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[Log4Girlz]

I wonder how many of the blood thristy posters are american in here.

Do you post your outrage every time an american company CEO burns through the company's assets, leaves with millions and gets to do the same at another company if only as a Board director?
.

What are you talking about?

 

[Aquamarine]

I love fake specs, they are so bad. Remember what the Revolution was supposed to be before it was revealed to be just an upclocked gamecube?

I know, right?

Fake specs are always hilarious.

 

[Jorok Goldblade]

That totally trumps the Wii U's 2013 in both variety and quality. That's on average one game a month, I wouldn't call that a drought.

Yeah- The Wii didn't have a drought in its first year. Its second, fourth, fifth and sixth years had droughts, but years 1 and 3 were packed to the gills.

 

[tehrik-e-insaaf]

I wonder how many of the blood thristy posters are american in here.

Do you post your outrage every time an american company CEO burns through the company's assets, leaves with millions and gets to do the same at another company if only as a Board director?

I can understand the frustration at not being addicted to a Nintendo product, that the craving to bow before our Japanese Gaming Lords is missing from our lives but Iwata is just doing his job of running a company without betting everything on black.

The "Too Japanese and Conservative" and "NOA Needs Independence" memes are getting really tiring. Either people don't really understand how businesses and especially NCL works on this board - or there is something deeper happening here. The situation is very complex and comes to the heart of the values Nintendo holds as an organization.

I know I'm going to get a lot of anger/drive-by-rage for this. But let me share this. Before some of you start screaming for no reason, just try to read the whole thing - and please don't engage in personal attacks. Consider what I'm saying before your heads explode and you start saying I'm shilling for Nintendo or something asinine.

I have a friend from law school who works at a marketing research firm. Anyways, he told me an interesting study about the perception of brands like Nintendo (foreign companies that are doing business in the US). The results were a bit surprising. People love Nintendo. They see it as American as apple pie for the most part. That much he knew. The twist came when they started looking at how people responded to products offered by "Asian-looking" people.

Caucasians in general were very negative about buying products from "Asian" people.

The explanation for that is that the economy is still pretty much garbage for a giant chunk of Americans (particularly low-income Americans who tend to buy Nintendo products) - and the implication was that seeing an "Asian" who speaks English with an accent just has a very negative impact on peoples' willingness to buy. This is especially true with the rise of China and Americans' general fear of losing their dominance in the world.

To extrapolate a bit further, for a lot of Americans - Iwata coming on Directs and having interviews that give people an idea of what is happening inside Nintendo - might be having the opposite effect Iwata intends - it has made people fully aware that Nintendo is a Japanese company - when Iwata's goal was probably to show people that NCL isn't a reclusive company that sticks to itself (which is the perception in Japan, not to mention the rest of the world). That it's a company that values partnerships and needs to work and collaborate with others to succeed.

This potentially has implications for Nintendo's corporate relations. When I was visiting Raleigh a few months ago - one executive working at a gaming company - explicitly said "Sony did a great job letting Mark Cerny make the Playstation 4" - and proceeded to explain how Mark Cerny was the "Steve Jobs" of gaming and how the Playstation is a product of "California/American Ingenuity" (he was a bit surprised when I explained to him that Steve Jobs' biological father was Syrian - the guy nearly shit his pants). The guy also ranted for a while about how Nintendo had destroyed the gaming market by releasing "junk" and "kid's games" with "fruity Japanese characters" - when people should be buying games with high production values with the latest technology. This isn't really an isolated instance, I'm just sharing one example.

So the aggression with which they talk about Nintendo is somewhat related to the fact that they are Japanese and people know that. The same kind of problem Microsoft had when they were trying to get into the Japanese market.

Unlike Nintendo and Microsoft, Sony has rarely had such problems. They are a chameleon. It's just part of the DNA of the company to not be any one thing to any one particular type of person. They fit in and change their message whenever needed to appeal to the broadest subset and audience possible. When they make mistakes - they quickly alter course and do whatever they can to change trajectory. They are a very tactical company. Sony in Japan was the one hired Cerny and set him loose to tell a story about how he transformed the Playstation brand in the face of traditional Japanese engineers.

The reason Sony lets all this happen is because they know the primary audience for a console is American and European. Like many Japanese companies doing business abroad - Sony hires people who look like the people they are trying to target. That's really important to them. This philosophy is evident in the way Honda and Toyota have hired executives. These execs are not particularly competent as far as I can tell, but, they make the company more "American" and thus more likely to resonate with customers. GAF has all these Cerny-love posts, but the reality is that the PS4 was being discussed and talked about in its current iteration well before Cerny was ever involved, and many of the decisions he gets credited for have nothing to do with him.

Anyways, this is all very hard for NCL to swallow. NCL's view of this "conservative Japanese" notion is very skeptical - since little children across the socio-economic spectrum and of a variety of skin tones and religious backgrounds - play Mario and Zelda and Pokemon - and Shigeru Miyamoto (by Nintendo's own marketing effort) is somewhat of a household name. Nintendo of America's COO is a Haitian-American whose parents were immigrants. The company has diverse demographics in its executive and management ranks including many women historically. This makes them very different from your typical MBA-run company in California like Electronic Arts which was founded by a frat boy from Stanford.

