Howard Lincoln: Kicking Ass Before Reggie Came Along

Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku! said:
If this article is to be believed, one of the reasons Rare started shopping buyers is because Lincoln left Nintendo and they felt like they didnt have anymore "allies" there.
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Didn't Ken Lobb also leave Nintendo in 2001? He was another person who bridged the relationship between Rare and Nintendo.

Ken Lobb (left in 2001), Howard Lincoln (left 2000), and Minoru Arakawa (left 2002) must have killed Rare's relationship with Nintendo.

Looking at it from that perspective, it's no wonder Rare and Nintendo were no longer friends by 2003 when they got sold.

Every ally that Rare had at Nintendo was gone.
 
Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku! said:
If this article is to be believed, one of the reasons Rare started shopping buyers is because Lincoln left Nintendo and they felt like they didnt have anymore "allies" there.
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What I've heard is that a certain person wanted to sell all his shares when the price was still high ...

Cheerilee said:
Reggie jobbed to Iwata at E3 2005 and tried his best to give him some of that meme status, so Iwata promoted him to NOA President in 2006.
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lol
 
Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku! said:
If this article is to be believed, one of the reasons Rare started shopping buyers is because Lincoln left Nintendo and they felt like they didnt have anymore "allies" there.
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The Stampers started the "second party" thing by selling ~10% of their company to Nintendo. Every time the Stampers wanted more cash, they sold a few more percent to Nintendo.

At the time of the split, the Stampers had sold 49%. They wanted another hit of cash, but they decided they didn't want to be "minority" owners in their own company, so they decided it was time to cash out 100%.

Nintendo was comfortable with buying a few percentage points here and there with their loose change, but they didn't want to buy 51% of Rare all at once, especially not when the stock price was at it's record height.


It's possible that if the NOA old guard was still around, the Stampers might have been willing to be minority owners to them, and it's possible that the old guard might have pushed harder to buy Rare no matter the price, but it's more likely that the Rare/Nintendo ship was always going to crash.
 
From left to right, Joel Hochberg of (Rare's U.S. business partner) Coin-It, Chris Stamper, co-founder of Rare, and Nintendo's Frank Ballouz, Howard Lincoln, and Minoru Arakawa.

rare-nintendo-the-start.jpg
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I read the entire article and this pretty much put to rest whatever claim NOA never had authonomy. Current NOA holds no authonomy because Iwata made it to be like this or enforce even further how Reggie is incompetent for his job.

According to a 1997 article from Bloomberg Businessweek, “EA’s chief had long refused to create Nintendo games, saying the royalty fees and up-front costs were too high. But Lincoln went wooing, and in mid-March EA agreed to produce six N64 sports titles by Christmas, 1998. What changed? Nintendo was anxious enough to make financial concessions, and the N64 is gaining momentum. “The economics now work,” says Probst. Lincoln has been trying to work similar magic elsewhere and says that by year end, the N64 will have 40 games.”
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This is what made me respect Howard Lincoln even further. Nintendo needs someone like him now. He would never sit and don't care about what third-parties say about Nintendo consoles nowdays and would actually convince them to support it. He could make Epic Games, Rockstar, EA, Bethesda, pretty much all third-parties which openly criticized Nintendo and said they wouldn't support it, to change their minds and bring their games.
 
TreasureHunterG said:
I read the entire article and this pretty much put to rest whatever claim NOA never had authonomy. Current NOA holds no authonomy because Iwata made it to be like this or enforce even further how Reggie is incompetent for his job.
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That article has a ton of conjecture in it, especially in that regard.
 
Damn. Sounds like he saved the N64 from being a complete disaster. It also sounded like the N64 would have been CD based if it was up to him.
 
Remember, Minoru Arakawa was also the one who:


-Created NST with Claude Comair's help

-Conviced Claude Comair to have DigiPen on Nintendo's campus, and provided DigiPen with the financial support to fully launch some of their degree programs. Arakawa-san wanted an ability to have Nintendo get first dibs at fresh, dynamic talent coming out of DigiPen to build an even stronger western development focus.


Arakawa = Boss. The shit. The man. etc etc.
 
Howard has nothing to do with the the Mariner's lack of success. Seattle's population does little to motivate any local baseball team. Went there some months ago -- all they care about is coffee and lesbian grunge music.

