Iwata's Broken Promises (NotEnoughShaders article)

I'm thrilled to see someone finally researched and presented the quotes to remind everyone of Nintendo's statements over the years. I recall them saying these same things time and time again and it always irritated me that almost no one ever mentioned this wasn't the first time we've heard this story. I never had the patience to go back and research and find them all.
 
cyberheater said:
After all the articles I've read and the hyperbolic PR from Nintendo. I was led to believe there would be a solid stream of good quality 1st and 3rd party games.

A couple of months later. All I get is an apology from Iwata for the lack of titles on WiiU. So yeah, they are totally to blame.
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Eh, I don't know. Were you at least satisfied by the launch line up for a while? I don't see why you'd buy a console for future releases that you knew nothing about, considering how there weren't even names or anything by the time of the system's launch.

I'm a Nintendo fan who bought the GC and Wii right after their launches, but it's because they had games I wanted to play and knew they'd last for a while (Smash Bros Melee for the GC, Twilight Princess for the Wii). The Wii U had nothing comparable for the near future, so I still haven't gotten one yet.


Had Iwata and Miyamoto not done a complete 180 in console philosophy between GCN and Wii, Nintendo would likely not be in business anymore. No way a GameCube successor with HD graphics and dual analog controller would have sold more than GameCube.
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I'm not sure. It certainly wouldn't have reached Wii numbers, but the loss of power that Sony went through could have helped an HD Nintendo console a lot, especially in the beginning of the generation when tons of things went multiplatform rather than continuing Sony only due to the PS3's slow start. An HD Nintendo console there could have benefited a lot from that. Of course, that's all in hindsight, considering how they likely didn't know Sony's launch plans exactly when they were making the Wii.

Iwata might have turned things around with the Wii anyway, as far as sales go, but now he has damaged Nintendo's image among part of its core audience and lost all the extra audience the Wii had obtained. He has launched a system that's performing worse than the GameCube.

And this only happened because he bet on a strategy that was a dead end. Even in a best case scenario, the Wii U would sell just as much as the Wii. If everything worked like they expected, and the Gamepad exploded, it'd be just an exact repeat of the Wii's trajectory, with no chance for growth (initial support with last gen ports, support drops when current gen becomes strong, lack of titles hurt the console's market outside of a few specific segments). The Wii did well, but I don't think they should have set themselves on a course with no growth opportunities.
 
Shiggy said:
Last year's E3 should have made it evident that these software releases were not coming. The months following E3 should have made that even clearer. And since launch it's just plain obvious that Wii U gamers have to solely rely on 1st party releases, which may arrive one day.
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That's simply not true.

I was hoping to be playing Rayman right now. An exclusive game for WiiU that has now been pushed back due to the fact that the WiiU isn't selling because Nintendo launched with the worse launch line up I can ever remember.

And we've all heard plenty of tales of devs abandoning development on WiiU because no one is interested in it. Who's fault is that. Mugs like me for supporting the platform or Nintendo for not ensuring the launch was the success it should have been?
 
SMD said:
It's the complete opposite with the 360 and PS3, at the time you get games that you think "oh my God this is amazing" but then in hindsight you think 'eh'. I'm horribly generalising here but I mean games like Uncharted, God of War, Gears of War, games that were hugely popular at launch and still have devoted followings but they don't feel as timeless. I don't mean they're terrible games, I've got them and enjoyed them to varying degrees but I can stick on Super Mario World, 64, Galaxy right now and be just as enamoured as when I played them.
PS1 and PS2 games struggle to retain that timelessness and even when you get HD ports, like God of War 1 and 2, while fun they show the limitations..
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Mario games are timeless. Not only when compared to Microsoft's and Sony's games, but even Nintendo's other ips. Not Zelda, not Metroid, not anything can stand the test of time like Mario.

