Topic: Furukawa's Interpretation of Nintendo's motto.

Nintendo's motto is to "surprise and delight". It's existed in some form since Yamauchi was CEO. TLDR at the bottom.

Yamauchi's strategy at first was to try new off the wall things as a gamble, because the playing card business was stalling. Like instant rice, taxis, and hospitality.
Later into his tenure as CEO, that became trying new things within play, when he noticed workers like Gunpei Yokoi fiddling with what would become Nintendo's first hit toy. Because Yokoi was having fun with it, even before Yamauchi approached him to make a product out of it, it would become a success. Today this is similar to prototyping a game to find the fun. This is how Yamauchi honed Nintendo's gambles to become successes, how he knew when and where to pivot. Yamauici's intepretation of the motto was to trust intuition to lead him to fresh good ideas.

Next we have Iwata. By this time, developers had caught on to standards and practices that made games sell well to a core audience. Iwata intepreted it as gaming reaching a dead end, so he decided that Nintendo would try to be accessible and interesting to a larger audience. He requested the Wii be designed like "something Mom would like" Iwata's priority was to reach new people that hadn't considered video games before and make them feel comfortable. Iwata's interpretation of the motto was to use fresh ideas to connect to new people.

Furukawa hasn't made many public appearances since he succeeded the intermediate CEO. Kit and Krysta have indicated that Furukawa has respect for: play, "the reality of business", and Fire Emblem. One of the responsibilities of CEO is to approve projects and big decisions within the project as executive producer, This is how we will get a feel for how he interprets the motto.

The intermediate president beforehand, approved many low energy games such as Hey Pikmin, Mario Party the Top 100, Sushi Strikers, Luigi's Mansion 3DS, and the Infamous Boswer's inside story remake, the majority of good games were in development before his tenure. These were low quality with low marketability, that often didn't understand what made the originals good, or had poor twists.

Furukawa by comparison has approved many games that build off the appeal of existing ideas as returns to form, as sequels, as remakes. Ring Fit Adventure from Wii Fit; Animal Crossing New Horizons, Metroid Dread, Mario Party Superstars, Xenoblade Definitive Editon, Pokemon Rescue Team DX. In comparison to the intermediary CEO, there have been more hits in proportion that he is responsible for approving. Furukawa seems to be prioritizing nostalgia, this is also indicated by apps like Nintendo Music, which are intended to "Let players reconnect with their memories of playing a game." and also let players discover new games through music. This is how Furukawa interprets "delight".

In recent times, Nintendo has been using Nintendo Today to reveal information at odd times or last minute. They were using social media for such things beforehand with games like Origami King, and save some reveals for outside Directs. Furukawa also approves projects that explore existing characters or ideas in interesting ways such as Princess Peach Showtime; DK Bananza, FZero 99, Echoes of Wisdom. Games like Luigi's Mansion 3, Xenoblade 3, Mario Bros Wonder are full of moments that are new and exciting but easy to spoil. Furukawa interprets surprise as literal surprise in terms of information and spoilers as well as reinterpreting old ideas.

Thus Furukawa's interpretation of the motto is to create new memories through considering the feeling and novelty of reinterpreting an old idea.

TLDR:

Yamauici's intepretation of the motto was to trust intuition to lead him to fresh good ideas.
Iwata's interpretation of the motto was to use fresh ideas to connect to new people.
Furukawa's interpretation of the motto is to create new memories through considering the feeling and novelty of reinterpreting an old idea .

Hey, Sushi Striker wasn't bad...

Furukawa was hired at Nintendo as an accountant.

His focus is weighed more on making stockholders happy rather than making customers happy.

Pulling the gold coin program with no replacement, increasing prices on old hardware when traditionally those prices are lowered over time, etc. It's almost a guarantee that a price hike on NSO is...right around the corner. For years Furukawa has coasted on the success of the Switch 1, but his leadership behind Nintendo and the Switch 2 is not off to a great start.

@Dogorilla It did leave poor initial impressions.

