Masahiro Sakurai Praises the Achievements of Steam, Isn't Content With Other Download Services

Bundles are amazing. When you look at trilogies like DKC, it seems very natural to offer them all in a reduced-price pack!

I have a feeling Mr. Iwata had to "talk" to Sakurai after this interview.

Nintendo's online presence could only improve by taking a note out of steam's book. Glad to see Sakurai has considered it, hopefully Nintendo will implement more "PC" mechanics to edge ahead of PS4/Xbone and PC's

@Chaozrush21 Yup. That's what I thought too haha.

Ah man, I need to get onto Steam again at some point.

Is there a rational person who doesn't think Steam is the best digital platform? Nintendo has arguably the absolute worst digital purchasing system of all the major console companies.

You know what else is fantastic about Steam, you can actually gift games and DLC to other people as well as it being irrelevant of where they live. I've gifted Rocksmith DLC to a few NA friends before and I think that kind of option should be present for eshop/XBL marketplace/PSN store. I don't think equivalents of the Steam sales would be particularly suitable for other platforms though it's still another great feature.

@DarkKirby I disagree about Nintendo's being the worst, at least with PS3 the store is a complete mess and SCEE purposely avoids releasing music game DLC so I vote for Sony being the worst.

Keep in mind Sakurai isn't a Nintendo employe, so he wont get in trouble with Nintendo for saying stuff like this. Besides, it's not like he names the eShop by name and mentions its flaws.

I actually think that Nintendo is doing a fantastic job with the eShop. If your wallet's short, you can add just the amount of money that you need, wishlists are quite streamlined, and feedback requires both owning the game and playing it for an hour. Things they need to improve on are running more sales, offering cross platform functionality, and maybe lowering prices of older games

@DarkKirby Plenty, including myself. GoG beats Steam on every possible level. Ever since Steam opened up the flood gates, they have lost all quality control. Steam is actually one of the least consumer friendly platforms at the moment. It's a complete joke, and it's a real shame the average consumer doesn't seem to realize that.

Well, if you have a Steam account, you can play your games on every PC in the world just by logging in, let's start from this, would you Nintendo?

Of course a game maker is going to like steam-- its a cheap platform to release a bunch of garbage games. Sure, steam has thousands of games, but 98 percent of them are crap.

On top of that, download only services are a flippin' scam. You never own the game, so no matter what a 'deal' you get it for, you're still just renting it.

@Grumblevolcano I 2nd. I have always hated the PS3 online store. I don't have a Xbox so I can not comment. but from what I've seen I still don't like it. Also, Nintendo is free, you have to pay for the others. Not steam...but consoles.

@Chaozrush21 Well, hopefully Nintendo's board will have a little talk with Mr. Iwata after their next meeting...

@DarkKirby Nope, I used to have and Xbox 360 and its store sucks. I like the eShop, the interface is not perfect but I think it's good enough. The only downside are the prices, they're a little too high

I personally like the eshop on the Wii U, and even the Xbox 360 has a pretty decent shop interface.

The one I dislike is the shop on the PS3. Ever since they revamped the shop, its hard to find anything without searching, difficult to simply browse content, and the overall shop layout is cluttered. Not to mention, the shop on the PS3 has an annoying habit of crashing randomly even on a PS3 that is barely a year old.

What is sad about this is the PSP has a much better shop interface then the PS3. That shop is not cluttered with non-sense, the store itself has a much better layout, and its easier to browse.

I don't know how the PS4's layout is, but in my opinion the PS3's store is the worst interface I have ever seen for an online shop. I consider it even worse then the Wii's shop, and that's saying something.

@DarkKirby my experiences have been for the most part been positive. Most of steams features have been implemented in the Nintendo network- Miiverse differentiates users who own the game when it comes to posts. Ratings are in the eShop reflect those who bought it, can't leave a rating unless they own it. Kind of hard to see these things from an external point of view. Buying games is easy, you have the option of saving credit card info and click(touch) away. While they haven't had any large Steam size sales, sales do happen. I remember buying mega man games and others for 50% off a while back.

"What do you think, would implementing some of Steam's ideas elevate the Nintendo Network and eShop stores to a new level?"

Uh... Yeeaahhh.....

@orravan85 To be more precise, you can't leave ratings until you've played the game for at least an hour.