EDIT: As for the comment that games like Tomb Raider and Bioshock will be forgotten while Lego City Stories and Monster Hunter will have "legs", I think it's nonsense. Put Monster Hunter and Lego City Stories on a console like Xbox or PS3 where there's constantly an influx of new titles every month, and they to will be drownd out. The only reason they can stand out on a Nintendo console is due to the lack of competition. It has nothing to do with the individual quality of those titles as you seem to be implying.
 
NeonZ said:
Eh, I don't know. Were you at least satisfied by the launch line up for a while? I don't see why you'd buy a console for future releases that you knew nothing about, considering how there weren't even names or anything by the time of the system's launch.

I'm a Nintendo fan who bought the GC and Wii right after their launches, but it's because they had games I wanted to play and knew they'd last for a while (Smash Bros Melee for the GC, Twilight Princess for the Wii). The Wii U had nothing comparable for the near future, so I still haven't gotten one yet.




I'm not sure. It certainly wouldn't have reached Wii numbers, but the loss of power that Sony went through could have help an HD Nintendo console a lot, especially in the beginning of the generation when tons of things went multiplatform rather than continuing Sony only due to the PS3's slow start. An HD Nintendo console there could have benefited a lot from that.

Iwata might have turned things around with the Wii anyway, as far as sales go, but now he has damaged Nintendo's image among part of its core audience and lost all the extra audience the Wii had obtained. He has launched a system that's performing worse than the GameCube now.
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During gamecube's life, it was considered the weak low spec console compared to the others, it was the toy, an HD nintendo console would of horribly lost out to the insane jump microsoft and sony went through, Microsoft had future tech in it's GPU and both went with 512MB of ram when that was a huge increase in total ram size.

What Nintendo should of done in hindsight was make a console that was clearly weaker than 360/ps3 sold it at $249.99 (taking at most a small loss) but would use modern GPU tech for the time and possibly a dual core version of the Wii's processor, of course out putting 720p. This would of allowed 3rd parties to make all those AAA games on Wii even though they would look inferior they would still be somewhat comparable. This is what they are doing with the Wii U btw, but the real problem with the Wii U is that it won't catch fire like the Wii and because of the Wii, western devs don't have a poor relationship with nintendo, they have none at all.
 
NeonZ said:
I'm not sure. It certainly wouldn't have reached Wii numbers, but the loss of power that Sony went through could have help an HD Nintendo console a lot, especially in the beginning of the generation when tons of things went multiplatform rather than continuing Sony only due to the PS3's slow start. An HD Nintendo console there could have benefited a lot from that.

Iwata might have turned things around with the Wii anyway, as far as sales go, but now he has damaged Nintendo's image among part of its core audience and lost all the extra audience the Wii had obtained. He has launched a system that's performing worse than the GameCube.
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That's very much a highsight being 20/20 thing though, Nintendo didn't know Sony was going to completely crap themselves at the beginning of the generation.

I'd also argue that a lack of system features would have significantly hampered a GCN2, assuming it's online and non-gaming features would be on par with the Wii. And there's little reason to assume otherwise, if you're going to get into even further into that sort of revisionist history you might as well say Nintendo could have just catered to the Rare FPS crowd with the Gamecube from day 1 and Microsoft may have never gained any footing at all.

I think Iwata was right that Nintendo had to do something different, and the Wii was a good response, but everything that came after that (including many decisions made during that generation) is pretty questionable
 
AOC83 said:
It´s normal for a system that is released years earlier to have worse hardware in some departments.

If Nintendo released later/at the same time they had always better or at least comparable hardware.
See SNES > Mega Drive, N64 > Playstation,Saturn, XBox > Gamecube > PS2, Dreamcast
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The SNES was severely outclassed in CPU terms while having only double the memory of the Genesis, which launched two years earlier. The N64, also two years late, had an impressive CPU and GPU but was memory-starved (only 33% more than PS before the expansion pack, in an odd arrangement that was effectively all VRAM and no work RAM) and fatally lacking in mass storage.
 
I still don't understand why given the lengthy development time of WiiU why Nintendo couldn't have released a 3D Mario at launch.
They would have had at least 2 years to work on it. What have they been doing with their time.
 
