Topic: The Biggest Software Lesson Nintendo Should Have Learned

Port all Wii VC games to Wii U. Remove the separate boot setup with the Wii and incorporate it into the Wii U.

@Haru17 Sorry I haven' replied to you sooner. I was asleep. Anyways, I'm not sure what you're saying here. I mean, it kinda sounds like you're re-enforcing what I said by going over how Nintendo goes for simplicity over complexity, and how their games are different from multi-plat ones. Then again it's entirely possible that I just misinterpreted your post entirely. Could you please go a bit more into detail?

That part is very interesting:

The sports market has become narrow with fewer publishers making sports titles. Nintendo is now under the mercy of third party publishers like Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive (2K Sports) to provide sports games on Nintendo platforms. Unfortunately, those publishers have proven to be unreliable for Nintendo. Even if EA and Take-Two came crawling back to Nintendo with sports titles for Wii U, there is no guarantee these publishers won’t stab Nintendo in the back again with future consoles. Unlike Microsoft, Nintendo doesn’t have the kind of money to throw at every third party publisher to keep them happy,

Nintendo’s biggest mistake was their over-reliance on third parties to create western content. Nintendo should always strive for third party support, but never forget that third parties are in the business for their own self-interests. Give third parties too much power over your platforms, and you could end up walking away empty handed if the relationship goes sour. Nintendo’s weakness in certain genres gave third parties leverage to use against Nintendo during negotiations. The entire licensed sports genre is being held hostage by two publishers (Take Two and EA) because they know Nintendo is too much of a penny-pincher to develop their own non-Wii Sports/Mario sports games.

This isn’t the first time that Electronic Arts and Nintendo have had a rocky relationship. Who can forget when EA Sports staff wanted to walk off because they weren’t interested in developing Wii games.

During the 16-bit era, Electronic Arts always gave Sega the superior versions of their sports titles. When Nintendo 64 was getting ready to launch, EA wasn’t willing to commit support for the console until Howard Lincoln spent weeks negotiating with them. During the GameCube era, Electronic Arts was getting ready to ditch Nintendo. To stop EA from ditching the GameCube, Miyamoto gave them permission to use Nintendo’s characters in EA Sports titles like NBA Street Volume 3, SSX 3, and Fight Night.

It’s great if Nintendo continues working with EA and 2K Sports, but Nintendo should have a “Plan-B” in case things don’t work out with their partners. I think that ‘Plan-B’ should involve Nintendo investing in a studio that specializes in creating licensed sports titles. Instead of putting themselves under the mercy of third parties, it’s time for Nintendo rely on themselves. Especially when the game industry has become increasingly political behind the scenes.

They have Sega and Camelot to make some Mario sport games but there isn't anyone left in the industry to make some more serious arcade sport games like Virtua Striker or the ISS games. And Next Level working on a Metroid game for 3DS instead of a next Mario Strikers on WiiU makes no sense in my opinion.

Nintendo doesn't have to directly compete with the big name games like EA Sports to find success. Just take what you have and expand on it. Mega Super Baseball found success not because it was the most stat driven game, but because it brought the game back to a level that people could just play and enjoy it. Nintendo could easily do that with a Mario or Wii Baseball game.

Likewise, they could easily build on Wii Sports Golf or Mario Golf to be a richer experience. Those games are fun to play, but one lacks courses and the other becomes too arcade-y. But the controls introduced in Wii Sports Club were solid. The same for Tennis and Football/Soccer. They have the engines there, just build upon it. Make it less of Mario Sports but more than Wii Sports. With Football/Soccer just turn it into a world tournament. With Tennis emulate the three major tournaments and have people need to move through the ranks.

But for all of this to work, online play needs to be there. I don't think voicechat is needed, as my experience is that it mostly is trash talk but put it there for friendlist play. I should be able to trash talk my best friend who just happens to live 500 miles away.

I don't think splitting up existing franchises into 2 brands is a very good idea. What Nintendo could do though is start a separate publishing label exclusively for M-rated games they plan to publish.

