By Nelson Schneider - 02/22/15 at 02:53 PM CT
Nintendo, the developer/publisher/hardware maker that single-handedly saved gaming in North America during the 1980s has not been doing well lately. And by “lately” I mean “Since 1998.” With the exception of the Wii – the success of which now seems much more like a fluke, in the same manner as a viral video, than a repeatable formula for success – Nintendo has been struggling along since the N64, propelled primarily by their own first-party software and the legions of fanboys who think the company can do no wrong.
Unfortunately, it seems that everyone who isn’t a Nintendo fanboy is some sort of militant anti-Nintendo hater. The anti-Nintendo camp primarily relies on single-word arguments such as “kiddie,” “casual,” or “milking” to explain why Nintendo should just go out of business already instead of releasing consoles like the Gamecube or WiiU that don’t really have any third-party games. Of course, when the anti-Nintendo crowd talks about “third-party games,” they don’t actually mean anything relevant, like exclusives, but simply the same multi-platform releases that are available on every other platform. And when they say, “kiddie” or “casual” they simply mean “not a brown and gray realistic shooter with gritty, manly violence.” The “milking” argument holds even less water, considering Nintendo only releases a handful of titles in a given franchise over the course of a hardware generation, whereas the “not kiddie/casual/milking” franchises the anti-Nintendo crowd love get annual rehashes with new map packs.
I like to think of myself as a relatively neutral third-party standing between the Nintendo fanboys and the anti-Nintendo haters. I have liked a lot of Nintendo’s software, but I am not afraid to call them out on stupid decisions. I think both the fanboys and the haters need to be a bit less myopic about the company and try to create arguments that can’t be summed up in two syllables.
The biggest and most frequently spouted multi-word argument against Nintendo, which I see plastered all across Internet message boards, is that Nintendo needs to just get out of the hardware business. Frequently this argument falls back on comparing Nintendo to Sega, the company’s old rival that dropped out of the hardware business to focus on software in 2001. Yet when anyone argues this, I can’t help but wonder if they are at all familiar with how Sega has been doing since the Dreamcast died.
Back in 2011, right after MeltedJoystick went live, I wrote a two part blog mulling over the idea of whether or not Sega should try to make a comeback. I considered the concept of Sega going full retro and making an official emulation box for their old games and the possibility of the company being bought-up by Microsoft to bolster the credentials of the latter’s uninspiring Games Division (“Sega Xbox” certainly sounds more appealing than “Microsoft Xbox”). What I did not realize at the time I wrote those articles was that Sega had already been bought-up by a third-party way back in 2004: Sammy Corp., the publisher behind a variety of unimpressive 8-and-16-bit games, plus the continuing ‘Guilty Gear’ fighting franchise.
Since its acquisition by Sammy, Sega has struggled with inconsistency. While the beloved ‘Sonic’ franchise finally got a good game in the form of “Sonic Colors” for the Wii and RPG fans got a fantastic new IP in the form of “Valkyria Chronicles” (which, naturally, received iffy handheld sequels instead of a proper sequel), the majority of Sega’s recent releases have reviewed poorly. Sega is no longer a household name, except possibly as a laughing stock or as an example to be held up when discussing how NOT to run a videogame company. It seemed that things might be turning around a bit when Sammy also bought struggling niche RPG developer/publisher Atlus and rolled it into their big ball of videogame silly putty, but the long-term results of this acquisition remain to be seen.
Most recently, however, Sammy-Sega announced that they were cutting hundreds of jobs and restructuring the company’s game division to focus more on PC and mobile games. For a company like Sega that once held a portion of the console pie all to itself, completely abandoning consoles to focus on smartphones and Windows seems like the ultimate defeat. Especially when one is able to read between the lines and realize that “focusing on smartphones and PC online gaming” means “Free2Play MMOs with microtransactions and annoying Pay2NotWait phone games.” Personally, I would love it if Sega and Atlus were to focus entirely on porting their libraries to Steam and releasing new games digitally with the idea of them appearing on Steam first and making their way to console digital platforms later. But I really don’t think that kind of move is what we’re going to see from Sega going forward. Instead, we will witness a slow death wherein beloved Sega and Atlus franchises get butchered along the lines of “Final Fantasy: All the Bravest” in order to maximize profits by taking advantage of dumb people with smart phones.
Circling back to Nintendo: Is this REALLY where we, as a collective gaming community, want to see one of the pillars of the industry? Do we want Nintendo to be bought-up by a company that doesn’t really do videogames (Sammy makes pachinko machines)? Do we want to see Nintendo shift focus to nickel-and-diming stupid people to death via inescapable microtransactions on their phones? Would Nintendo itself even allow such a thing to happen?
I am of the opinion that if Nintendo gets into enough of a financial bind that they can no longer afford to do what they’ve been doing since 1983, they should just stop. They shouldn’t make horrible “Sonic and the Black Knight” or “Sonic 2006” versions of ‘Mario’ games for Sony or MS consoles. They should just stop. They shouldn’t sell the rights to their classic IPs to other companies so those companies can produce “Wand of Gamelon” quality games for the lowest bidder. They should just stop. Sometimes it’s necessary for things to die. Instead of doing the equivalent of a necromantic ritual and keeping the rotted remains of a once-loved game maker animated – but not alive – Nintendo should just gracefully bow-out and retire everything. No more ‘Mario,’ no more ‘Zelda,’ no more ‘Metroid’: It would be a great loss to gaming culture, but it would be better than seeing those beloved franchises (and the rest of Nintendo’s less-beloved franchises) subjected to the same fate as Sega’s franchises, dragged through the mud, and ultimately ruined.
Alternatively, Nintendo could change gears a bit, adapt with the times, and put their expertise toward legitimizing mobile gaming. A big step for them would be forking Android into a Nintendo-specific version, a theoretical “NintendOS.” Iwata has mentioned wanting to unite Nintendo’s games all under the roof of an OS instead of specific hardware, and this would be a great way to do it. Putting a custom NintendOS ROM of Android on a series of Nintendo-build devices that can double as handhelds and consoles (much in the same way as the Nvidia Shield Tablet) would help unify the company’s focus on just making good games instead of constantly fiddling with gimmicky hardware or splitting dev teams between handhelds and consoles.
The final word in the argument about Nintendo copying Sega in dropping hardware to become a third-party: Don’t! If Nintendo follows Sega’s example, nothing but despair and disappointment awaits for all, be they stockholders, IP holders, or fans. We’ve seen enough carnage recently from other third parties going out of business and selling their IPs, only for those IPs to be ignored or abused in the name of profit – Sega’s situation is not an isolated incident! If Nintendo needs to die in order for its IPs to be reborn after a period of hibernation as Indie spiritual successors, it would still be better than Sega’s tortured existence as an undead slave.
