Here's the article for those who don't want to click through.
Nintendo on the Blue Ocean
Jun 12, 2008
By: Rick "32_footsteps" Healey
Look, I have a really good reason for being late with this – it took quite a bit to read over this piece, in which blogger Sean Malstrom looks at the video game industry, and goes into detail about why Nintendo is not only going to win the current console generation, but might just elbow the other console manufacturers out completely. Well, the last part is a bit of exaggeration (Sony and Microsoft are too large to just knock them out completely, at least within the next 20 years). But it's a very thought-provoking piece, and it deserved some reaction.
First, I've got to give him full credit for pinpointing why the Wii has such a large reputation for shovelware at the moment – because, quite simply, many lousy party game collections are coming out for the system. I mean, when even my own mom is complaining about how many lousy Wii Sports imitators there are out there, you know things are ridiculous. (By the way, the "even my mom knows" yardstick, regardless of speaker, is the perfect way in nearly every circumstance to tell how ubiquitous something is). Moreover, he actually goes into why companies are doing that, which is something most people neglect.
In fact, he does everything short of actually coming up with the heart of why companies are only imitating the outward signs of Nintendo's re-emergence and not the culture behind it. Sure, companies can't just imitate Nintendo in coming out with minigame collections and expect to succeed. Yes, they actually have to innovate, or at least approach the concept from a new angle, to succeed. But Malstrom stops short of saying why they only imitate – because actual inspiration is extremely difficult to pull off.
There's a reason that it's said that there are only seven basic stories ever told. There's a reason that in the video game industry, there are generally the same thirty or so games referenced as the most influential ones out there. Basically, most things have already been thought of already – it's just thinking of a new twist that will capture imaginations. Some companies, like Nintendo, have a habit of picking up people who can do that. Not everyone can, though, which is what leads so many to play catch-up. Telling people to think the way Nintendo thinks is impossible, to some extent, simply because they cannot.
It's also good to see Malstrom completely shatter the myth that Nintendo's strategy is something new. I'll grant you that their recent success with it is, and that's because Nintendo finally thought out of the box in terms of game interface. But Nintendo has been talking about reaching out, and going beyond simply the hardcore market for years. Trust me, I was at the press conference where the GameCube was officially unveiled – they were talking about it back then, too. Of course, Nintendo stumbled a bunch along the way. The classic moment at the press conference was when Satoru Iwata talked about how you can't let a company stagnate by churning out sequel after sequel. They then proceeded to show off a new entry in the Smash Bros, Metroid, and Mario (well, if you count Luigi's Mansion as a Mario game) series. They also flashed a bit of one of the early GameCube Star Wars games, to show that it wasn't just them running off sequels. True, Pikmin was also first shown then, but it was clear that while Nintendo said they were going to pursue the so-called "Blue Ocean" strategy of growing the gaming market, they were pretty bad at it for a while there.
As much as I like the piece, though, Malstrom goes astray when planning out Nintendo's future. I'm with him in putting games into tiers – more intuitive games like Wii Sports into Tier 1, so-called bridge games, like Mario Kart Wii or Super Smash Bros. Brawl, in Tier 2, and then more thought-intensive games like Final Fantasy games into Tier 3. And I can see the beauty of Nintendo's strategy – carry along as many Tier 1 gamers as you can, pick up more, and give them Tier 2 games to lock them into your system to move more games of all tiers. It's a sound strategy, when you put it out like that.
However, the problem is pretty evident when you actually look at it closely – Nintendo pretty much ignores the Tier 3 market. I'll grant you, that's the market that's hardest to establish, and often doesn't even do well until later in the system's life cycle. (This, by the way, is why No More Heroes has not done nearly as well as it deserved – if it came out in six months, it'd have double the sales after one year than it will after two years from its actual release date.) But for all its offerings, Nintendo doesn't do much to cater to the crowd that wants more complex games, particularly in America. We didn't get the Famicom Wars series (which we often call Advance Wars due to the first American release) until nearly 20 years after its release. Nintendo never bothered with the Fire Emblem games at all until two characters from it proved popular in Super Smash Bros. And both of those series are only half-heartedly supported in America by Nintendo, with the titles often quickly disappearing and not reappearing on shelves. As for their other such series, Mother? Oh, let's not get me started, as that's a whole other column by itself.
It's probably worth noting that Nintendo's most focused effort at a game that can be appreciated by more advanced gamers is, in fact, Pokémon. However, the games themselves are almost built to discourage that kind of gaming. Note that for all the talk that hardcore players have for EVs, breeding chains, and the like, very little of this is discussed in-game, or even in published strategy guides. It's like Pokémon fans are either Tier 1-type gamers, or Tier 3 gamers so radicalized and specialized we practically form our own fourth tier of obsessed lunatics who would actually find this stuff out.
I'll grant that there are other companies poised to take advantage of Nintendo's odd reluctance to reach to more advanced gamers (NIS America, Atlus, and SquareEnix are the three that seem most ready to me), I don't quite get how Nintendo can come up with a strategy to build towards both expanding the user base overall and build up dedicated gamers when they themselves offer little to keep them. I agree with Malstrom that Nintendo is certainly well on their way to dominating the gaming industry again. However, unless Nintendo can either start catering to the hardcore alongside the "Blue Ocean", or guarantee that they'll maintain the support of companies that will cater to the dedicated gamer, I see Nintendo falling well short of the dominance that the piece imagines.
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