@Magician I fundamentally disagree. We've got too much extremely effective nostalgia bait and great new games from Furukawa for that to be true, and not enough trend chasing, microtransactions, gacha, live service games, ai slop, or bad short term decisions designed to make the shareholders happy. That's projecting a standard idea of a bad leader onto Nintendo, because of price increases, and game key cards, and Furukawa's career history while ignoring his respect for play.

This is indicated by how Super Mario Kart the game got him interested in working for Nintendo and that Kit and Krysta statement about him liking Fire Emblem.
Furukawa did not join Nintendo because he thought he could make it big, he joined Nintendo because he wanted to support the company's creative endeavors like Mario Kart and Fire Emblem.

The strategy around memory that I speculated based on the releases he approved is supported by this interview with Nikkei, translated by Nintendo Everything: https://nintendoeverything.com/furukawa-talks-nintendo-philos...
Furukawa had worked often with Iwata as indicated by another section of the interview on the same site:
https://nintendoeverything.com/furukawa-reflects-on-iwata-and...
I just found that interview while trying to re find evidence that Iwata wanted Furukawa to be his successor, I think it was Kit and Krysta who claimed that Furukawa shadowed Iwata in Iwata's final years but I can't find the source.

Game key cards are meant to ease manufacturing burdens and costs for third parties, and Nintendo has a survey out about it in two regions right now despite that going against their goals.

And as for gold points and voucher that's a fair point. There is a reasonable explanation for increasing prices on old hardware, and the speculation about NSO's price increase for similar reasons isn't confirmed.

I do agree with @Magician that Furukawa's leadership feels more business-driven than his predecessors, but I think the main difference is that he (or at least the current generation of the company as a whole; I don't know if it makes sense to pin these decisions on an individual) is positioning the Switch 2 as a premium, high-power device for what it is, whereas Nintendo consoles historically have usually been among the more affordable options on the market and (under Iwata in particular) been more interested in finding new gaps in the market than just iterating on power. DYKG talked about this in this video, worth a look if you have a spare half hour.

But @TheSaneInsanity you're right to point out that Nintendo is generally still avoiding the worst industry trends such as microtransactions (in paid games), genAI, etc, and that's why I will still defend them somewhat when people accuse them of being a consumer-hostile company or whatever, even if I am a bit frustrated at their overconfident pricing strategies of late.

@Dogorilla I agree too that Furukawa is more business driven, I think that companies chase microtransactions because of budget and development cost, and Nintendo's answer to that is to get the consumer to "respect the value" instead of lowering the barrier to entry. I do think they are accelerating too much at the moment. I think a 5$ increase for standard games, and games with massive development budgets could have stayed at 70$. A majority of switch 2 edition upgrades from third parties are under 5$ and 10$.

The thing I think Furukawa's Nintendo is isn't as interested in surprising the consumer as Iwata's or Yamauchi's Nintendo, and that's certainly something people have been feeling.

I haven't got much to say about Furukawa or Furukawa's Nintendo yet.

The relationship with the fanbase has evolved into a less fun, more distanced one, which seems a loss, but the Switch 2 generation needs to play out for me have much more to say about it, I suspect.

I'm very interested to see what direction Nintendo takes the next Animal Crossing, the next (?) Smash Brothers, the next Nintendo Sports, and what innovations or novelties they come up with akin to ARMS, LABO, Mario Kart Live Home Circuit, and Game Builder Garage. And what happens beyond the obvious iterative step that Switch 2 is. But by then, we'll probably be in the 2030s and the world, and the world of electronic entertainment, will be quite different from how things were during Iwata's time.

I don't know the demographics, but I feel like a very significant part of Nintendo's success comes from the generation(s) that grew up with NES, SNES, Game Boy, N64 - we're buying a lot of Nintendo products for ourselves, and for our kids, because our lives are so intertwined with Mario, Zelda, Pokémon but, outside of Japan, how successful are Nintendo going to be at maintaining relevance to new generations of players, 5-10 years from now? Will there still be the same market for video games in another 5-10 years and, if not, how will Nintendo adapt to that?

