Iwata's Broken Promises (NotEnoughShaders article)

Canon said:
Yeah OK, you keep hating on Iwata, who clearly is the big evil in this industry. It's not at all that he's only a man and couldn't possibly get everything right in one try.
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How many tries does it take?

He was instrumental in the development of the Gamecube. Also became CEO 7 months after its launch. Iwata himself acknowledged that when he saw the Gamecube tank rather then back it to the hilt he pulled resources and investment out of it. He was instrumental in not only developing that console but the commercial failure of it.

Wii? Yes amazingly successful commercially, but the same issues that plagued the Gamecube and N64 persisted. Developer disinterest, lack of 3rd party support, weakest online system you could imagine, technically gimped, and in its final two years largely abandoned by Nintendo.

DS? Yep perfect. Well done Iwata and co!

3DS? We all know how that went at launch

Wii U? Look at it.

Further to the hardware failures there's also the management failures.

Nintendo being totally unprepared for HD development

Being stupid enough to expect 3rd party support on gimped hardware

Crapping on to us during the Wii era about how complex modern controllers are and how that turns of casual gamers. Only then to release a traditional controller for the Wii U with even more buttons tech and a screen on it....

Online system and network still a joke

The half baked Wii U OS

The financial losses in recent years

List goes on and on.

He's a great bloke, I respect him, but he's no CEO. He lacks strategic direction, repeats the same mistakes over and over, contradicts himself and the companies view....
 
lemonade said:
and people wonder why the market clamors for them to turn 3rd party. i would be satisfied for them to focus their efforts on handheld and make pc games. why not?
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Because, apparently, Nintendo hardware is full of magic pixie dust that allows their developers to do magical things that just aren't possible on hardware that's magnitudes more powerful than their own.

Also their developers wouldn't be able to take risks and innovate on other platforms so we wouldn't get unique and groundbreaking software like New Super Mario Bros U, Luigis Mansion 2, Pikmin 3, Fire Emblem 3, Wind Waker Remake and Mario Kart 8.
 
Burai said:
Also their developers wouldn't be able to take risks and innovate on other platforms so we wouldn't get unique and groundbreaking software like New Super Mario Bros U, Luigis Mansion 2, Pikmin 3, Fire Emblem 3, Wind Waker Remake and Mario Kart 8.
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Because that's the only software Nintendo does...
 
Burai said:
Because, apparently, Nintendo hardware is full of magic pixie dust that allows their developers to do magical things that just aren't possible on hardware that's magnitudes more powerful than their own.

Also their developers wouldn't be able to take risks and innovate on other platforms so we wouldn't get unique and groundbreaking software like New Super Mario Bros U, Luigis Mansion 2, Pikmin 3, Fire Emblem 3, Wind Waker Remake and Mario Kart 8.
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Who are you quoting from this thread or are you just making up bullshit?
 
freddy said:
Who are you quoting from this thread or are you just making up bullshit?
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That's implied by some posters in other threads. Nintendo developers can only create games so well because they are on their very special hardware. A very questionable assumption, accessories such as Wii Motion+ and the Balance Board were already sold separately and the same could happen when going 3rd party.
 
Tenki said:
Because that's the only software Nintendo does...
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Of course. I forgot Mario & Luigi 4, Animal Crossing 5, Pokemon BW2, Pokemon XY, Mario Golf, Professor Layton, Rhythm Tengoku 3, Warioware 6 and Smash Bros 4. Is there anything else I forgot? NSMB2? Donkey Kong Returns Remake?
 
Shiggy said:
That's implied by some posters in other threads. Nintendo developers can only create games so well because they are on their very special hardware. A very questionable assumption, accessories such as Wii Motion+ and the Balance Board were already sold separately and the same could happen when going 3rd party.
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Well the best thing to do would be to attack and address posters who haven't even posted in here by baiting them and turn this in to a Gamespot System Wars thread, right?
 
Cheerilee said:
When Hiroshi Yamauchi took over leadership of Nintendo, he supposedly asked his #2 to make a list of all the people he absolutely positively cannot fire.

When the #2 came back with the list, Yamauchi handed the list back to him and told him to go fire everyone on that list. Because he's Hiroshi Fucking Yamauchi, and people needed to understand that he can fire anyone.
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It went a bit differently:
In 1949, Yamauchi's grandfather, the incumbent president of Nintendo, suffered a stroke. As he had no other immediate successor, he asked Yamauchi to come immediately to Nintendo to assume the position of president. He had to leave Waseda University to do so. Yamauchi would only accept the position if he were the only family member working at Nintendo. Reluctantly, Yamauchi's grandfather agreed, and died shortly thereafter. Under the agreement, his older cousin had to be fired. Due to his young age and total lack of any management experience, most employees did not take Yamauchi seriously and many resented him. Soon after taking over, he had to deal with a strike by factory employees who expected him to cave in easily. Instead, he asserted his authority by firing many long-time employees who questioned his authority.
 