Ultimately, for Nintendo, they want to be embraced and accepted for who they are, and create experiences the way they have envisioned. Iwata in paritcular doesn't want to compromise who they are or hide who they are. Nintendo is Nintendo is Nintendo. They aren't Japanese, or American, or European, or anything else. They are Nintendo and a variety of people around the world have contributed to making the company what it is.

EAD has had tremendous British influence, from its interactions with Rare, down to the ex-Argonaut staff that worked in-house and transformed and left a lasting impression on EAD. Howard Lincoln has been critical to Nintendo's history and deeply respected by people like Iwata. I know this sounds surprising to a lot of the NCL-haters on this board - but NCL is filled with counter-cultural types and isn't much of a traditional Japanese company at all.

So long story short - to get back to your insight about the way people are talking and discussing things - there are a lot of reasons why Nintendo is in the situation it is in - most are of their own doing and a result of their own failures in re-capturing their market.

But one reason could be the fact that tribalism influences peoples' perceptions - whether they realize it or not, and it's a problem that permeates corporate relations in general - not just the aggression of certain people on this board. It's also something that Nintendo doesn't believe they should compromise on. They want to be who they are and accepted for who they are. That comes with certain costs.

Just my 2 cents

Please don't kill me GAF

 

[Effer]

The "Too Japanese and Conservative" and "NOA Needs Independence" memes are getting really tiring. Either people don't really understand how businesses and especially NCL works on this board - or there is something deeper happening here. The situation is very complex and comes to the heart of the values Nintendo holds as an organization.

I know I'm going to get a lot of anger/drive-by-rage for this. But let me share this. Before some of you start screaming for no reason, just try to read the whole thing - and please don't engage in personal attacks. Consider what I'm saying before your heads explode and you start saying I'm shilling for Nintendo or something asinine.

I have a friend from law school who works at a marketing research firm. Anyways, he told me an interesting study about the perception of brands like Nintendo (foreign companies that are doing business in the US). The results were a bit surprising. People love Nintendo. They see it as American as apple pie for the most part. That much he knew. The twist came when they started looking at how people responded to products offered by "Asian-looking" people.

Caucasians in general were very negative about buying products from "Asian" people.

The explanation for that is that the economy is still pretty much garbage for a giant chunk of Americans (particularly low-income Americans who tend to buy Nintendo products) - and the implication was that seeing an "Asian" who speaks English with an accent just has a very negative impact on peoples' willingness to buy.

To extrapolate a bit further, for a lot of Americans - Iwata coming on Directs and having interviews that give people an idea of what is happening inside Nintendo - might be having the opposite effect Iwata intends - it has made people fully aware that Nintendo is a Japanese company - when Iwata's goal was probably to show people that NCL isn't a reclusive company that sticks to itself (which is the perception in Japan, not to mention the rest of the world). That it's a company that values partnerships and needs to work and collaborate with others to succeed.

This potentially has implications for Nintendo's corporate relations. When I was visiting Raleigh a few months ago - one executive working at a gaming company - explicitly said "Sony did a great job letting Mark Cerny make the Playstation 4" - and proceeded to explain how Mark Cerny was the "Steve Jobs" of gaming and how the Playstation is a product of "California/American Ingenuity" (he was a bit surprised when I explained to him that Steve Jobs' biological father was Syrian - the guy nearly shit his pants). The guy also ranted for a while about how Nintendo had destroyed the gaming market by releasing "junk" and "kid's games" with "fruity Japanese characters" - when people should be buying games with high production values with the latest technology. This isn't really an isolated instance, I'm just sharing one example.

So the aggression with which they talk about Nintendo is somewhat related to the fact that they are Japanese and people know that. The same kind of problem Microsoft had when they were trying to get into the Japanese market.

Unlike Nintendo and Microsoft, Sony has rarely had such problems. They are a chameleon. It's just part of the DNA of the company to not be any one thing to any one particular type of person. They fit in and change their message whenever needed to appeal to the broadest subset and audience possible. When they make mistakes - they quickly alter course and do whatever they can to change trajectory. They are a very tactical company. Sony in Japan was the one hired Cerny and set him loose to tell a story about how he transformed the Playstation brand in the face of traditional Japanese engineers.

The reason Sony lets all this happen is because they know the primary audience for a console is American and European. Like many Japanese companies doing business abroad - Sony hires people who look like the people they are trying to target. That's really important to them. This philosophy is evident in the way Honda and Toyota have hired executives. These execs are not particularly competent as far as I can tell, but, they make the company more "American" and thus more likely to resonate with customers. GAF has all these Cerny-love posts, but the reality is that the PS4 was being discussed and talked about in its current iteration well before Cerny was ever involved, and many of the decisions he gets credited for have nothing to do with him.

Anyways, this is all very hard for NCL to swallow. NCL's view of this "conservative Japanese" notion is very skeptical - since little children across the socio-economic spectrum and of a variety of skin tones and religious backgrounds - play Mario and Zelda and Pokemon - and Shigeru Miyamoto (by Nintendo's own marketing effort) is somewhat of a household name. Nintendo of America's COO is a Haitian-American whose parents were immigrants. The company has diverse demographics in its executive and management ranks including many women historically. This makes them very different from your typical MBA-run company in California like Electronic Arts which was founded by a frat boy from Stanford.

