“The video game market (in Japan) has been shrinking since 1997. There have been a number of reasons given for it, such as the low birthrate, emergence of the used game market, and the growing use of mobile phones. But that’s not enough to explain everything. Games have really gone through an amazing evolution since the Famicom era, and with it, games have gotten more complex and high tech in order to meet the demands of gamers. Casual gamers are starting to drift away from games, and people who used to purchase a lot of games a decade or two ago are no longer doing so at the same rate.”

Iwata then outlined Nintendo’s stance toward game innovation. He explained that games oriented toward veteran gamers cannot be played by new gamers, but games oriented toward gaming novices won’t satisfy the hardcore element. “So what we needed was to find a way to make everyone start off from the same point, like back when the Famicom made its launch and everyone touched the controller pad for the first time,” he said. “That’s the concept behind the Nintendo DS. Its touch-sensitive panel and voice recognition capability will offer a wide range of experiences that will be new for both beginners and hardcore gamers.”

-Satoru Iwata, June 2004 (Source: Gamespot ) http://www.gamespot.com/news/6100299.html

In 2004, Nintendo declared war against ‘Gamer Drift’. The war is not against Sony or Microsoft or another company, it was against disinterest in gaming. ‘Gamer Drift’ was Nintendo’s way of saying that video games have gotten to difficult to play because they were challenging and/or the interface was too confusing to new gamers. The DS and Wii would break down the interface barrier and put out games that new gamers can play.

In 2010, I can say confidently that ‘Gamer Drift’ never existed. What existed was only ‘Developer Drift’. How can you blame gamers for not buying games when you refuse to make the games they used to buy?

The most transparent example of ‘Developer Drift’ is Super Mario Brothers. Without Super Mario Brothers, the NES and SNES would not have been successful. Super Mario Brothers essentially made Nintendo a powerhouse company. The game is probably the most influential, best selling, and most revolutionary game ever made. When Nintendo decided to stop making it, sales of Nintendo hardware experienced decline starting from the latter SNES era up to the Gamecube. Sure, Nintendo kept making Mario games. But they were radically different from the classic Mario games.

Nintendo is guilty of what I call ‘The New Normal’. Using the example of Mario again, what was ‘normal’ for Mario games was to be Super Mario Brothers 1, 2, 3, and World. This massive audience kept coming back to the core Mario gameplay. With Mario 64, with the introduction of 3d Mario, Nintendo said this was “The New Normal”. Mario games would forever be 3d Mario which was a radically different type of game than what classic Mario was. Naturally, the 3d Mario didn’t sell as well as the old Mario. Nintendo ceased to be ‘top dog’ in the console market after that.

The reason why Nintendo lost the audience was because of ‘Developer Drift’, was because the ‘New Normal’ alienated the original Nintendo audience. People were not buying 3d Mario because they found it inaccessible or difficult, they just plain didn’t like the game. Gamers were rejecting Nintendo’s “New Normal”. It was not gamers that left Nintendo. It was Nintendo that left the gamers.

This ‘New Normal’ is a mentality the developer stomps on the market. The N64 controller, as insane as it was, did have a D-Pad and a Super Mario Brothers 5 game could have been made. After seeing how Mario 64 fell flat everywhere except America, Nintendo chose to reject the market’s decision on it. What we got instead were sequels to Mario 64. When the DS was launched, it was released with the portable version of Mario 64. The result is that the PSP outsold the DS.

It is a mystery to me how New Super Mario Brothers got made for the DS. I imagine that the fact that the PSP was cleaning DS’s clock in sales made the business side of Nintendo to tell the developers of a game they wanted made. Once released, a new DS purchase often meant a new New Super Mario Brothers purchase as well. It was such a huge success, Nintendo made the developers make one for the Wii. And that game was also a monster hit.

The conclusion is that the market was rejecting Nintendo’s “New Normal” defined back during the N64 and preferred how Mario used to be of the NES/SNES Eras. “But people liked 3d Mario,” some will say. That is true. But the sales do not come anywhere close to 2d Mario. It is important to focus not on the people who are buying 3d Mario but on why people refuse to buy it, but they will buy 2d Mario. These people’s actions hold the answer to Nintendo’s decline.