Burai said:
Of course. I forgot Mario & Luigi 4, Animal Crossing 5, Pokemon BW2, Pokemon XY, Mario Golf, Professor Layton, Rhythm Tengoku 3, Warioware 6 and Smash Bros 4. Is there anything else I forgot? NSMB2? Donkey Kong Returns Remake?
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I think it's I credible how little changes are made to most of their current sequels. Going from MK64 to MKDD was a big step forward. From MKWii to MK7,not really. The Animal Crossing sequels are simply laughable. In general, I wonder why they more or less completely abandoned new ideas such as Ouendan, Jam with the Band, The Last Story, Hotel Dusk, and instead focus so much on simple sequels. Seems like they already announced more original titles for Wii U than for 3DS,though not a lot.
 
Wait, are you telling me that leaders of companies are bullshit liars who make promises that they never intend to keep?!

NO WAY! Kaz and Ballmer I thought were trustworthy, I thought it was only scum of the earth Iwata.

I for one am perfectly fine with the Nintendo droughts. I have every other system known to man, so I never find myself coming home and crying over my Wii U. It's no big deal to me at all. Shit would suck if I was Nintendo fan only.
 
Okay, the way I see Nintendo's train of thought regarding the conception of the Wii U:

* Nintendo does not currently have the capacity to produce software for both their systems at a steady rate
* They have been making moves to expand to produce more. It's not a fast process, but it is underway.
* Right now, they believe that they need third parties to bolster their production to acceptable levels.
* One major advantage of the Wii Remote was that it offered a USP to play the games with.
* The Gamepad has a touchscreen to offer a new USP that the rival platforms do not.
* One major complaint about the Wii Remote was the fact that third parties didn't know how to use it, and did not have the time or inclination to do the extra coding required to take advantage of it.
* To solve that complaint, the GamePad was given traditional controls; third parties can use it as a standard controller.
* The touch screen can be pressed into service as a simple off-tv screen, requiring minimal extra code time; it is in effect a 'free' feature (Similarly the 3DS's major feature - again - requires minimal extra code time; they've produced two systems where third parties do not need to expend effort to make use of the USPs. Nintendo - I think - did this explicitly because it's what they believed third parties were demanding.


I don't see anything inherently wrong with the train of thought.. It certainly hasn't been successful out of the gate, but the reasoning seems sound; I recall *tons* of comments along the lines of "We like the idea of the Wii Remote, we just can't afford to spend time figuring out how to leverage it.". The Gamepad - as it stands - solves that issue. However, it solves it at a significant cost; the expense of the device led in turn to a restriction of how much they could spend on the power of the central unit. Since the major third parties haven't embraced that, I think Nintendo are doing the right thing by going all-out courting the smaller ones.

So, as a broad question to everyone: What's the solution? The Gamepad, for whatever reason, doesn't appear to be it. How do you make a device that:

* Has a USP over its rivals
* Requires minimal development cost to implement that USP
* Does not cost much to produce the hardware to offer that USP

Nintendo did the first two, at the cost of the third. Sony appear to have gone with a software-based USP by buying out the entire company that offers it. We'll have to see what Microsoft's is, although if the rumours of 'no used' are true, I'll be interested to see if that feature allows them to leverage some form of favourable treatment out of the publishers as a result.
 
Shiggy said:
I think it's I credible how little changes are made to most of their current sequels. Going from MK64 to MKDD was a big step forward. From MKWii to MK7,not really. The Animal Crossing sequels are simply laughable. In general, I wonder why they more or less completely abandoned new ideas such as Ouendan, Jam with the Band, The Last Story, Hotel Dusk, and instead focus so much on simple sequels. Seems like they already announced more original titles for Wii U than for 3DS,though not a lot.
Click to expand...

Where? All I see is more sequels. And the gap from Luigi's Mansion 1 -> 2 is pretty huge.
 
The home console + portable "combo machine" can't come soon enough for Nintendo. I don't think splitting their 1st/2nd party devs across platforms is going to cut it for much longer.
 
so basically, when the west whines and complains about no third parties being on Nintendo (home) consoles, and when 3rd parties screw Nintendo over everytime, it's Nintendo's fault?

