Topic: Where Does Nintendo Go From Here?

@Bolt_Strike:
"Real violence, not cartoon violence."
...
Nope, the violence that occurs in any game is virtual violence. It's not real.
You want real violence? Head over to the troubled parts of the world.

Semantics. The point being, older fans are not going to respond as well to cartoon violence as they are with more realistic violence.

For the new CEO or president I think they need someone similar to Shuhei Yoshida and phil spencer......

@ZeroZX-Dev:
I always thought the problem is that Nintendo is stepping out of convention, just not in the way people want it too. I always pictured stakeholders getting down his throat to try to be more like his competitors, when Iwata and friends were stubbornly trying to be unique, for better or for worse. That's why Nintendo was late to things like online-play, HD, mobile, the toys-to-life platform, and more recently virtual reality. His belief that he should set itself apart from the competition kept Nintendo from following trends when it needed to, and instead innovated in ways not everybody was asking for.

Personally, I'd rather have the innovation, but I can't deny that, under Iwata's watch, Nintendo missed a lot of trends that they should have followed earlier. It's mostly an objective observation though. I'm not complaining.

Why is one better than the other for older fans?

We weren't talking about variety we were talking about volume. And quality. All I was saying was why should Nintendo try to compete with the GTAs and Assassin's Creeds of the world? There are already huge studios dedicated to pumping out those sort of titles. People don't buy Nintendo's systems for those titles anyways. And the reverse is true. Why would the other devs pour money into "Nintendo style" games on the other platforms? All of the people who are into Nintendo's style of games buy into Nintendo's ecosystem.

For sure they should produce a larger variety of content and I'd say the same of every game developer. We all want more variety and there is no limit to that. But Nintendo has a unique brand and they serve a section of the market that isn't particularly well served otherwise. So other than the cries of doom which claim to be about sales numbers but ignore part of what the sales numbers say... what reason is there?

Sigh... Quite a bit of truth there. Darn shame.

Nintendo also should try to take some more risks...splatoon was an amazing risk and i think they should let more studios try new projects as well as letting some of the younger people in the company try to take some leads(with over sight with the older staff of course) because as we have seen, not everyone going to last forever so they need to start training the younger developers.

No. Nintendo must stick to their core ideas of fun and innovation. Iwata was amazing in bringing friendliness to gaming. Granted, I do believe they should push the envelope and as stated before take risks, but having a a CEO like Yoshida and Spencer would make Nintendo just another gaming company. A healthy balance is needed.

@Sleepingmudkip: Agreed. Every time Nintendo takes a risk is when they're at their best. After all, the NES, N64, Wii, DS and 3DS were massive risks. And here we are today, enjoying and playing all of these fantastic games that us and everyone else thought were absolutely crazy.

@Nicolai,

But now the situation has suddenly changed, and they probably beg Miyamoto to do the job. Japanese people are full of pride, and I guess if they ask him he won't refuse. He would see it as a honor, and his duty to save the company.

@Henmii: I doubt Nintendo wasn't prepared. Considering Iwata was known to be terribly ill, it's almost certain that Nintendo already had plans set in motion in case Iwata passed away. It just depends on what their plans are and how they handle them, but it's highly unlikely that they were unprepared. Nintendo as a general company is doing fine as far as I'm aware.

@AtomiCartridge: Gamecube says hello.

I'm hard-pressed to believe nintendo doesn't have a plan here. Iwata was ill, and people close to him must have known as much. The illness he had has an extremely low survival rate as well. At some point, there must have been talks.

He may have succumbed to the illness sooner than expected in terms of weeks to go, but way before e3 many nintendo people must have known there was no turning around anymore. Perhaps that is why the e3 they had was so, well, run through the motions - even myamoto seemed more preserved with the not-now, so to speak.

@AtomiCartridge: I really wouldn't call the Wii much of a risk. It used very outdated hardware and made a profit on each unit sold from the beginning. The Wii U was more of a risk since they priced it so that they wouldn't make a profit on each unit sold and tried betting on the Wii name to carry it to success. As we saw, it failed. So I don't think Nintendo is necessarily at their best when they take risks. Sometimes it pays off, other times it doesn't. At this point a risk for Nintendo would be putting out a console that competes on a technical level with the others. Releasing another underpowered piece of hardware compared to the competition to ensure they make money on each unit sold won't be much of a risk

@rferrari24: I don't believe he's a Nintendo employee, but he can still become president. No one ever said the new CEO had to come from inside Nintendo, itself.

Many people are incorrectly assuming Iwata had cancer. He had a bile duct tumor, but I haven't seen any information that it was cancerous. Generally, a cancerous tumor isn't just called a "growth". From what I heard, Iwata was unexpectedly hospitalized, and didn't make it. It wasn't really an expected thing as with Steve Jobs 4 years ago.

That said, he did have a surgery on a vital internal organ last year, so I agree that Nintendo probably had some contingency plan in place.

The Wii tried to tap a new market while simultaneously appealing to older fans despite not significantly improving the specs of their machine. Instead they relied on a unique control scheme that no one could predict as a success. I'd define that as a risk.

Sure they profited on every unit sold, but if they sold 5 units, then the system would have still lost them money.

During Hiroshi Yamauchi's retirement, he also came into assistance and suggested Iwata to make the Wii and DS the way they are now. So if the previous president himself felt that innovation was needed, then its clear that they need a CEO with that vision of innovation as well.

Also, the CEO isn't the one always the one who makes the next console or handheld as the one who actually made the Wii U is Katsuya Eguchi and not Iwata. Iwata's job is to make Nintendo profit by leading Nintendo to directions. I don't understand why people misunderstand that the CEO would be the one responsible for releasing such hardware and software.

I'm going to throw some ideas out for Iwata's successor.

1. Yoshiaki Koizumi- I firmly believe this guy is the most talented developer at Nintendo. Look at his page on Wikipedia. Almost everything he has done has been almost universally well received by the fan base. In terms of his abilities as an executive, he has run EAD Tokyo very smoothly since he was promoted to head the division after Super Mario Galaxy. He's maintained incredibly high quality with the group's games, and as a producer, has managed to get every game out at or ahead of time. He would be a risky choice, but I think his insight could really push Nintendo forward.

2. Satoshi Tajiri- creator of Pokemon and CEO of Game Freak. This is a safer choice, and I think it would work great. Tajiri has let Game Freak through astounding growth and success, expanding the studio's talents far beyond just Pokemon. From his experience with RBY and GSC, we know that he has an understanding of how to create kid-friendly games that are fun for adults.