Ultimately, for Nintendo, they want to be embraced and accepted for who they are, and create experiences the way they have envisioned. Iwata in paritcular doesn't want to compromise who they are or hide who they are. Nintendo is Nintendo is Nintendo. They aren't Japanese, or American, or European, or anything else. They are Nintendo and a variety of people around the world have contributed to making the company what it is.

EAD has had tremendous British influence, from its interactions with Rare, down to the ex-Argonaut staff that worked in-house and transformed and left a lasting impression on EAD. Howard Lincoln has been critical to Nintendo's history and deeply respected by people like Iwata. I know this sounds surprising to a lot of the NCL-haters on this board - but NCL is filled with counter-cultural types and isn't much of a traditional Japanese company at all.

So long story short - to get back to your insight about the way people are talking and discussing things - there are a lot of reasons why Nintendo is in the situation it is in - most are of their own doing and a result of their own failures in re-capturing their market.

But one reason could be the fact that tribalism influences peoples' perceptions - whether they realize it or not, and it's a problem that permeates corporate relations in general - not just the aggression of certain people on this board. It's also something that Nintendo doesn't believe they should compromise on. They want to be who they are and accepted for who they are. That comes with certain costs.

Just my 2 cents

Please don't kill me GAF

I wasn't even conscious of my feelings about Nintendo Directs until you mentioned it. I was actually wishing they'd present them with someone who spoke English as their first language, so the directs were more concise. Maybe I secretly wanted a white guy. I'm a horrible person.

 

[Sneds]

The "Too Japanese and Conservative" and "NOA Needs Independence" memes are getting really tiring. Either people don't really understand how businesses and especially NCL works on this board - or there is something deeper happening here. The situation is very complex and comes to the heart of the values Nintendo holds as an organization.

I know I'm going to get a lot of anger/drive-by-rage for this. But let me share this. Before some of you start screaming for no reason, just try to read the whole thing - and please don't engage in personal attacks. Consider what I'm saying before your heads explode and you start saying I'm shilling for Nintendo or something asinine.

...

Just my 2 cents

Please don't kill me GAF

Why would this not have had an impact with the Wii?

How many people actually watch Iwata's Nintendo Direct appearances?

Nintendo ads use local actors or celebrities.

 

[royalan]

The "Too Japanese and Conservative" and "NOA Needs Independence" memes are getting really tiring. Either people don't really understand how businesses and especially NCL works on this board - or there is something deeper happening here. The situation is very complex and comes to the heart of the values Nintendo holds as an organization.

I know I'm going to get a lot of anger/drive-by-rage for this. But let me share this. Before some of you start screaming for no reason, just try to read the whole thing - and please don't engage in personal attacks. Consider what I'm saying before your heads explode and you start saying I'm shilling for Nintendo or something asinine.

I have a friend from law school who works at a marketing research firm. Anyways, he told me an interesting study about the perception of brands like Nintendo (foreign companies that are doing business in the US). The results were a bit surprising. People love Nintendo. They see it as American as apple pie for the most part. That much he knew. The twist came when they started looking at how people responded to products offered by "Asian-looking" people.

Caucasians in general were very negative about buying products from "Asian" people.

The explanation for that is that the economy is still pretty much garbage for a giant chunk of Americans (particularly low-income Americans who tend to buy Nintendo products) - and the implication was that seeing an "Asian" who speaks English with an accent just has a very negative impact on peoples' willingness to buy.

To extrapolate a bit further, for a lot of Americans - Iwata coming on Directs and having interviews that give people an idea of what is happening inside Nintendo - might be having the opposite effect Iwata intends - it has made people fully aware that Nintendo is a Japanese company - when Iwata's goal was probably to show people that NCL isn't a reclusive company that sticks to itself (which is the perception in Japan, not to mention the rest of the world). That it's a company that values partnerships and needs to work and collaborate with others to succeed.

This potentially has implications for Nintendo's corporate relations. When I was visiting Raleigh a few months ago - one executive working at a gaming company - explicitly said "Sony did a great job letting Mark Cerny make the Playstation 4" - and proceeded to explain how Mark Cerny was the "Steve Jobs" of gaming and how the Playstation is a product of "California/American Ingenuity" (he was a bit surprised when I explained to him that Steve Jobs' biological father was Syrian - the guy nearly shit his pants). The guy also ranted for a while about how Nintendo had destroyed the gaming market by releasing "junk" and "kid's games" with "fruity Japanese characters" - when people should be buying games with high production values with the latest technology. This isn't really an isolated instance, I'm just sharing one example.

So the aggression with which they talk about Nintendo is somewhat related to the fact that they are Japanese and people know that. The same kind of problem Microsoft had when they were trying to get into the Japanese market.

Unlike Nintendo and Microsoft, Sony has rarely had such problems. They are a chameleon. It's just part of the DNA of the company to not be any one thing to any one particular type of person. They fit in and change their message whenever needed to appeal to the broadest subset and audience possible. When they make mistakes - they quickly alter course and do whatever they can to change trajectory. They are a very tactical company. Sony in Japan was the one hired Cerny and set him loose to tell a story about how he transformed the Playstation brand in the face of traditional Japanese engineers.