I understand the whole drought with 1st party titles, but yet this is the same thing that happened with the 3DS. so how is it any different from that? N64 SURVIVED off of 1st party and 2nd party titles virtually by itself. If it wasn't for the 1st party software they wouldn't have made a profit from the GC. so where does the problem TRULY lie?
 
The worst part of that article was the focus on how Iwata keeps making the mistake of not releasing enough games, as though simply increasing your staff and output is no more onerous than putting a "help wanted" sign in the window in Nintendo headquarters, Tokyo.

Nintendo have built, outfitted and have now moved into a massively expanded new R and D building, this didn't come about from Iwata twiddling his thumbs for 6 years, whilst apologising and interviewing developers.

Any competently run company will expand slowly, since it is difficult to train, manage and hire highly skilled teams. People who are good enough to be hired at Nintendo generally already have jobs, and setting up proper management structures over them isn't simple either.

These are long term solutions, and you can join the dots to see that they've done a ton of short term stuff to improve their output too. Why the sudden increase in outsourced stuff like ie. Luigi's mansion 2 or collaborations like Fire Emblem x Shin Megami Tensei? It's a cheap way to boost your output, but its a stopgap because you don't expand from it. These projects were set in motion several years ago, again when Iwata 'wasn't doing anything' to solve the problems caused by a fucking law of nature : the time disparity between the creation of content, versus the customers consumption of that content.

Something about Nintendo topics at the moment is driving people insane. I've never seen so much drive-by dumbfuckery tolerated on these boards. Must be that sweet next-gen hit.
 
People always want the head to take responsibility for things that aren't necessarily in their control. It's clear Iwata has been trying to change how Nintendo does things and that's taken a long time. Sure his promises are made too early, but who hasn't made early promises to keep investors happy? People know things take time but they still want instant change. It's kinda silly on both sides.

What will forcing him to resign leave us with? Who will take the crown? Right now there doesn't seem to be any contenders but maybe that's because they're too busy working than showing their face to us. That's great but how do we know they'll be better than Iwata?

Iwata right now is the only person I can see leading Nintendo. He just fits their current image and with Nintendo Direct he has clearly connected with his audience. People know who he is-- well his "public" self anyway.

What I think really needs to change with Nintendo is their marketing departments. Whoever is making those advertisements and branding needs to be retrained or replaced. That's in all three regions.
 
Interceptor said:
Actually Nintendo increased its software output a lot during the last years. But i guess the games had not enough guns in them to be recognised.
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Great response, and I'm sure "not enough guns" is the main reason we're not noticing all of these new first party U games that Nintendo's been pumping out.
 
JordanN said:
Could you seriously tell me in 2006 that the Wii was going to be some kind of roaring success? I'm guessing no.
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I could. Given the success of the DS Lite vs. the PSP, and the Singstar/Buzz hype of the PS2, it wasn't hard to tell that Nintendo is gonna be the market leader again.
 
I think when all is said and done, the answer a new CEO/Management. I have said this at several other forums and been shouted down: If not Iwata, then who?

I don't know, who. But I am sure there is someone out there that can do the job better. Who can be a real problem solver. I mean reading that article and seeing all those broken promises and flip-flopping. Horrible.
 
mclem said:
So, as a broad question to everyone: What's the solution? The Gamepad, for whatever reason, doesn't appear to be it. How do you make a device that:

* Has a USP over its rivals
* Requires minimal development cost to implement that USP
* Does not cost much to produce the hardware to offer that USP
Click to expand...

MiiVerse fits all of the above, in a way. I mean the USP of Xbox is Live. Expand MiiVerse to be an all-encompassing online experience (gaming, social, apps, eShop, sharing) coupled with the characteristics that are... Nintendo-like.

That's just something quick and dirty off the top of my head. I mean to me and maybe to a great deal of others, the USP or advantage of Xbox over PS3 is Live and what it brings to the table over PSN (though parity is starting to happen).
 
Duckhuntdog said:
MiiVerse fits all of the above, in a way. I mean the USP of Xbox is Live. Expand MiiVerse to be an all-encompassing online experience (gaming, social, apps, eShop, sharing) coupled with the characteristics that are... Nintendo-like.

That's just something quick and dirty off the top of my head. I mean to me and maybe to a great deal of others, the USP or advantage of Xbox over PS3 is Live and what it brings to the table over PSN (though parity is starting to happen).
Click to expand...

