18th December 2022, 9:14 AM
The interesting thing is each of these "eras" can be just as easily defined by what's going on outside the company as what's going on within it. The CEO may in fact be a reflection of what those who chose to put each one in charge felt was needed in the first place to keep Nintendo competitive. For example, the Gamecube feels more like a part of the earlier era than the later era, with it's focus on power and creative off the wall game designs. In fact the Gamecube was the last system to directly compete with Sony (and fledgling Microsoft) on their own terms. But, that system failed. Was the Gamecube the result of Iwata's leadership and a place where Iwata decided to change Nintendo's direction, or was it already set in stone being in development since before Iwata's takeover and was carried on by project inertia?
In the 80's and 90's we had a long era where smaller companies were all jumping into the console ring. Just about everyone tried it, and while some were utter failures, it was a lot easier to find a niche. Do "micro-PCs" count as consoles? By the standards of the time, heck, modern consoles are pretty much ALL "micro-PCs", especially the ones that have some kind of cute "coding" app you can download. In any case, it didn't take too much to join that arena and STILL produce a console that, for at least a couple years, did things a PC couldn't. 3D acceleration changed that. Moore's law was one thing but console makers quickly found out JUST how much of a jump in horse power was needed to make 3D actually look good. Check out our opinions on N64 games at the time of their release. We were simultaneously impressed by the likes of Perfect Dark while acknowledging just how far from "realistic" any of that actually looked and we all were hyped for the next gen that might actually make stuff that "looked like Toy Story". We knew much better was possible, and the Dolphin excited us a lot.
We got a whole generation stuffed full of cooling fans and every last system was surprisingly large. The Gamecube hid it's size well by going vertical. Nintendo acknowledged that, at least for a time, cartridges weren't going to cut it. (Ironically, they've gone right back to carts these days.) The next jump, each console maker realized, was going to need to be pretty huge to be noticeable by the customers. Without that, the "HD revolution" wasn't going to work. Both MS and Sony slipped into a mode where their consoles were sold at a loss. Nintendo meanwhile looked at how the Gamecube and all it's fun bizarre games actually sold compared to the PS2, and it came up lacking. That is the key point. Nintendo refused to sell at a loss, and so they decided to stop competing on power altogether. The Gamecube was "good enough", so just up the clock speed a touch and double the RAM, then focus R&D entirely on the interface. They were selling their most popular console of all time and they were selling at a profit! PS3 and XBox 360 however, the "core gamers" fled to those for the big name games. It took a few years compared to the last gen but eventually games really started showing what they could do on that gen compared to last, but this would be the last time there was a start instantly visible difference between the last gen and the current one.
Iwata saw the power competition between Sony and MS and simply opted out of it entirely. In the long run, that was the best move to make. Consoles were getting ridiculously expensive to make, and that trend hasn't ceased since. Alright, so Nintendo was a single "generation" behind, but they still knew how to make the hardware work for them. This kept up for a bit, until the Wii U came along. Iwata's style found it's major weakness. If the gimmick they come up with isn't seen as valuable, no one is going to buy it, and no one really wanted "the Wii but with a tablet". What didn't help is that most people didn't even realize the Wii U was a hardware upgrade. Nintendo didn't really push that the Wii U was at last competitive with the PS3 and XBox 360 (just before the PS4 and XBox One were to launch, but still). Nintendo was also starting to develop a reputation, deserved or not, for just constantly iterating on existing franchises and not being nearly as daring as they were with the Gamecube and earlier. That has only become more true with time, though it's worth noting the numerous ignored franchises introduced on the 3DS like Pushmo, Dillon, and Boxboy.
In any case, this is when we enter the as you put it, "focus tested" era. Focus testing is not all bad. It really is important to get an idea on whether or not the public actually wants what you're selling. Now, my opinion on the Switch is that this was ultimately a very wise move. The Switch is everything the Wii U tried to be, but in it's ultimate form after all. It was that final realization of just what the Wii U was trying to be, while finally ditching the one thing it can't do, the duel screen thing. That was a major design mistake since people can't look at both screens at once, and if you can't do that, what's the point of having two? May as well have a button to switch back and forth between two views on a single screen. The fact that just about every popular Wii U game was easily ported to Switch with minimal changes pretty much goes to show how much of a pointless gimmick that was. Well, never mind about that. I'm starting to rant about specific game design and not their leadership decisions.