Oh, it goes way further than that. Even Origin of all places has surpassed them in terms of refunds and customer service. The sheer amount of unfinished/incomplete, bug-ridden games that end up on the front page, some of which completely get to bypass the Greenlight system for no good reason, while other games get denied access without even given a fair chance. 9 out of 10 reviews on Steam are people trolling with their typical "haha, we're mocking IGN" nonsense. And instead of trying to fix that like GoG does, they add a "funny" button, cause that's real helpful, right? I could go on and on why Steam as a platform and Valve as a company have some serious catching up to do. It's just disgusting that they keep getting away with it too.

@DarthNocturnal What's a GoG?
And Nintendo, can we have crossbuy? Thanks.

@Grumblevolcano even better!

Account wise, I have transferred my Wii onto Wii U onto another Wii U. 3DS to 3DS XL( which was broken unable to turn it on) onto a new 3DS XL over the phone and then finally onto a New 3DS XL. Maintaining my huge volume of digital content. Not as quick as login link new user but it works. I haven't lost a thing in the transfers.

@EvisceratorX I agree with everything you stated. I'd also like to see more bundles as someone above pointed out, like todays Donkey Kong would have been nice to get all 3 for $20.
I also wish DDP would have stayed, not having it has ceased some of my eshop purchasing.

Of the digital platforms I've tried (steam, nintendo eshop, ps3), I'd say they rank best to worst in that order listed. The eshop works pretty well to group together related games (price drops, multiplayer, etc), while PS3 I really don't like the searching method of selecting letter by letter (and not being able to enter a search keyword). Even then, I have trouble finding the items I'm looking for on the playstation shop.

The main improvements I see for eshop. is more sales (though they have good ones from time to time), being able to purchase a game from the internet or regardless of wiiU disk space (and being able to download it later, not a huge deal, but I have an external HD but I don't always keep it connected when visiting the eshop). There could be a larger selection of quality games, either VC or indie, but the library is steadily growing.

Other than that, the main issue is a hardware one, the standard HD space on wiiU is too limited (does not meet have enough disk space for downloads per the standard user), and buying an external is a bit of a hassle (and a Y USB cable connector, if no external HD power source).. I presume this will be corrected on the next console release.

Well the man has good taste. Worth noting that Steam is not perfect though. The discounts are great, and the features are all good, but god help you if you want to talk to some support staff. The void will stare back at you, and you will come out older but with the same problems.

@FernandoMachado If they offered DKC trilogy for $20 I'd buy it tonight
If they offered Donkey Kong Land trilogy for $10 I'd buy it tonight

I have some issues with Steam--notably, too many sales and discounts discourages gamers from supporting games when they're new and full price at a time when making that revenue is important. I think it's got some great pluses, such as putting a game on your want list and then getting a notice when it does go on sale, but there is too much emphasis on selling games for cheap.

This creates huge backlogs where players never experience the bulk of the games they buy, and it encourages players to wait until they pay almost nothing for games that cost millions to develop and produce.

I'm not too familiar with Microsoft's new Xbox One store, and while Sony's on the Vita and PS4 (the PS3 is just clunky as hell) has greatly improved, there are issues, such as automatically mixing movies in with games. Sorry, but I'm not buying movies on my game console, don't mix them in with the games. Microsoft, to my understanding, has done some very clever things with theirs, such as player rewards and discounts for playing the freebie games within a short time period after downloading them, which encourages players to broaden their range faster. At the same time, their user interface is kind of a wreck, and you can't, or at least couldn't, search by genre for some reason.

I think the eShop is an absolutely massive improvement over the crappy and cumbersome Wii Shop, but my biggest gripe is that, for a console that's supposed to be backwards compatible, the Wii Ware and Wii VC games should merely be a search option within the Wii U eShop, and not something I have to go bother with inside the extra-slow Wii Menu.

I have never used steam don't really care for pc gaming, but the ps3 has the worse shop channel, because of it crashing alot of times but it still has way better sales on games than the Wii U eshop nintendo need to learn how to lower there prices on older games and have some awesome sells like sony and microsoft has on there consoles.

Even Sakurai, one of the greatest Japanese devs out there, bends one knee to Lord Gaben and his Kingdom's accomplishments.

"only those who have purchased a game are allowed to rate it, paving the way for more constructive feedback"
The eshop does that too. I think even the Wii Shop did that.

