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Not sure how I feel about Mr. Iwata's perspective of Console Hardware
- Thread starter Ximonz
- Start date
3DS was just Nintendo like other companies trying to push 3D onto the consumer. The mistake was not appreciating that consumers have always rejected 3D.
The wii u should never of been greenlit simply because of the price it cost to produce. The costs to produce left them in a hole if they ever wanted to reduce the retail price and the numbers should of saw Nintendo never go to market with such a product.
The wii u hardware wise to me is easily the worst product I have owned from Nintendo. Opening the box then after 1 hour feeling extremely disappointed was horrible. That gamepad was nothing short of a disgrace.
The wii u should never of been greenlit simply because of the price it cost to produce. The costs to produce left them in a hole if they ever wanted to reduce the retail price and the numbers should of saw Nintendo never go to market with such a product.
The wii u hardware wise to me is easily the worst product I have owned from Nintendo. Opening the box then after 1 hour feeling extremely disappointed was horrible. That gamepad was nothing short of a disgrace.
Wii U was the only stumble. Wii, DS and 3DS were wild successes and a great deal of that was probably attributed to their lack of power. They found a balance between value and substance and power had to be cut to enable that.
I mean just look at 3DS. When it first launched it certainly didn't have the balance of Value and Substance and was seen as an overpriced failure in its first few months on the market. That was quickly turned around and today the 3DS has sold an extremely impressive amount, especially as many analysts didn't think a dedicated handheld was viable with mobile gaming being so popular. Power did nothing for the Vita and I can't see the 3DS being more powerful doing anything for it either.
Do you think the Wii was only successful due to its motion controls? I would argue it was successful because it was only £180 and came with a revolutionary game. If it were just because of motion controls then PS Move would have caught on, it didn't though because it was an expensive peripheral without a killer app.
Mr Iwata's perspective on hardware is different to a lot of ours simply because many of us want great looking games. That isn't how you make a successful console though and perhaps none of these systems would have sold anywhere close to what they did if they went for expensive cutting edge visuals.
Power is indeed a pillar of Switch but Switch is also in a unique position that I don't think you can apply to previous consoles. There's no longer a massive difference between mobile and console chips, that's never quite been the case before.
I mean just look at 3DS. When it first launched it certainly didn't have the balance of Value and Substance and was seen as an overpriced failure in its first few months on the market. That was quickly turned around and today the 3DS has sold an extremely impressive amount, especially as many analysts didn't think a dedicated handheld was viable with mobile gaming being so popular. Power did nothing for the Vita and I can't see the 3DS being more powerful doing anything for it either.
Do you think the Wii was only successful due to its motion controls? I would argue it was successful because it was only £180 and came with a revolutionary game. If it were just because of motion controls then PS Move would have caught on, it didn't though because it was an expensive peripheral without a killer app.
Mr Iwata's perspective on hardware is different to a lot of ours simply because many of us want great looking games. That isn't how you make a successful console though and perhaps none of these systems would have sold anywhere close to what they did if they went for expensive cutting edge visuals.
Power is indeed a pillar of Switch but Switch is also in a unique position that I don't think you can apply to previous consoles. There's no longer a massive difference between mobile and console chips, that's never quite been the case before.
No other game ever needed to have so many enemy types. It just doesn't make sense in other games. But it certainly isn't impossible.
And Breath of The Wild is exactly the type of open world that wouldn't be dense enough for a Pokemon game.
If Nintendo wanted to make the childhood dream Pokemon game many people fantasize about they will need more powerful hardware than what they currently have.
Microsoft has been willing to set their bank account on fire to keep the Xbox in existence. They could kill Xbox off tomorrow and their shareholders would hold a ticker tape parade for their CEO.
Sony has massive real instatement, insurance, and movie and music industries to subsidize the Playstation. They literally wiped every single dollar they made off the PS2 away with the PS3.
Nintendo is a toy company who has always been the 'how' of each platform instead of the 'who'. They are not gonna compete on power against two companies that are willing to burn so much money to win 5 year segments of time. The Wii and DS did just fine at their lower power. As long as you sell tons of units, developers will show up.