I'd also argue that a lack of system features would have significantly hampered a GCN2, assuming it's online and non-gaming features would be on par with the Wii.
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That'd also mean smaller OS resources though, which would likely mean smaller costs for the hardware to perform similarly to the other ones.

Anyway, I don't think the lack of online features would have crippled the console much last gen, Mario Kart Wii managed to have a strong online community in spite of the lack of features. They just needed it to be functional, something that obviously hit some of their efforts (Brawl).


I still don't understand why given the lengthy development time of WiiU why Nintendo couldn't have released a 3D Mario at launch.
They would have had at least 2 years to work on it. What have they been doing with their time.
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Because they thought that New Super Mario Bros U would have stronger selling power than any 3d Mario game. 2d Mario sells better than 3d Mario, and they were convinced that the aesthetic similarities and brand unity of the New Super Mario Bros games were a strong part of their selling power. In the end, that all completely backfired on them. It's not even the first time they made such a mistake (see Animal Crossing Wii).
 
New consoles always have a drought. I remember plenty of time I was playing Geometry Wars on the 360 just waiting for some more things to show up. Oblivion was the first big release after launch and that was a little ways away.
 
Screamapillar said:
I mean, it's difficult to take this article with more than a grain of salt when the only opinions she puts into it from other people are from others who agree with the premise she's attempting to come across with..
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I don't know, the premise is the promises Iwata has made that he has not fulfilled and the contention that these failures aren't given the attention they deserve as Iwata is an extremely likeable individual. It's a solid foundation as Iwata HAS made a lot of promises that went unfulfilled.

I have my ideas about why that is but the only one I can't figure out is the first party software droughts. What is going on in there?
 
Now that I've finally read the article all the way through, I have to agree with the people who called this article Ether.

The part about Nintendo's market cap value going from 85 billion to less than GameCube levels of market cap value is goddamn.
 
cyberheater said:
I still don't understand why given the lengthy development time of WiiU why Nintendo couldn't have released a 3D Mario at launch.
They would have had at least 2 years to work on it. What have they been doing with their time.
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Well, we don't know the specifics of what EAD Tokyo's timeline was/is for that game. They also had to crank out 3D Land in less than a year between the end of 2010 and the end of 2011, while at the same time no doubt they've been pressured from NCL to also get a 3D Mario for Wii U done as soon as possible. I assume that given that 3D Land didn't come out until November 2011 that the plan all along was for their 3D Mario to not be released until this holiday. I mean, think of it this way: NSMB U was coming out at Wii U launch. It was ready and done. It wouldn't make much sense to release two home console Mario's in the same year.
 
VGChampion said:
New consoles always have a drought. I remember plenty of time I was playing Geometry Wars on the 360 just waiting for some more things to show up. Oblivion was the first big release after launch and that was a little ways away.
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What are you talking about. The Xbox 360 had plenty of games to play at launch.

Amped 3
Call of Duty 2
Condemned: Criminal Origins
Every Party
FIFA 06:
Gun
Kameo: Elements of Power
Madden NFL 06
NBA 2K6
NBA Live 06
Need for Speed: Most Wanted
NHL 2K6
Perfect Dark Zero
Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie
Project Gotham Racing 3
Quake 4
Ridge Racer 6
Tetris: The Grandmaster ACE
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06
Tony Hawk's American Wasteland

And they were available day one. Not some mythical launch window.
 
Celine said:
0jESHVH.png

Graph by lascar.
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Not bad in this day and age for a handheld.
 
Shikamaru Ninja said:
Ok. According to who? And what Mario? All of them?
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According to me. I can still go back to the original SMB, and have just as much fun today as I did in 1985. It's simple pick up and play, and immediately gratifying. In fact the only other NES title I'd consider timeless is Punchout.

Metroid and Zelda aren't. They've aged and require a time investment to get any enjoyment.
 
