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2016 IN REVIEW PART TWO: NINTENDO

13/12/2016

12 Comments

 
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Hey, guys! Check out this cool song:

Oh Nintendo!
Oh oh oh!
Ohhhhhhh-ohhh!
Ohhhh?


That was a real good song, even if I do say so myself, and it pretty much sums up my relationship with Nintendo these days; a series of "ohs" expressing different things.

Some of them are weary-ohs, some surprised, some affectionate, some frustrated. Here's what I say again, in case you've already forgotten: "Ohhhhh..."

It has been a weird, transitional year for Nintendo. It began with the company sliding its yellow, moist, torso into mobile apps and gaming, unveiling a miniature version of its first games console, that made everybody go a bit silly, before announcing its next console (which will console-idate its under-telly and handheld businesses), giving up on the Wii U, and revealing that it is moving into the theme park business.

Why, it almost feels as if Nintendo is having some sort of mid-life crisis. It'll be buying a sports car next.
PHENOM-NOM-NOM
Miitomo, it's probably fair to say, wasn't the social media hit that Nintendo might've hoped for. Certainly, I lost interest in it very quickly.

According to figures, so did most people, once the novelty of putting your Miis into compromising positions had worn off; from 1.6 million downloads in the US in its first four days at the end of March, by May only a quarter of the people who'd first acquired the app ever bothered opening it regularly. 


Pokemon Go broke download records for a mobile game, and became a full-on cultural phenomenon. Unfortunatey, downloads dried up sooner than Nintendo hoped for, and sales of in-game coins have all but stopped. 

An update this week is aiming to reinvigorate the title, with new Pokemon and a Christmas hat-wearing Pikachu, but many of the promised features - such as Pokemon trading, or player versus player battles - remain absent.

Super Mario Run - due out this week - is Nintendo's first bona-fide, premium-priced, mobile title, and the first it has developed in-house. It's likely that its success or failure will dictate the direction of Nintendo's mobile strategy.
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SWITCH PALACE
The other big Nintendo news this year was the reveal of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and the unveiling of its next bona-fide console, Switch.

I wasn't blown away with the first promo that Nintendo unveiled. It felt like it was trying a bit too hard to be cool, when Nintendo's traditional base has always been broader than slender Millennials with white teeth. 

Still... for whatever reason, Nintendo decided that this was indeed the correct strategy with which to show off its new console, and I've since warmed to the Switch. I mean, we still know barely anything about it - least of all which of its biggest franchises Nintendo will be bringing to it beyond Zelda - but I actually sort of like how cute and Nintendo-y a concept it is. 

Nonetheless, Nintendo remains the singlemost stubbornly idiosyncratic games company in the world. It almost exists outside the rest of the industry, refusing to abide by any traditional rules of engagement. Success in Nintendo terms is different to the way Microsoft or Sony might define it.

Indeed, success for Nintendo could be viewed as, say, Universal announcing that it is bringing a Super Nintendo World to its international theme parks.

​For all the ups and downs of the last few years, clearly Nintendo is the only games company with brands and characters that are - 'scuse the pun, daddy - sufficiently universally recognisable to compete with Mickey Mouse.

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U WOT?
Regardless, the Switch needs to succeed. The Wii U has shipped just over 13 million units worldwide - a fraction of what its predecessor achieved, and lagging way behind the PlayStation 4. 

Nintendo will be putting all of its eggs into a single basket with Switch - there'll be no Game Boy or DS safety net - and the jury is out as to whether its mobile games experiment is working. 

While Switch shouldn't be viewed as a direct competitor to the PS4 or Xbox One - not least because it's a hybrid console - it still needs to perform better than the Wii U has done. 

My prediction? It'll do better - far better - but it still won't do Wii or PS4 numbers. The genius of the Wii is that it was accessible to everyone. People who would never have otherwise picked up a games console were buying the Wii. It was a party system, a family system. Young kids and grandmothers, and their murderers, could play on it together.

The Wii U was nothing of the sort... and the Switch - while emphasising two-player gaming on the go, with its detachable joypads and portable screen, doesn't have that appeal either. And you can't really blame Nintendo for that. If Best Ideas Ever were that easy to come by everyone would be having them. 

Given the basic idea of the system they've unveiled - frankly, multiplayer gaming on the go doesn't particularly interest me - the key selling point for many potential Switch gamers will be the games themselves.