Move wasn't at real parity, though. Buy-in cost was higher because Sony was more focused on not looking like a Wiimote than just admitting they were adding a Wiimote, and you couldn't play 4-player Move games with everyone having a chuck because of them making the chuck a separate controller that paired to the console even though nobody had issues with the wired chuck on the Wii. And Move-wand only was limited by the fact that you couldn't use it as a simple controller due to the color bulb, so you could only do games where you pointed at the screen like a wand.
Sony has massive real instatement, insurance, and movie and music industries to subsidize the Playstation. They literally wiped every single dollar they made off the PS2 away with the PS3.
Nintendo is a toy company who has always been the 'how' of each platform instead of the 'who'. They are not gonna compete on power against two companies that are willing to burn so much money to win 5 year segments of time. The Wii and DS did just fine at their lower power. As long as you sell tons of units, developers will show up.
Move wasn't at real parity, though. Buy-in cost was higher because Sony was more focused on not looking like a Wiimote than just admitting they were adding a Wiimote, and you couldn't play 4-player Move games with everyone having a chuck because of them making the chuck a separate controller that paired to the console even though nobody had issues with the wired chuck on the Wii. And Move-wand only was limited by the fact that you couldn't use it as a simple controller due to the color bulb, so you could only do games where you pointed at the screen like a wand.
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Well, if the power of the device doesn't matter toward nintendo's success. Me as consumer if given the choice, would choose a more powerful machine than not.
no man (or woman) is perfect..
seriously, go dig up some of the history of your favourite heroes and heroines and you will most definitely find some dirty or less than ideal choice they made during their lifetime..
Even Steve Jobs came up with duds once in awhile. Remember Lisa, Ping and MobileMe? Those happened under his watch so you can't shift the blame to others.
So really..the idea of some visionary making some missteps and mistakes is hardly surprising.
seriously, go dig up some of the history of your favourite heroes and heroines and you will most definitely find some dirty or less than ideal choice they made during their lifetime..
Even Steve Jobs came up with duds once in awhile. Remember Lisa, Ping and MobileMe? Those happened under his watch so you can't shift the blame to others.
So really..the idea of some visionary making some missteps and mistakes is hardly surprising.
If you can put the console in somewhat of a needed range, yes. But that third party support is just going along as the hardware allows it.
It is pretty cool to see Wolfenstein and Doom on the Switch but I think that won't happen with the next consoles from Sony and MS.
Unless Nintendo is able to release the next iteration of the Switch in the same timeframe.
*Facepalm*
That's because, and I don't know how this is confusing to you, the thing you're imagining is not possible for any games studio to make. The idea that botw wouldn't match up when it's one of the best designed open world's in the industry just shows how ridiculously impossible your imagination is.
What was the alternative?
Have you ever actually looked at the sales numbers of each of Nintendo's home consoles?
Prior to the Wii the NES was their best selling console. When Nintendo were trying to compete directly with their rivals and match them in raw power every subsequent console they released sold around 10 million units less than the previous one.
NES: ~60 million
SNES: ~50 million
N64: ~30 million
GameCube: ~20 million
Iwata single-handedly reversed a 20 year trend with the Wii and launched the third best selling console of all time.
Whatever miscalculations he might have made with the Wii U and 3DS (and the 3DS still outsold the NES and SNES) Iwata was responsible for Nintendo's best selling home console and their best selling handheld.
Nintendo could have kept making consoles that were more or less the same as their competitors', matching them in power and thoroughly redundant, and they could have watched their market share continue to shrink, or they could do what they did and be wildly successful.
