, the Nintendo Switch returns to Nintendo's early strategy of a video game console for gamers of all ages and levels. It's a console where Nintendo Switch Sports and Just Dance can exist alongside Tears of the Kingdom and Bayonetta. If anything, it's more a spiritual successor to the Nintendo DS than it is to the Wii U.

bdbdbd said:

Switch as a system fits the modern lifestyle better, but what I meant by "Touch Generations" was games that are designed to fit the modern lifestyle - that's what they in the end were. If you think of the core games, they are huge timesinks and do not fit the busy lifestyles people have. Of course there are some core games that you can pick up and play, such as Mario Kart, but not specifically designed for this purpose. Wii Music kind of ruined the whole idea of such philosophy, because it was marketed as one but was definitely a core game.

A lot of first party Switch games are designed to have tons of small objectives to do when you're playing on the go. Take Super Mario Odyssey for instance. The game is filled with hundreds of different moons, and when you play in handheld or tabletop mode away from the TV, you can collect one or two moons and feel satisfied, even for only a few minutes at a time. The whole point of Nintendo Switch as a brand, is that it combines the short, easy-to-play nature of mobile/smartphone gaming, with the scale and depth of console experiences.

Mario Kart 8 DX is the reason the Switch was able to catch on as quickly as it did because its the game that best sells the concept of the system. It's a console-quality Mario Kart that you can play either on your TV, or take with you, and it lets you play with a friend right out of the box thanks to the two Joy-Con controllers. Mario Kart as a series, also has broad appeal because it works on two levels. It's very simple, and easy for newcomers to have fun, but also has a lot of nuances and depth that more experience players can master as well. The series has historically thrived on consoles that embody that philosophy such as the DS, Wii, and Switch.

Actually the poorly documented tools and features did not hurt PS2 and I don't think it hurt PS3 to the extent you seem to suggest. PS3 had great 3rd party support out of the gate, it just dried up after the system and it's games did not sell.

If Sony had consulted the developers, it had delayed the system if Sony had wanted all PS3 controllers to include motion controls, as Sony clearly had no idea how to use the tech as they could not just copy the Wii Remote as a PS-mote and piss all the devs and publishers who would have needed to build completely different controls to their games. It took time for Sony to learn how they wanted the controls to be used and make the required tools to make the controls work.

Of course PS4 and PS5 motion controls work much better than they did on PS3 because Sony had a lot more time to develop them. If Sony had taken a year or two more to develop them on PS3, they'd been just as good on PS3 as they are on PS4 and PS5. This is why it was a mistake on Sony's part to tack them on to a dual shock and remove the force feedback.

Well, Wii U was graphically on par with PS360, so it did not offer anything new. This was a year before the PS4X1 released. If Nintendo had delayed Wii U until the competition released, Wii U had likely done much better as we would have already seen what the 8th generation had to offer and Wii U had, at least in theory, offered something new to them. Now nobody was waiting how the Wii U gamepad could bring something new to games we had.

I actually have Mario Kart 8 on Wii U and I don't think it really is a system seller - if it was, it had sold Wii U's. Mario Kart does fit the Switch philosophy, but it's not specifically designed to it. Mobile phone gaming isn't exactly short and easy to play. For the most part they're complex timesinks, aside from a couple of games. In terms of mobile gaming, we're technically at the same point we were back in the early 90's where the games were becoming increasingly complex. The game centric computers disappeared because the games complexity reached the point where they competed the more powerful IBM clones without the same processing power. And when the 16 bit consoles came out, the computers needed to compete with simple games like Super Mario and Sonic, along with more complex ones like Final Fantasy.

Playing Super Mario Odyssey the way you described is the complete opposite to what the touch generations philosophy is, that Wii's and DS's success was build on.