peanutbutterlatte
Member
That tarnishes their relationship with you, not third parties. If third parties care that much about overseas sales, they'd put more effort into localisation.
Howard Lincoln: Kicking Ass Before Reggie Came Along
- Thread starter guek
- Start date
That tarnishes their relationship with you, not third parties. If third parties care that much about overseas sales, they'd put more effort into localisation.
The article refers more about how they lost so many second parties, stopped working closely with some western studios, and didn't pursue new relationships attempting to create second parties. So it's not really about EA, Activision or Ubisoft being un-happy for this or that, which is also very important and a topic of discussion, but the lack of "Nintendo western development" as it was during the N64 era.
Right now (and also during the Wii), it would seem, that the main obstacle for other companies besides the technical side, would be the excuse of there not being other games of the same genre having success on the console, so they don't think their games would suit the platform.
The way to combat this is for Nintendo to produce games in all genres, and create a successful environment for every type of game. Of course NCL can't work on all this, and they shouldn't, but instead they should create new studios in America and Europe, hiring people with experience on all these western games, or acquire studios in the vein of the 90's second parties to work on new games that NCL don't make.
Also, special consideration should be given to each market separately (Japan, America and Europe), in Europe they need to be way more aggressive since it has historically be their weakest region, so things like bundles, marketing, price drops, sponsorships, etc, everything should be considered in a case by case basis. But waiting ages for games such as Fire Emblem or Animal Crossing to come over is not the way to go.
Iwata, Reggie and Shibata did a fantastic job with the Wii and DS, no one can deny that, but their Japanese centric business model is what's hurting them the most right now with the Wii U. It is not too late, and results might not be seen within a year, but this should be the best time to create or improve relationships with most developers, establish second parties and increase game production from all around the world, that at least could help the Wii U to not become the lowest sold console on their history, and it will certainly help them have a strong support for their next console in 3-6 years.
MaverickHunterX
Member
Fuck, came to post this!
Isn't Lincoln the same reason licensees had to abide by that "5 games a year" bullshit as well? (this is why acclaim made LJN and Konami created ULTRA)
Quick question for GAF, what role did Lincoln play in censoring Mortal Kombat?
peanutbutterlatte
Member
Yeah, but Spielberg also made A.I and Crystal Skull. So... y'know.
The decision for green blood was a decision taken by multiple people, if I recall correctly. I do not know HL's personal stance on that particular matter, but he was in there and part of the decision. It was probably taken by other parts of the organization, that wanted to keep Nintendo out of the goriest stuff.
The Sega Genesis got red blood, the SNES got green.
Wrong, the GC failure is strictly related to the "old guard" (of course there isn't a clear line from old to new guard, Iwata was chose by Yamauchi because he knew he would guarantee a continuity) who created the system and launched it.
It would have been a failure regardless of Iwata as CEO.
I think your assumption is wrong.
In the past generation (360/PS3) we saw that most games went multiplatform due to two system splitting in half the western markets and the increase of development costs (thus to reduce the risks).
If the Wii was a Gamecube 2, there would have be the risk to be a "gamecube" even in sales thus preventing the system to get the same level (quantity and quality) of support by third-parties.
At the parity of condition I think Nintendo will always be in disadvantage compared to MS or Sony because:
a) Nintendo itself is one of the biggest publisher in the World, that mean heavier competition for third-party.
b) We are at a point where the audience the Nintendo games brought in don't overlap with the audience sought by big publishers.
Raising of western developers on console last gen ( and relatively decline of japanese developers) have nothing to do with Sony mistakes and all to do with technical skills, way of working, rising costs and japanese market.
What makes tolerating Reggie even harder is that this is the bozo that replaced Howard L.
Nintendo didn't pander to idiot 3rd parties. You either supported Nintendo or you died and if you crossed them, you would get raped in court.
Iwata wants to be everyones friend. He wants to be an internet celebrity with his Nintendo Directs and Ask Iwata when he should be crushing his rivals.
Nintendo didn't pander to idiot 3rd parties. You either supported Nintendo or you died and if you crossed them, you would get raped in court.
Iwata wants to be everyones friend. He wants to be an internet celebrity with his Nintendo Directs and Ask Iwata when he should be crushing his rivals.