The reason Sony lets all this happen is because they know the primary audience for a console is American and European. Like many Japanese companies doing business abroad - Sony hires people who look like the people they are trying to target. That's really important to them. This philosophy is evident in the way Honda and Toyota have hired executives. These execs are not particularly competent as far as I can tell, but, they make the company more "American" and thus more likely to resonate with customers. GAF has all these Cerny-love posts, but the reality is that the PS4 was being discussed and talked about in its current iteration well before Cerny was ever involved, and many of the decisions he gets credited for have nothing to do with him.

Anyways, this is all very hard for NCL to swallow. NCL's view of this "conservative Japanese" notion is very skeptical - since little children across the socio-economic spectrum and of a variety of skin tones and religious backgrounds - play Mario and Zelda and Pokemon - and Shigeru Miyamoto (by Nintendo's own marketing effort) is somewhat of a household name. Nintendo of America's COO is a Haitian-American whose parents were immigrants. The company has diverse demographics in its executive and management ranks including many women historically. This makes them very different from your typical MBA-run company in California like Electronic Arts which was founded by a frat boy from Stanford.

Ultimately, for Nintendo, they want to be embraced and accepted for who they are, and create experiences the way they have envisioned. Iwata in paritcular doesn't want to compromise who they are or hide who they are. Nintendo is Nintendo is Nintendo. They aren't Japanese, or American, or European, or anything else. They are Nintendo and a variety of people around the world have contributed to making the company what it is.

EAD has had tremendous British influence, from its interactions with Rare, down to the ex-Argonaut staff that worked in-house and transformed and left a lasting impression on EAD. Howard Lincoln has been critical to Nintendo's history and deeply respected by people like Iwata. I know this sounds surprising to a lot of the NCL-haters on this board - but NCL is filled with counter-cultural types and isn't much of a traditional Japanese company at all.

So long story short - to get back to your insight about the way people are talking and discussing things - there are a lot of reasons why Nintendo is in the situation it is in - most are of their own doing and a result of their own failures in re-capturing their market.

But one reason could be the fact that tribalism influences peoples' perceptions - whether they realize it or not, and it's a problem that permeates corporate relations in general - not just the aggression of certain people on this board. It's also something that Nintendo doesn't believe they should compromise on. They want to be who they are and accepted for who they are. That comes with certain costs.

Just my 2 cents

Please don't kill me GAF

...very little of this makes sense when you consider Nintendo's wildly successful "Wii would like to play" ad campaign - which featured the Wii being introduced to American homes by two very "Asian looking" men.

I'm sorry, but...I actually had trouble getting through this post. I don't like the spirit of the discourse being introduced here.

 

[Azure J]

I know, right?

Fake specs are always hilarious.

The funny part isn't even the specs themselves most times. It's almost always the "extra touches" these people put into their spec lists that just make you laugh at them while thinking "aww, [poster] thinks these things work like this, how cute."

Edit: tehrik, I get where you're coming from, but I think I side more with Royalan in overall feeling after reading the entirety of the post. Nintendo does have a persistent perception problem to address with different facets of the gaming audience but I can't find myself agreeing with the idea that they're causing friction because the big guy talking isn't "American Steve". This is also weird considering Shu Yoshida has become a figure people enjoy hearing from.

 

[CLEEK]

text

While everything you've written has a ring of truth to it, and I'm not criticising your opinion, Nintendo is still a very Japanese run company at its heart. The single biggest issue with the WiiU is that the Gamepad was an answer to a question no one in the West was asking.

The two main design choices that have dictated everything come from Japanese considerations. Making a small console that looks discrete in small Japanese living rooms. And having a tablet for a controller, to allow WiiU games to be played in other rooms in small Japan apartments without the need for additional big TVs and consoles. Look at the original plans for the Xbox One with family sharing - really for people who have multiple Xboxes under the same roof. Not uncommon in the West.

The half arsed way that they approach online is also very Japanese. Compare the online social side to the Xbox One, which goes in the other direction and is an American designed console for Americans. Look at what features are there for an American audience.

It's too early to see how Japan react to the PS4, but so far, its success seems to be that it is the one console designed for a global market. Nintendo's games are certainly universal, but their hardware and services definitely aren't.

 

[thepotatoman]

...very little of this makes sense when you consider Nintendo's wildly successful "Wii would like to play" ad campaign - which featured the Wii being introduced to American homes by two very "Asian looking" men.

I'm sorry, but...I actually had trouble getting through this post. I don't like the spirit of the discourse being introduced here.

Completely agree. I'd also point out Yoshida has been a large part of Sony's campaign, showing up on Spike TV and at E3, and he doesn't even speak English very well, yet Sony's far from screwed in America.

And even if his point were true and people wont buy an Asian branded console, the only places where that's happening is E3 and Nintendo Directs, and those don't matter to most people anyway.

Not that I'm one to argue that racism is over in America, but I really don't see it applied here.