If I was going to choose things from Steam to implement on the eshop, I'd want the great sales and the accounts. I'd also love to see Nintendo's take on Greenlight, though I'm not sure if that would work.

@Grumblevolcano

It's not really fair to judge an out-going platform, particularly when the current machines beautifully improved upon almost every aspect of that which you criticize. If you're going that route, then be fair, and recognize that no one had a worse digital storefront than Nintendo with the Wii.

I don't disagree that the PS3 store is an unfettered, clunky mess, but then the whole user interface of that console is a cumbersome, frustrating nightmare of terrible design. The PS4 has arguably the best user interface of all modern consoles as it is fast, smooth, uncluttered, and ridiculously easy to navigate. The PS4 store is basically like a good, working version of the PS3 store and with rare exception, finding what you want is extremely easy.

But I wouldn't judge Nintendo now on the horrible Wii Shop since the eShop is running on two platforms, and better in every single way. Because the only digital shop worse than the PS3 was the Wii.

...But Steam sucks. TwT

@Donutman you guys are both bashing the PSN Store on Sony's LAST GEN console. The PSN store on the PSN is just fine.

While we're at it, should we critique the Wii Shop?

@mowerdude why are you all trying to defend the eShop by comparing it to the PS3 store?? That console is 9 years old ffs

I haven't used Steam much for actual purchases, but when I do I think it's nice that I don't have to pay for taxes unlike the eshop.

@Chaozrush21 Please understand

@gatorboi352 I am not trying to defend the eshop I am just stating that the ps3 store crashs almost every time I try to use it, The eshop need's to have some changes done to it like I said above Nintendo needs to lower there prices on older games, and learn how to actually have some good sales on games.

@AugustusOxy Modern console games physical makes no difference - at the point where you can no longer get the patch / online is turned off then it is just as worthless as a download. Steam is good in that you can easily break the DRM if you ever need to which gives a real guarantee of being able to play indefinitely.

@AugustusOxy

Wow, talk about console butthurt. Steam is far from perfect, but it is by FAR the best digital download service for games. And that's not even defending it that much...it's just EVERY other company does a horrible job with digital games interfaces that Steam just has to do an OK job it's automatically better.

-No stupid monthly fee (gawd I hate these stupid fan-defended, nickel-n'diming schemes)
-Amazing sales($4 Tomb Raider vs. $45-60 on PSN....O....K)
-Even if 98% are garbage, the 2% is still around 50x more good games
-Like unrandomsam said: DRM is easy to break on Steam so the "renting" claim is BS.

I'm a hardcore Nintendo fan, but ignoring what's good is stupid. Sakurai is wise in his choice. Nintnedo SHOULD take notes from Steam. Especially the part about staying free...montly fees are so stupid.

@Captain_Gonru

I think it was plans for Miiverse is what made them not include gifting on the 3DS and WiiU eShops. With the Wii it was as you needed friend codes to add people so because it's more likely people are going to contact and add friends that they know personally.

But imagine WiiU and 3DS Miiverse pages if gifting was available, it'd be full of "Can someone friend and gift me this game plz?", or "Gift me this game and I'll gift X" type scams and begging.

I do have a hard time understanding the economy behind humble-bundles.
5 - 10 games get to share around 1 - 2 million dollars.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Humble_Bundles
That would make around $400,000 - $100,000 per game.
If you sell a game on eshop for $10 you only have to sell 10,000 - 40,000 copies to get same amount of money. That is about 1 - 4 ‰ (per mille) of the WiiU owners.
(Disregarding all aspect of fees, taxes and other economic things involved)

Other than prices of older games I really have no complaints about the E-Shop. I am pretty content with it.

@DarthNocturnal

With Miiverse begging and someone friending and gifting the game it could happen in the matter of a minute, it's all done on the system.

On a Forum it'd be a much slower arrangement that a scammer/begger would end up reported/banned before it could happen. Both sides have to enter each others friend code on the Nintendo Wii so there can't be any drive by scamming unless someone is in as much of a rush to gift a game to a scammer and have their Wii friend code immediately on hand as the scammer/begger is to do it before they get caught.

Yeah, Steam is great. Honestly, I wouldn't see much point in PC gaming without it.

