Nintendo's President Hopes To Avoid 'Return to Arrogance'

Today Newsweek's N'Gai Croal has up an interview originally held back at E3, speaking with current President of Nintendo Satoru Iwata. The piece is an interesting look inside one of the top minds at a company that has experienced unprecedented success in the last year. In the interview, Iwata states that one of his most important tasks right now is to avoid allowing the company to appear arrogant. Just because people now assume Nintendo will succeed, he needs to make sure that's not the company's view as well. "This time, we were very lucky and very fortunate that people were accepting and positive about the introduction of the Wii Balance Board and the Wii Zapper. Now, what we have to do, what's very important for us is to make sure that when those products are actually launched, we not only meet their expectations, but we surpass them so there's that gap--we thought it was going to be this, when actually it's here. We need to create that buzz. We need to create that word of mouth and that's our challenge."

Re:Memo to all third-party developers:

[Khaed]

I'm not so sure anything old Nintendo did is worse than the things Sony and Microsoft have done. Maybe their game divisions haven't done things as bad, but c'mon, both of those companies have done some seriously awful stuff: Rootkits, Windows ME...

Some of Nintendo's policies in the past, like limiting games per year, had to do with avoiding a repeat of the crash. Others were just stupid legalese (suing over the Game Genie, for example) and every big company does stupid things with lawyers.

Re:Still not listening...

[seebs]

Not listening to you, maybe.

They're listening to me just fine: If I want online play, I'll play WoW. I have zero interest in online from my console, and I want them to spend that money instead on things I do want.

Re:Still not listening...

[uerunner]

Mario Strikers Charged has been out for over a month now and you can play it online. It does use the friend code system, but also uses a matching system to play against total strangers. The new Madden game has online play, and it does not use Nintendo's friend code system. I've not played this to see if it is any good yet, but it is a third party game using the Wii's online play which is a good step in the right direction

Re:Memo to all third-party developers:

[Incoherent07]

That crap has far more production value than the crap Nintendo was trying to avoid.

Re:Nintendo's arrogance

[meringuoid]

as a Nintendo aficionado for the better part of two decades, I resent Nintendo for expecting me to continually buy the same type of games over and over.

Two decades, you say? So you remember the NES era?

Then how much does Twilight Princess resemble The Legend Of Zelda? How similar is Super Mario Galaxy to Super Mario Bros. 3? What at all does Metroid Prime 3 have to do with Metroid? The similarities are pretty superficial: character art, brand name. Just about everything else has been changed massively over the years.

You have a case with Mario Party and Smash Bros, but for the rest? Nintendo reuse popular franchises, true, but they're hardly reissuing the same games over and over. Hell, even Twilight Princess only feels so much like Ocarina because the fanboys complained so much about Majora and Wind Waker...

Acclaim?!? Re:Memo to all third-party developers:

[Ang31us]

I'm the biggest Nintendo fanboy of them all, but I think the quality control argument for third-party licensing is a load of crap.

The vast majority of the games made by third parties are garbage and they still get licensed for release. This was the case back in the NES days as well...remember Acclaim [wikipedia.org]?!? Those clowns put out tons of licensed shovelware on all systems.

The only reason for third-party licensing is for the console manufacturer to make $$$ on the licensing fee.

Re:Memo to all third-party developers:

[steveo777]

Riiight.. I don't see how people could hold the 10NES against Nintendo. They used it (albeit mainly) to keep crapware off their systems. Yeah, they also wanted to capitalize as much as possible, but if they hadn't, do you really think Nintendo would have had the same success? There's a good chance there would have been a lot of junk that gave Nintendo a bad name and ran it into the ground.

Most the 3rd parties still made gobs of money and are still existing in one form or another. Nintendo went on to create more great systems and games (yes, even the N64... Virtual Boy? not so much).

Re:Memo to all third-party developers:

[gameboyhippo]

Yeah, if only Christian games were half as good as contemporary Christian music (P.O.D, Lifehouse, etc...)

Re:Memo to all third-party developers:

[MeanderingMind]

DRM restricts the user. 10NES restricted the developers.

The chip was designed for two purposes, keep crap games off the system and give Nintendo control to that effect. Was it 100% effective? Certainly not, but neither are most Spam filters. That, and there's no accounting for taste.

Take the time to read Game ver [amazon.com], you'll have a better idea of what went on.

Re:Acclaim?!? Re:Memo to all third-party developer

[badboy_tw2002]

But the "quality control" isn't for "how fun a game is." There's no requirement that "the game is fun" in the list of stuff you have to pass to get certified by one of the big publishers. Basically, they're looking though a few categories of things:

a) You don't violate various trademarks of the publisher.
b) Your game doesn't crash, drop out the sound, render at 2 frames a second, sit on a black screen for 2 minutes while loading, etc.
c) Consistent UI experience
d) Do bad things that would break the system or introduce security holes.

"Crap" has nothing to do with the content but the fact that you're delivering what could be considered a valid, working piece of software. Whether or not its any good to play is up to the market to decide.

Re:Acceptance? Really?

[rjung2k]

"This was ridiculed by the Western gaming press."

...who were drowned out by the cheers of praise from the mainstream non-gaming press. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that compliments from USA Today and The New York Times will help Nintendo more than brickabats from the likes of 1Up.

Re:Memo to all third-party developers:

[drcagn]

Anyone who lived through the NES era will know that this is not true. The NES is second only to the PSONE in terms of the "If you build it, they will come" mentality. Suffice it to say it was all about making money. Wikipedia has a some good details you might be interested in reading. The "Nintendo Seal of Quality" didn't mean much about how good a game was (in terms of "fun"). All it meant was that Nintendo was paid their license fee.

Anyone who lived through the Atari era will know that every game on NES was gold compared to the amount of steaming shit that was put out for the 2600. Comparatively, the NES had great quality control.

Re:Nintendo's arrogance

[Emetophobe]

but it just seems to me like Nintendo keeps pumping them out assuming that the games will be purchased by the faithful

There's no assumption involved. The faithful WILL purchase them.

I resent Nintendo for expecting me to continually buy the same type of games over and over.

You don't have to buy them. The thing that other people like about Nintendo are these key franchises. Without Mario, without Zelda, without Metroid Prime, I wouldn't have purchased a Wii. First party titles are what people want, even if they are rehashes. That's the main reason I also own a PS3, for when Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy and Gran Turismo come out...

Exclusive franchises are important to any game console, look at Nintendo with Mario, Sony with Metal Gear Solid or Xbox with Halo... These are considered system sellers for a reason.

Take a look at this list of Video Game sales by Franchise [wikipedia.org]. Here are couple:

#1 is the Mario franchise with 193 million games sold
#4 is the Final Fantasy franchise with 75 million games sold
#7 is the Zelda franchise with 52 million games sold
#8 is the Grand Theft Auto franchise with 50 million games sold

Nintendo would be crazy to not make any more Mario games when they still have a ton of devoted fans who will continue to purchase them (I know I'll be picking up a copy of Mario Kart Wii and Super Mario Galaxy).

On a side note, a lot of the GBA/DS games I own are ports of old games like Mario 2, Mario 3, Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (my favourite game). I owned all these games many years ago, but I bought them again so I could play them on my DS Lite and they are still extremely fun, even 10-20 years later.