@DreamOn: Good find. Reason number 11 applies to all genres. If Nintendo doesn't make exclusive shooters, racers, fighters, sports, or rpgs; then Nintendo won't have those gamers.

I think the biggest opportunity for a licensed sports title for Nintendo, as an exclusive, is NCAA football. They ended their exclusivity deal with EA and all Nintendo would have to do to avoid the complication of player likenesses is to randomly generate the player faces.

Or better yet, just open up more dev studios in the West. That could also solve the problem of having no one to make IPs like F-Zero and Metroid.

Their DLC is the cheapest, and comes later than other other company DLC, so you'll probably have enough money to buy something for $2 on a game. I bought Dead Rising while it wasn't on sale, but I can always buy the DLC, even without Xbox Live Gold, so that's where it evens out, because I already beat the whole game, before it went on sale.

It's not that simple, they will need to find people who possess similar ideals to Nintendo to run the projects. They will be risking big dollars on a product which may not meet their expectations. Or they would have to relocate people from Japan to oversee development.

If Nintendo want to keep making and selling consoles successfully they need numbers, a.k.a. bug fanbase. Actually the fanbase it seems not big enough to compete with Sony and Microsoft. Hence, they need to attract buyers, especially in the west, so they need more appealing games for western audience. This leads to two solutions: a) get back third parties (the big names) b) make your own "western" games (sports, fps...) by buying developers.

If not, Nintendo is destined to become a "niche" thing, since it seems (love it or hate it) that their traditional "gameplay" have lost appeal on young generations... then, we will see if being an hardware makers is still viable or it will be better for them to transform in a very renown and historical software (only) house.

@shaneoh: But in a way, that was what has been done with Bayonetta. Working together with an external dev.... At a certain point, Nintendo has to loose the leash on devs, otherwise these software droughts will keep coming forever....

Bayonetta was developed in Japan, and wasn't a Nintendo property, the second game was only financed by Nintendo. It's all very well for people to say that others should sacrifice their ideals.

Disclaimer: I apologise if this post seems disjointed, I've currently got a needle pumping steroids into my right arm (chemo) and am writing using my left hand.

Some random things I've always thought that Nintendo as a whole needs to change:

1) Realise that there is a world outside of Japan that needs support. Japan gets a lot that the rest of the world don't and while that's great for Japanese Nintendo fans, it's not so fun being left out for the rest of us.

2) Don't put so much focus on the family/casual/children market that it alienates the older and more experienced gamers. Nintendo should be a brand that appeals to all and there IS room for Kirby alongside Call of Duty. There are only so many grinning grandparents and nuclear families that those outside of the target demographic can take before we move elsewhere.

3) Classics are good, classics alongside new IP's are better! Nintendo should strive to give us new games/characters while bringing back old ones just to keep things fresh and original. Sometimes it's hard to know who they're targeting with NES games on the VC (for example). Younger gamers aren't likely to want to play something so old while older games have likely already played them. They're great fun. I enjoy them but would appreciate new titles alongside them too.

4) Don't give up at the first hurdle. Rather than refine or modify, Nintendo seems to be in the habit of giving up the second something doesn't meet their expectations (see the VC, the Wii U, Nintendo Land). Some things just aren't going to work the first time but come back to them and rebuild, not give up.

5) Listen to your fans, make an effort to understand what they want. A familiar comment in the industry is that Sony and MicroSoft ask their fans what they want, and try to deliver that experience. Nintendo gives fans what Nintendo wants, and get upset when the word doesn't gush over it. Fans need an official channel to voice their opinions and Nintendo needs to start listening.

6) Don't worry about gimmicks so much and focus on competing (at first). Gamers are going to need to be convinced why they should own a Nintendo machine alongside their Xbox and PS4. A new gimmick may look cool, but if the machine is woefully underpowered then it's not going to appeal to many people. Likewise there needs to be a strong line up of games and a long term release schedule to instil confidence in consumers. Gaming machines are an investment, give fans something to invest in.

