Nintendo's potential overkill to innovate

[bahn]

1UP Editor-in-chief composed a remarkable editorial concerning his thoughts on the Nintendo's alleged new console, along with a retrospective of the DS, the imminent domestic launch of the PSP inevitably destined to steamroll over said platform and then some.

Here's an excerpt:

But my real point is not that I don't want to see Nintendo innovate -- honestly, as a hardcore gamer, I realize it's sacrilege to even suggest that -- but it's that I don't want Nintendo to feel as though it has to. Nintendo has so many killer properties, so many amazingly talented developers, a brand name still synonymous with gaming, and puts out more quality titles on a whole than any other publisher, that it doesn't need to resort to completely unproven methods to attract an audience.

Full thoughts at: http://capnsmak.1up.com/

Discuss.

p.s. there's some good comments expressed by other 1up blog members, but you'd have to register to read em.

[Drewbacca]

Nintendo's not overkilling innovation. They're overkilling bad ideas and decisions. I still don't think they're that bad, but they do make some stubborn decisions.

[bahn]

Here's one member's response towards the end that stood out of the pack:

One person commented "I really wish this anti-nintedo crap would end, because if we lose nintedo we will lose the last true gaming company. I enjoy my 3rd ps2, and my roommates xbox, as well as my cube, but if the popular media continues this anti-nintedo trend the mass-idiocy of society will believe and end up not supporting nintedo because of some false image that media outlets like Ziff-Davis have produced.

one last bit of food for thought....

Most Ziff-Davis mags are known and accused often of their anti-nintedo thoughts... Softbanc owns a controlling portion of Ziff-Davis... And Sony owns a controlling portion of Softbanc.......

do the math

[Cowutopia]

Well....okay. Here's the thing. About the "so many killer properties," they're becoming less and less "killer" as Nintendo farms them out more and more.

I agree that they still have "amazingly talented developers" and "a brand namy still synonymous with gaming," but the "innovative"(gimmicky) systems aren't the biggest problem- it's the stagnation of their main properties, and aside from that it's the lack of innovation in those series. They've either produced lackluster main titles (Sunshine) or slapped their brand names on everything (That mario dance game.) It's getting real old. They need to cut this shit out. You really really don't need Mario in a game for it to sell.

Apparently as of this generation their business strategy, isntead of online gaming, was targeting children, for real. "Children don't get the internet anyway, heh." "Children will want anything with Mario or Pokemon in it."

Well, boo to Nintendo. They won't survive this way forever. Every year more and more young kids are deciding Nintendo's not "cool" and once they've lost that demographic, I mean...what've you got left? Disgruntled gamers like Diffx.

So, innovate your strategy Nintendo, don't gimmick out your hardware. Update your goddamn selves and consider the present.

[Bonestorm]

some people bitch about nintendo when they change things, and the rest bitch about them when they don't.

[voltz]

Being a fan of gameboy is pretty hard when you look at nintendo's run-of-the-mill lineup cause if you things from my point of view, metroid and castlevania are about the only games worth wasting time over.

Granted, nintendo needs to continue working on their current platforms, stray a little less from teh kiddie games, quit rehashing old franchises so much (make their value worthwhile overtime like they used to) and stop porting lesser versions of console titles. Anything that's shared with xbox, gamecube, ps2 etc etc is like having a small plate compared to a banquet, and we really need new and original content that's exlusive to the system in order to stand out. If they want to continue with making new systems, it's gonna be SEGACD/32X/SATURN syndrom all over again.

Nintendo really needs to take a look at what they're doing before they see their market dissapear.

[Drewbacca]

Nintendo has Miyamoto, who created a lot of killer franchises for them. But like Opaque said, those franchises are becomming less and less relevant and more stagnant with every game they slap Mario into. Nintendo isn't about innovation, they're about bad decisions and half-assed committal to newer ideas. The Gamecubes design was clean, original and good looking, then they put a handle on it and made it purple.