The big difference I see between N64 era and current Nintendo is Rare (Rare was more a Publisher than a developer at the time).
For the rest current Nintendo still continue to use small western studios to develop games that simply cannot be done by the busy EAD teams like for example Pilotwings Resort or Luigi's Mansion 2 (this one is really surprising IMO, NLG must have really satisfied Nintendo).
You can't just go out and buy studios because the talent can simply walk away.
Chip N Chance
Member
I love this quote.
Based on the tremendous worldwide success of Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct, its clear that Rare is the best video game developer in the world. Just like the movie industry where there are a handful of people who make great movies, the video game industry only has a few people who make great games. Lincoln continued, Nintendo considers the Rare team the `Spielberg of video game development.
Based on the tremendous worldwide success of Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct, its clear that Rare is the best video game developer in the world. Just like the movie industry where there are a handful of people who make great movies, the video game industry only has a few people who make great games. Lincoln continued, Nintendo considers the Rare team the `Spielberg of video game development.
Technically Iwata did crush his rivals with the wii and the DS/3DS.
When you have someone with basically no power running the show at NOA, it's no wonder that third party relations in North America are going to fall by the wayside, but the lack of power was a decision made in Kyoto. I don't think that blaming American 3rd parties makes much sense because it's not like they're the ones that decided that Nintendo didn't need them any more.
But this is the problem, the western studios are being used to make games with the usual Nintendo IPs and genres, they aren't used to expand into other genres and to create new IPs. Retro might be working on new stuff, and that will be great, but it is just too little.
And if the talent are going to walk away, then find new people to replace them, this happens all the time on any industry, risks have to be taken.
What new IPs? The most common thing I hear is that Nintendo needs more western studios so that they can appeal to the western gaming market... and then they point to Retro as a model... to say that "Japanese" Nintendo can't make AAA dudebro shootbang games with lots of production value, annoying marketing, DLC and tacked on multiplayer. And Retro doesn't make these kinds of games anyway.
It's not that they can't... it's that they've decided it isn't worth it. Iwata is right.
Exactly, no new IPs since Nintendo don't allow or have western studios to do such things.
No. I am asking you. What new IPs would you have them make, and compare them to what they have already made and their place in Nintendo's library.
I am amused reading so many people posting comments like "I miss the good old days when Nintendo was a badass"..
I remember those days, when the NES was pretty much the only game in town. Nintendo had themselves a fairly solid monopoly going and they held on to it as firmly as they could. The result was high prices for consumers.
I remember. I refused to buy an NES because the games never dropped in price. Mario 3 and many other NES games stayed at $50 for many years because there was so little competition. It wasn't until time passed and competition gained ground that Nintendo's prices came back down to earth.
So while I admire Nintendo for bringing console gaming back to America with creativity and great games, I will not forget how ruthlessly they clung to their monopoly and how consumers paid the price for the lack of competition.
I remember those days, when the NES was pretty much the only game in town. Nintendo had themselves a fairly solid monopoly going and they held on to it as firmly as they could. The result was high prices for consumers.
I remember. I refused to buy an NES because the games never dropped in price. Mario 3 and many other NES games stayed at $50 for many years because there was so little competition. It wasn't until time passed and competition gained ground that Nintendo's prices came back down to earth.
So while I admire Nintendo for bringing console gaming back to America with creativity and great games, I will not forget how ruthlessly they clung to their monopoly and how consumers paid the price for the lack of competition.
How could I tell you, I'm not a developer for Retro. The issue is not with Retro, we don't even know what they are working on at the moment, even tho some rumors said they're working on 3 games.
The guys from Retro could have ideas of their own and want to make a different game than just working on existing IPs, they are creative people, so that's a totally feasible situation.
Pushmo is an example of a recent new IP from one of Nintendo's best studios, Intelligent Systems, why would they make such a game that isn't Fire Emblem, Advance Wars or Paper Mario? Because they have more ideas than just those strictly related to their usual games.
But it's not about making Retro do this or that, or put EAD or Intelligent Systems to work on a FPS or RTS. It's about expanding and increasing their western output. You just have to see what are the best selling games on the PS360 to see what types of games Nintendo doesn't cover. There are versions of Blops2 and AC3, but Nintendo needs to have their own FPS or Action game to move people over their new console and allow an ecosystem for those multiplatform games.