Edit: not that I don't like lesbian grunge music. I do. But variety is the spice of life.
 
GloveSlap said:
Damn. Sounds like he saved the N64 from being a complete disaster. It also sounded like the N64 would have been CD based if it was up to him.
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I think he would have made N64 CD based if it were up to him.

Lincoln was the guy who came out and revealed Nintendo had teamed up with Phillips (Sony betrayal).

Check this interview:

http://www.gamezero.com/team-0/articles/interviews/howard_lincoln/

FM: Are there any other CD facts that are new?
Lincoln: Yes. We are actually developing two separate CD units. Our second unit is planned for multi-media use. It is not a game. It will utilize Nintendo characters [Mario, Link, etc.] in its environment. Comic books and other things should be expected.


FM: What game titles will be released with the unit?
Lincoln: We began development in January of '92 on games for the system, and we plan on Falcon 3.0 and 7th Guest to debut with the system. We are trying to push CD to its limit. Unlike the competitions new unit [Sega] the games on our CD will be well beyond the limits of EPROM [cartridge] based games.

FM: Other than the XA technology, what puts your CD unit on top by a hardware standpoint?
Lincoln: Several things... Our CD contains a real time graphics co-processor, 8M RAM (main), 1M RAM (secondary), 150Kb per second data transfer, and a .75 second average access time.

FM: Explain how this improves games.
Lincoln: With increased RAM, we can manipulate more backgrounds and characters. With fast processors, slowdown will be unheard of, and low access time means no pauses between levels like our competitors. And, with 540MB, memory will not likely be a problem.
 
NintendoGal said:
That article has a ton of conjecture in it, especially in that regard.
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Uh?

Hiroshi Yamauchi gave Minoru Arakawa and Howard Lincoln freedom to pursue alliances with studios like Rareware, Retro Studios, Silicon Knights, and Left Field. They also created studios like NST. Lincoln and Arakawa were even pulling off getting exclusive deals on the Turok trilogy and a Star Wars/LucasArts deal with games like Shadows of the Empire, Episode 1 Racer (limited exclusivity), Battle for Naboo, and the Rogue Squadron games.
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Unless you have evidence which indicates it wasn't Lincoln's actions responsible for all this western support, I can't see this as conjecture.
 
Oddduck said:
I think he would have made N64 CD based if it were up to him.

Lincoln was the guy who came out and revealed Nintendo had teamed up with Phillips (Sony betrayal).

Check this interview:

http://www.gamezero.com/team-0/articles/interviews/howard_lincoln/

FM: Are there any other CD facts that are new?
Lincoln: Yes. We are actually developing two separate CD units. Our second unit is planned for multi-media use. It is not a game. It will utilize Nintendo characters [Mario, Link, etc.] in its environment. Comic books and other things should be expected.


FM: What game titles will be released with the unit?
Lincoln: We began development in January of '92 on games for the system, and we plan on Falcon 3.0 and 7th Guest to debut with the system. We are trying to push CD to its limit. Unlike the competitions new unit [Sega] the games on our CD will be well beyond the limits of EPROM [cartridge] based games.

FM: Other than the XA technology, what puts your CD unit on top by a hardware standpoint?
Lincoln: Several things... Our CD contains a real time graphics co-processor, 8M RAM (main), 1M RAM (secondary), 150Kb per second data transfer, and a .75 second average access time.

FM: Explain how this improves games.
Lincoln: With increased RAM, we can manipulate more backgrounds and characters. With fast processors, slowdown will be unheard of, and low access time means no pauses between levels like our competitors. And, with 540MB, memory will not likely be a problem.
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From what I saw they both did each other bad, Sony wanting to get all the profit with the games made on the SNES PlayStation and Nintendo not talking to them first and telling them they aren't doing the deal with Sony in front of so many people embarrassing Sony.

Play Value have good videos that talk about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk-rxAArGd0
 
Meelow said:
It would of been amazing if the N64 was CD based.
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Hell no. I hated CD based systems back then. It just wasn't that mature back then. The load times were horrible and the reliabilty was too.