Nintendo launched an AMAZING marketting campaign, with more adult oriented themes, but used them on games that were more palitable to the younger audience, and also ruined the commercials by having a young, childish slogan (TOO MUCH FUN) that nobody really understands. It's too much fun, so is this a bad thing? Okay, that's being a bit silly, but Nintendo clearly doesn't know how to market or brand its products. In those commercials the 1up sound should have easily been the slogan, as the PLAY-STA-TION was for the PSX. It was clever and people liked it. Nintendo doesn't seem to get it.

It's small details that seem to elude Nintendo. The gameplay and control in Mario Sunshine was great, but where was the lava, the desert, the castles or the goombas? To me it almost feels as though someone was developing a killer platformer based in a tropical setting and Nintendo decided to come along and put Mario into it, much like they did with Fox and Dinosaur planet. I liked Star Fox Adventures, but it did seem like a different game from a Star Fox, and I would've have been just as entertained controlling another protagonist aside from Fox.

The best thing about Star Fox was its shooting. It's fun, it's easy and it's simple: things that Nintendo are saying they want to push because gamers apparently don't get complex things. Yet they betray their own words, as much nonsense as they are, by taking the root of that series and changing it for ground battle.

I want to see Nintendo make and produce a game like Halo. Metroid was technically a good game, but it was boring. I didn't feel like I was viscerally part of the action, because of the looser controls. But I still give that game it's due, because it was good.

Nintendo is a bunch of mixed messages and puzzling decisions right now. They want to innovate, yet push tried mascots on everything. They say they want to simplify the gaming experience, yet put things like the flud in a Mario game and less flight in Star Fox. They produce systems with really awesome potential, yet don't give us a reason to be excited about it. The DS is an amazing system, the stylus is a really awesome innovation, but then we're left hanging on the software end. They give us a mature, well-produced marketting strategy and couple it with child-oriented slogans and games.

It's frustrating to someone like me, as a Nintendo fan, because it seems like we're the only one who Nintendo doesn't listen to. And you know what, it's that kind of attitude which is going to make me alright if Nintendo is bought: they did it to themselves.

[voltz]

It's frustrating to someone like me, as a Nintendo fan, because it seems like we're the only one who Nintendo doesn't listen to. And you know what, it's that kind of attitude which is going to make me alright if Nintendo is bought: they did it to themselves.

That will change should nintendo go the way of sega, then the games will be all they can afford to worry about. Besides I'm seeing too many mainstream systems on the market anyway.

[sethsez]

some people bitch about nintendo when they change things, and the rest bitch about them when they don't.

The problem is that they change the things that don't need changing, and don't change what's gotten extremely dull. Change isn't enough... it has to be change for the better, not just for its own sake.

[RoleTroll]

Sony is losing hundreds of dollars on every PSP sold. Nintendo cannot win the money game against Sony, even less than Sega could against Nintendo in the 8-bit and 16-bit days. The DS touchscreen is a gimmick, sure.

Would they have been better off with the DS at $100 and one screen? I don't know, maybe. They might have been better off with a Gameboy that was similar but weaker to the PSP. Then third parties would make games for the Gameboy, and clean them up for the PSP, so that the full power of the PSP is seldom used and the difference doesn't look as great (like the PS2 did to the Xbox). Instead, the DS games are going to come from the N64 library and I doubt many companies will be coding one game multi-platform like they did with the PS2/NGC/Xbox.

I think 1Up is essentially right on this. Nintendo knows it can't compete against Sony's pockets, and it will only bankrupt itself if it tries. It knows it can't afford to buy off the third-parties, like it did against Sega. The one thing it has is a great lineup of exclusive franchises, and they need new titles in those franchises instead of republishing N64 games. A true, new mario game for the DS would go a long way.

Hopefully Nintendo and Sega will be bought by Microsoft and we can have a fair fight between Sony and Microsoft.

Milking games repeatedly is good for the short-term, but it kills you over the long term. Nintendo needs new games, not just the 8-bit Mario games re-coded for the SNES then ported to the GBA then touchscreen support added. Ports and backwards compatibility are a good thing, but they're not enough. (I would love to see N64 Paper Mario with touchscreen support added as the DS packin....)