Alright, point is, their new leadership is going all-in on indy games in a way we haven't seen in a long time. However, there's accepting indy titles, and there's making the same problem Atari had before the U.S. game market collapsed. They opened the flood gates. Instead of taking the careful approach of vetting and approving indy titles after review, they're letting everything on. The Switch store has turned from a bastion of good indy talent to a shovelware platform, and "discoverability" suffers as badly as it does on Steam, or the PS4/5. Modern Nintendo is focused even further on never straying too far from established franchises, or even the IMAGE of their franchises. They currently have set in stone rules about "spinoff" Mario games not being allowed to create new species and locations and being stuck with what already exists within the Mario franchise. This environment makes Paper Mario suffer! They also seem to play it FAR safer with storylines. Of course, Pokemon's constant repetition of those game's stories is infamous at this point, but Paper Mario in particular used to have rather engaging stories while now they're very safe and paint by numbers. We don't get whole new locations full of cloud people or buzzy dreamland inhabitants, we get toads and toads and toads forever.
This isn't to say there's NO innovation, but "play it safe" Nintendo really does make one worry in some ways... except for one thing. The one place we want them to play it safe is their own legacy, and not alienating their core audience. Nintendo resisted the lure of microtransactions and loot boxes before, but it's very clear their investors have put way too much pressure to dive in and we're seeing that creep in all over the place. From the Amiibo becoming nothing more than glorified physical DLC unlock keys to working in microtransaction manipulation and even loot boxes into their mobile phone offerings, it's a scary time. This, if you ask me, above all else is the thing that frightens me most about Nintendo as a company. They're sinking into this customer abusing practice deeper and deeper. In fact, while such things USED to be mobile only, now those same manipulative games are ending up on Switch. It's a worrying time and Nintendo is very close to just embracing this fully. MS of course are the worst of the big three when it comes to this. It's so bad that MS's core franchise, Halo, was reduced to a lootbox factory as of Halo 5 and turned into a full on FOMO "time limited unlock event" design with Infinite.
Time will tell if Nintendo manages to pull themselves back out, but this whole thing if you ask me isn't a sign of just "leadership style changes". I think it's the other way around. The leaders were picked after all. They didn't conquer and rise. The leaders reflect the concerns the higher ups at Nintendo had. That's the neoliberal problem in a nutshell. They think the system's fine the way it is, it's just that we need the right leader, and abuses of the system aren't a failing of that system, just a failing of the wrong person put in charge. To me, the very fact a bad leader CAN exert that much control IS the problem. Counting on luck to deliver the right leader every time has failed us. The system has failed us. Capitalism has failed us. Nintendo's steady crawl towards abusing it's customers isn't just the result of having Scrimgeour in charge here. The whole danged ministry needs to be torn down. They are being financially motivated to make every single decision they have made. Once, it made sense when Nintendo was much smaller to woo customers and bend over backwards to give those customers everything they wanted and build that solid loyalty to their brand. That no longer makes financial sense, so they no longer feel bound by that. That ultimately is the explanation behind EVERY one of Nintendo's decisions, good or bad. The president currently in charge is largely inconsequential in the face of that.
In the 80's and 90's we had a long era where smaller companies were all jumping into the console ring. Just about everyone tried it, and while some were utter failures, it was a lot easier to find a niche. Do "micro-PCs" count as consoles? By the standards of the time, heck, modern consoles are pretty much ALL "micro-PCs", especially the ones that have some kind of cute "coding" app you can download. In any case, it didn't take too much to join that arena and STILL produce a console that, for at least a couple years, did things a PC couldn't. 3D acceleration changed that. Moore's law was one thing but console makers quickly found out JUST how much of a jump in horse power was needed to make 3D actually look good. Check out our opinions on N64 games at the time of their release. We were simultaneously impressed by the likes of Perfect Dark while acknowledging just how far from "realistic" any of that actually looked and we all were hyped for the next gen that might actually make stuff that "looked like Toy Story". We knew much better was possible, and the Dolphin excited us a lot.
We got a whole generation stuffed full of cooling fans and every last system was surprisingly large. The Gamecube hid it's size well by going vertical. Nintendo acknowledged that, at least for a time, cartridges weren't going to cut it. (Ironically, they've gone right back to carts these days.) The next jump, each console maker realized, was going to need to be pretty huge to be noticeable by the customers. Without that, the "HD revolution" wasn't going to work. Both MS and Sony slipped into a mode where their consoles were sold at a loss. Nintendo meanwhile looked at how the Gamecube and all it's fun bizarre games actually sold compared to the PS2, and it came up lacking. That is the key point. Nintendo refused to sell at a loss, and so they decided to stop competing on power altogether. The Gamecube was "good enough", so just up the clock speed a touch and double the RAM, then focus R&D entirely on the interface. They were selling their most popular console of all time and they were selling at a profit! PS3 and XBox 360 however, the "core gamers" fled to those for the big name games. It took a few years compared to the last gen but eventually games really started showing what they could do on that gen compared to last, but this would be the last time there was a start instantly visible difference between the last gen and the current one.