The only pro would have been developer support. But a lot of games that made the N64 a great system wouldn't have been possible with cd's. And I'm glad my N64 still works after all these years. While I cross my fingers every time I start up a disk based system built in the 90's.

OOT, MM, Mario 64, etc. Would have been horrible on a disk based system.
 
Oddduck said:
Didn't Ken Lobb also leave Nintendo in 2001? He was another person who bridged the relationship between Rare and Nintendo.

Ken Lobb (left in 2001), Howard Lincoln (left 2000), and Minoru Arakawa (left 2002) must have killed Rare's relationship with Nintendo.

Looking at it from that perspective, it's no wonder Rare and Nintendo were no longer friends by 2003 when they got sold.

Every ally that Rare had at Nintendo was gone.
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Actually, for such a split, the split up between Nintendo and Rare was actually very amicable. Nintendo gave up the ownership of all of Rare's franchises, while Rare gave up their claims on Donkey Kong and Starfox. GoldenEye 64's specific circumstance was that it was a licensed game so both Nintendo and Rare likely assumed that they wouldn't be able to do anything with it.

In addition, the Stampers were faced with the need for money and only owning 51% of Rare, just enough to make them the current majority owner, but not enough to sell shares to Nintendo or anyone else really, without becoming a minority owner unless all 51% was bought. It seemed like Microsoft was really the only one willing to take that kind of deal. And it made sense for Microsoft to take a deal like that with money being no object to them. Microsoft was looking to get into the video game industry and had made motions to pick up both Sega and Nintendo as exclusives for their system. They didn't get either, but hey, the Stampers were wanting to sell their 51% of Rare and Rare was one of Nintendo's largest second-party developers at the time.
 
TedNindo said:
The for their time huge game worlds would feel far less seemless. And that's exactly one of the strenghts the N64 had.
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I suppose so. It would gain other advantages if it were on CD though. Zelda games could have actually had a fully orchestrated soundtrack and dialogue and we wouldnt be still arguing about it in 2013 :).

The N64 was essentially designed around Mario 64 tho. The cart format, controller, etc were all chosen because they'd make the best Mario game possible. It worked, but at the expense of tons of other games.
 
TreasureHunterG said:
Uh?

Unless you have evidence which indicates it wasn't Lincoln's actions responsible for all this western support, I can't see this as conjecture.
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There's a bit of a question as to whether or not NOA is truly as "powerless" these days as they're often described.


EA, for example, got their start in the industry by marching up to NOA and asking for a break on the royalties. Nintendo said no. So EA said "bye" and went to Sega, who were willing to give them a break on the royalties. As a result, EA quickly became one of the most profitable companies in the industry, and the Sega Genesis became the king of sports games.

Howard Lincoln "recognized" that Nintendo was lacking sports games, so he went looking for EA and offered them a break on royalties. So the question is, was Howard just fixing his own mistake? Or did he need Yamauchi's approval for that kind of deal?


And then there's also a question about whether or not Reggie is making the rounds and talking deals with developers just like Howard was, but maybe he just doesn't have anything to show for it? Just because Western devs didn't want to make Wii games, doesn't mean Reggie isn't trying, or that he isn't allowed to try.

Personally, I am of the opinion that Iwata takes a much more hands-on approach to North America than Yamauchi did, and that the old guard of NOA was initially uncomfortable with the changes that came with Iwata, and that Reggie (being a noob himself) saw no problem taking orders from the "new boss", Iwata was just "the boss" to him, and that lack of resistance is a big part of why Reggie gained favor with Iwata. That set the new dynamic of Iwata giving orders, and Reggie following them.
 
Cheerilee said:
Personally, I am of the opinion that Iwata takes a much more hands-on approach to North America than Yamauchi did, and that the old guard of NOA was initially uncomfortable with the changes that came with Iwata, and that Reggie (being a noob himself) saw no problem taking orders from the "new boss", Iwata was just "the boss" to him, and that lack of resistance is a big part of why Reggie gained favor with Iwata. That set the new dynamic of Iwata giving orders, and Reggie following them.
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Correct me if I'm wrong but...Yamanuchi didn't even play video games did he? I recall reading that he used to have people play them for him while he watched when he wanted to see a new game. That probably explains why he was more hands off on the recruiting of creative talent.
 