It'll rest on whether Nintendo listens to the clamouring for its biggest franchises, whether it launches Switch with a line-up of triple-A, in-house games, a new Mario game - and more. That's what Switch needs in order to build buzz. It needs to appeal to a new audience, and recapture its old one; the one that drifted away after Wii U, and grew frustrated with the idiosyncracies which define the company.

Just look at how well the NES Mini has done. This is a company that still has a lot of loyal people out there waiting to return.

AMID-DLE 
Amid all this, one thing comes across: people still love Nintendo. I still love Nintendo. People want a games industry where Nintendo is a major player. There's a yearning for Nintendo not to balls things up, and to do well. The company understands the purity of game design almost better than anyone else.

Speculating wildly... I wonder if Nintendo's bright colours and warm visuals are exactly what we all need right now. 

Here at the end of 2016 the world feels bleak for many of us. Switch - with its emphasis on bringing people together, and the shameless fantasy of Breath of the Wild - might be exactly what we - what I - need.

​That's what I hope. 

Oh Nintendo!
Oh oh oh!
Ohhhhhhh-ohhh!
Ohhhh?


Such a cool song...
FROM THE ARCHIVE:
​2016 IN REVIEW PART ONE - VIRTUAL REALITY​
WHY WE LIKE THE GAMES WE LIKE - BY MR BIFFO
​
VIRTUAL REALITY WILL BE THE DEATH OF US - BY MR BIFFO
12 Comments
RichardM
13/12/2016 11:21:36 am

I've got comment fever today. The only cure? More commentsssss.

Long term Nintendo fan. Played every first party title until the Wii, and stopped buying Nintendo consoles after that. Got an XBox360 and played Gears of War and stuff instead. Haven't played the last couple of Zelda titles, which makes me sad... but the hurdle to ever playing them is probably too great now. Hopefully when my children are old enough to play videogames they will want a Nintendo console?

Definitely going to get Super Mario Run, having now checked thrice that it involves no actual physical running.

As for Nintendo's future... I'd go on some Mario Kart dodgems and a Luigi's Mansion ghost train, yeah. Zelda on mobile would be nice. Or a good Starfox game. SNES Mini? I'd buy one of them. Seems inevitable.

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Rufio1980
13/12/2016 12:40:41 pm

I wonder how many thousands of people are sat poised to throw money at Nintendo when they release the SNES mini? 'A sure thing' is an understatement. I haven't bought a Nintendo since the N64 but I'm already reasonably aroused at the prospect.

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Marc Booth
13/12/2016 12:48:16 pm

I like my Wii u but there are so many missed opportunities with multiplayer; why no online play for Mario party 10? Why no decent offline multiplay for Splatoon? Why no split screen or online for Staf Fox? Why the wasted potential werid to access Xenoblade Chronicles X online play? That especially could have been so much more incredible. I downloaded F Zero X the other day, the N64 one, and it was great, if they'd released a port of that with online play, 30 cars and death race mode too, I would have smiled really wide, but we didn't get that, we haven't had an FZero since theGamecube.

They got it bang on with Mario Kart 8. You can pick that up and jump in online whenever you fancy. For the other games and for a console of this generation it makes zero sense to have less online / multiplayer functionality than a dreamcast.

Also. I want Power Stone 3.

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Dirty Barry
13/12/2016 02:46:18 pm

I've owned all their consoles since the NES days but Nintendo need to realise certain things. 1. Underpowered (compared to the competition) consoles do not sell well to today's teraflop savvy consumers. 2. Except the Wii which was a media hysteria fluke and will not be repeated. 3. The majority of kids don't like kiddy themed stuff and are obsessed with being grown up - sadly they want the same COD as their older brothers, not Splatoon. 4. Smartphones have all but killed the handheld console. 5. The audience that is willing to own a second console just for first party Nintendo games is shrinking, 6. As is the audience willing to miss out on big multiplats and already established multiplayer. 7. I really hope I'm wrong about this.

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I've never been to one of these meetings before....
13/12/2016 03:18:06 pm

Long term Nintendo fan here!

I agree that the Switch is not realistically going to be Ninty's biggest seller but I don't think it needs to be.

Not having to split their elite teams across 2 platforms should pay dividends - the Switch will have AAA Nintendo goodness dripping from its Yoshi's Egghole.

I think Nintendo's future is bright. I hope so too because without them what is there? Dystopian shooters and shiny cars driving around in circles.

And Fifa.