Errrm... No, it really couldn't. "Power" isn't all that Nintendo has to sell, and I would dispute the whole "underpowered" narrative, too - In terms of parity, sure, their consoles are less meaty and more power and performance efficient since the Wii and DS, but today, there isn't a single non-exclusive game on XB1/PS4, existing or forthcoming, that couldn't exist on the Switch in some capacity - A lot of their partners wouldn't be on board, if this statement wasn't true (Bethesda, specifically). One might even make the case for the Wii U - With that, it was more that the endeavour wasn't there, and Nintendo had lost its appetite for it due to its lack of commercial success. But it's a general truth that people on here love to overstate the differences in power between Nintendo platforms and others, when the reality is that it really isn't that much, and it matters less and less, anyway, because of scalability, performance and efficiency gains, more modern architectures and better design tool support, among other things. They weren't selling "more power" during the 7th Generation, and they were proven right. In the case of the DS, it's dual screens, touch and precision gameplay, Wi-Fi, and longer battery life for a $149/€149/£100 point of entry. It's forgotten that the PSP launched at $249 in the US - That was the same launch price as the Wii, and it's also forgotten that meatier PSBox consoles exist because Sony and Microsoft typically sell their consoles at a loss despite their much higher points of entry to ownership, higher-priced online subscription services, etc..
It's true that Miyamoto wasn't against the idea of a HD Wii, HOWEVER, it's lost on here that the 7th Generation was a longer one than the usual 5 or 6 years - One could actually make the case that XBox One should've been released in 2010, or certainly in 2011 (X360 was 6 years old that that point, and perhaps we could have avoided a slew of barely-a-generation-old remaster upon remasters). Nintendo and Nvidia could create a very powerful Switch successor if they wanted to, even with that form factor - The more compelling question is whether you would be ready, willing and able to pay at least $399 for it (Bear in mind that with the exception of the Wii U Deluxe Models, Nintendo has never launched any of its individual platforms at more than $299).
I clearly remember Activision telling us about hair on an arm for COD: Ghosts. I also remember Sony fanpeople getting wet over grass on the floor in GTA V for the PS4 which was seemingly more sparse in the XBox One version, but SURE, "Iwata wasn't "with the program"", when these events happened in the same year that he pointed out those details.
There was no reason for the WiiU too be that weak shit of hardware.
That's different. People were groaning over Activision's emphasis because people do not play cod for the details on a man's armhair or whatever happens with the fish in the lake. People might not care about graphics in Donkey Kong but I think they do care about how Donkey Kong is presented as a character. The issue with the presentation of Tropical Freeze is that Iwata was presenting it as "HD" in an attempt to impress you and he was 5 years late. He was presenting techniques that were incredibly common all throughout Xbox 360's lifecycle and even Conker Live & Reloaded on Xbox Original. It's not the same thing, don't conflate out of some Nintendo defensiveness.
It's also totally laughable to claim that the "blue ocean" approach didn't work, or that "the userbase moved on to mobile" - If you believe that many people bought a Wii for Wii Sports, Wii Fit, and nothing else, then you need the remaining Wii owners to pick up the slack with its very high attach rates. Such claims have always been a very pathetic attempt at negative spin, and you would do well to stop drinking from the chalice Of Pachter's poison. What you have here is a combination of a small group of loud, wrong and disillusioned Nintendo fans and antis who can't bring themselves to accept that this company is not interested in the "more power" race-to-the-bottom. "Blue Ocean" is a big reason behind the Switch's success - A 7 year old playing a DS or Wii in 2004 or 2006 would be 21 or 19 in 2018. They were Nintendo's most successful home and portable products, and there's a whole generation of people for whom a Wii or DS was their first console.
I think there is uncertainties the basic assumptions that is used in the basic arguments.
1, The DS is underpowered. No it was not. It was a natural step up from the GBA which in turn was a natural step up from GB/GBC. There has always been handhelds with more power than Nintendo machines however they have never sold more than Nintendo. The reason for that the industry has left the handheld market has very little to do with the hardware power of Nintendo's system.
2, The Wii might have been underpowered compared to both previous Nintendo hardware and the competition, however I would argue that it saved Nintendo consoles. How much I love my gameGame the system was a failure. Nintendo could price the system correctly and they could build a war chest for later days.
3, The price was an issue for the 3DS. However I would argue that even if the 3DS had the same power as the Vita it would have failed at that price. The handheld market has always been more price sensitive.
4, Nintendo is still active in the blue ocean trying to offer something that the competition is not doing. Both Switch and the 3DS is examples of this. Heck even WiiU was such an example, a failed one but still a try to do something different.