When the N64 controller was unveiled with its analog stick, it was declared the ‘New Normal’. Competitors would steal it and adopt it as their own. With the Wii, Nintendo rolled back the ‘New Normal’ and replaced the N64/Gamecube controller with one reminiscent of the NES era. What former gamers (i.e. the Lost Generation) assumed was that Nintendo was rolling back all the ‘New Normal’ and returning back to the awesome company they were back in the 80s and early 90s, back in the time when game series stayed true to their roots with new exciting series being born from Super Mario Kart to Starfox. This is why the Wii launch was greeted with cheers of ‘Old School Gaming Revolution’. With elements like the Virtual Console, it appeared Nintendo would no longer follow its bizarre ‘New Normal’ behaviors.

What we got instead from the Wii was a different story. Nintendo was never interested in rolling back the ‘New Normal’ that delivered it the Gamecube. Instead, Nintendo insisted that the ‘New Normal’ sell like ‘Old Normal’ through improving its accessibility. Mario Galaxy was not the ‘successor’ to Super Mario World. (NSMB Wii was.) The reaction was yet another 3d Mario in Galaxy 2 but this would be different, you see. Nintendo would make Galaxy 2 ‘more accessible’. The mission for Galaxy 2, as stated by various Nintendo execs, was to make 2d Mario players buy 3d Mario. In other words, Nintendo insisted on staying with the ‘New Normal’ despite the market responding to the old Normal. Instead of making games that their former customers want to play, Nintendo tried to ram 3d Mario down the 2d Mario customers’ throats.

It didn’t work. It has nothing to do with how ‘accessible’ 3d Mario is. It is about gamers rejecting Nintendo’s “New Normal”. They reject the radical change in gameplay that was done. They rejected it fifteen years ago. They reject it today.

Zelda is another good example of this dogmatic forcing of the ‘New Normal’ on the poor market. When Wind Waker came out, many gamers rejected it. Why? It is because what is ‘normal’ is Link is a badass warrior. In Wind Waker, he is a Fairy Boy.

Above: Link was a badass warrior!

Above: Link became a Fairy Boy. Totally emasculated and full of emo emotions.

“But Wind Waker shows great expressions and emotions from Link.” So what? The audience doesn’t want their hero to be emotional. That is a Fairy Boy, not Badass Warrior. It is impossible to look at Wind Waker Link and see a ferocious warrior.

Nintendo acknowledges the art style caused problems with the game. But was it really the art style? Or was it the content in the game itself? Was it how Link was portrayed? People called him “Celda”. Interesting, Twilight Princess sold pretty well with ditching the cell shaded art style. But also Link was portrayed more as a young man instead of as a Fairy Boy.

But Nintendo would not have it. They insisted that “Celda” be the ‘New Normal’. In the handheld games, Fairy Boy returned. And look at the Wii Zelda for a moment:

Note how the trailer starts off showing the ‘vehicles’ of Zelda from Ocarina of Time onward. Apparently the first decade of Zelda games is left out. Nintendo attempting to do the same exact thing as Galaxty 2: ram the ‘New Normal’ down people’s throats. It is the laughable excuse that people reject the ‘New Normal’ of Zelda because of accessibility or control schemes.

The talk focussed on Aonuma’s recent tribulations as the anointed head of the franchise, starting with the below-expectations sales of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for GameCube—especially in Nintendo’s home turf of Japan. Internally, the poor performance was blamed on something called “gamer drift”: losing the core audience while failing to attract new players. Aonuma himself determined the problem was that the series itself had not been going anywhere new, as each new sequel was far more of a Zelda expansion pack than a new title. The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures was Aonuma’s first shot at reversing that trend. When the E3 demo was a hit, Nintendo produced the title, only to find it was a far worse commercial failure than Wind Waker was. Aonuma blamed the hardware requirements: to play Four Swords Adventures with more than one player, each one needed a Game Boy Advance and link cable.

While the Four Swords Adventures experiment was underway, Aonuma also learned of the suboptimal performance of The Wind Waker overseas, something NOA blamed on the title’s style. Aonuma decided, since Japan was a loss anyway, he’d go with NOA’s suggestion and make a realistically-styled Zelda pretty much specifically for American audiences: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Twilight Princess started life as little more than a new Ocarina of Time on paper. It wasn’t until later that Aonuma added the wolf mechanic, inspired by Link’s transformation into a rabbit in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and wonderings about how such a transformation might grant Link a new way of interacting with the world.

