^It's not about third parties it's about investment and aggressiveness.

Nintendo could have created ten Rarewares and Retros to make western games for them with all the money they got during the Wii-peak and still have a lot left. Then western third parties could have gone fucking themselves if they still refused to give support. Nintendo would have been fine.
Building an over seas first party development base is an excellent strategy, it helped Sega almost topple the SNES, it gave Sony a lot of games. This is well documented since the 16-bit era.

I think there's a quote of Iwata with something about Nintendo being an exporter of Japanese culture. Could something ideological be why Nintendo hasn't invested overseas. (everything else Nintendo did agressively overseas was because of Howard Lincoln)

I dont know. Its difficult for Nintendo because of all the hate they get in the west, wich basically means no western software support. It means the company must expand and get more development studios to keep up with the software demands by customers. Add to that that they have 2 consoles to support and things get really difficult.

I think that with the Wii U they are breaking middle ground, maybe towards unifying both the handheld and home markets. To imagine this concept just imagine the next 3DS beeing the gamepad and having its own memory capacity in wich you can play your home console games on but it works on its own aswell and you can take it with you. I think this would be a venue to explore for Nintendo. Actually i might just have given them a great idea here. It might also work better backwards. A powerful portable console that doubles as home console (wich you can plug on the HDTV). This would allow Nintendo to focus on just one platform and prevent software droughts.

I don't understand the connection between the thread name and the original post. What "hubris" versus what "Western Culture"?

I feel like I was tricked to come here.

""old" way of thinking (better graphics, more buttons, 3D > 2D) is still ingrained in Nintendo's DNA"

It is Nintendo fault if many people are promoting orbis/durango specs or Epic Unreal Engine 4, if Dualshock 3 has  L3 and R3 buttons ? How many 2D games there are on XBOX360/PS3 ? This "way of thinking" is probably not ingrained in the whole game industry's DNA nor in gamer's DNA...

its not all iwata its nintendo as a whole..things just take time to change and thats what is happening right now.

I have to say I preferred Nintendo pre-Iwata, but Iwata is clearly a decent head for the company. The Wii U is looking like a bit of a blunder, but it shouldn't overshadow his successes.

It seems a little unfair that his predecessor, Hiroshi Yamauchi, was kind of a monster and basically held gamers in contempt, but Nintendo still enjoyed more support from other developers under his fairly draconian approach. When Sony offered a viable alternative most developers jumped ship, and in that respect I guess Iwata's spent a lot of time suffering from Yamauchi's legacy.

Aggressive western investment should come as a plank of more aggressive investment period. The last acquisition Nintendo made was NDCube back in 2011 or so, and before that, Monolith Soft (2006). Compared to Sony and Microsoft's veritable stream of infant studios all over the generation, it's rather pathetic (especially since Nintendo had the money to make those nonexistent studios. The Sony and MS gaming divisions... less so).

IMO, the lack of internal capacity, and apparent lack of desire to build internal capacity, is Nintendo's key flaw, the point from which most of the other things that are (legitimately!) wrong with the company come from.

i like this post a lot, especially bold.  i think this is what made me most frustrated with nintendo last gen.  when i had a gamecube and things were sometimes disappointing it was easy to forgive nintendo.  at the time they were just getting by, they did what they had to.  but in the hayday of the wii/ds when they were making billion+ profits a year the lack of investment, the lack of growth, the lack of doing anything to improve made the obvious flaws in software capacity was just.. infuriating. 

Complaints about Iwata baffle me.

As an investor I think he's fantastic for posting about 10 billion or so in profits. As a gamer I love that he's in charge since his background is as a game designer.

Nintendo's hardware strategy is infinitely superior to their competitors. 20% more home console sales is impressive, but vastly more impressive is that Nintendo makes money on their systems. People criticize Nintendo for not having more powerful hardware, but in truth the only reason that Sony and MS release more powerful systems is because their gaming divisions don't need to make money, or much money. Nintendos aren't underpowered, the competition is overpowered. If Sony and MS were only gaming companies, they would have gone banckrupt long ago.

The Wii and DS were brilliance, and I think most would agree with that. The sleek, apple-like designs looked high-end but the tech was cheap to make. The touchscreen DS brought in a whole new demographic of customers.

The Wii U and 3DS are perhaps even more brilliance. Not as groundbreaking as before, but both systems have the forsight to battle a more difficult market. The 3DS offers affordable gaming and the 3D is not a feature which is replicated on phones. Wii U offers a touchscreen which can enable the porting of iOS and Android type games which are loved by the mass market. They may not be as successful as their predecessors, but they are perhaps even more creative in battling a tougher market.

Game droughts are vastly over-rated. This one in particular. In the grand scheme of things, Jan and Feb '13 will mean nothing. It is way better to have a spectacluar lineup in fall '13 when real competition launches than a few token releases right now.

Nintendo could do a few things better. NintendoLand was poorly named. Wii U could have used 4 gig RAM, but I think Nintendo was sure that Sony would only have 4. But I think they are on the right track. If I were in Iwata's shoes I would do a major change in Wii U marketing, and I might look at purchasing a couple developlers or a publisher with multiple developers. If 3rd party support ends up being week, buying someone like Take Two would make that irrelevant. GTA, Bioshock and 2K sports would make EA's lack of support no longer matter, and fill the voids in Nintendo's release schedule.

But overall I think Iwata is excellent.

LOL, what? I personally feel he is overpolite, formal and boring in the Directs, the Directs are interesting because of the news, not because of Iwatas presentation.

To the topic - well, he made many things right with Nintendo in the past. I don't think he is a really bad CEO. And he has a connection to the gamer. If he steps back I fear he is replaced with a business guy and Nintendo might lose it's special appeal in gaming. Maybe my fears are unfounded.