Two interesting articles relating to Nintendo have recently come out. The first is a series of tweets from a senior software engineer at EA who didn't have many good things to say about the Wii U. The second is about Nintendo's recent decision to do anything within their legal power to collect ad revenue from YouTube videos featuring their products.
EA
The comments from the EA engineer, Bob Summerwill were harsh, but hardly surprising. For years now Nintendo seems to have been surviving on nothing but a handful of first party licenses (like Mario), its hold on the handheld market, and nostalgia to keep itself afloat. The Wii, despite its popularity with the casual market, didn't have enough steam to compete with the better libraries (and hardware) of Xbox 360 and PS3. Nintendo has always maintained a firm grip on their licenses, and as such the Wii library of games has had a few amazing games surrounded by a mountain of garbage known as "shovelware" that sought to take advantage of the Wii's non-gaming customers who trusted developers to put actual work in to their $40-60 product.
Summerwill critiqued the Wii U on things that may not be apparent to those who aren't tech savvy, like myself, but nevertheless bode ill for the console's future. The most telling tweet was
The WiiU is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet. Nintendo are walking dead at this point.Harsh, but hardly surprising. The article also features a link where EA, one of the biggest names in the gaming industry, admits that they aren't working on games for the Wii U. While that isn't a red flag for the system, it could serve as an orange caution cone for other developers who haven't fully dove in to supporting the console.
YouTube
If you've followed me for awhile you know how I feel about big companies seemingly bullying the little guy. While a company's actions make sense from a business perspective, at a certain point you need to focus on the long-lasting worth of your company's dignity of the short-term increase in profits. So I was shocked when Nintendo, a company many of us grew up with, decided to take money from people who have been instrumental in promoting their products.
In a nutshell, there are people on YouTube who make series called "Let's Play _____" where they record themselves playing a game while they give commentary over it. Some creators are so popular that this is their full-time income, and they do well with it. This income is generated from a YouTube partnership, where sponsors place ads before, after, or around the videos and YouTube pays the creators money based on views and clicks.
Nintendo is now demanding, as is their legal right, that any advertisement revenue from videos featuring their games, or even images and music, be put directly in their pocket. Someone in the IGN comments said it best when they pointed out that Nintendo is basically asking these creators to become free PR workers for them. Of course Nintendo has a right to protect their property, but these videos are key in people purchasing a game they wouldn't have otherwise.
Indie games like Minecraft, FTL, Terraria, and Binding of Isaac became the hits they are because of Let's Play videos. I know several people who won't play a game until they've seen a Let's Play because it does something that no amount of advertising can do - it shows the entire game, not just the good parts. In 2013 we don't care about the mystery of whether something will live up to its hype - we want to know the value of something so we can determine whether we want to experience it. Gamers are burned out on spending $60 for a game that turns out to be an utter disappointment, and these YouTubers are one of our greatest assets when it comes to smart shopping.
Money Over Respect
This leads to one very important question - what is Nintendo doing? They want to promote an image of family and togetherness, yet don't understand the crowd they're selling to. The Wii U made the first mistake of including the word "Wii," an automatic turnoff for many who considers themselves true gamers. Then they go back to motion control, a concept that wore thin for many. Then they include a weird little tablet that sets one player apart from the others. And to top it all off, they apparently did all of this with outdated hardware and expected it to do well.
Then to further the baffling moves, they strongarm YouTubers in to removing Nintendo games from their Let's Play series. After all, Nintendo wants money for these videos, and the YouTube channels that would net them the most money aren't going to give up their personal income by spending their working hours making free videos. So you'll have small channels doing Let's Plays that will remain unseen by the majority of potential Nintendo customers, while bigger channels (whose opinion people trust) will be forced to promote other games for free to maintain their own income.
I realize that Nintendo has had a hard time moving on. They've made statements in the past that show they just don't understand the changing market, but you'd really think someone would stand up during a meeting and politely point out how ludicrous some of their decisions really are. It's really heartbreaking to see, because I grew up blowing in to NES cartridges to make them work. I busted my butt to save up for a Nintendo 64. And despite everything I still want a 3DS (you know... for my kids).
I love Nintendo, and that's why I, and many others, are upset. Those in charge are hurting the company that turned me in to a gamer, and something needs to change before Nintendo becomes another gaming company that couldn't keep up with the changing times.
See you tomorrow with something a bit more uplifting!
That is how things are from a generally accepted media perspective. The reality of the Wii was a bit different:
ReplyDeleteYou know what the most interesting things about the Wii were? One was what questions were asked when the box itself was made. Sony's driving question was "how do we make the best console possible?", to which everything more and better is a very logical answer. Not a financially sane one, but logical and proper. So "what is good" was graphics and power.
What Nintendo asked was "how to make a box nobody hates". This resulted in "what is good" being things like "small", "quiet", "not horribly expensive", "doesn't consume a ton of electricity", "backwards compatible" and such. Same thing with the controller. Make it powerful but not scary. Motion is more natural than a million buttons.** So enter Wii hardware.
I explain these values because they explain why most third-party Wii games failed. The third parties didn't realize "good" was redefined on the Wii. They saw people buy games in the vein of old arcade titles*** - things where you can quickly tell what's going on, can begin playing quickly type of things, with an extra dose of friendly. Production values were not terribly high. Of course, from the old frame of reference these things looked odd - the checklist of "better technical graphics", "more movie-like presentation", "systems systems systems", "online instead of the couch" told them these games were bad, disappointing. In some ways, even going backwards (because we're usually taught that new is automatically better, which is not categorically true).