But other than maybe the social aspect, Live does all that better; it's not a USP. It's a similar problem that World of Warcraft's competitors have; they have to dive in and compete with something that has had many years of development and refinement, and let's be honest, it's development and refinement in a field Nintendo don't really have a great deal of experience in. In other words, even to get feature *parity* with Live, it'd require a ton of expenditure on research, planning and infrastructure - breaching the third of the listed requirements.

I *like* the aspects that Miiverse offers that Live doesn't - I like them an awful lot. I, however, am very much in a minority. If this turns into something that's purely a battle of who has the most mature and feature-packed online offering, that's a battle Nintendo simply can't win any time soon.
 
Jackano said:
Finished reading the article. Good article.
Sometimes it forget how it is necessary for Nintendo to dissociate from MS/sony, but the main point (Iwata having said for each console learning mistakes and trying to avoid software drought) is good. I mean, even me, as a Nintendo fan, I'm pissed off.
Whoever work at software planning needs too to be in the front line, not just Iwata.
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That would be Miyamoto
 
I'd rather they make sure the games are good then timely.

Nintendo rushing out games led to Mario Sunshine and Wind Waker's triforce hunt.

Obviously, it's inexcusable that they haven't at least matched their effort in the N64 days with Western development, but that's a slightly different issue.
 
Pretty terrible article if you ask me. Iwata deserves a lot of criticism, namely for how Wii U has been handled so far, but most of the article bases itself on comparing two completely different strategies in different points in time for Nintendo and the market.
 
The funny thing is the vision for the DS (which it could be argued led to the Wii) came not from Iwata, but from Yamauchi.
 
Iwata is full of it. I have never had buyers remorse on a console before the WiiU.

And the drought continues.
 
Part of the problem is that Nintendo's top developers are often perfectionists. In terms of making quality games that's not a problem, but in terms of games being constantly delayed it is. Look at Pikmin 3 for example, it was touted to be a launch game and now we don't even know when it's going to come out.

As a customer I would rather have a better game later than a worse game now, but that doesn't make much business sense.
 
mclem said:
Okay, the way I see Nintendo's train of thought regarding the conception of the Wii U:

* Nintendo does not currently have the capacity to produce software for both their systems at a steady rate
* They have been making moves to expand to produce more. It's not a fast process, but it is underway.
Click to expand...

isn't the problem that they've been saying this for the last ten years, and still nothing?
 
cyberheater said:
Iwata is full of it. I have never had buyers remorse on a console before the WiiU.

And the drought continues.
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What baffles me the most is that we have April and there still is no release date for W 101 and Pikmin. They should´be both been released by now an yet it looks like they won´t even hit May (let alone April).
 
Randdalf said:
Part of the problem is that Nintendo's top developers are often perfectionists. In terms of making quality games that's not a problem, but in terms of games being constantly delayed it is. Look at Pikmin 3 for example, it was touted to be a launch game and now we don't even know when it's going to come out.

As a customer I would rather have a better game later than a worse game now, but that doesn't make much business sense.
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Some posters raised the question whether it not just delayed for strategic reasons as otherwise the game drought would be even more intense in Q2 (where we basically have no games as of now). Maybe Scribblenauts will finally be released ;D
 
SolarPowered said:
This is my first time learning about how many TVs the average Western family owns. Holy crap... why would they spend so much money per unit on the off TV feature when so many families own more than three television sets? I'm genuinely confused and curious.
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Honestly, finishing my basement and picking up a second HD set and thus moving gaming away from the 'main' TV is one of the best things I've done. Works out better this way when you have a family.
 
Like the hat? said:
Is it just me or is the anti Nintendo thing in the industry really strong going all of a sudden?
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They launched a new console to little fanfare, developed only another NSMB game (which uses a bunch of assets from prior entries and came out 3 months after the 3DS entry) and a mini game collection for the first 5 months of it being on store shelves with no release schedule for upcoming games that were supposed to be out already. Rayman Legends went multiplatform and delayed, and every new third party engine isn't going to run on the Wii U meaning we'll be seeing very few third party games on the console. Plus, the console cost $350 at launch and has tons of software issues still (hard locks, slow OS, TVii not working, etc) and no legitimate account system for DD purchases.

There are a lot of real reasons to be complaining about Nintendo and it's place in the industry.
 
I for one am very happy how he's handling the WiiU.

Looking at some of the threads where a 3rd party refuses to port their game to the system, it seems that others agree with me. They just don't want those games on the WiiU.
 
That was a really amusing article. Itis all true.


