7 ms·

I only peripherally pay attention to games, but is my impression right that Nintendo is just a brilliantly innovative company, light years ahead of any other (m

I only peripherally pay attention to games, but is my impression right that Nintendo is just a brilliantly innovative company, light years ahead of any other (major) gaming developer? Off the top of my head, I see the Wii, Pokemon Go, and now this. In addition to being innovative, they seem focused on artistry, creativity, and positive experiences for their customers. Wii in many ways encouraged collaboration and activity, playing with others (i.e., rather than alone with pizza all night long); it focused on that over flashy graphics and shock-and-gore. Pokemon Go got people out on their feet, interacting, exploring and engaging with their towns, creatively rather than garishly introduced them to the possibilities of new tech (AR), and was fun but not violent. Perhaps that's already Nintendo's reputation; I don't know. But they don't get enough attention and praise IMHO. They seem to me to be like the Pixar or Apple of games, or better.

syva 10y ago
Totally agree! However, Pokemon Go is not Nintendo.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- flgr 10y ago
  I'm surprised by how similar and non-gamy Pokemon Go feels (feels more like a grind / freemium mobile game). I was also surprised by how much the core mechanics have a vibe very similar to Ingress. I think it'd be interesting to see a Pokemon Go designed by Nintendo / Game Freak themselves.
  - mcphage 10y ago
    > I was also surprised by how much the core mechanics have a vibe very similar to Ingress. It was made by the same developers—and the pokestops and gyms when the game launches were all ingress sites.
flgr 10y ago
> it focused on that over flashy graphics and shock-and-gore > They seem to me to be like the Pixar or Apple of games, or better. I think that what both Apple and Nintendo have in common is that they don't just try to put hardware components into a box and sell them to you for cheap (e.g. Dell). They have a chance of higher profit margins by taking themselves out of that race via trying to find creative ways to add value instead of optimizing raw performance / sale price.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  No, they just overcharge you for old or gimmicky hardware instead. :p They aren't afraid to take chances but not all of their chances are so great. The Wii U was a bit of a disaster.
  - flgr 10y ago
    Exactly this! If you think Apple and their profit margins there's a big parallel. And both Apple as well as Nintendo have gone for gimmicks that weren't obvious big hits (the Wii U, 3D touch). (On the subject of the Wii U, in a lot of ways it seems like the Switch might be the second iteration for being hip and also making a tablet, where the Wii U was the first one.) Not sure if it's still true that all other console makers are subsidizing theirs.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > They aren't afraid to take chances but not all of their chances are so great. Isn't that the nature of taking chances? If there weren't failures, it wouldn't be called 'taking risks'.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
    The first Wii was pretty amazing IMHO. Resident Evil 4, Metroid Prime have the best controls of any FPS I've ever played on console. It was just so natural, I could get head shots in RE4 by just pointing my arm at the TV and pulling the trigger. Then they released the Wii U ...
  - mcphage 10y ago
gshulegaard 10y ago
Pokemon Go was not Ninetendo, just Nintendo IP. There was an interesting market reaction once people realized this: http://www.polygon.com/2016/7/25/12270074/pokemon-go-nintendo-stock-price http://www.polygon.com/2016/7/25/12270074/pokemon-go-nintend... That's not to say that Nintendo did anything to mislead the public, they didn't, it was just a widespread misconception. As a gamer, Nintendo is somewhat "brilliantly innovative" but they also appear to be somewhat disconnected from their market. Pokemon Go is actually a good example. The Nintendo fan base is positively starving for content and Nintendo seems to consistently underestimate demand. Or as you suggest, perhaps they are more interested in being innovative rather than servicing their fan base. So while I think they should be praised for being innovative I would also say two things: * Pokemon Go is not at all their innovation * They definitely have problems
- hackuser 10y ago
  Thanks for the clarification. Do they at least get credit for backing and popularizing Pokemon Go? Where would it be without Nintendo? (Real questions; I'm not advocating for Nintendo.)
  - cbhl 10y ago
    Well, that would just be Ingress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_(video_game)
  - gshulegaard 10y ago
    As I understand it, not really. Niantic took their Ingress platform and modified it slightly to work with Pokemon IP with a minigame (casting poke-balls) inside. The original PokeStops were actually Ingress points of interest :)
    - hackuser 10y ago
      EDIT: Per Wikipedia, the idea for the game came from a Pokemon Company employee (owned 33% by Nintendo [0]), inspired by Ingress, and the game was developed at the Pokemon Company. Another link says "The Pokémon Company... and Nintendo jointly developed the app". Where does the story that it was all Niantic come from? Per Wikipedia: * Ingress: It was downloaded 8 million times "as of" 2015, about a year after its release, and claimed 7 million players in 2015. * Pokemon Go: 130 million downloads in its first month, 650 million within 8 months. PG was "the most active mobile game in the United States ever with 21 million active users" within a week of its launch; note that is in only one country. From a software development perspective Nintendo might not have done anything, but who had the vision to invest in bringing this to such a huge market? That also is an investment in creativity and innovation. (That's not meant to be a rhetorical question; I don't know the answer.)