Screamapillar said:
Well, we don't know the specifics of what EAD Tokyo's timeline was/is for that game. They also had to crank out 3D Land in less than a year between the end of 2010 and the end of 2011, while at the same time no doubt they've been pressured from NCL to also get a 3D Mario for Wii U done as soon as possible. I assume that given that 3D Land didn't come out until November 2011 that the plan all along was for their 3D Mario to not be released until this holiday. I mean, think of it this way: NSMB U was coming out at Wii U launch. It was ready and done. It wouldn't make much sense to release two home console Mario's in the same year.
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So Nintendo only has one dev team. If they are working on 3DS game, they can't work on WiiU games. Is that it.
 
VGChampion said:
New consoles always have a drought. I remember plenty of time I was playing Geometry Wars on the 360 just waiting for some more things to show up. Oblivion was the first big release after launch and that was a little ways away.
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Oblivion and Dead or Alive 4 were out in January, with Fight Night Round 3 appearing in February, and I believe GRAW somewhere in that timeframe as well.

How many new U games were out by February?
 
cyberheater said:
So Nintendo only has one dev team. If they are working on 3DS game, they can't work on WiiU games. Is that it.
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I'm just talking about EAD Tokyo. It's the team responsible for 3D Mario games. EAD does the side-scrollers. They've never made a handheld game before, they've only ever done Galaxy 1 and 2. So I was saying their resources were split from having to make 3D Land as well as work on this new 3D Mario for Wii U. I'm sure they're stretched pretty thin these days. I'd be shocked if they weren't also planning on a 3D Land sequel as well.
 
Screamapillar said:
I'm just talking about EAD Tokyo. It's the team responsible for 3D Mario games. EAD does the side-scrollers. They've never made a handheld game before, they've only ever done Galaxy 1 and 2. So I was saying their resources were split from having to make 3D Land as well as work on this new 3D Mario for Wii U. I'm sure they're stretched pretty thin these days. I'd be shocked if they weren't also planning on a 3D Land sequel as well.
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I understand what you're saying but giving how important a good quality launch title was for WiiU. Why didn't Nintendo assemble a top notch team of internal developers and make it happen rather then having to schedule the work with a internal dev team that is already busy.

Smacks of mis-management to me.
 
Mandoric said:
I'm not dogging on it at all. Just pointing out that conservative hardware is embedded deeply in Nintendo's engineering DNA and has often succeeded before--so calling it an Iwata idea or pointing to it as Nintendo's current problem with no further explanation is flawed.
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I hear you on that - I think it's very fair to say that Nintendo was conservative when it designed its handhelds. But as I was trying to draw out, there were very good reasons for making "underpowered" handhelds - they were working with the limits of battery technology, and what they could fit into an affordable package.

I don't think the design philosophy carries over to the console side (indeed, it's only just now that Nintendo is even consolidating the teams that design handhelds and consoles - so it wasn't just different philosophies, it was entirely different teams making the GBA as opposed to say, the Gamecube). Through the PS2 generation, Nintendo created home consoles that made equivalent or better visuals than the market leader (wording chosen carefully). For the Wii, they were the opposite of conservative - in a radical move, they abandoned the hardware power race, to go after the Wii model. The blue ocean doesn't care about graphics, in short. As the article points out, Nintendo itself readily agreed this model had shortcomings - the graphic showcase games that are popular in the West just weren't coming to their system. They promised to change this. They didn't.

To bring it back to the Gameboy, the Gameboy was severely hampered in some areas, but that was purposeful - Nintendo kept the marketplace concerns of price and battery power above all else. the Wii U was also designed within limits, but the limits were NOTHING THE MARKETPLACE CARES ABOUT. They spent a bunch of money making a tablet controller and an energy efficient console, that cost more than any previous Nintendo console. They screwed up. Nintendo is very, very inward focused, and that means Japan focused. They just don't care what their gigantic market (the majority of which is in Europe and North America) wants. And they're getting punished for it.
 
cyberheater said:
I understand what you're saying but giving how important a good quality launch title was for WiiU. Why didn't Nintendo assemble a top notch team of internal developers and make it happen rather then having to schedule the work with a internal dev team that is already busy.