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Oink
13/12/2016 04:42:39 pm

Surely from a gamer's point of view, whether a player is 'major' or not depends on the strength of the software available to the gamer, rather than how many units have sold, which would be more relevant to say, a shareholder that cares not for games? The Wii was great for shareholders, but is considered poor for core gamers now; the opposite is true for the Wii U. Absolutely marvelous games and a great generational experience rivalled (for its time) only by the SNES.

That the Nintendo consoles aren't like the ironically termed 'powerful' competitor consoles is a good thing. Having recently played Halo 1 on both XB360 and PC, I'm embarrassed at how terrible and low end the XB360 is. The PC version is stunningly slick and fast, and plays so much better.

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Dirty Barry
13/12/2016 05:22:24 pm

Does it always have to be one or the other though? Why not have a Nintendo console which competes with the big boys power-wise (thus getting the big grey shooters and fifa crap people want) AND the excellent Nintendo first party stuff?

You don't need a gimmicky fisher price controller/last gen specs to play Mario Kart. But you do need a console with decent spec if you want devs to make games for it, especially in the long term.

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Oink
13/12/2016 10:36:40 pm

You don't get powerful Nintendo consoles because a) it costs and is not necessarily good from a business perspective, and b) the gaming experiences Nintendo intend which have earned them the immense popularity and universal respect across the industry, even by competitors, is achieved without that false illusion of power.

However, it's true that from a 3rd party penny-pinching perspective, you have to develop principally for the lowest common denominator hardware, and if that is too far below the largest combined market share, then certain platforms may have to be omitted--as we've seen with Nintendo's platforms. But a significant number of people have multiple consoles, and Nintendo's first party experiences provide a strong and enjoyable experience without 3rd party support. While 3rd party support is nevertheless still desirable, as Sony recently said, Nintendo make their own market, and that's not a bad thing.

The other disadvantage of 3rd parties pandering to the lowest common hardware is that PC gaming, where TRUE power lives, is (and has been for a long time now) severely diminished, with lazy ports of games that are fundamentally designed about relatively inferior 'powerful' console hardware and their input methods (e.g. controllers). The 'powerful' consoles represent some muddy middle ground and the worst of both worlds (Nintendo hardware creativity and PC hardware power). But market forces are driven by consumerism which requires cheap, simple, familiar, and thus often alas, ultimately relatively naff; hence this more popular middle ground.

Spiney O'Sullivan
13/12/2016 05:58:18 pm

The Switch looks a lot like what the Wii U should have been. Do I think it'll reclaim the Wii market? Honestly, I doubt it, as a large chunk of that is playing smartphone games and probably isn't buying another console any time soon. Nintendo's best hope there is to recapture them on the phone, though the question is how they monetise that as their usual model of providing high quality experiences at a premium up-front price with minimal microtransactions is completely at odds with the dominant mobile gaming model. Mario Run will be the real tester of if the public will accept their approach to it (free for a bit, then paid, a bit like old Shareware).

The big question now for the Switch is if it will shoot for being the core gamer's "primary" console, or stick with the role it had in the last two generations of the "the other, cheaper one with fewer -but very good- games". A big part of that is going to depend on third party support. Personally I'm going to wait on this one, as I'm not sure I can justify another machine just for the new Smash Bros, Mario Kart and Zelda (which will be admittedly one more game than my Wii U has, though I've got a lot of fun out of those).

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Dirty Barry
14/12/2016 06:27:53 pm

I think Nintendo has become all too content with being the third console with very few, but very good games. Happy to just hang around in the background, doing it's own thing really well.

This is all well and good if that's what they want to do - it's enough to please the majority of Nintendo fans. But I remember the glory of the SNES, and honestly think if Nintendo would get in the ring and compete on equal footing, they could snatch a significant chunk of Sony/MS's market share.

Most people would love a console that gives them what their bones and ps4s offer but with the ability to play mario kart and Zelda. The Switch will not do this, the refusal to get in the ring will continue.

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S Hawke
13/12/2016 06:26:40 pm

I doubt the Switch will be successful. I think there's a gap in the market for a console that looks like a toy and is priced and marketed as a toy. The sort of thing you could give to children to mess around with, or let family members have a go at without explaining what every button does and plodding about tutorials that last for hours. I don't see the Switch filling that gap, it doesn't look like a toy and kids will just mess it up with their stupid fingers anyway.

I'd release something that looked more like the NES mini, but had 4 controllers included and focused on party games, with an extra emphasis retro games to appeal to the fanboys.

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stuart pearce
16/12/2016 02:17:28 am

hahaha troll

Reply



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