Clearly, the logical conclusion is that these people were idiots and were satisfied with things that needed no effort to make (I mean, just look at how unimpressive Wii Sports is). So the game industry made games for drooling idiots. Guess why they failed? A complete lack of respect for your audience is oftentimes a pretty bad thing in entertainment.
Nevertheless, third parties put in no effort to understand their audience, don't respect them at all, make bad things (or things good by "old" metrics, which will fail because old metric customers are on 360/PS3, not Wii => Bad things don't sell and fail => "Only Nintendo can succeed on Nintendo"
So that's the bad games. What about the good ones, then? The interesting thing was how those good games sold. Their sales were not short, frontloaded spikes like on traditional industry consoles. Instead, they sold more steadily over a long period of time. This kind of sales pattern indicates sales by word of mouth, that is, satisfied customers telling and showing others how cool that stuff is. Many people were disappointed that Wii/DS games weren't often discounted, but the reasons for that are plainly logical: You don't need to if the product is moving all the time at full price. There's little else to it.
ReplyDeleteSadly, despite all the success, Nintendo went nuts and abandoned the values that drove the DS and the Wii and did a complete 180. They also began thinking (or perhps were thinking all along) that 3D is The One True Way and people who don't get it are idiots. See Galaxy 2 training DVD for those poor things who still think 2d Mario is better ("why the hell does this thing keep selling twice what 3d Mario does? We want to make THREE DEE, not this 2d crap" - Nintendo), see 3DS. There are indications that the Wii U is a stepping stone for divorcing the console from the TV so they can then do 3D. It makes a morbid kind of sense.
Luckily, karma and markets are a bitch and they're paying for their mistakes. The sad thing is that they had so much potential. Ah, well, I have my cards.
*Yours truly's slightly biased take.
**Not to imply that good pads are bad, I love me a good pad.
*** Ironically nowadays bashed as not being real games, when that is exactly what most people started gaming on. The simple, grokkable things like old SF and Mario and Sonic and the like. They are things that build audiences. The current crop of "hardcore" movie games for the most part do not. Past gaming growth largely rode on new geographical markets and general population growth. Less new geographical markets, a worse economy and declining populations mean they need broader appeal if the industry is to stay stable or grow at all. The current moviegame way isn't doing it. It's why the Wii and DS were made.
I'd never looked at the Wii as taking an entirely different approach to the console market, but it does make a lot of sense. Clearly it was different, but your explanation shines a bit of new light on the life of the Wii.
ReplyDeletePS3/Xbox are "love 'em or hate 'em," but who -really- hates the Wii? I know many found it tedious, but it did everything just well enough that it was acceptable across the board. But you're right, they sacrificed a lot to make everyone happy, making for a shallow experience.
I just hope Nintendo isn't in the midst of making their final mistakes before they're no longer relevant. I don't imagine they'll fully die with how well they do in the handheld market, but I don't want to see the creators of my first console no longer able to understand the industry they popularized.
Thanks for you insightful comments, Coffeeling. You've given me quite a bit to chew on today!
Also, the Wii experience doesn't mean shallow, necessarily. The box itself was built so that no one would hate it, and the controller was likewise built to be non-intimidating (but still powerful and extendable if it proved insufficient).
DeleteThe games themselves could be very deep things, easily. The key would just be to make them with the mindset you'd use to make an arcade game - that is where console gaming was born, after all, and that is the style Nintendo etched out with their own games. This can mean anything from family friendly fun like Wii Sports to tough, strategic action titles like Castlevania Rebirth.
Not clearly arcade-inspired games could easily be done as well - Metroid Prime for oldschool design, newschool presentation, Xenoblade Chronicles as an example of pure new school design and lots of ambition and drive and desire to make the best game possible.
It's just about trying. And the Wii catered much better to certain ambitions - Xenoblade for example is as big as it is because it's on the Wii - using hi-fi art resources for a game of that size is just a recipe for bankruptcy. With lower technical production values, art direction, gameplay and sound become huge drivers for quality, which is often a bit hard for studios used to CoD/Gears style things wher eyou just do tons of effects and oh it looks great. Wii required work.
They are, probably. The company has become arrogant and the 3d obsession is driving them to the ground. Moreover, the way they develop games is not healthy - they think up some gameplay gimmick first, then take some content and force-fit it to the gameplay gimmick they did. In the old days, they would've made a new world for a new gameplay idea that didn't fit some established franchise. Someone put it well: Modern Nintendo would've made Metroid: Space Shooting Edition instead of Starfox.
ReplyDeleteSee: Every Zelda game since Aonuma got the reins. (The man HATES classic action-oriented Zelda, by the way. And was made boss of Zelda. wtf).
This is bad because people buy games for the content. It is what draws people in, gets them passionate. The gameplay is a big part of what keeps them coming back. No content, no respect, no draw.
Sony is bleeding money every which way, not just in gaming. The PS division is one of the least horribly in the red in all of Sony.
Microsoft just doesn't give a crap about gaming to begin with. The whole Xbox endeavor was simply a shield to prevent Sony from conquering the living room anyway (which they said they intended to do with the Playstations. The shield was necessary because they might have threatened Windows otherwise).
So, yeah. The Wii was the last console, and no company is in the proper mindset to do a proper console anymore. That time is over, at least until a new industry crash.
As the adage goes, if you want to understand something, follow the money. That's as true in the gaming business as in anything, though a company's mindset is also hugely important. As long as you think about things through yourself instead of listening to video game forums and media.
(Though Jim Sterling can perhaps be excused, he's a rarity because he is largely sane and lives in the real world)