 

[tehrik-e-insaaf]

Key things:

1. This may be a factor. I'm not making a claim that it is - only that it COULD be. I wrote my post with incredible nuance. If it is a factor, then Nintendo doesn't want to address it because they don't believe in it for a variety of reasons I explained. I can see in certain situations where it might be true. Though it doesn't explain the vast majority of problems at Nintendo presently.

2. This is post-2008 research after the economy tanked. More importantly, NOA's marketing for Wii went beyond that television campaign - and the ad you mention included American families using and enjoying the products.

3. I'm sorry it makes you uncomfortable - I took a risk writing this b/c I knew some people would just be totally allergic. I apologize if it offended you.

 

[CLEEK]

Of course people's biases and subconscious thoughts affect their consumer habits. No reason to disbelieve the findings from a study because the idea of subtle racism makes you uncomfortable. Psychology plays a huge roll in advertising, point of sale, sales pitches etc, which is why marketing is a multi-billion dollar industry.

 

[tehrik-e-insaaf]

While everything you've written has a ring of truth to it, and I'm not criticising your opinion, Nintendo is still a very Japanese run company at its heart. The single biggest issue with the WiiU is that the Gamepad was an answer to a question no one in the West was asking.

The two main design choices that have dictated everything come from Japanese considerations. Making a small console that looks discrete in small Japanese living rooms. And having a tablet for a controller, to allow WiiU games to be played in other rooms in small Japan apartments without the need for additional big TVs and consoles. Look at the original plans for the Xbox One with family sharing - really for people who have multiple Xboxes under the same roof. Not uncommon in the West.

The half arsed way that they approach online is also very Japanese. Compare the online social side to the Xbox One, which goes in the other direction and is an American designed console for Americans. Look at what features are there for an American audience.

It's too early to see how Japan react to the PS4, but so far, its success seems to be that it is the one console designed for a global market. Nintendo's games are certainly universal, but their hardware and services definitely aren't.

I understand. I would argue that people assuming that Nintendo's decisions like the industrial design of the console, GamePad or a lack of focus on network services isn't so much a Japanese thing as an audience thing. iPad users aren't crying over the lack of competitive multi player and they love their touch screen. The fact that people tend to make it out to be a Japanese thing might be a result of implicitly believing Nintendo is Japanese and thus thinks with Japanese users in mind, rather than for a global audience.

Completely agree. I'd also point out Yoshida has been a large part of Sony's campaign, showing up on Spike TV and at E3, and he doesn't even speak English very well, yet Sony's far from screwed in America.

And even if his point were true and people wont buy an Asian branded console, the only places where that's happening is E3 and Nintendo Directs, and those don't matter to most people anyway.

Not that I'm one to argue that racism is over in America, but I really don't see it applied here.

I don't think the Wii U is flopping because Iwata is presenting it. Far from that. I was responding to the poster who was trying to understand why people were being super-aggressive about Iwata's failure versus Ubi or EA or anyone else who have bled billions. Some people say it might be related to psychology as I outlined above. Yoshida might be Japanese, but he is one name among a variety of names. That's what makes Sony's marketing so great.

 

[Cheerilee]

Unlike Nintendo and Microsoft, Sony has rarely had such problems. They are a chameleon. It's just part of the DNA of the company to not be any one thing to any one particular type of person. They fit in and change their message whenever needed to appeal to the broadest subset and audience possible. When they make mistakes - they quickly alter course and do whatever they can to change trajectory. They are a very tactical company. Sony in Japan was the one hired Cerny and set him loose to tell a story about how he transformed the Playstation brand in the face of traditional Japanese engineers.

Just tossing this out there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96iJsdGkl44

 

[Father_Brain]

The "Too Japanese and Conservative" and "NOA Needs Independence" memes are getting really tiring. Either people don't really understand how businesses and especially NCL works on this board - or there is something deeper happening here. The situation is very complex and comes to the heart of the values Nintendo holds as an organization.

Simple question: How many times in the last five years has Nintendo published a title aimed specifically at Western markets? I'm not even just talking core dudebro games here.

 

[royalan]

Key things:

1. This may be a factor. I'm not making a claim that it is - only that it COULD be. I wrote my post with incredible nuance. If it is a factor, then Nintendo doesn't want to address it because they don't believe in it for a variety of reasons I explained. I can see in certain situations where it might be true. Though it doesn't explain the vast majority of problems at Nintendo presently.

2. This is post-2008 research after the economy tanked. More importantly, NOA's marketing for Wii went beyond that television campaign - and the ad you mention included American families using and enjoying the products.

3. I'm sorry it makes you uncomfortable - I took a risk writing this b/c I knew some people would just be totally allergic. I apologize if it offended you.

Of course people's biases and subconscious thoughts affect their consumer habits. No reason to disbelieve the findings from a study because the idea of subtle racism makes you uncomfortable. Psychology plays a huge roll in advertising, point of sale, sales pitches etc, which is why marketing is a multi-billion dollar industry.

Well of course, that goes without saying.

I just don't like the idea of saying racism has anything to do with why Nintendo's doing so poorly, because it doesn't take into account their previous successes, the continued success (although diminished) of the 3DS, and the success of Sony despite the continued visibility of their Japanese arm.

