Aquamarine said:
Please look at this quote from Dan Adelman who was an employee of Nintendo of America: "Nintendo is not only a Japanese company, it is a Kyoto-based company. For people who aren’t familiar, Kyoto-based are to Japanese companies as Japanese companies are to US companies. They’re very traditional, and very focused on hierarchy and group decision making. Unfortunately, that creates a culture where everyone is an advisor and no one is a decision maker – but almost everyone has veto power. Even Mr. Iwata is often loathe to make a decision that will alienate one of the executives in Japan, so to get anything done, it requires laying a lot of groundwork: talking to the different groups, securing their buy-in, and using that buy-in to get others on board. At the subsidiary level, this is even more pronounced, since people have to go through this process first at NOA or NOE (or sometimes both) and then all over again with headquarters. All of this is not necessarily a bad thing, though it can be very inefficient and time consuming. The biggest risk is that at any step in that process, if someone flat out says no, the proposal is as good as dead. So in general, bolder ideas don’t get through the process unless they originate at the top. There are two other problems that come to mind. First, at the risk of sounding ageist, because of the hierarchical nature of Japanese companies, it winds up being that the most senior executives at the company cut their teeth during NES and Super NES days and do not really understand modern gaming, so adopting things like online gaming, account systems, friends lists, as well as understanding the rise of PC gaming has been very slow. Ideas often get shut down prematurely just because some people with the power to veto an idea simply don’t understand it. The last problem is that there is very little reason to try and push these ideas. Risk taking is generally not really rewarded. Long-term loyalty is ultimately what gets rewarded, so the easiest path is simply to stay the course. I’d love to see Nintendo make a more concerted effort to encourage people at all levels of the company to feel empowered to push through ambitious proposals, and then get rewarded for doing so."
Think about Nintendo for a second. They have been producing consoles and handhelds since 1983. That's 33 years of consoles and handhelds. The old guard at Nintendo who still wield significant influence over the company....their entire careers have been defined by these consoles and handhelds. It's very hard to convince everyone in a company like that to just give up their entire livelihood in one fell swoop. That's why the NX exists. It's a test to either reaffirm Nintendo's commitment to dedicated hardware, or act as the evidence that will finally convince everyone to fully embrace a new direction. Given Nintendo's unique corporate structure and history, the NX is the only logical route management can take. It's the boldest route they can take to changing their company. Expecting anything more out of Nintendo at this juncture is completely ignorant to how they operate. |
Nintendo can be stubborn, but there is another undeniable truth .... once they get a taste of big money, they always follow.
If Nintendo IP on iOS/Android become a success beyond even what most people expected ... it is a game changer for their board of directors and the shareholders will be all over them to let that drive more and more of their business.
I said it pretty much a year ago ... Nintendo has the ability to become the biggest smartphone game company in the world. Their IP catalog is that big, and the confines of mobile favor them *a lot*. There's a lot of casuals (well all the casuals) there and kids and look at the smartphone market ... all/most of the big games are all cartoony games, this is really from a money perspective a match made in heaven for Nintendo.
The console market is the one that's changed to be more about high end graphics, violent action games, and sports sims ... none of which Nintendo does particularily well.