"Nintendo has arguably been slightly behind the curve in the online space". Matthew Herst, that's a complete understatement. Be bolder in your writing - Nintendo is objectively the MOST behind in the online space.

I like this writer's style, direct and to the point, my hat off to you Matthew!

Sakurai is really on-point with this

@AugustusOxy Steam is amazing - Nintendo should be aiming to provide the same level of service Valve provide.

Amazing sales, intuitive interface, integration, design, flexibility - Steam is basically anti Nintendo. Though I will give it to Nintendo for slowly getting up to speed.

Hopefully this statement reaches the other higher ups in Nintendo so they can continue giving us good deals like the Metroid Prime Trilogy a couple of weeks back. That's the kind of deals that they should be doing for their older titles. And despite the influx of low quality games on all digital stores nowadays, I trust Steam the most due to their feedback system. Something that the other digital stores, including Nintendo need to work on.

@mowerdude I have never had a crashing issue on the PS3 store. Perhaps there is somethi g wrong with your console.

@Quorthon The PS3 interface is excellent and easy to use with beautiful iconic Sony design. The PS3 store is certainly not a clunky mess either.

If you want to talk about ugly interface design look no further that the 3DS and Wii U OS app screen. Nintendo took the beautiful and sleek designs of IOS and Android and made their own clunky, ugly versions.

I'm not trying to be anti Nintendo - I love my 3DS and Wii U, but their interfaces leave alot to be desired compared to all their rivals.

@Caryslan No. Nothing is worse than the Wii Shop. It is hands down easily the worst design of anything in history.

The Ps3 store looks incredible and I have never had any issues with it - I don't even understand why some of the posters here keep bringing it up to excuse Nintendo's failure.

I don't get what Sakurai likes about Steam. The purchaser-vote system is on 3DS and WiiU as well, the tag system consists of more trolling than being useful, and feedback is rarely present in favor of the recurring "X/10 would (not) [insert activty related to gaming or the game] again", and the Steam cards are just as worthless as trophies and acbievements, except that they're not mandatory, and people actually pay money for some of them.
Though the worst has to be Steam Greenlight...

@DarkKirby Steam is completely overloaded with stuff, to the point where using it is downright annoying.

@DarkKirby From my (admittedly limited) experience with XBLA, it was not very adequate. Some indie devs complained that their games took about 19 seconds to find their game if you knew what you were searching for. That is ridiculous. Still think Nintendo has quite a bit to learn from steam though.

@Grumblevolcano can't agree more. I have the hardest time finding older games on my PS3 and/or VITA. For me the interface of the Eshop is very straight forward. Only thing I like about PSN is you don't immediately have to download games. Anyway this could be done on Eshop.

@liveswired I think Nintendo made their home screens to be simple to operate for everyone. My nephew has an easier time finding an app on his 3DS than his aunt's PS4

Man, Sakurai needs to become the president of Nintendo...

Iwata, I love you and all, but you should probably retire. It's been over 10 years, you had a good run.

@Kaze_Memaryu Sales, what else?

Even though I don't agree with everything he does, Sakurai IS someone who holds a lot of influence. So if he's complaining about the eShop, then people who can do something about it might listen.

@crazycrazydave Your avatar is.... HHGGHH click noice.

I agree wholeheartedly with Sakurai-san and I think it's awesome that a Nintendo official like him would be so mature and honest to admit their platform's inferiority.

GoG is great because you actually get a COPY of the game verses renting from Stream, but the 3DS eShop is pretty good. I just ask Nintendo to put there 1st party games on sale more often. One premium game on sale a month shouldn't hurt the retail world right?

@Grumblevolcano there are lots of Digital Stores that do the same as Steam. The original Rayman isn't on Steam but its out at GOG which is odd because Steam also supports Dosbox like GOG so why can't it be ported to Steam?

The only reason why a lot of people prefer Steam is because of how accessible it is. Price cuts are frequent in Steam and the summer sales are ridiculously cheap. So with that in mind, of course Steam is the best.

Honestly though, even if Nintendo does a lot like how Steam does, it won't change the fact that getting games for their systems will still be time consuming and the virtual console seriously needs improvement and I'll admit that Steam does emulation better than Nintendo although I wonder why Steam can't port Sega Master System games as well seeing that its made by SEGA.