Also, I saw a post you made in another thread, is not about westernising Nintendo, NCL or the Japanese studios have no need for change, it is about globalizing Nintendo, and have people around the world expanding their games production.
You say this is no needed? Look at the Wii U launch, their current development model is not enough to sustain a healthy console launch.
Venturin said:
Do you still buy Nintendo games? Even if you don't, just go to Amazon or any online retailer and check the price of Wii, DS and 3DS Nintendo developed games. Those games rarely drop in price.
This is the problem. To do this, you need lots of money. Nintendo does not make these games for a reason. Will they ever make a game like this? Sure, maybe here and there. But they've already said that they won't. Because it's a dumb strategy. If you re-read my first post to you, you'll find a short reason why.
Your suggestion would destroy any chance of sustained development. Wii U launch software is lacking, but it will get better in the coming year. Things will even out.
I understand what you say, making a $100M game is certainly not the way to go, but they don't have to go to such extremes, a good game doesn't require such a budget, it might require a big marketing budget of course, but it's either that and attracting customers, or selling just about 120-150k units worldwide of your newly launch console on its second and third month.
I'm just thinking more on a medium and long term. The Wii U will be in trouble until the current games in development are finished, but to prevent another Wii U situation from happening, they just need more people working on more projects, and increasing the amount of games they make doesn't mean sticking Mario into every genre.
I saw this edit after replying.
I know things will get better, this month they are getting better already, next week I'm getting MH3U and the one after Lego City. The holidays will be great and next year should have great games as well, I'm no contesting that at all, I wanted to play Nintendo games on HD and that's why I bought a Wii U at launch.
But there are people that don't care about Mario and Zelda, but if Nintendo had a hit western game like Halo, Uncharted, Far Cry, or so, people who like those, as you called them dudebro games, they will buy the Nintendo console for reasons that aren't Mario or Zelda.
I agree with you that they need more games, but they are working on this. So yes, more games, do want. For the rest, I will just quote Iwata.
Iwata said:
Right, I guess we don't need to keep going on about this, you truly believe that Iwata's current model is the best way, I think there needs to be a middle ground between his way of work and Yamauchi's.
The Wii U will be the proof if Iwata's Japanese centric model was the way to go or not.
And I don't buy them new. Nintendo very rarely gets my money for their first party games. They still want $30 for Super Mario Bros on the DS? I see it selling for less than $10 on Ebay. Easy choice
The GameCube was always going to "fail" in the sense that Nintendo (very optimistically) expected that they could take the console throne back from Sony and the PS2, or at least seriously compete for it SNES/Genesis-style, in the console's first year. That was never even close to happening.
But when it failed to to that, Iwata called it a failure and began to shut things down. And that caused the GameCube to fail even harder and allowed Microsoft to surpass them with the XBox, a mistake which Iwata himself even recently admitted and said that he learned from when the 3DS was in trouble.
Iwata's new direction that he charted with Wii included the philosophy "We will never win against our hardware competitors on even terms, so why bother wasting energy trying?" And he was celebrated for that. But that retroactively added another level of failure to the GameCube. The GameCube tried to compete, and according to Iwata, it wasted it's time. And anyone who believed in the GameCube was a fool for doing so, because Iwata didn't follow though, which means that next time Nintendo asks us to believe in their commitment to hardware, we won't, because we've heard that lie before.
The GameCube was a fantastic piece of hardware. It was better and more dev-friendly than the PS2, on par with the Xbox, and profitable at 2/3 the price of either console, both of which were losing serious money.
And waggle was a GameCube innovation. It was being shown to GameCube devs (in an unfinished state) even before the GameCube launch. When Iwata saw that the GameCube was a failure, he took everything that was good about the GameCube and relaunched with a new name. If Nintendo had produced a "GameCube 2" instead of a "GameCube Turbo", with all the strength shown in the GameCube's design, people would have still been lining up around the block at E3 for a chance to experience waggle for the first time. It wasn't Wii's lack of 720p that drew people to the system, and it sure wasn't Nintendo's profit margin, which vastly exceeded the N64 and GameCube's profit margins.
