In my mind competition is supposed to spur on creativity because you essentially can not keep doing the same thing you've been doing to be successful.  It's a very simple definition, for the sake of this topic, and yet it still comes up short when I see this video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jILgxeNBK_8 (I tried embeding the video below.  It shows up in "preview" but not when I sumbmit post.  Why is this not easier to do?  Am I missing something?)

http://youtu.be/jILgxeNBK_8

I want to get your thoughts on how this applies to the game industry at hand.  Most companies compete with each other on similar grounds, and intentionally so they can increase sales.  New games, of all genres (think Shooter games, especially) are generally very similar to one another as a way to increase sales and minimize risk.  This may be very obvious to us on some level, but how the heck can we incentivize creativity if competition and money won't even do it?

Even if you stray too far from what the main stream likes (setting up shop not in the middle of the beach, like in the video), and are successful, the competitor will simply change their next product to be somewhat closer to you product so that they still eat up your sales and get the mainstream market as well (again just setting up shop a little closer to you).

Nintendo is innovation, Nintendo is change

Creativity on a large scale is rare in any industry. Refinement and gradual improvement is much more common-place and every bit as important. That's because new things are often not better than what we already had.

This is why I think they're important

By always thinking of new ideas they are essentially testing new areas of the metaphorical "beach." If they strike a chord it means more of the beach was potential customers than the industry thought. Then they set up shop closer between the new idea (could be Nintendo, could be other guys, MineCraft, etc) and the mainstream market.

And if the competitors end up being really spread out then other guys will fill the spots in between.


My personal take on this is that this is great for really catapulting good new ideas into the mainstream so that a new market (ie new customers) can develop. It’s just bad in the long run because then markets get over saturated and depleted. In other words, customers get tired of that flavor (Guitar Hero/Rockband, Wii-Play type games from last gen., and maybe even the short-lived 2D-Platformer resurgence from last gen.).

Nintendo innovates the most but unfortunately the competitors just copy them.

The problem is cost.

Typically, first party studios/publishers aren't as affected by costs of development as everyone else. They literally can afford to make games that are barely financially successful and they need to sell less of their game to make a profit since they practically get all the revenue from the game's sales. This is why you will see the most amount of creativity or even new IPs from first party studios. At least thats how its supposed to be.

When looking at third party publishers, whose bread and butter is all from how their games perform sales wise, creativity based development goes out the window and it becomes more of trend based development. When you need to sell 2-3M copies of a game to break even these days as a third party publisher its kinda hard to want to do anything to that will mean taking chances. Which is why with regard to 3rd parties you only really ever see new IPs at the start of a new generation.

What the hell are you guys talking about with Nintendo? I just bought a WiiU and I'm loving Twilight Princess right now...but innovation is not the first word that comes to mind when I think of why I bought a WiiU. Mario Kart is essentially the same with some gliders and stuff added, DKCTF is still a pretty basic platformer, SM3DW is exactly what its title suggests, Zelda will probably have a dungeons, heart pieces, bombs, a claw hand thing, bow, slingshot, rupees, the master sword, bosses which utilize the gadget you got in that dungeon to defeat them, and a number of other similarities with similar titles.

Now I'm not bashing these things. I LIKE consistency from Nintendo. I go to them for REFINED experiences. Their franchises get better with each installment mechanically imo and their storytelling has...somewhat improved though it's definitely their weak point. My point is they mostly don't do much radical innovation just a new feature or two. Those new features normally work wonderfully so that's great for them but don't act like they're doing something crazy or risky with each.

Nintendo does have the refined experience.  This is true.  But you're wrong on the consistency within franchises.  Just think of Halo or Call of Duty.  The amount of innovation between each sequel is much smaller than that between let's Say Mario (Sunshine-Galaxy-3DWorld) or Zelda (Majora-Wind Waker-Twilight-Skyward).

Nintendo has consistent franchises in terms of their worlds (Story, Characters, etc.) but they try hard to innovate (sometimes too hard imo) the mechanics of each new installment.  Twilight Princess was an exception due to their previous over-innovation on WindWaker which was rejected by the masses.  And yeah the Wii U has not innovated as much as the jump from Gamecube-to-Wii as from Gamecube-to-WiiU, that's for sure.  But, it is another attempt at trying hard to innovate when they could have set up shop in the same place and had some guaranteed success.

I'm not even saying it's a good thing on their part to innovate, I'm just saying it's what they do.  But I'm not trying to make this thread about Nintendo specifically, but rather competition and how accurate this video depicts the industry.  I think @Intrinsic made a pretty solid point as only a company as financially stable as Nintendo was able to risk the WiiU idea.

To be fair (and I'm not saying AC or COD are anywhere near the level of Zelda or Mario) those games come out once a year so they don't have time to change quite as much.  Nintendo usually only has 1 or 2 Marios, 1 or 2 Zeldas a gen.  That gives them a lot more time in development AND a lot of times they're getting new hardware to play with and it just goes with that (like Skyward Sword's motion plus stuff).  Also I actually do think AC changes as much as any Mario in some instances.  Remember Brotherhood adding the whole recruiting thing (which was extensive).  Remember Revelelations' bomb making and expansion of the recruiting to a sort of strategy game on the Mediterranean?  Then 4 with the ship building and plunder definitely was a big change.  

Now Mario jumping gen to gen tends to have some new mechanics like the gravity gameplay in Galaxy and Sunshine did the water gun and added a new jump or two if I remember but really I just don't see them as too different from previous installments.  They're like a lot of others series in which they add a couple new things along side many familiar ones and it works out because even if you hate the new stuff (like me with Skyward Swords delayed motion controlling) you can still love the old aspects (like Skyward Sword's dungeons and puzzle solving and story which were top notch).  If you LOVE the new stuff then you probably love the game even more.

I would say the motion control boom of the Wii gen, and halfway through it, was an example of one of those "rare times."  And it happened because what we already had that point was something we had fully exhuasted (Essentially 3D gameplay).

The failure of the WiiU to me proved that what we already had now, motion control mechanics, had not been exhuasted yet.  They tried to create a new market for customers who were tired of motion controls, but they had yet to be explored fully.  As you said, the new thing was not better than what we already had.

In other words, they kept setting up shop on the beach in a new place before all customers could even get in line

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I really really wish I could embed this video so some people passing by would actualy click it.  Does anyone know why it won't embed???