Simultaneously, Aonuma was working on a Zelda title for DS, announced at GDC last year: The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Inspired by successes with cel-shading on the DS, Aonuma created the completely touch-based control scheme due to problems with a previous bottom-screen-based effort and found that direct manipulation meshed perfectly with the world of Zelda. Adding in things like drawing paths for the boomerang to follow and making notations on the map meant Aonuma had the first major innovation in the series since Ocarina debuted on the Nintendo 64. Despite his success, Aonuma feared reception of the change: the multiplayer mode demonstrated at E3 2006 and this year at GDC was added in an attempt to placate the Zelda zealots.

-From 2007, Source: N-Sider http://www.n-sider.com/contentview.php?contentid=3110

A big difference between the old ‘Normal’ of Nintendo and the ‘New Normal’ of Nintendo is that the ‘New Normal’ is nothing more than a parade of tricks (which Nintendo developers confuse as ‘innovations’). Link becomes a wolf. Link sails on a ship. Link rides a train. The old ‘Normal’ of Nintendo was dogmatic focus on the fundamentals of gaming. Zelda 2 was not marketed as an ‘innovation’ but as a greater exploration of Hyrule. Link to the Past was not marketed as an ‘innovation’ but also as a greater exploration of the Zelda universe. The same with Ocarina of Time. There were no tricks in these games. The games were not made to revolve around a ‘new trick’ in the gameplay structure. This is why Zelda fans sense that the Zelda universe has not expanded past Ocarina of Time and that every game afterward has felt stale despite all the new ‘tricks’.

It’s amusing Aonuma blames the lack of innovation. Did he not flood the world in Wind Waker? Did he not place trains in Spirit Tracks? Those are radical changes. But the only change we want is to return to the fundamentals. To reject the ‘New Normal’ and get back to the ‘old Normal’ of when Zelda used to be cool.

And now let us look at Metroid which is the freshest example of the ‘New Normal’ mentality Nintendo has and who insists on ramming it down our throats. Every game reviewer of Metroid: Other M has asked the same question. “Is this the New Normal of Metroid? Is this what the series will be like now?” The answer is YES. Even if Sakamoto puts out another 2d Metroid, he will drift back to the Other M formula. Everyone has rejected the atrocious storyline in Metroid: Other M and the characterization of Samus Aran. What is Sakamoto’s response? He gives you the middle finger. The next Metroid will take place after Fusion to continue the “brilliant” Sakamoto story line. Any casual observer can see that the best move for the series would be to dump the Sakamoto storyline entirely and retcon Other M’s story as if it never happened.

What have Metroid fans been asking for? They want a game like Super Metroid. This is the ‘Old Normal’. Sakamoto is telling you guys to go to hell. He demands Metroid be the ‘New Normal’ which is defined more by Fusion and Other M. To the people who feel despair over this ‘New Normal’, you guys join me in the Lost Generation.

Former gamers did not, one day, wake up and say, “I no longer have time to play video games!” or “Game controllers are too difficult for me these days!” Rather, they say, “Game companies no longer wish to make games that I want to play.”

“But Malstrom!” a nitpicking reader will say. “Gaming must have innovation! We must make new types of games or else all will stagnate!”

Oh, indeed! We must have new types of games!

“Then why the argument?”

What is the Old School Gamer’s complaint? It is that there is no innovation in gaming at all!

“But look at Other M! Look at all those cutscenes! Behold the maternal instincts!”

That has nothing to do with gaming. Why is it that every ‘innovation’ from the ‘Game Industry’ in the past decade be more about movies and computers than about gaming? Game makers do not wish to make games. They wish to make computerized movies. The most important word in ‘innovation in gaming’ is GAMING.

“But who are you to say what should and should not be ‘normal’ for glorious game developers to make? We should embrace them in taking risks in ‘innovating’ their game series. They are artists; they cannot be opposed.”

We are paying the bills, that is why. Nintendo does not buy its own games. We do. Until Nintendo makes games we want, we do not buy them.

Is it not ironic that the ‘New Normal’ of Nintendo is marked by decline and the ‘Old Normal’ of Nintendo is marked with rapid growth?