7) And relax. In a bid to deliver a family friendly service, Nintendo tends to worry too much and gets a little overprotective at times. For example allow us to post freely on the Miiverse boards, allow us to open our Animal Crossing gates to random strangers, give us a permanent cross platform identity ala PSN and Live. We know the risks that come with such freedom, by all means have parental controls, but allow the more sensible of us to play games how we want without being nannied.

/RANT

@shaneoh: It is not about loosing ideals. You can still keep the average quality of games high. But if you do not open to online games (PvP and PvE with chat as an example), more mature themes, more "complex" gameplay, so essentially what the market want, you just disappear. Sadly as it is. I do not see Nintendo beeing able to "convert" youngsters to its "ideal of gaming". 30 years on the MArio's shoulders are heavy to carry, and you can see it. Many franchises looks stale at the eye of the gamers majority, Like it or not. You are a player in a market, and the market goes on certain way, and not all of the time you can hope to change it. If you do not adapt, you won't survive.....

@Jimtaro: Great post. You nailed it completely, point by point!

You're not asking them to adapt, you're asking them to conform, to do what everyone else is doing. If we all conformed we'd still be thinking we could fall into a void by walking off the edge of the Earth. If Nintendo conformed then gaming wouldn't be at where it is today, because they would never have considered releasing the NES and would have stuck to arcade. Adapting doesn't have to be a response to the environment, it can be making the environment respond to you.

Third parties have zero interest to work on Nintendo systems except if Nintendo pay them big money. But Nintendo prefer spending money for their own games. And Nintendo publish a lot of games. Much more than Sony or Microsoft so third parties consider Nintendo as a competitor, not a partner. No one is going to make games that will help to sell a Nintendo system since the main purpose of a Nintendo system is to sell Nintendo games. To attract the third parties Nintendo would need to release the NX and say "ok here is a new system and we don't release any big game for it that could overshadow third parties" but if they did that the NX would probably sell worse than the WiiU.

@bitleman: I do not understand this theory. How Nintendo overshadows 3rd parties? Do you really think that releasing Zelda will overshadow the sales of The Witcher? Or that WiiSport will do the same with Fifa? I don't know, to me it seems that Nintendo release very peculiar games, and many WiiU owners (me included) just would like to play, lets say again, a 3D Mario AND Dark Souls 3 on the same console. I have bought plenty of games on Ps4 both 1st and 3rd parties. Cos I like the variety there. Is not that if I have bought Infamous Second Son then I won't buy GTA. Probably, it will happen the opposite, since one game makes me hungry about the genre....

@shaneoh:
The problem is that Nintendo no longer have the power to alter the environment to their liking. In the 80's or 90's perhaps so but Nintendo now is a much weaker beast than Nintendo then. They need to "conform" (though I don't quite agree with the term) in order to regain some standing BEFORE making radical changes. If Nintendo attempts to make another change to the environment now, people could well dismiss them as attempting another Wii, a gimmick that fades out, discourages third parties and has Nintendo giving up and asking consumers to "please understand" yet again. By all means they can attempt it when they've regained support, but they're going to have to convince the global market (and not just fans) of their worth before that would be viable.

@shaneoh: "Adapting doesn't have to be a response to the environment, it can be making the environment respond to you." On paper, it's admirable and would tend to agree with you. But we are not living in a idillic system where you can do what you want and the people will accept it. Market is a bad beast, it likes to eat who fails..... and the market said that Nintendo has failed (with WiiU).

Nintendo has still plenty of space to innovate, through software. Innovate or, at least, create some clever, well designed games. But if they wanna be competitive in the console market, maybe the gimmicky at all cost is not always the answer. Maybe a transition like from NES to SNES (where the second was a overpowered version of the first, with no crazy gimmicks) could be a solution this time.

If, on contrary, Nintendo want to adapt as a secondary console maker that sells barely 12 million units per lifecycle, then they can go on with underpowered hardware, no 3rd parties, and whatever controller they want to sell us....