Best part of steam is the community. Many people help in the sfm forums. :3

@Melkac Unlikely, Steam Sales hurt the industry, after all. He wouldn't be positive about something that disregards effort in its entirety and instead marks games as throwaway gags.

Steam is the best on every level except one: achievements. Comparing your achievements to a friend's is ridiculously complicated, involving going through like 10 menus. Otherwise, he's hit the nail on the head. The community beats the Miiverse, Early Access/ Steam Workshop/ Greenlight are great, their trading card system is awesome, their gifting/inventory system is great, the Steam overlay while gaming rocks, their chat function/ messaging is king, and their party system beat's Microsoft and Sony's. Nintendo doesn't have one at all.
So, yeah, Steam is the best.
Not to mention all the sales...
The summer/winter sales destroy my wallet every year

That the eShop has seen some improvements does not mean it's close to today's standards. The eShop is very expensive, specially for Nintendo games. And there is little to none incentive to buy from it. Besides, Virtual Console is growing so slowly and sometimes is going backwards by removing titles and consoles (N64 being an obvious example).

@EvisceratorX "running more sales, offering cross platform functionality, and maybe lowering prices of older games" - AMEN!
I don't mind the eShop - particularly on 3DS - but agree with all this. The reason I want a Steam Machine in the future is the lure of Steam Sales, bundles etc. I love picking up older gems cheap as chips. Not that there aren't some decent Ninty deals (Super Mario World / Earthbound for £5.50 ain't bad) but Wii games for £18.99?

@Kaze_Memaryu Fair point. I think Iwata is right about valuing content too. It's a tough balance to get right - between being perceived to be comparatively expensive and encouraging to buy more by throwing us more bones.

@DarthNocturnal Yes i thought of that once. Yon can play Nint. games on the nint. steam machine only, but you can also play and stream game from steam. + They should also realease VC on steam like SEGA did.

@gatorboi352 I don't have many problems with PSN on PS3, but what few I do mostly have to do with interface and performance. It's slow as balls and the interface is mess. It doesn't take next gen hardware to make an intuitive, easy-to-navigate store.

I think every other PC digital storefront is better than Steam. People love Steam cause it was the first digital store and has achievements, trading cards, badges, a chat system, etc. I think all those stuff are useless, IMO, and I'd rather just play the games I buy than care about worthless badges, etc.

I prefer GoG, GG, GMG, even Origin, to Steam, since they don't have all that stuff and you don't need to load up a third-party program in order to play the games you buy from them.

Steam doesn't always have the best sales anymore too. Even Amazon has amazing deals now that beats Steam. Despite what people think about EA, I've had good customer service from them, and I can talk to them through livechat. I've heard nothing but horrible customer service from people who had to go through Steam support. Origin even gives you a complete refund for games within 24 hours after you buy them, and that goes for brand new games too. They have Game Time too, which lets you play the game unrestricted for 48 hours so you can judge whether you want to buy it or not, and once you buy it, you can continue from where you left off. I played Sims 4 using Game Time and I discovered it isn't as horrible as people say it is.

Too many people worship Steam, which baffles me. If I didn't already have a bunch of games on Steam, I'd ditch them a long time ago.

I'd love to see Valve and Nintendo strike a deal, whether it be a game collaboration or an online store collaboration.

GoG is a really good online store too, I would say my favorite thanks to no-DRM.

Nintendo is the worst, why do I have to pay more then Americans for digital games? There is no price difference in the PlayStation store between countries, so I'm kinda peeved over that...

#PCMasterRace

Glad I'm not the only one that always hated the PS3 store. Haven't had to the chance to use the PS4 store firsthand yet but from what I've seen, it seems like a vast improvement.

I adore the 3DS store. The interface is so cute, easy to use, and the music just really sets the 'playtime' mood.

I've never really used Steam, so I can't speak to the comparison, but I definitely feel there are some improvements to be made to the eShop, both in terms of interface and functionality.
I actually posted a video about this subject back in December. You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6h_IaDMIOg

Super Smash Bros. Source Confirmed!

@DarkKirby

Nintendo is definitely the worst, at least when it comes to good sales (the same few games have been in constant rotation on the 3DS Eshop for years), not allowing a unified account (this, in particular, is ridiculous on their end), and pricing inconsistencies (mainly a VC problem. Not all games are created equal).

The eshop has nothing that compares to the best PS4 flash sales and Steam sales.