And we need a bit more causality here than the "bad economy = hate Asians" that was presented in that post.

It just doesn't fit here, and honestly marks a new low in the reaching to make Nintendo's failures the fault of everything BUT their own asinine decisions. It's like people REALLY think Nintendo should be successful because Nintendo.

 

[CoffeeJanitor]

snip

I've liked most of your posts, but not this one; I think you might be projecting here. People want a western leader because Nintendo has been shielding itself from the rest of the gaming world for so long. They're partially in their situation because they don't have much of an international foothold.

 

[AzaK]

I wasn't even conscious of my feelings about Nintendo Directs until you mentioned it. I was actually wishing they'd present them with someone who spoke English as their first language, so the directs were more concise. Maybe I secretly wanted a white guy. I'm a horrible person.

I find it quite a strain to listen to severely broken English and I find it pulls me out of the hype experience at times. Now, Iwata isn't too bad but Shibata is almost unintelligible.

 

[tehrik-e-insaaf]

Well of course, that goes without saying.

I just don't like the idea of saying racism has anything to do with why Nintendo's doing so poorly, because it doesn't take into account their previous successes, the continued success (although diminished) of the 3DS, and the success of Sony despite the continued visibility of their Japanese arm.

And we need a bit more causality here than the "bad economy = hate Asians" that was presented in that post.

It just doesn't fit here, and honestly marks a new low in the reaching to make Nintendo's failures the fault of everything BUT their own asinine decisions. It's like people REALLY think Nintendo should be successful because Nintendo.

Which people? A new low? I'm the only person who made a claim here in this thread - and I said it's something people talk about.

I'm even being very precise that it doesn't explain the subpar performance - just that it is something that has been raised and NCL doesn't believe in it - but that the aggression and anger of certain people might be linked to their perception of Nintendo being a Japanese company, rather than a company that tries to appeal to a broad international audience.

It's a little funny - tons of people use Microsoft Windows in Japan, yet when the Xbox failed twice, some were arguing that the Japanese are just racist and won't buy American goods. The reality is that both products missed the market - and a variety of reasons explain why they failed, before any question of subtle biases ever arise.

 

[tehrik-e-insaaf]

Simple question: How many times in the last five years has Nintendo published a title aimed specifically at Western markets? I'm not even just talking core dudebro games here.

I think Nintendo publishes games that appeal to an international audience. The Nintendo audience in America bought up the Wii and DS like crazy, despite not having any Western-specific titles published for it.

Again, Nintendo's focus and decisions aren't because they are Japanese, but because they are global in how they approach publishing and have a particular, global audience in mind.

The fact that they don't release Western-specific titles isn't a function of being Japanese, but the fact that unlike Microsoft which targets Western markets, Nintendo targets global markets with games anyone can enjoy.

To your point? Yes I think Nintendo could use diversity in their line-up with region-specific games. But the lack of that isn't because they are Japanese. The fact that people believe that it's because Nintendo is Japanese is a result of their own biases, rather than understanding that Nintendo has a global family market they go after.

 

[chaosblade]

To extrapolate a bit further, for a lot of Americans - Iwata coming on Directs and having interviews that give people an idea of what is happening inside Nintendo - might be having the opposite effect Iwata intends - it has made people fully aware that Nintendo is a Japanese company - when Iwata's goal was probably to show people that NCL isn't a reclusive company that sticks to itself (which is the perception in Japan, not to mention the rest of the world). That it's a company that values partnerships and needs to work and collaborate with others to succeed.

This right here is the problem though, even though I don't think you realize it.

It has nothing to do with making Nintendo an American company or making people believe their products are coming from non-Japanese people. If Nintendo's Japanese studios could develop games that resonate specifically with western gamers, that would be great, but it doesn't seem to be the case, nor is it necessarily the direction that people want them go in.

It's not about changing who they are. That's why people want to see NOA expand, NOT see NCL contract or see Nintendo's Japanese development and partnerships taper off. They want to see a Nintendo that can deliver the experiences we get now (and some we may have gotten in the past and aren't getting now, i.e., Star Fox, F-Zero, etc) but also experiences that are only available on other platforms that cater to taste of western gamers specifically. Nintendo is great at catering specifically to the taste of Japanese gamers, and they have some very powerful IPs worldwide, but they struggle when it comes to specifically western oriented games. That is what people want to see improved.

 

[tehrik-e-insaaf]

I've liked most of your posts, but not this one; I think you might be projecting here. People want a western leader because Nintendo has been shielding itself from the rest of the gaming world for so long. They're partially in their situation because they don't have much of an international foothold.

Well I don't disagree that Nintendo needs globally-minded executives.

But I would argue that your perception of Nintendo not meeting the needs of Western audiences is untrue.

Because the Wii U doesn't meet the needs of any audience, Japanese, American, or European. Period.

That's because they focus on global publishing for a type of audience that has now moved on to playing F2P on the iPad.

To your point however, if Nintendo were to suddenly alter their focus and make games for the contemporary, primarily male audience that games on the PS4 - then yes I think having someone who understands that market and has experience in it makes a lot of sense. In that circumstance I could see the pool of qualified executives be primarily American and Western-focused, since that is where the market is.