Now the hardware designs under Iwata was not always perfect, but I would argue if Nintendo had not taken that route we would not had the Switch just from a financial standpoint.
Neither different nor defensive to point out that such details were being pointed out across the industry at the time - Don't get defensive because it's rather you and other trolls who weren't "with the program" ;). Don't believe me? Nvidia Hairworks launched the year after, in 2014, and we learned more about how they gave more "life" to fur and hair. So, this idea that he was "late/not with the program" doesn't hold water. Also, Iwata once reminded people that he once created a baseball game without any players, so, if anybody appreciated such details, it was him. Some people may not care much for these details until they want to overstate the differences in power between Nintendo platforms and their favourites, but the truth is that he was very much aware, and just pointed out that it was possible to have them in some form on the Wii U, too.
If you're seriously going to try and argue that the DS, with its, at the time, unprecedented industry-wide support for a handheld and touch generation games sparking the global paradigm shift towards mobile gaming as we know it today, as a device that distanced Nintendo them from the industry, then you're simply talking reckless.
Power is not the be all and end all of everything FFS.
Power is not the be all and end all of everything FFS.
Yes, there was. Nintendo isn't interested in the arms race and they never will be again. They thought the gimmick of the gamepad would have been enough, they were clearly wrong, but they developed the concept further and now we have switch.
Of all those mentioned in the op, only Wii U was a failure commercially, and it's to be expected when you are trying to find new and different ideas for gaming. I think more people appreciate moves to differentiate themselves from what others are doing instead of being yet another company that prioritizes beefier hardware over fresh ideas.
I know that's what I love about Nintendo: being different from the others.
I know that's what I love about Nintendo: being different from the others.
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If the used regular cd dvd then maybe. Not that mini dvd disc they used.
There's a difference between hairworks and using postprocessing/blur to create the look of fur as they did in many launch-day 360 games and Tropical Freeze. Advertizing a 2014 game for being "HD" (as in just 720p) and "next gen" fur-rendering is a statement only sole adopters of Nintendo machines with blatantly outdated hardware, such as Wii U, would be impressed by. It just struck me as clueless. Nintendo living in a bubble.
Sorry OP but I don't think you put together a well constructed argument at all nor supported it with evidence. The Wii was born from the Gamecube failing, which was a system that was equal at minimum to PS2 and Xbox, and still sold the worst. Nintendo cannot afford to get into an arms race with Sony and Microsoft because both of those companies had other businesses which allowed them to bleed money to gain market share. By comparison, PS3 is one of the biggest disasters of the industry since it literally wiped out any profits Sony had made off the PS1 and PS2, two of the most successful consoles in history. I'm not sure how you can look at Wii and DS, which sold hundreds of millions of units of hardware and more than a billion units of software combined and then question Iwata. The 3DS was priced too high with a gimmick that wasn't as novel as the system aged, and everything about the Wii U was implemented poorly, but Iwata still was able to navigate the company through profitability for most of those years, which were the darkest Nintendo had ever faced, even taking paycuts instead of reducing staff.
As a comsumer given a choice, I take whatever platform offers the games I care about. it's relative or absolute power is meaningless buzzword nonsense to me. As long as I have the games I want, I don't care of whatever chunk of plastic I get has 5 fuzzywagas and 10.467 shamiyadingus per second less than the competiton.
I never understood the fetishization of specs among gamers - there's just nothing they actually give me. An Etrian odyssey X for example is still a much, much better game than labyrinth of refrain, even if the latter appears on the PS4 and PC and the former on the much weaker 3DS. Gameplay cares little for specs, blast processing doesn't do jack.
It doesn't sit right with me to make Iwata the sole person responsible, both negatively and positively.
We get it, you don't like the consoles sans Switch, no need to play a reductionist blame game
We get it, you don't like the consoles sans Switch, no need to play a reductionist blame game
I don't think it's Iwata the one to blame here. I remember that iwata was the one who told the hardware guys that the Wii u should be able to play the games that the competition had available, but since those guys were clueless about modern hardware, we got what we got.