Sony fell on their face with the PS3. And Microsoft's biggest advantage was their one-year head start. Howard Lincoln learned from the SNES and told the world (as mentioned in this article) that being first to market was meaningless. Because the industry would wait for Nintendo. That sort of happened with the N64. That did not happen at all with the PS2/GameCube. And that one year head start is what made it utterly impossible for the GameCube to catch the PS2. Iwata identified this as arrogance and vowed that he would launch first in the next gen. And then MS to beat them to market with the 360. And then he dismissed that second blindness regarding Microsoft, claiming that MS wasn't a real competitor, only Sony was. And yet, the 360's head start gave that upstart MS the lead against Sony for several years.
I would maintain that if Nintendo had launched a 720p-capable dev-friendly and profitable GameCube 2, before or around the time of the 360's launch, powered up with the immense demand we have seen for waggle, the videogame industry would have been revolutionized (as opposed to being fractured between casual and hardcore), Nintendo would have been the lead console, Microsoft would have nearly fallen off the map, and Sony would have remained an expensive but needless alternative. Nintendo would have won our current generation of consoles, their third party relations would be repaired, and they would be the hands-down favorite to win next gen.
But instead, they made mad bank for a few years, and now they're paying for it.
TreasureHunterG
Banned
Outstanding post. One of the best overviews I read about what Iwata did for Nintendo and the missed opportunity he had to make Nintendo rule the gaming market with an iron fist.
This post should be mandatory for whatever Iwata's defender saying he was a deity from the heavens who saved Nintendo from failure. Your overview put to rest whatever "Nintendo can't compete" excuse for Nintendo not changing their current direction which is turning Nintendo irrelevant to the gaming industry.
JordanN
Banned
Rather than compete, why doesn't Nintendo actually help them?
For example, Soul Calibur II sales actually lead on Gamecube despite having some of lowest installbase that gen. This could partially be related to fact it had Link.
I think the whole Nintendo vs Third Party is overblown. People will buy games as long as it's good. Nintendo just has to create the environment for it and get the word out too.
And yet SC3 was PS2 exclusive.
But seriously Nintendo is already helping third-party games, for example publishing their games in Europe.
No, Nintendo expectation (the hard number) for the cube is known and had nothing to do with thrones.
It was 50 million.
They missed the forecast by a landside.
No, Iwata basically withdraw support for the cube (after 2004) because it was a lost cause to invest more at that point.
I want to remember that GC situation was so bad that after missing the yearly target by half (expected 10 million, sold 5 million) Nintendo had to stop the production lines in early 2003 until autumn (when they cut the price of the system to $99).
Read:
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/events/110729qa/05.html
The mistake he talks here isn't related to him "cutting the support before the time and letting Xbox pass them" but to have not drop the price earlier (as he did with 3DS).
But please remember that Iwata became CEO of Nintendo in May 2002 while Yamauchi was chairman of Nintendo's board of directors until mid 2005 (the distinction between old and new Nintendo isn't that simply to made especially because there was a continuity of ideas between Yamauchi and Iwata leaderships).
The other mistake he publically admitted was Nintendo had failed to ensure the GameCube had good supply of great software.
Source where Iwata say that [GC] was a waste of time and anyone who believed in the GameCube was a fool for doing so?
Nintendo had problem to ensure a good supply of games in the latter years for their home console system since the N64 due to lack of third party software (when Nintendo internal development is shifting to the next generation of hardware).
Iwata identified (correctly) that timing is a very important factor for a system.
You need to built up the momentum of your system before the ones of your competitors explode or that will negatively affect any chance of success.
N64 had big hype behind it that helped it to sell strongly in the first months.
Too bad it was launched too late, Sony had already masses of big games in development.
Costs would have gone up considerably and the new control scheme was still seen as a gamble.
Hindsight is 20/20.
But just overclocking the GC for the Wii was indeed a bit extreme.
Neff
Member
During the period of the old Nintendo dream team was truly the best time to be a fan. The last 12 years cannot compare.
It helped that Yamauchi's son-in-law was in charge of NOA. We'll never get those days back.