 

[CoffeeJanitor]

Well I don't disagree that Nintendo needs globally-minded executives.

But I would argue that your perception of Nintendo not meeting the needs of Western audiences is untrue.

Because the Wii U doesn't meet the needs of any audience, Japanese, American, or European. Period.

That's because they focus on global publishing for a type of audience that has now moved on to playing F2P on the iPad.

To your point however, if Nintendo were to suddenly alter their focus and make games for the contemporary, primarily male audience that games on the PS4 - then yes I think having someone who understands that market and has experience in it makes a lot of sense. In that circumstance I could see the pool of qualified executives be primarily American and Western-focused, since that is where the market is.

I guess I just think that they can develop both family friendly titles as well as games with more "mature" content. Disney does this. I've always thought it would be a good investment...

 

[tehrik-e-insaaf]

This right here is the problem though, even though I don't think you realize it.

It has nothing to do with making Nintendo an American company or making people believe their products are coming from non-Japanese people. If Nintendo's Japanese studios could develop games that resonate specifically with western gamers, that would be great, but it doesn't seem to be the case, nor is it necessarily the direction that people want them go in.

It's not about changing who they are. That's why people want to see NOA expand, NOT see NCL contract or see Nintendo's Japanese development and partnerships taper off. They want to see a Nintendo that can deliver the experiences we get now (and some we may have gotten in the past and aren't getting now, i.e., Star Fox, F-Zero, etc) but also experiences that are only available on other platforms that cater to taste of western gamers specifically. Nintendo is great at catering specifically to the taste of Japanese gamers, and they have some very powerful IPs worldwide, but they struggle when it comes to specifically western oriented games. That is what people want to see improved.

Yup agreed. To be honest, that's why I think Metroid is probably going to be Retro's next project. I think NCL screwed themselves this gen and realized they needed games on the Wii U ASAP. So while they offered Metroid to Retro, I'm sure Kelbaugh decided that DKCR at least had some potential selling power globally and the audience Nintendo would initially capture, and decided it made the most business sense for the company, while telling us all a story about how Retro had fun making it and wanted to return to it.

That said, their struggle with Western-orientated games isn't because they are Japanese, it's because they are a global company that targets an audience that isn't there anymore.

No one said Disney was too Japanese or European or too American when they released subpar animated movies in the early part of last decade. Based on the way some people are framing things, if they had foreign executives, people would have made statements about how Disney was out of touch because they were foreign.

Nintendo is out of touch because Nintendo, not because they can hire an American and suddenly it solves even part of the problems. Iwata might make some bold claims about wanting to stay in touch with global trends, but he really doesn't believe that - he is just saying that to appease people. He knows F2P has eaten his lunch and tablets have killed Nintendo's market from last-gen.

I do agree with you though - gaming tastes have splintered so much that NCL may no longer be able to sustain their efforts to operate as one global publisher of the same content. They will likely need to invest in region-specific content at an accelerated pace. That kind of Nintendo might end up releasing more games specifically for the American market.

 

[tehrik-e-insaaf]

I guess I just think that they can develop both family friendly titles as well as games with more "mature" content. Disney does this. I've always thought it would be a good investment...

Agree. The problem right now is that they just don't have content period. Region-specific titles come when you have a steady flow of content. If Nintendo invests a lot of resources into region-specific titles then it takes away management and production time from content that can sell consoles across all territories for the audience that they believe primarily buys their console. I think that's the way they think about it.

Like I said though, they may no longer have a choice. But they practically, they can't set resources aside for a $20M title to work that will appeal to one region, and one subset of their existing (children-dominated) customer base right now because they have limited budgets - and they need content that appeals to a very general audience to keep selling and staying in business. So that's why you aren't seeing the content that might be appealing to you.

Hope that made sense. =/

 

[CLEEK]

I don't think much weight can be put on people's reactions to Nintendo Directs. I think they play a big part in the poor reception of the WiiU, as they're the opposite of advertising to the masses. They put the onus on the would-be consumers to do all the leg work and make the effort to view the Direct announcements themselves. They're just preaching to the converted, so a highly ineffective for or marketing.

The single biggest issue with Nintendo and the WiiU is they are faced with a product that isn't selling itself. The Wii sold by the bucket load, through word of mouth and a an array of new games which were simple to understand and unique to the console. The advertising Nintendo did helped promoted the console and games, but you don't sell over 100m consoles due to advertising alone.

 

[chaosblade]

I actually think region-specific titles would help bolster that flow of content, at least assuming those titles are coming from new partnerships or studios and not their existing ones.

Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but in terms of western partnerships I think they could do really well to work with B-tier companies like Obsidian. Let them take the reigns on an Eternity-like project for Nintendo's console and that will be an interesting and unique draw for the platform. Another interesting option would be to buddy up with Crytek for a new Timesplitters.

If well marketed, projects like those on top of things like Bayonetta 2 from Japan definitely paint a picture of a slightly different Nintendo for the "core" gamer that might not be sold on Nintendo's traditional IPs alone. And variety is essential to that.

I don't think much weight can be put on people's reactions to Nintendo Directs. I think they play a big part in the poor reception of the WiiU, as they're the opposite of advertising to the masses. They put the onus on the would-be consumers to do all the leg work and make the effort to view the Direct announcements themselves. They're just preaching to the converted, so a highly ineffective for or marketing.