Smacks of mis-management to me.
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You talk about mismanagement but Nintendo work this way since... the beginning? And EAD Tokyo is still in progress. You don't just throw more people in a building and they deliver within a year.
 
cyberheater said:
I understand what you're saying but giving how important a good quality launch title was for WiiU. Why didn't Nintendo assemble a top notch team of internal developers and make it happen rather then having to schedule the work with a internal dev team that is already busy.

Smacks of mis-management to me.
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A few issues at NCL have become evident over the past 3 years: Lack of market research, mismanagement, and hubris. People always say that they want developers in management positions; this is what you get as a result.
 
cyberheater said:
I understand what you're saying but giving how important a good quality launch title was for WiiU. Why didn't Nintendo assemble a top notch team of internal developers and make it happen rather then having to schedule the work with a internal dev team that is already busy.

Smacks of mis-management to me.
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I mean I think you kind of answer your own question lol. I think Nintendo thought that NSMB U would serve as a fine launch game and that people would be happy with it. I don't think it occured to them that most people who wanted a Wii U at launch were yawning over yet another NSMB game.
 
Screamapillar said:
I'm just talking about EAD Tokyo. It's the team responsible for 3D Mario games. EAD does the side-scrollers. They've never made a handheld game before, they've only ever done Galaxy 1 and 2. So I was saying their resources were split from having to make 3D Land as well as work on this new 3D Mario for Wii U. I'm sure they're stretched pretty thin these days. I'd be shocked if they weren't also planning on a 3D Land sequel as well.
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What do you mean they never made a hand held game before? They made two DSiWare games and 3D Land. None of us know exactly how many people work there, but Tokyo has the largest population and largest amount of university graduates. In theory, EAD Tokyo should be growing much faster than EAD Kyoto ever could. Of course that is just blind theory, since there is no exact confirmation of staff number. But they do have two main production units, each capable handling 2 games each provided they have a green light on the actual projects.
 
Shiggy said:
A few issues at NCL have become evident over the past 3 years: Lack of market research, mismanagement, and hubris. People always say that they want developers in management positions; this is what you get as a result.
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Yes. Let the good developers develop and get allow those that are trained managers to manage. I've seen this a lot of times in companies I've worked in. Allowing engineers into management positions because it's the only career path. And it's almost always a disaster.

Screamapillar said:
I mean I think you kind of answer your own question lol. I think Nintendo thought that NSMB U would serve as a fine launch game and that people would be happy with it. I don't think it occured to them that most people who wanted a Wii U at launch were yawning over yet another NSMB game.
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Yes. We played the Wii version of NSMB to death. We still got the WiiU version and returned it within days. I know some would disagree but they were basically the same game.
 
BruiserBear said:
I'm thrilled to see someone finally researched and presented the quotes to remind everyone of Nintendo's statements over the years. I recall them saying these same things time and time again and it always irritated me that almost no one ever mentioned this wasn't the first time we've heard this story. I never had the patience to go back and research and find them all.
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Exactly what I was thinking.

You can only say you learned from your mistakes so many times. My opinion is Iwata and Reggie have passed that point now.
 
Hoodbury said:
Exactly what I was thinking.

You can only say you learned from your mistakes so many times. My opinion is Iwata and Reggie have passed that point now.
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I have to agree with that. E3 is going to be very interesting. I hoping for a big shake up.
 
Hoodbury said:
Exactly what I was thinking.