Gonzo The Great said:
Nintendo's decision to stick with cartridges single-handedly tarnished their relationship with third parties forever. Biggest mistake they've ever made as a company as far as I'm concerned.
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I don't think the N64's carts were a "forever" kind of mistake. Financially-speaking, they were the "safe" way to fail. Others have lost much more by failing in a more progressive way.

And the GameCube was the first step in a plan to rebuild those relationships, but that plan was abandoned when Iwata came in and changed the company's course, which converted the GameCube into a second failure instead of a promising sign of things to come. And Iwata's new direction was not interested in repairing the damage they were carrying since the N64.

If the Wii was a GameCube 2 instead of a Wii, I believe Nintendo's third party problems would be pretty much a thing of the past by now (possibly replaced by new problems).

Basically, I think the third party situation isn't the result of a single problem, but a constant stacking of problems, company-wide, over time.

Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku! said:
Correct me if I'm wrong but...Yamanuchi didn't even play video games did he? I recall reading that he used to have people play them for him while he watched when he wanted to see a new game. That probably explains why he was more hands off on the recruiting of creative talent.
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He may have thrown his NES controller at the TV screen when his servants tried to get him to try playing it, but he was an immense "people person". He could tell if you're good at what you do by asking you if you're good at what you do, while he stares into your soul to see if you're telling the truth.
 
NoA needs to be given new management and given control of what to do. Iwata has the leash on way too tight, and it's pretty obvious that NoA has gone to shit.
 
Gonzo The Great said:
Nintendo's decision to stick with cartridges single-handedly tarnished their relationship with third parties forever. Biggest mistake they've ever made as a company as far as I'm concerned.
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Absolutely. But they couldn't wean themselves off that cartridge-making lucre.
 
Yaceka said:
NoA needs to be given new management and given control of what to do. Iwata has the leash on way too tight, and it's pretty obvious that NoA has gone to shit.
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That's pretty much how Japanese companies are run. Look at the stories of the hell Sega USA's management went through in trying to convince SoJ to let Sonic be the Genesis pack-in instead of Altered Beast.
 
cj_iwakura said:
That's pretty much how Japanese companies are run. Look at the stories of the hell Sega USA's management went through in trying to convince SoJ to let Sonic be the Genesis pack-in instead of Altered Beast.
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I'm just saying it's a shitty way to go about things. Sony has a much better system tbh. SCEA is shitty a lot of the time, but it's much better than NoA in terms of how much control they have. Even when the JP studios aren't producing anything SCEA makes it's own titles. That's exactly what NoA should be doing during these continuous game droughts. Plus they really need to do earlier localizations on games. The 3DS ended up with a shitty holiday season because of no big localized games.
 
Cheerilee said:
I don't think the N64's carts were a "forever" kind of mistake. Financially-speaking, they were the "safe" way to fail. Others have lost much more by failing in a more progressive way.

And the GameCube was the first step in a plan to rebuild those relationships, but that plan was abandoned when Iwata came in and changed the company's course, which converted the GameCube into a second failure instead of a promising sign of things to come. And Iwata's new direction was not interested in repairing the damage they were carrying since the N64.

If the Wii was a GameCube 2 instead of a Wii, I believe Nintendo's third party problems would be pretty much a thing of the past by now (possibly replaced by new problems).

Basically, I think the third party situation isn't the result of a single problem, but a constant stacking of problems, company-wide, over time.
Click to expand...

If that's all true Iwata needs to be talked to or they need to make a team that fixes third party support, getting third party support is very important and Nintendo really has to stop lagging on this, it's been too long now that Nintendo's been having third party problems (console wise) and I think those problems need to end with Wii U (if not now than in the future of this generation).

Or Nintendo has to be a global company and stop being very Japanese centric and get both sides and not just focus on 1 side, I actually think Sony making the PS4 Western centric could affect Japanese support in a way, not a huge way but a way from what those Japanese companies said about the PS4 in that topic yesterday.

Just like how Nintendo making the Wii U Japanese centric can (showing) affect them with Western support.
 
Cheerilee said:
Howard Lincoln "recognized" that Nintendo was lacking sports games, so he went looking for EA and offered them a break on royalties. So the question is, was Howard just fixing his own mistake? Or did he need Yamauchi's approval for that kind of deal?
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Aware of Yamauchi's business practices, probably the second. Makes much more sense.