One thing I find amusing reading through this thread though is the assumption that Nintendo hasn't been trying to court 3rd party devs/pubs to release games on the Wii U, but what if they did try and this is the result. Shitty 3rd party support.

I don't see why 3rd parties would support the Wii U since they seem content with MS ans Sony. Nintendo would have to pay money, which is probably something they haven't tried, since they have stated many times they don't moneyhat and stuff. What I'm basically saying is that 3rd parties just don't see the point in supporting the Wii U, so they won't put their games on it due to past market trends (Wii, PS3, 360).
 
I agree with a lot of what she is saying. I've felt that way for years.

Nintendo seemingly never learns from its mistakes and most of their problems are caused by putting their Japanese customers before everyone else in the world despite 70% of the their revenue coming from outside of Japan. They seemingly view the entire game industry though that Japanese lens.

-That is why their online infrastructure is still catching up
-which is why they seemingly can't get over valuing local MP over online MP, which is insane
-which is why the whole tech seems behind the curve
-which is why western customers are less interested in the 3DS/Wii-U
-which is why their 3rd party support is lousy
-which is why Nintendo can't get a lot of core gamers on their side

Nintendo also don't follow through on their part of the bargain.
-where's Pikmin 3? That was supposed to be a launch title and now it looks like it won't make Q3, PATHETIC
-where's Wonderful 101 and Game & Wario? Supposed to be Q1

They did the same thing with the 3DS, which didn't have a good game that wasn't a remake until 8 months after launch.

Yeah, I like Iwata, but I don't think he gets it.
 
If they can get the wii u down to 200 and eventually 150 and offer compelling first party experiences it will be hard to pass up. Nintendo didn't have much steam rolling into the wii u. They need a rebirth soon. It's just not exciting hardware but in the end it always is about the games.
 
mrklaw said:
isn't the problem that they've been saying this for the last ten years, and still nothing?
Click to expand...

Well, expanding is good, but I don't think it's ever going to be possible for Nintendo to support systems entirely on their own; they're going to need third parties at *some* point along the line.
 
Lord-Audie said:
I for one am very happy how he's handling the WiiU.

Looking at some of the threads where a 3rd party refuses to port their game to the system, it seems that others agree with me. They just don't want those games on the WiiU.
Click to expand...

It's simply not a viable decision to bring most of these games to Wii U. Costs are expected to be higher than resulting revenues. That's a simple business decision and looking at the sales of the platform I cannot blame any publisher for that. For once, their projections proved to be accurate (unlike the original Wii).


DaBoss said:
That was a really amusing article. Itis all true.


One thing I find amusing reading through this thread though is the assumption that Nintendo hasn't been trying to court 3rd party devs/pubs to release games on the Wii U, but what if they did try and this is the result. Shitty 3rd party support.

I don't see why 3rd parties would support the Wii U since they seem content with MS ans Sony. Nintendo would have to pay money, which is probably something they haven't tried, since they have stated many times they don't moneyhat and stuff. What I'm basically saying is that 3rd parties just don't see the point in supporting the Wii U, so they won't put their games on it due to past market trends (Wii, PS3, 360).
Click to expand...

Nintendo's B2B marketing strategy seemingly failed then. Just as their B2C marketing strategy has been a huge failure.
 
The ps3 had a huge comeback after the wii and 360 ate their market share at the beginning. The ps3 started making a lot of games you could not get on the 360 or wii and their tides somewhat turned.
 
It's a poor article because you can't just pull out the context in which they were made. Things like the Wii U lineup were much larger and were pushed back, Iwata made those calls but rushing them to meet promises certainly doesn't make for better games, and it's not like they weren't trying to accommodate a larger post-launch. Nintendo has beefed up internal development, they've been hiring constantly for all sorts of positions. You aren't going to see the effects of it immediately. It might take 3-4 year for projects starting with those hires to actually make it into the market. There would be a point if every situation was the same, but none of them were 3DS's initial problems aren't the same as Wii U's and by not having those contexts this becomes an entirely meaningless exercise.
 
javac said:
Except for the shit-ton of money they made under his wing. I'm sorry but for us gamers the money Nintendo make might not seem to affect us but it does. It funds games after all and we get amazing stuff like Fire Emblem Awakening.
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and xenoblade
 
Ol No Bones said:
The ps3 had a huge comeback after the wii and 360 ate their market share at the beginning. The ps3 started making a lot of games you could not get on the 360 or wii and their tides somewhat turned.
Click to expand...
...W-What? This is not only factually wrong (the 360 still outsells the PS3 consistently in North America), but it isn't even on topic.
 
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