By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Nintendo - Dromble: Dan Adelman Discusses Nintendo’s Culture, Third Parties, VC & More

curl-6 on 22 January 2015
Soundwave said:
curl-6 said:

As has been said, they seem to have adopted a mentality that, since the N64 and Gamecube were outsold by the PS1 and PS2, they shouldn't try to compete directly with their adversaries, but rather seek alternate routes. This becomes a problem when they let said adversaries then chase them out of market after market, leaving them with very loyal core fanbase but little appeal to the larger audience.

Rather than try to maintain footholds in markets like the lucrative 13-30 Western male crowd, they're surrendered these audiences to Sony and MS, and withdrawn to make a last stand in their inner sanctum of Mario and Zelda. They're fighting a defensive war instead of trying to expand their territory.


The GameCube really let Nintendo down unfortuantely (or vice versa). 

Had they been on their game a little more and given MS more of a bloody nose to convince them to stay out of the game business was were the dynamics really would have changed. 

But once MS got their foot in the door, they decided to stay, and in a market where Nintendo suddenly was up against two large corporations, they decided to run rather than compete from that point on, and it even worked for a little while until they got blindsighted by the smart device revolution.

If the GameCube could've held serve and whupped the XBox (the PS2 obviously did its job) so that MS could have been convinced to not go ahead with the 360, I think Nintendo would be a very, very different spot today. Especially with Sega also going belly up, Nintendo could've carved out a comfortable existence as the defacto alternative to Sony.

They should have pushed harder I think to release the GameCube in 2000 (a year earlier). That would've ensured a decent no.2 finish for them and wouldn't have allowed MS to get much momentum even with Halo. 

Part of the problem with the Gamecube was that for the most part, it made Nintendo's big franchises seem "uncool".

Mario 64 was cool, Mario Sunshine wasn't.

Ocarina of Time was cool, Wind Waker wasn't.

Starfox 64... ok, you get the idea.

GCN actively chased away core gamers with its "kiddy" image. (I know that image wasn't really justified, but that's how it was percieved nonetheless)



Around the Network
Soundwave on 22 January 2015
curl-6 said:
Soundwave said:
curl-6 said:

As has been said, they seem to have adopted a mentality that, since the N64 and Gamecube were outsold by the PS1 and PS2, they shouldn't try to compete directly with their adversaries, but rather seek alternate routes. This becomes a problem when they let said adversaries then chase them out of market after market, leaving them with very loyal core fanbase but little appeal to the larger audience.

Rather than try to maintain footholds in markets like the lucrative 13-30 Western male crowd, they're surrendered these audiences to Sony and MS, and withdrawn to make a last stand in their inner sanctum of Mario and Zelda. They're fighting a defensive war instead of trying to expand their territory.


The GameCube really let Nintendo down unfortuantely (or vice versa). 

Had they been on their game a little more and given MS more of a bloody nose to convince them to stay out of the game business was were the dynamics really would have changed. 

But once MS got their foot in the door, they decided to stay, and in a market where Nintendo suddenly was up against two large corporations, they decided to run rather than compete from that point on, and it even worked for a little while until they got blindsighted by the smart device revolution.

If the GameCube could've held serve and whupped the XBox (the PS2 obviously did its job) so that MS could have been convinced to not go ahead with the 360, I think Nintendo would be a very, very different spot today. Especially with Sega also going belly up, Nintendo could've carved out a comfortable existence as the defacto alternative to Sony.

They should have pushed harder I think to release the GameCube in 2000 (a year earlier). That would've ensured a decent no.2 finish for them and wouldn't have allowed MS to get much momentum even with Halo. 

Part of the problem with the Gamecube was that for the most part, it made Nintendo's big franchises seem "uncool".

Mario 64 was cool, Mario Sunshine wasn't.

Ocarina of Time was cool, Wind Waker wasn't.

Starfox 64... ok, you get the idea.

GCN actively chased away core gamers with its "kiddy" image. (I know that image wasn't really justified, but that's how it was percieved nonetheless)


Yeah. I'll never understand why you'd go to all the trouble of getting Resident Evil exclusive and then go with such a toy-like looking console. Just some mind bogglingly poor execution.

They should've redesigned the casing to not be so toy-like, moved up the release date to November 2000, and moved Zelda: MM, Perfect Dark, Sin & Punishment, and Conker's BFD as launch window titles. 

Unfortunately though I think a lot of the stupid decisions came from the Japanese side ... I mean if you're going to make all these Japanese centric decisions, at least have a console that sells well in Japan, but the GCN was a relative flop in Japan too. So their Japanese division couldn't even give them a console that sold half way decent in Japan, but also made poor decisions that really neuetered the system in the West. To be honest, if NOA had been allowed to handle the GameCube it probably would've sold *a lot* better. 

A lot of of the dumb decision making for that system came straight from Japan. 



curl-6 on 23 January 2015
Soundwave said:

Yeah. I'll never understand why you'd go to all the trouble of getting Resident Evil exclusive and then go with such a toy-like looking console. Just some mind bogglingly poor execution.

They should've redesigned the casing to not be so toy-like, moved up the release date to November 2000, and moved Zelda: MM, Perfect Dark, Sin & Punishment, and Conker's BFD as launch window titles. 

Unfortunately though I think a lot of the stupid decisions came from the Japanese side ... I mean if you're going to make all these Japanese centric decisions, at least have a console that sells well in Japan, but the GCN was a relative flop in Japan too. So their Japanese division couldn't even give them a console that sold half way decent in Japan, but also made poor decisions that really neuetered the system in the West. To be honest, if NOA had been allowed to handle the GameCube it probably would've sold *a lot* better. 

A lot of of the dumb decision making for that system came straight from Japan. 

The big problem with Nintendo's Japan-centric mindset is that over the last fifteen years, gaming has become an increasingly Western-dominated market, leaving them out of touch because they refuse to adapt to the demands of Western consumers.



Soundwave on 23 January 2015

Even if they could have finished the GameCube generation like this ...

PS2 - 140 million
GameCube - 35 million
XBox - 18 million

That probably would've chased MS out of the market and then they could have pounced on Sony's coming mistake to force feed Blu-Ray into the PS3 to win the disc format war but in the process making PS3 $600.

They've kinda screwed themselves with both audiences now though. They basically let MS/Sony take over the entire core gamer segment, and then watched helplessly as Apple/Google smart devices took over their casual market from the DS/Wii era.

Never should've let Microsoft gain a foothold, they should have fought much harder during the GCN cycle, it would have saved them a lot of headaches later on and ensured a decent market presence for them.