It feels like there are aspects which can overlap, for example the idea of exploring old characters in interesting ways can also apply to the gamecube era nintendo while the criticisms of some of those "low energy" games could also apply to the aspects people were critical about with something like yoshis new island or how there were 4 NSMB games which ended up re-using a lot of ideas and assets such as music in places, in terms of the nostalgia aspect it felt like the idea of virtual console was a mix of nostalgia along with appealing to new fans who may not have played those games.

@Dogorilla
it kind of feels like with nintendo it can sometimes be a double edged sword with industry trends, like you mentioned a good aspect is that they managed to avoid a lot of really bad trends like gen-ai and lootboxes for the most part but at the same time theres aspects where it feels like they've leant into an industry trend but missed out on some of the positive aspects which made that trend work, such as offering digital purchases with the wii, dsi etc but not incorperating an account system which similar services were offering, or leaning into the subscription service model like with gamepass or PS+ but not offering purchase options for individual games on it.

Furukawa wasn’t hired to be the face of the company. He doesn’t have the personality or desire to be a celebrity. He was hired, with his background in accounting to help lead Nintendo into a new age of brand expansion. The Lego collaborations, the foray into the big screen with the Mario Bros Movie and upcoming films. The Universal Attraction Parks and of course their continued path in the video games industry. They needed the company to be as profitable as possible in order to achieve and sustain that level of growth. No Switch 1 price cuts ever, charging for Online gaming, the $80 USD games, higher price of accessories, the cost of the Switch 2 ecosystem. They needed a numbers guy to balance the books. It’s as simple as that. They have been allowing the creators and developers to step in here and there but Furukawa’s vision and purpose is to make and keep Nintendo heathy, financially.

@Rainz I definitely agree. The only problem with that is that Nintendo doesn’t feel like it really has a ‘mascot’ anymore (not sure if that’s the right word). During the Wii U/3DS generation, Iwata and Reggie did great work to make it seem like they really cared about their fans, even if, at the end of the day, they too were calculated businessmen. I just don’t feel much friendliness from Furukawa and Bowser, which isn’t helped by their infrequent public appearances during Nintendo events. The only direct Bowser ever helped host was June 2019. And Furukawa has never made an appearance in a direct

Under Furukawa's watch, too many decisions are being taken without regard for the value they represent to the customer. This is not a good sign.

@WhiteUmbrella I disagree, I think Furukawa is focusing too much on how value is represented to the consumer and isn't surprising us enough with things we didn't know we wanted.

@TheSaneInsanity So ... according to you, the prices increases, remote online bans, alterations to the eula and game key cards are decisions that have been made to represent value to the consumer? Ok.

Analyzing the administrations as a Nintendo fan in Brazil:
Furukawa >>>>> Yamauchi >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Iwata.
The Furukawa administration is doing an excellent job of expanding the brand globally (along with Doug Bowser at NoA, specifically in Latin America).
The worst possible moment was the Iwata + Reggie period; I hope those times never return.
Fans in the United States probably have a completely different perspective than mine, and I completely understand.

@WhiteUmbrella I meant in terms of the game releases Furukawa approves. This discussion is about Furukawa's interpretation of the motto and how he runs Nintendo in line with that, not about Nintendo's history of inappropriate use of legal power. Online bans and Eula changes have little to do with the effects of the motto, and more to do with security of their services and covering legal loopholes.

Though the game key cards are something that falls under how normal consumers are effected. They have put out multiple surveys to judge how consumers are reacting. We can connect this to how Furukawa runs Nintendo in terms of the motto through "delight" and how they see that they need to put this survey out because consumers are not delighted.

Magician has done a decent job of bringing up other topics like this: Gold Points, Vouchers, Price Increases, and a speculated NSO price increase.

Drill Baby Drill... oh ops... Money Baby Money..............