There are a few whiners in video game forums, especially around here, but by and large 3D Mario is loved.  I think you have a very odd perception to think that there are more people who are "pissed" at 3D Mario than love it.

@erik aston  i dont know what happened with Sunshine, it wasnt bad but could have been better.

IMO this is what they have been doing with the Wii as well (except not only 3rd party does not build the base). Keep the releases low quality and barren for the majority of the year and when something "worthwhile", "decent" or "brilliant" comes along, "everyone" will buy those games because there is nothing else to buy. No wonder their titles sell like crazy, there are so few new ones to buy every year. 

So to me, this is just more of the same old "this generation"-Nintendo tactics.

@noname

You seem pretty pessimistic on the 3DS.  Do you think we have seen enough to warrant that?

Thanks for the post, this is definitely the most articulate write up of this sentiment I have seen so far, and I can now see why people are tying it into Iwata's statements here.

Personally I still disagree with this train of thought though. When looking at the DS's mega sellers (10 million ), it is comprised of Nintendogs, Animal Crossing, Mario Kart (all 3 are announced and probable before the end of the fiscal year for 3DS), 2D Mario (confirmed by Miyamoto), Pokemon (guaranteed), and Brain Age (again a sequel has already been talked about). So I just don't get the complaining, those franchises are all coming to 3DS, several of them are coming soon. If any of them are simply clones like Nintendogs cats, then I could see that being a problem, but I don't see any reason to assume that they will be yet.

I think a big part of the reason that these franchises turned into huge hits on DS and Wii despite many of them being around for a long time, is the marketing and communication that Nintendo successfully used on those platforms. That is why I take Iwata's comments here as very positive, because I think a large part of the 3DS's slow start is because of a failure to clearly communicate why people should be interested.

I also feel like the condemnation of the "you don't know what you want, we do, and we shall teach you!" logic is a bit off-base considering that is exactly what they did with the Wii.  I think there were a lot of people who didn't know they wanted motion controls, or games like Wii Sports and Wii Fit, until Nintendo effectively communicated the appeal of those types of experiences. I don't think 3D will ever have the same level of appeal, but I think Nintendo should be trying to figure out a better way to communicate the appeal then they are doing now.

When Iwata says

"create new experiences which have been neither enjoyed nor requested by consumers, and let them say, “This is the very thing I have been wanting to play”

he is implying that he wants to SURPRISE consumers with new content they haven't seen before. People did not want 2D Mario until it was actually created; I have seen Iwata say this same thing before several times.

Actually, it's obvious that people can't know if they like something new until they try it, and blind hatred towards 3D sounds quite luddite, but I get the objection against 3D Mario platformers if they are meant to replace 2D ones, they can be an addition to them, but they cannot replace them by any means, they are completely different stuff. Personally I like 3D games (on 2D screens, I still don't like 3D ones!) but for me the true Mario is still 2D, indeed I even prefer the totally flat and pixellated one of the origins to successive refinements that made him look like a plastic doll. The issue is very simple: there are some things that are better in 2D, or isometric 3D from above, than in 1st or 3rd person 3D.

Think back on it. What did Nintendo do to "communicate" about those hit games? Simple, straightforward commercials that showed the games, and showed people's reactions while playing the games. That's pretty much exactly what they're doing now, but people aren't getting excited about it.

Nintendo also took the attitude that they didn't know which games would become mega-hits. Games like Brain Training and Nintendogs, which had a slow start, Nintendo just left out there, and as they had a long tail, Nintendo kept promoting them. Remember Nintendo was surprised how organically those DS games spread, to the point that they created Tupperware parties for Wii's launch to try and jumpstart that process.

Nintendo was also never in over their head with any of those games. There were many games made as follow-ups to the Brain Training success, and some sold in the 3-6 million range, and some sold not very much at all. But if some of those games failed, it wasn't a big deal. They didn't have to blame anything on "communication." The new idea games had successfully acheived both low cost and high differentiation, so there was potential for a mega-hit, but low risk with a failure. They could afford to listen to the market if it rejected something.

Even with Wii, there was not a huge risk associated with failure compared to 3DS. Nintendo left themselves 3 outs, with a high profit margin, conservative initial production, and no less than 4 alternate control methods. Nintendo expected a slow start like DS, and if it had happened, Nintendo wouldn't have been caught with their pants down.

And another thing to mention is the way that Brain Training was developed. Iwata left the rest of Nintendo alone. He created a new, small development team to create something new, isolated from the rest of Nintendo, and they came up with Brain Training. Wii Fit may have also had a new team established for it. But mostly, since Brain Training there's been this intermingling of new ideas and old ideas throughout new and old teams. Basically, Iwata never isolated the core market game development from expanded market game development, in order to protect the core. As a new generation starts and the old expanded audience becomes the new core, it is also not protected.

While common sense dictates there will be sequels to mega-hits, feature-based upgrades like Animal Crossing Wii and Nintendogs Cats are falling flat. The attempt to turn Brain Training and WarioWare into DLC-based games failed. Wii Sports Resort, while an awesome game and a mega-hit, is built around the island setting and a hardware upgrade. Wii Fit Plus is a huge hit, but a dumbfounding follow-up to Wii Fit. In comparison, Brain Training was followed up by:

Brain Training 2
Big Brain Academy
Flash Focus
English Training 1 2
Personal Trainer: Cooking
Personal Trainer: Math
Personal Trainer: Walking
Half a dozen weird, Japan-only games like, uh... Face Training? What the heck?

By protecting the core, I mean that all of Nintendo's existing mega-hits should be given ongoing development resources, with further resources devoted to make second tier games in the same area similar to those Brain Training follow-ups. Keep catering to the expanded audience, and bring them into the core. Following that path alone will lead to slow decline through increasing costs and competition. So isolate out smaller teams to keep coming up with the Blue Ocean, low cost, high differentiation titles like Brain Training.

What is the only area being given significant resources for both the existing mega-hits and developing new second-tier games? It's what Malstrom keeps calling the "Gamecube games." 3D Mario, Zelda, Metroid, the new Kid Icarus, Paper Mario, Last Story, Pikmin. That's where Nintendo's focus is: 3D, character and story driven, high focus on graphics or 'art design', single player focused, expects a high time commitment and long play sessions.

So no, it's not a "communication" problem. It's chaos. It's chasing the next big thing with a failure to keep building on the established. And in that chaos, Nintendo's true colors of wanting to develop Gamecube games is shining through.

And gamers are rejecting it.

I always hear Americans complaining about the pricing of the 3DS...

$250 = £150

£230 = $375

The RRP of the Nintendo 3DS in the UK is £230. The price of the 3DS in other countries is rediculous, but in the UK it is crossing a line. I don't know how Nintendo intend to sell the 3DS at that kind of price, especially considering it isn't that much more powerful than a PSP.

The problem is I am dying to get my hands on Zelda: OoT, MGS3D and Tales of the Abyss, you can't go wrong with remakes =D.

If Nintendo drop the price of the console to around £120 / $200 I will buy it.

Remember also that Nintendo has said that, due to certain physical consumer limitations regarding 3D, no game shall be made that 100% requires it, which means that by the 3DS' nature they can't simply try to rehash everything in 3D and call it a day. Nintendo having admitted the prior fact means that they're aware, and i think you're seeing that with much of the 3DS software: OoT3D is making a value effort through including Master Quest (which was hard to find on GC if you didn't do the initial WindWaker preorder deal)