Myth. But there is a thread of truth to it.
Nintendo has a very product driven approach. This was the primary motivation of Gunpei Yokoi's philosophy, and the successor to that known as the Blue Ocean strategy. Their purpose was to use existing and stable technologies in new ways that satisfied a large market demand. In this way, you could get things like the D-pad which is based on button technology that was a century old, but had not really been used for navigational purposes - joysticks were primarily used for this in the video game space.
The thread of truth is that there is obviously some symbiosis between the development of software concepts and hardware concepts. Think of science, there's a hypothesis, and then tests are needed to verify it as a working theory that integrates into the larger strategies. Some examples of this are the button combos in Nintendo's SNES games very much factored into their button designs, as well as the idea of touch games for DS, and motion games for Wii - the tests were the prototypes, found them to be a lot of fun, and then they knew their hardware hypothesis was the correct direction - Duck Hunt, Wii Sports, Pilot Wings, even Super Mario Bros 64 were all prototypes/advanced prototypes developed into release games. That's why Nintendo often comes up with the best new ideas for the industry, they have that unique approach to hardware development.
Here are some examples of their product driven features and aesthetics:
NES - d-pad, simplistic button design.
GB - portable handheld with an inexpensive screen, a media input, and long battery life.
SNES - Diamond face buttons, L&R triggers.
N64 - analog stick and 4 players
GBASP - Sleek design, folding, backlighting, self-charging.
DS - touch screen, 8 players, DS Lite featured the sleek design.
Wii - Sleek design, wireless motion controls (accelerometer and IR, later gyro), interface expansions making all catalogue games playable (remotes, nunchuck, and classic controller), online features (WiiConnect24/Wii channels, Netflix, news updates), photo-EShop (VC and WiiWare), and personalization (Miis).
3DS - glasses free 3D, street pass,
Switch - Sleek design, merging the DS/Wii stuff into a single hybrid unit that can be switched between home console, portable home console (with the kickstand), tablet, and handheld modes.
Note: I mentioned glasses free 3D, this one probably doesn't belong because it was new when it came out, and it was certainly not ready as there were a lot of errors with it, like moving vision to the left or right would cause the visuals to break. This was eventually fixed with new3DS.
Bottom line, Nintendo has almost always had a product driven approach. Even when they went outside of their core product philosophy (mainly with the Gamecube and original GBA to varying levels of success) it was because "Sega/Sony did this successfully, so this product with our game franchises might work better for us." So, I think Nintendo always had a consumer audience in mind. With Gamecube, the major problem was that the product already existed in a feature superior and more aesthetically pleasing form with the PS2 - that's why that one failed. Virtual Boy used old technology in a very innovative way, the problem is Gunpei Yokoi didn't think of the potential audience, so I don't think this quite counts - even geniuses compromise their own working philosophies make mistakes; similar to Iwata and co with the Wii U.
Last edited by Jumpin - on 16 August 2024I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