Nintendo Directs aren't a negative in any way at all. They aren't a replacement for Nintendo sending out traditional press releases and screenshots/trailers to IGN, Gamespot, etc, they are something else on top of that for the fans.

To put another way, if Nintendo did a Direct this month and said it would be the last one, how would that benefit them in any way at all? Reggie, Iwata, and co. save 10 minutes of time they spent recording every few months?

 

[CoffeeJanitor]

Agree. The problem right now is that they just don't have content period. Region-specific titles come when you have a steady flow of content. If Nintendo invests a lot of resources into region-specific titles then it takes away management and production time from content that can sell consoles across all territories for the audience that they believe primarily buys their console. I think that's the way they think about it.

Hope that made sense. =/

Oh I completely agree. Just talking about the long term, (if they choose to stay in the hardware market in the long term). They've gotten themselves in quite a bad situation by not making these investments earlier...

 

[CLEEK]

Nintendo Directs aren't a negative in any way at all. They aren't a replacement for Nintendo sending out traditional press releases and screenshots/trailers to IGN, Gamespot, etc, they are something else on top of that for the fans.

To put another way, if Nintendo did a Direct this month and said it would be the last one, how would that benefit them in any way at all? Reggie, Iwata, and co. save 10 minutes of time they spent recording every few months?

Don't know what things are like in the US, but here, Nintendo's traditional print/TV advertising has dried up in recent years, coinciding with the Nintendo Directs. The Wii used to get advertised heavily, the WiiU hardly at all.

Nintendo Directs would be fine if they were in addition to a well run marketing campaign, but they seem to exist instead of that.

 

[chaosblade]

Don't know what things are like in the US, but here, Nintendo's traditional print/TV advertising has dried up in recent years, coinciding with the Nintendo Directs. The Wii used to get advertised heavily, the WiiU hardly at all.

Nintendo Directs would be fine if they were in addition to a well run marketing campaign, but they seem to exist instead of that.

I don't disagree that Nintendo could do a better job marketing their products to the masses, but that's a separate issue.

It's not very good in the US either (seemed better over the holidays at least, but I think that was too little too late), and the downturn seemed to coincide with Scott Moffitt's hiring.

 

[tehrik-e-insaaf]

Oh I completely agree. Just talking about the long term, (if they choose to stay in the hardware market in the long term). They've gotten themselves in quite a bad situation by not making these investments earlier...

It's also a bit of a function of how design companies work. They realize design innovations can catch fire and they can flop. They depend on small teams for exceptional success, and don't have the functionality in-place to scale parts of their organization fast enough to take proper advantage of their innovation.

The fact that Nintendo missed the boat doesn't surprise me - I figured that would be the case - because Apple was in the same boat in the 80s when their innovations caught fire and they didn't have the staff to keep up with the insane adoption rate of personal computers. They basically ended up with an orphaned platform.

It took two failures at Apple to figure out how to time their hiring needs with the market and scale as fast as possible, without destroying their culture, and yet they are still an extremely lean operation. That was with Steve Jobs back at the helm.

With Nintendo, they failed to grow in-time to meet their needs because they were caught up preserving their internal culture and capitalizing on Wii's success whenever they had additional staff - but now they are laying out big bucks because I think Iwata and Miyamoto both realize the predicament they are in.

The other thing you have to remember is that Nintendo effectively offers lifetime employment to its employees - that isn't really "Japanese" but a function of their desire to preserve internal culture and prevent attrition. Apple had the same basic philosophy for a very long time and still do - and it keeps their developers and designers loyal to the company.

 

[tehrik-e-insaaf]

Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but in terms of western partnerships I think they could do really well to work with B-tier companies like Obsidian. Let them take the reigns on an Eternity-like project for Nintendo's console and that will be an interesting and unique draw for the platform. Another interesting option would be to buddy up with Crytek for a new Timesplitters.

Great idea - and it's something that's actually part of Nintendo's history - after all Nintendo worked with Argonaut, Rare, and others directly. I think the reason Nintendo hasn't done that to date is that NOA basically doesn't believe the core gamer exists in the US on Nintendo platforms. If they did, they wouldn't have been strong-armed into releasing Xenoblade, and they would have marketed Metroid and other IPs very differently (marketing is their sole responsibility - NCL basically has little or no input outside of giving them a yearly budget). Their single big bet was Metroid Other M - and much of the gameplay suggestions came down to marketing feedback from the US to target the semi-core semi-casual audience that they thought was present on the Wii at the time. Well.. we all know how that played out...

Unfortunately I don't see this changing. NOA believes that the core audience is out of their reach - projects like Bayo2 and what not are mere afterthoughts to a platform strategy that was focused on capturing those who moved onto an iPad.

 

[QaaQer]

There are people who think Nintendo is American? wtf?

Nestle is one of those chameleon companies nobody is exactly sure where they are headquartered, but Nintendo? Sony? Naw.

(It's Swiss, btw).

 

[cafemomo]

There are people who think Nintendo is American? wtf?

I've met people who think Sony is an American company