Iwata dead at age 55

[Dark Jaguar]

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, this is really terrible, 55 is far too young... :( cancer is horrible.


This has made me think about his legacy, though, and it's mixed. It'll be VERY interesting to see who becomes the next president of Nintendo, and what direction the company goes in next. I hope that Nintendo doesn't change too much -- I want them to stay as a hardware maker, and not go mobile or something awful like that. It'll be difficult, but I hope that they can find a way to get more people to buy Nintendo consoles again, and handhelds in general. It's great that Iwata resisted the calls to go mobile, and he was absolutely right when he said that there needed to be games (including handheld games!) that cost more than they do on cellphones. and I really hope this tragedy doesn't change that. I have some disagreements with Iwata's decisions (below), but the good is, overall, better than the bad for sure!

Nintendo is definitely is a tough spot here, though. On the one hand, if they push tech, it'll be much more expensive and getting developers back will be very hard and probably won'[t happen -- why support Nintendo when you could just continue to support Sony and Microsoft and face much weaker first-party lineups? And gamers go where the games are, which currently isn't on Nintendo. But on the other hand, a continued focus on low-power systems is also risky, because cellphones and tablets have done such a good job of taking nongamers who bought DSes and Wiis away that it's hard to imagine what Nintendo could do to get them back. Another Wii-level hit could happen, but as the Wii U shows you can never count on it, and casual audiences aren't es loyal as core gamers either. It's very tough, and I don't know what the best course of action is. They need to do something, but at this point what's the best path? Their choice of leader will of course greatly affect how they address these questions in the future; I expect it'll be an insider, but different people will do different things, as you see when you compare Yamauchi and Iwata.

As I've said before, Iwata's decisions to abandon high-end tech in consoles, most of their Western development partners, and more really hurt Nintendo. Of course during the height of the Wii/DS boom it was easy to overlook the downside to his direction, but once it faded the problems of Iwata's direction (as you list) became very apparent. Yamauchi made decisions that people question as well (no CDs for the N64, the split with Square, etc.), but he always pushed tech, believed in having at least some developers on his side, gave the American branch a significant amount of autonomy so that they could do the best for this market, and more.

For Western development, for example, to cite the usual list, back in the '90s when NOA had autonomy, they set up NST and Retro (yes, Retro was founded in '99, by Howard Lincoln before he left), made Rare (another Howard Lincoln move), Left Field, and Silicon Knights second parties, and built close relationships with several American third parties, most importantly Factor 5.

After Iwata took control of NCL, Nintendo sold, separated from, or broke their relationship with all of those studios except for Retro and NST, and NST's console team was shut down during the Wii generation, leaving only their handheld team still in existence. And Retro is amazing, but never became the multi-game team they were originally conceived as, so just on a number-of-releases level they aren't a replacement for the loss of Rare. I guess you could mention Monster Games and Next Level as third parties that are close to Nintendo now, so there is that, but that's about it. Iwata abandoned almost all Western development partners in favor of a greater focus on Japanese games. That led to some good things -- we wouldn't have Xenoblade on Nintendo otherwise, for sure! -- but there was a downside.

Along with Western developer relationships, powerful hardware also went with Yamauchi. Under Yamauchi, all four Nintendo home consoles released while he was in charge were very powerful machines that were, at the time of their release, one of or the most powerful consoles on the market... and then Iwata took over, and since that point neither Nintendo console has been anywhere near that level. Yes, development costs have gone up, but Yamauchi wouldn't have just given up like Iwata did, I don't think. I know Nintendo was frustrated at the Gamecube's failure and went with the Wii partially in reaction to that, but I just can't see Yamauchi doing what Iwata did.

Of course, Nintendo abandoned good tech in order to aim the Wii at a casual and family audience. That direction was very successful for a while, but the problem is that smartphones and tablets have completely taken it away, and it's hard to imagine how a console could win them back now. What could do that? Cheap and good home VR won't be here for quite some time, and short of that... what?

Of course Nintendo couldn't have known what would happen in the future, but they must have known that choosing to give up on tech would mean they'd lose most Western developers, and that this would be a bad thing considering that at that point the prominence of Western developers on consoles was steadily rising. Also, as I say above, the blue-ocean hope of turning casual buyers into more of a loyal gamer fanbase always was somewhat unlikely (a less dedicated person is probably less likely to be loyal to your company in future hardware generations), and while it would have been awesome if it had worked out, it's not surprising that it didn't.

The problem is, once lost, gaining back the "core gamer" developers and fans that Nintendo's casual move lost is very hard when there are two other companies making consoles for that core base. Losing them was indeed something that happened over time, but it was only with the Wii that Nintendo fully surrendered. The move was understandable given the GC's lack of success, and it resulted in a smash-hit... but if that smash hit led to a massive collapse only one generation later, you do start to wonder if they could have done better. I am torn, though -- on the one hand the casual-focused move really paid off short-term, but on the other hand long-term it's going poorly. As a huge N64 fan, though, I do find the loss of significant Western support very disappointing these last few generations. I'd probably have rather seen a more powerful Wii, but I definitely can see the case the other way.