You can only say you learned from your mistakes so many times. My opinion is Iwata and Reggie have passed that point now.
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I'd also agree with the article that Reggie doesn't have the power to do shit. The article paints him as basically a middle manager with no resources and an out of touch demanding boss and I have a hard time disagreeing with that portrayal.
 
cyberheater said:
I have to agree with that. E3 is going to be very interesting. I hoping for a big shake up.
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i hope you're right. unless you're *only* interested in graphics improvements or off-screen console play, this gen isn't making much of a compelling case yet (i suppose the "show you my mad skillz" folk are keen on ps4 share).

this article has been in the making for ages: Iwata talks like he gets it, but events seem to suggest he's either unwilling or unable to right the wrongs he sees.
 
birdchili said:
i hope you're right. unless you're *only* interested in graphics improvements or off-screen console play, this gen isn't making much of a compelling case yet (i suppose the "show you my mad skillz" folk are keen on ps4 share).

this article has been in the making for ages: Iwata talks like he gets it, but events seem to suggest he's either unwilling or unable to right the wrongs he sees.
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Unable. That's the key word there. The company is so entrenched in it's hierarchical management structure that there's nothing he can do.
 
macuser1of5 said:
Work with me here for a second.... It can display content on the screen, has touch functionality, and can be run off of a battery... This is not a tablet in function?
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Saying that is similar to looking at a horse and saying "It has eyes, a nose, ears, a mouth, 4 limbs, it breaths and blood runs through its veins... This is not how a human functions?"

By your definition, the DS would be tablet. Heck, by your definition, a touch screen monitor would be a tablet.

evilromero said:
Again, this thread is full of surprises. Two of the most revered games in history are not comparable to Mario?
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Mario isn't a game. He's a game character. Till this day, there has never been a game simply named "Mario". At least not by Nintendo.

The only characters comparable to Mario that aren't made by Nintendo are Sonic the Hedgehog and the Tetris L block.
 
krizzx said:
Saying that is similar to looking at a horse and saying "It has eyes, a nose, ears, a mouth, 4 limbs, it breaths and blood runs through its veins... This is not how a human functions?"

By your definition, the DS would be tablet. Heck, by your definition, a touch screen monitor would be a tablet.
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If a touch screen monitor is roughly the same size as tablets available on the market and can be held in my lap for the purposes of interacting with content... Well, it's probably gonna be compared to a tablet when consumers are making purchase decisions. Not sure why this is so difficult to understand, or how this is a controversial observation.

Your horse analogy is bizarre and nonsensical.
 
ShinUltramanJ said:
Mario games are timeless. Not only when compared to Microsoft's and Sony's games, but even Nintendo's other ips. Not Zelda, not Metroid, not anything can stand the test of time like Mario.
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Super Metroid
Tetris Attack
Link To The Past
Punch-Out!!
Super Smash Bros Melee


Are timeless

Current Nintendo is pretty dead to me though, even if they themselves make wonderful games. They're not alone in making great software and their competitors / third parties are able to do it on hardware keep narrowing the gap and filling a bunch Nintendo doesn't cover at all.

This Wii U fiasco is embarrassing and unsurprising. No rational person is hoping for their failure necessarily, but Nintendo insists upon being its own worst enemy.
 
SMD said:
You know who'd disagree? People who played it for more than a few days :P I don't understand why you'd bail on a Mario title of all games so early but to each their own.
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But as a launch title it did nothing for WiiU. In it's own right it is a good 2D platformer. But from a casual gamers point of view. The same demographic that Nintendo was hoping to sell WiiU too. It looked just like the game that most Wii owners already had.

A lazy and very poor choice for a next gen launch title and not a system seller.
 
SMD said:
I genuinely don't understand. It's a great 2D platformer, one of the best modern ones. What does it matter if it came out now or later? It's got a fair amount of content and challenge and I'd rather this than a rushed 3D Mario game.
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But as he said, not a system seller.
 
Screamapillar said:
Had Iwata and Miyamoto not done a complete 180 in console philosophy between GCN and Wii, Nintendo would likely not be in business anymore. No way a GameCube successor with HD graphics and dual analog controller would have sold more than GameCube.
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It's still funny how people know so much about how a HD console would have performed yet the reverse isn't being said about Wii. Hypocrisy much?

In fact, if the Wii was guaranteed to win no matter what, articles like this should never exist.
http://www.1up.com/news/iwata-wii-doesn-outsell-gamecube

Double points for coming straight from the CEO's mouth.
 
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