Iwata saw the power competition between Sony and MS and simply opted out of it entirely. In the long run, that was the best move to make. Consoles were getting ridiculously expensive to make, and that trend hasn't ceased since. Alright, so Nintendo was a single "generation" behind, but they still knew how to make the hardware work for them. This kept up for a bit, until the Wii U came along. Iwata's style found it's major weakness. If the gimmick they come up with isn't seen as valuable, no one is going to buy it, and no one really wanted "the Wii but with a tablet". What didn't help is that most people didn't even realize the Wii U was a hardware upgrade. Nintendo didn't really push that the Wii U was at last competitive with the PS3 and XBox 360 (just before the PS4 and XBox One were to launch, but still). Nintendo was also starting to develop a reputation, deserved or not, for just constantly iterating on existing franchises and not being nearly as daring as they were with the Gamecube and earlier. That has only become more true with time, though it's worth noting the numerous ignored franchises introduced on the 3DS like Pushmo, Dillon, and Boxboy.
In any case, this is when we enter the as you put it, "focus tested" era. Focus testing is not all bad. It really is important to get an idea on whether or not the public actually wants what you're selling. Now, my opinion on the Switch is that this was ultimately a very wise move. The Switch is everything the Wii U tried to be, but in it's ultimate form after all. It was that final realization of just what the Wii U was trying to be, while finally ditching the one thing it can't do, the duel screen thing. That was a major design mistake since people can't look at both screens at once, and if you can't do that, what's the point of having two? May as well have a button to switch back and forth between two views on a single screen. The fact that just about every popular Wii U game was easily ported to Switch with minimal changes pretty much goes to show how much of a pointless gimmick that was. Well, never mind about that. I'm starting to rant about specific game design and not their leadership decisions.
Alright, point is, their new leadership is going all-in on indy games in a way we haven't seen in a long time. However, there's accepting indy titles, and there's making the same problem Atari had before the U.S. game market collapsed. They opened the flood gates. Instead of taking the careful approach of vetting and approving indy titles after review, they're letting everything on. The Switch store has turned from a bastion of good indy talent to a shovelware platform, and "discoverability" suffers as badly as it does on Steam, or the PS4/5. Modern Nintendo is focused even further on never straying too far from established franchises, or even the IMAGE of their franchises. They currently have set in stone rules about "spinoff" Mario games not being allowed to create new species and locations and being stuck with what already exists within the Mario franchise. This environment makes Paper Mario suffer! They also seem to play it FAR safer with storylines. Of course, Pokemon's constant repetition of those game's stories is infamous at this point, but Paper Mario in particular used to have rather engaging stories while now they're very safe and paint by numbers. We don't get whole new locations full of cloud people or buzzy dreamland inhabitants, we get toads and toads and toads forever.
This isn't to say there's NO innovation, but "play it safe" Nintendo really does make one worry in some ways... except for one thing. The one place we want them to play it safe is their own legacy, and not alienating their core audience. Nintendo resisted the lure of microtransactions and loot boxes before, but it's very clear their investors have put way too much pressure to dive in and we're seeing that creep in all over the place. From the Amiibo becoming nothing more than glorified physical DLC unlock keys to working in microtransaction manipulation and even loot boxes into their mobile phone offerings, it's a scary time. This, if you ask me, above all else is the thing that frightens me most about Nintendo as a company. They're sinking into this customer abusing practice deeper and deeper. In fact, while such things USED to be mobile only, now those same manipulative games are ending up on Switch. It's a worrying time and Nintendo is very close to just embracing this fully. MS of course are the worst of the big three when it comes to this. It's so bad that MS's core franchise, Halo, was reduced to a lootbox factory as of Halo 5 and turned into a full on FOMO "time limited unlock event" design with Infinite.
Time will tell if Nintendo manages to pull themselves back out, but this whole thing if you ask me isn't a sign of just "leadership style changes". I think it's the other way around. The leaders were picked after all. They didn't conquer and rise. The leaders reflect the concerns the higher ups at Nintendo had. That's the neoliberal problem in a nutshell. They think the system's fine the way it is, it's just that we need the right leader, and abuses of the system aren't a failing of that system, just a failing of the wrong person put in charge. To me, the very fact a bad leader CAN exert that much control IS the problem. Counting on luck to deliver the right leader every time has failed us. The system has failed us. Capitalism has failed us. Nintendo's steady crawl towards abusing it's customers isn't just the result of having Scrimgeour in charge here. The whole danged ministry needs to be torn down. They are being financially motivated to make every single decision they have made. Once, it made sense when Nintendo was much smaller to woo customers and bend over backwards to give those customers everything they wanted and build that solid loyalty to their brand. That no longer makes financial sense, so they no longer feel bound by that. That ultimately is the explanation behind EVERY one of Nintendo's decisions, good or bad. The president currently in charge is largely inconsequential in the face of that.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)