Just because Western devs didn't want to make Wii games, doesn't mean Reggie isn't trying, or that he isn't allowed to try.
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Reggie already demonstrated sheer ignorance about gaming business so many times, I don't believe he's "a puppet" like many suggests he is. NoA refused to publish many first and second-party Nintendo games, while NoE did brought them. There's no valid argument to believe it was an order from NCL to ignore the NA market and bring it to EU, where Nintendo was never that big, and furthermore no evidence which proves Reggie holds no authonomy, so it's very likely the decision to not bring these games for NA came from him.

If he don't even try to bring Nintendo's own games, what makes you believe he would care about third-parties?

Personally, I am of the opinion that Iwata takes a much more hands-on approach to North America than Yamauchi did, and that the old guard of NOA was initially uncomfortable with the changes that came with Iwata, and that Reggie (being a noob himself) saw no problem taking orders from the "new boss", Iwata was just "the boss" to him, and that lack of resistance is a big part of why Reggie gained favor with Iwata. That set the new dynamic of Iwata giving orders, and Reggie following them.
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Iwata is totally out of touch with the western market and is very japanese centric. Although Nintendo improved it's ties with japanese third-parties, on the other hand, became irrelevant in the west outside of Nintendo's own games. This is a world where the gaming industry is now more and more western centric. Iwata did a wrong gamble and Nintendo is now struggling for western support because of his wrong decision.
 
TreasureHunterG said:
Iwata is totally out of touch with the western market and is very japanese centric. Although Nintendo improved it's ties with japanese third-parties, on the other hand, became irrelevant in the west outside of Nintendo's own games. This is a world where the gaming industry is now more and more western centric. Iwata did a wrong gamble and Nintendo is now struggling for western support because of his wrong decision.
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I don't think western support was really all that important until Sony made all their mistakes with the PS3. Last generation, the PS2 won by a landslide, yes, but the original Xbox only sold 2 million more than the GameCube. It could be said that Xbox 360 only did as well as it did because you could get one at the typical console price of $300 as opposed to PS3's lowest price of $500, which was $200 more. And even then Microsoft only ends up selling around the same level as the other console that is not in first place. Who's to say that Microsoft won't have their misstep leading to Japanese developers rising in importance again?
 
ii Stryker said:
Nintendo had only one competitor during Lincoln's tenure.

Comparing him to Reggie is simply just dumb.
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Uhhh....

SNES vs Genesis vs Neo Geo vs Turbo Graphx?

Nintendo 64 vs PlayStation vs Sega Saturn vs Atari Jaguar vs 3DO? (N64 launched after PS1/Saturn/other consoles). There were even things like 32X and Sega CD coming out at the time as well. There was a time when analysts bashed N64 because they said it was coming too late and PS1/Saturn would gobble up all of the marketshare before N64 launched.

I get what you're saying (it came down to two major competitors each time) but *technically* its not true.
 
Nintendo had to focus on Japan in the last gen because the population as a whole was getting older and wasn't paying attention to videogames. Touch Generations was one response to this, and their traditional software is what they're trying to get everyone to buy now.

Even if the majority of their income is from western gamers, Japan is Nintendo's foundation and they have to protect it. I don't know if the same can be said even for Sony.
 
From the article:

So what happens after they retire? Everything that Arakawa and Lincoln accomplished between the years of 1994 through 2000 went down the toilet after new management takes control of NCL and NOA.
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I disagree with the writer's assessment. In fact I'd say that Lincoln's hardball style of dealing with other companies is what led to Nintendo's withering relationship with third parties.
 
Lincoln seemed to understand what Nintendo needed way more than anyone since. So many of the partnerships he made lead to some of the best games on the systems. Reggie just seems like he's in it for the PR and paychecks, he doesn't seem like he cares about Nintendo's success.

Old Nintendo may have been pretty ruthless but most of the time they delivered a quality product.

Edit:

TedNindo said:
Hell no. I hated CD based systems back then. It just wasn't that mature back then. The load times were horrible and the reliabilty was too.
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I was so happy with carts. Not only for load times but I hated FMV's with a passion.
 
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