Also, Wii owners didn't made the transition, it says more about the wiiu than about the Wii. And if was not the Wii, probably that a lot of companies wouldn't have made past 2008. Even ea was living on the back of the Wii for like 4 years.
Besides, iwata at least offered sensitive prices. Switch has to be the most overpriced hardware Nintendo made in the last century.
Also, Wii owners didn't made the transition, it says more about the wiiu than about the Wii. And if was not the Wii, probably that a lot of companies wouldn't have made past 2008. Even ea was living on the back of the Wii for like 4 years.
Besides, iwata at least offered sensitive prices. Switch has to be the most overpriced hardware Nintendo made in the last century.
You're embarrassing yourself right now, so, you would do well to leave it here.
But I really disagree. For one, your "hairworks" argument makes no sense when Hairworks had nothing to do with Donkey Kong. Again, he was advertising a development convention that was innovative 7 years ago and using it as a selling point. it was strictly for Nintendo's only, narrow (at the time) dedicated fanbase who played Wii, another underpowered system, and we were following a graphical evolution offset by -7 years because Wii repeated a generation in terms of graphical power while the other giants kept moving ahead.
This is not a criticism of Iwata's accomplishments as a CEO - the guy had an amazing philosophy to business, and it was bold of him to allow consoles to remain "underpowered" in order to focus on development and creation of innovative games to sell to a "blue sea" target group, and he also made many sacrifices in terms of finance to publish games that normally don't have a market in this industry such as Hotel Dusk, one of my favorite games of all time. I'm only saying when it comes to selling a system lacking behind basically an entire generation in computing capability, Iwata appeared downright delusional to me when pitching it to a worldwide audience.
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A note here - a key factor in Nintendo's history of underpowered hardware is their longtime head of hardware R&D Genyo Takeda. He's been quoted as being focused on low power consumption.
Thankfully, he retired after Switch launched (though he retains a consulting role).
Thankfully, he retired after Switch launched (though he retains a consulting role).
The N64 and the GameCube were not underpowered though. They had other problems but not enough power was none of it.
Wii U and 3DS were clear misfires, but Wii, DS and Switch showed that he knew exactly what a game system could be and what people would want, and how different it could be from the competition.
Also, DS and 3DS were not underpowered, they were clear generational jumps from past handhelds. It was the Sony hardware that was underpowered, with power hungry CPUs and game sizes too big for the system's limited infastructure that drained battery life, skyrocketed loading times, and made portable gaming a chore rather than fun.
Also, DS and 3DS were not underpowered, they were clear generational jumps from past handhelds. It was the Sony hardware that was underpowered, with power hungry CPUs and game sizes too big for the system's limited infastructure that drained battery life, skyrocketed loading times, and made portable gaming a chore rather than fun.
google "Miyamoto Wii HD"
https://nintendotoday.com/miyamoto-on-hd-wii/
I guess the magazine was Famitsu
And weren't trying to force two-screen gaming at the expensive of off-TV play (which was arguably the Wii U's secret best feature).
The GameCube was the perfect balance of processing power AND energy efficiency:
https://gizmodo.com/181610/console-power-usage
Alas, the scales tipped towards the latter afterwards.
I do believe that Wii U was needed for there to be Switch. It was a genuinely bad piece of hardware, but it was a natural step between a traditional home console and what Switch eventually was.
i firmly believe that iwata's vision was right for nintendo as it was. they never could have competed directly with microsoft and sony in a console arms race and were right as a company to sidestep it entirely.
now i don't think they made great games necessarily for those systems at the frequency i'd like, but it was still for the best from nintendos point of view
now i don't think they made great games necessarily for those systems at the frequency i'd like, but it was still for the best from nintendos point of view
I wasn't on board with the DS until I played WarioWare Touched which really showed off it's capabilities.
I thought the Wii was pretty cool as a concept but the hardware itself was horribly underpowered. When you play Wii games on the dolphin emulator you realise just how short-changed Nintendo's artists were by the Wii hardware.
The Wii U felt like better hardware but was hampered by the Game-pad.