There's a great look at this era and this relationship in this documentary.
steve jobs
tehrik-e-insaaf
Member
Is this a documentary or yellow journalism?
Neff
Member
It represents a stunningly out-of-touch and cynical view of the industry, but the BBC is big enough to leverage some excellent material in this case.
To be fair on NES-era Nintendo, the five games a year was a pure North American creation. The main cause of the Video Game Crash of 1982 was a supersaturation of the market with hundreds of mostly low-quality games from third-parties, so Nintendo had to implement some safeguards to prevent crap like that like happening again. Even LJN, notorious for their games as they were, were a step above the crap that generally appeared on the Pre-Crash consoles.
The North American Video Game Console Market needed a company like Nintendo to tell third-parties that they weren't going to get away with the crap that they did on the 2600. Now, Nintendo could have been less restrictive with the NES, but it cannot be said that the NES wasn't haunted by the ghost of Atari in North America, and that Nintendo had to make sure something like that couldn't happen again.
I disagree. The games that do well in the west today are the typical genres of the Xbox line, namely FPS and Western JRPGs. The Original Xbox was the FPS console and had Morrowind, KotOR, and Jade Empire. Outside of GTA, which actually did jump to the Original Xbox once the exclusivity agreement with Sony was done, the popular games are games like Halo, Call of Duty, Oblivion, Skyrim, and Mass Effect. The only games other than them that are popular are games created for this generation like Assassin's Creed. In general, the games that people play on an Xbox are now more popular because most people have an Xbox. We've seen this with Nintendo franchises where a game like Mario Kart sold much better on the Wii than on the GameCube.
This also ignores the fact that the DS was a much larger hit worldwide than even the Wii was. DS did vastly better than any of the consoles did in its generation, which had really never happened before. This was also a generation where every console and handheld released outsold the NES. The fact that Dragon Quest IX was made for the DS kind of shows that most Japanese companies moved on to handhelds because those sell in Japan, and despite tepid sales in the west, the 3DS is already past the Original Xbox and GameCube in sales.
I disagree. Even if the Wii was as powerful and online savvy as the HD Twins, there was still one roadblock to third-parties getting on-board with it...
The lack of the standardized controller. We've seen publishers today complain about how they'd have to make a game for the touchscreen and that is why they are not porting their game to the Wii U, when all they'd really have to do is implement Off-TV play, or even just admit that they are focused on Next-Gen Systems.
The Wii Remote itself would be an obstacle in porting games to Wii because publishers would need to make their ports support it. Take away the Wii Remote and you take away the selling point of the Wii, and you'd really have a GameCube 2.
To add to what Celine said, Iwata already had adopted this philosophy before Gamecube launched.
http://youtu.be/jWSmFjOgyG4?t=8m15s
It's always about thrones.
Those were both the same problem.
GameCube had a bad Christmas 2002 (Iwata's first Christmas), and the board (Yamauchi) advised Iwata to kick in the afterburners with the $99 price point. It was a price the GameCube was designed to handle, and not reckless desperation. But Iwata had (and still has) a philosophical objection to price cutting, so he rejected the board's advice. Sales dropped. The board told Iwata "Our warehouses are full of GameCubes that aren't moving. Do something!" Iwata's solution: "We need to clear our warehouses of unsold machines before we make any more of them", and he shut down production. GameCube sales dropped to near-zero.
The board told Iwata "That's not working", so Iwata grudgingly moved to the $99 price point. The GameCube had two months of record sales, and then it ran out of stock. Iwata restarted production, but it took months to get back up to speed, and by the time they did, the GameCube had basically missed Christmas 2003, and all the excitement and momentum from the price drop was gone. That's Iwata's regret. The missed opportunity. It wasn't big enough for the GameCube to reach 50 million, but it was big enough for the GameCube to have done better than it did, and one good Christmas would have easily been enough for the GameCube to beat the Xbox and end the generation in second place, not last place.
Yep. Iwata's only human, he's bound to make mistakes. The important part is to learn from the past, and Iwata's shown he can do that. I was an Iwata hater in the Wii days when everyone loved him, but the more he fails, the more I seem to be becoming a fan. He's getting stronger. I can't wait to see what he learns from the WiiU.
