Recently, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata had an interview with BBC News Online. You can see the article here
. His ridiculous stupidity is the cause for this editorial. In the words of Popeye, the sailor man, "that’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more."
For starters, who does the president of Nintendo think he is to make comments regarding the current market or what is going to happen to it? This isn’t one of the leading companies in the console market. This is one of the distant, distant companies in the current console war, with absolutely no hope of catching up. This is the company who used to own the #1 spot with an iron fist, strike fear into other companies. Let’s be honest here, Nintendo is a shadow of its former self. For their president to comment on the industry like he is Miss Cleo, is like Vince McMahon commenting on what it takes to be successful in the professional football business. It’s like getting marriage advice from Tom Arnold. You are to take everything with a grain of salt. But wow, these comments are just beyond inane. Former president Yamauchi Hiroshi said some stupid things in his time but Iwata’s comments just take the cake and prove Nintendo is just too far behind the times. Let us discuss some of Iwatas stupidity.
He said unless things changed people "would get tired of games".
Yea, because we all know Nintendo is about complete change. I mean, one look at the "newest" Pokemon or Mario Party 542 can tell you that. Apparently it is ok for Nintendo to re-use the same franchises for 20 years but everyone else must innovate or die. Gaming has grown through each generation. Was there a significant difference in gaming besides graphics in the 8 to 16 bit leap? 16 to 32? 32 to 64? 64 to present? No. Oh wait... YES, there was. Sony used a CD medium in the PSone and Nintendo refused to adapt. The PSone could also be used to play CD’s, the Nintendo 64 could only play games. PSone games were $40-50 new, Nintendo 64 games were $60-70 new. Sony won. In the leap from 64 to the present, online gaming has become a big part of the industry. Which two companies utilize this feature? Sony and Microsoft. Which two companies are currently leading the US market? I’ll give you a hint: one of them isn’t Nintendo. Just like they did with the cartidge format, Nintendo dropped the ball with the GCN. Only this time they made two crucial errors. The first was neglecting online play completely. Oh no my bad, they didn’t neglect it completely. I mean, after all, they did make broadband and 56k modems for the GCN. Too bad they’ve yet to include a use for them in a single one of their games. The other area where Nintendo failed was multimedia. While Sony and Microsoft were expanding to components of the home console including the DVD players and hard drives and what not, Nintendo opted for simplicity. Great move!
"Some of the people in the industry still believe we can simply beef up the current technology in order to provide a constant supply of games to people. We don’t agree with that."
Apparently he hasn’t been involved in gaming since... oh... the fucking day it was created. What is even funnier about this is that he goes on to hype up the DS based on what? Two technical features, touch screen and voice recognition. Neither of which are really innovative anyway. Hell, Seaman on the Dreamcast revolved around voice recognition. But this is Nintendo we are talking about. Wind Waker had innovative graphics, even though it was only the hundreth game of this generation to use cel-shaded graphics. Animal Crossing was innovative, because apparently no one had ever seen or played Harvest Moon before. Metroid Prime was the worlds first FPA, because apparently games like Half-Life and Deus-Ex do not exist. The point? When Nintendo does something, they sell it as new and innovative and they have enough of a blind army that it is eaten up and believed. What else could explain the fact that Nintendo fanboys constantly bitch about PS2 having too many sequels, and then they go back to playing Mario, Metroid and Zelda, three franchises I played back in the 1980’s?
"Nintendo wants to bring gamers and games back to the start line of 20 years ago," he said.
"In order to do this, touch panel and voice input systems will have big possibilities."
How could anyone possibly think touch panels and voice recognition are going to wow gamers? It isn’t new. PS2 owners use voice recognition in many games, and so do XBox owners. Touch screen elements? Been on PC’s, laptops and other things for awhile now. This is no different than Nintendos fad with connectivity. Just something else they are going too far on a limb with. Does dual screens, touch panels and voice recognition sound cool on a handheld? Yes. But how is that high-tech crap any different than the movies/music and all the other features of the PSP that Nintendo always plays down? One might affect gameplay while the others don’t but Nintendo still fails to grasp the fact that the industry has moved on since the SNES days. That’s why the XBox and PS2 launched able to play CD’s and DVD’s and on the XBox, a HDD and the ability to burn music to use in games. And here is the big one.
Mr Iwata said he feared current games with their emphasis on complexity, realism and sophisticated control systems were alienating many potential gamers.
Right. This, ladies and gentleman, is why Nintendo is doomed to continue to slip further and further down the totem pole they created, and will eventually go the way of Sega. Forget that the gamers average age is now somewhere around 22 or 23. Forget the fact that since Nintendo lost their #1 position, the industry has strived and expanded to boundaries people could only dream about in the Nintendo-dominated 80’s. Forget the fact that so far the top 5 selling games on the 3 home consoles are all complex, realistic games with sophisticated control schemes.
Lets recap. Nintendo ran things their way until the early 90’s, and then the industry changed. Business boomed, millions and millions of gamers who would otherwise never of been seen playing games are now all over them. Hell, celebrities are at parties gaming on PS2’s and XBox consoles. The industry has grown immensely under someone elses watch, and now this jackass chimes in saying that the very types of games that have made this excellent change take place, are alienating many gamers from playing games? Brilliant. So, then, Einstein, how would that explain Nintendos slip from #1? Everyone knows Nintendo thrives on simple, challenge-free games that anyone can pick up and play. I would think that goes squarely against complexity, realism and sophisticated controls. Oh wait, that is right, this is Nintendo we are talking about. They are above all logic.
The main point is, Nintendo continues to come up with stupid move after stupid move, backed up by retard reasoning and more retard reasoning. Meanwhile Sony’s userbase has suprisingly improved over PSone’s, and Microsoft is starting to gain momentum. If not many gamers give a rats ass about Nintendos games right now, what makes this jackass think they will start to sell games if they "take gaming back to the starting line"? As cocky as Nintendo is, they are likely forgetting that the "starting line" of gaming wasn’t even the NES. Anyone want to go back to an era of gaming that resembles the Atari era? No fucking way. I like my games fine the way they are now, regardless of what tripe Nintendo tries to come up with, telling me what I want and how I want it. Obviously I am not in the minority either, because gaming is still just getting more and more popular, while Nintendo continues on that downward spiral. Maybe they are just bitter. Whatever their problem is, I am now convinced to the fullest that they have no idea what the solution is. The GBA I purchased last year is likely the last Nintendo console I will ever own, and I am suprisingly not saddened