I thought the Wii was pretty cool as a concept but the hardware itself was horribly underpowered. When you play Wii games on the dolphin emulator you realise just how short-changed Nintendo's artists were by the Wii hardware.
The Wii U felt like better hardware but was hampered by the Game-pad.
I owned both, but they moved Nintendo from being my top platform to my least played. Switch has brought that back some for me, but mostly last year as this year's library isn't great for my tastes. Next year should be better.
This is a bad interpretation of blue ocean strategy.
The blue ocean strategy is not about "casuals." It is about competing with product qualities that others in the market are not competing on.
The goal of blue ocean strategy is to make your competitors less relevant because competing products are designed to meet different customers' needs. The more you design the product to resemble your competitors', the worse it'll do because every feature you add to appease both kinds of customers is added cost that eats away at the value of your unique selling proposition.
From the perspective of your competitors, you're making a bad product for bad customers. This doesn't matter, since the goal is to attract and retain a new customer base competitors haven't gone after, not become better at stealing customers from your competition.
DS and Wii brought in tons of new players compared to the GameCube era. GameCube was unable to adapt to rising competitors; GBA did well, but also had no real competition until PSP came along (which explains why Nintendo introduced the DS). Some of them were the famous casual gamers or nongamers; Nintendo also targeted former Nintendo players through the VC and through sequels to established franchises. Sure, a lot of these players didn't stick around on dedicated platforms. But a lot of them did, too. They moved on either to 3DS or to PlayStation and Xbox.
3DS and Wii U were more descendants of Miyamoto's game-making philosophies than Iwata's. Miyamoto was the 3DS hardware lead, and contributed to Wii U's hardware concept as well. Iwata was a rubber stamp, but at the time, who thought Miyamoto would screw up so colossally? Neither of these was really a blue ocean product; 3DS was released during a time when stereoscopic 3D was being tested on a lot of fronts, and Wii U for all its uniqueness was ultimately just another HD box looking for a market - which is why the marketing for Wii U was so weak.
Switch is more of a blue ocean product than a red ocean one, but it's not targeting nongamers. Instead, it's targeting lapsed players who need a system that lets them play the kinds of games they want, the way they want. And because of DS and Wii there are an effing shitton of lapsed gamers who've played on Nintendo systems but moved on for whatever reason. In addition, Nintendo's also tapping into NES and SNES players, which is also something they did on Wii but something they can go way harder on since there is no short supply of indie games that are homages to those old games.
Moreover, it's a damn fact that maintaining a steady base of support on DS, Wii, and 3DS is the biggest reason why Switch is sure to get great third-party software support even while most AAA games will skip it.
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Anecdote from yesterday, I overheard a woman taking about getting a WiiUSwitch for her children for Christmas.
Wii U, the neverending impact.
Wii U, the neverending impact.
nah
the Wii U was the only misstep and the Switch proved that he had the right idea but the tech and execution were lacking for various reasons
the Wii U was the only misstep and the Switch proved that he had the right idea but the tech and execution were lacking for various reasons
This has been their business model for a real long time. They decided they could profit more by selling cheaper hardware with a gimmick and focusing on the quality of their games as opposed to trying to compete with playstation and xbox who are backed by much larger companies. It's another reason Nintendo rarely lowers the price of their games, and another reason why their consoles tend to lack features vs the others. Their hope is that Zelda and Mario will be enough to brink people back every generation.
There's been a lot of complaining about a lack of games on the switch (one that I disagree with), but that same complaint has happened on almost every single console they've released going back to the GC, always for the same reason.
Nintendo tries to be innovative and in general the industry and gamers have greatly benefited from it.
Sometimes when you take chances those chances fail or don't work out as well as you hoped they would. But when they work, like with the DS or Switch, it can have a huge impact.
I think the DS hardware was pretty much perfect. Probably the most innovative console I can think of. The dual screens and touchscreen gave us so many new gaming experiences.
Sometimes when you take chances those chances fail or don't work out as well as you hoped they would. But when they work, like with the DS or Switch, it can have a huge impact.
I think the DS hardware was pretty much perfect. Probably the most innovative console I can think of. The dual screens and touchscreen gave us so many new gaming experiences.