Thank you, someone gets it! Just THIS, people! If you only read and let one paragraph regarding Reggie and NOA sink into your head this month make it this one!! He just (mostly) does what NOJ tells him. Game X isn't being localized? Likely cause NOJ said no. I like Reggie as a person, and think he is a great public speaker. I feel sorry for him with all the criticism he gets. While some decisions may be his fault, the buck largely starts and ends with NOJ. I mean, folks, look at the man the last 6 months. He looks like he's about to have either a heart attack, nervous breakdown, flip out or all 3. Wouldn't you look like that too if you have people every week saying "F you Reggie!" "F you Nintendo/NOA!!" week after week for months? And youd look like that too if people complain no matter what you do for them. He isn't perfect by any means but the man doesn't deserve this much hate, vitriol or criticism that I see Internet wide. Just read NateDrake's post really well folks because he "nailed it" as you people like to say round here.
bloodyroarxx
Member
See I agree with this but it confuses the hell out of me.
Why would Nintendo hire someone like Reggie whom has a seriously impressive resume for what Nintendo needed then always has their hand up his ass and not let him do his job. I really do feel for Reggie dude gets alot of shit for what we assume is none of his fault. Take Xenoblade for instance I still will never understand how even after the game is good to go because of the euro release it still took forever to get it out here, that just seems like some easy money just sitting there doing nothing.
There's a simple explanation. With the European translation done you've got to re-license the voice work for release in NA which means still paying all the actors on top of all the standard costs of releasing a game. Xenoblade was never going to have amazing sales. All the money gets funneled back to Japan so factor in the exchange rate (strong yen, weak dollar) and it may not have been a profitable venture at the time.
Yes, and reading it one will find out that the situation in the 80ies that led to the "gang's" landslide success isn't comparable to the 2002 and onwards situation whatsoever. Trying to base the assessment of Iwata/Reggie-performance on decisions made in the former era under different circumstances for comparison's sake is apples to oranges imho.
More precisely they are typical PC games because PC developers shifted to console gaming with Xbox advent.
The idea that a different split (let's say PS3 110M, 360 30M WW) would have change the fate of japanese console games is very unlikely.
CoD would have still be the "GTA of this generation" (actually it is far bigger).
Here a few facts:
CoD games are the best selling games on PS3 in US.
Medal of Honor for PS2 sold 2.4M in US while Call of Duty Finest Hour for PS2 sold more than 1M in US.
More in general a different split wouldn't have any effect on the ability by japanese developers to keep up with western developers production values (or the better appeal they have on western consumers).
They would have still tried to ape western aesthetic to sell more in the west.
SquareEnix (japanese side) would have still fucked up its console output.
Hell we are at a point where even those the have skills to keep up like Capcom or Konami are giving some of their treasured IP to western studios (Castlevania, Devil May Cry).
DS domination and limited size of the jap market (related to the increase in development costs) are included in my post you quoted under the voice "japanese market".
Source? or are those pulled from your fantasies?
I'm very confident Iwata doesn't have the power to overrun the board of directors (this is actually a sensible change from the Yamauchi leadership highlighted by the President itself when he stepped down).
But I agree that a more aggressive Nintendo would have improved GC market penetration (at the cost of profits).
Ego play its part but the bottom line it's always about numbers.
Iwata is as good now as he was during Wii/DS era or GC/GBA era.
Not a genius, not a fool.
Because (if we believe the "Reggie is powerless" theory) marketing is his job. His position as president is mostly honorary.
The marketing department doesn't always have a lot of say in what they're selling, they just take what they're given and try to make the best out of it.
Well.... EA wasn't supporting Nintendo back in the day, they happily chose to go with Sega and PC's/Amiga instead. But Mr Lincoln went to speak to EA and convinced them to start producing sports titles for Nintendo. Which was unheard of at the time. And EA have supported Nintendo ever since.
I have no doubt in my mind if Howard Lincoln was still around he would be aggressively pursuing publishers and finding out why they they aren't putting out any games on Wii U.
I do agree, Reggie needs Howard's aggressive side of getting games on Nintendo systems, I know he tried getting Street Fighter 4 on the Wii but considering Capcom said the Wii wasn't powerful enough and how they put SF4 on the 3DS, Reggie should of tried harder.