aanm1988 10y ago
Nintendo is an odd company. They are extremely conservative in some ways, but game design isn't one of them. At the same time, nothing in Zelda is really that innovative, it's just put together very very well. They didn't develop pokemon go. > But they don't get enough attention and praise IMHO It's because they pull constant bullshit. Everything is a shortage. NES classic, amiibos, etc... Their online systems are years behind. They try to get people to pay again and again for the same ancient games. You can't transfer games bought on the virutal console between different consoles, why? Fuck you that's why. They are at times more concerned with being "innovative" then just providing a good core experience. You praise the wii but it wound being filled with shovelware and the motion controls are still just meh. They are extremely hostile towards their own community. They zealously "protect" their IP (as is their right) from people doing lets plays and reviews and such on youtube. I love nintendo the game maker, but they are not the best company around.
- vlunkr 10y ago
  I love Nintendo and I also agree with everything you say :P
- wapz 10y ago
  I really never understood why Nintendo so stringently protects their IP to the point of essentially not allowing youtube videos. I understand why they require always on for Mario run but I just feel like their choices aren't the best. If 10,000 people pirated Mario run, how many of those would have purchased it in the first place? I can't imagine more than 5-10% of them. And the whole purchase on every single damn system made me stop buying their digital content.
- mercer 10y ago
  I love and hate both Nintendo and Apple for pretty much the reasons you describe. There's a maddening idiosyncrasy (I feel there's a better word I can use... eccentricity?) to both companies where they do enough things right that I feel a kind of loyalty that I rarely feel for a company, but then they do plenty of things so spectacularly wrong that I feel a bit stockholm-syndromed for 'loving' them.
elastic_church 10y ago
I would say your impression is wrong. They do have their strong points that they capitalize on, around an equally large graveyard of failure. They aren't exceptional in the idea that none of the big game developers are really experimenting. Games today are very similar to the games 15 years ago in mechanics, and let alone title. Even with Nintendo in the mix pushing for collaboration and positive experience you still have to turn to the indie developers willing to take the risk on a new IP with innovative gameplay. When done right is better than any flagship title since they are all the same.
vlunkr 10y ago
I would say that they are like Apple in that opinions on them are often highly polarized.
jldugger 10y ago
Honestly, I don't think they're particularly innovative. Plenty of people had been working with accelerometers before Nintendo put them in a Wii controller. I had some circuit boards on my desk at work. The difference seems to be that the executive team is less risk adverse than you would imagine a 100+ year old family owned business to be. If anything, I figure that Nintendo's brand stable allows them to take on bigger hardware risks than others. Sony and Microsoft both have motion control technology, but Nintendo was the only one to ship it to customers by default. Third party publishers were absolutely not on board with that -- they more or less treat consoles as underpowered PCs-- leaving Nintendo more or less standing alone. I don't think Wii ever really had top tier 3rd party support, because they're focus is on publishing a consistent experience across a variety of device types (well, that and Sony / MS using their capital to buy up IP). tl;dr: Nintendo engineers are just as creative as anyone else's, but their management team is comfortable encouraging and placing large bets on them.
- alpha_squared 10y ago
  I think it's fair to say that innovating a play style is on the whole innovative. Sure, the fact that they're not that risk-averse is true, but they do put a solid effort in redefining how we traditionally think of game systems.
foobarchu 10y ago
I think it's really interesting that you have this impression, as an mostly outsider. If you look at real discussions between fans and gamers these days, ignoring the die-hard 'Nintendo can do no wrong' people, they're not doing so hot in the reputation department. - Wii was more than a decade ago, and is widely considered one of last things they did right. - Pokemon Go has nothing to do with Nintendo outside of their stake in the IP. Additionally, it's not remembered fondly by most people above the age of 13. - Wii U was a massive failure, and has been buried by Nintendo - The Switch was bungled pretty heavily, it's been nothing but criticized as far as I can tell. I haven't heard a single good thing about it, except that it has Zelda. As far as innovation goes, they haven't innovated in years. They've introduced gimmicks that get ignored or ridiculed, not remembered.

syva 10y ago

Totally agree! However, Pokemon Go is not Nintendo.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
flgr 10y ago
I'm surprised by how similar and non-gamy Pokemon Go feels (feels more like a grind / freemium mobile game). I was also surprised by how much the core mechanics have a vibe very similar to Ingress. I think it'd be interesting to see a Pokemon Go designed by Nintendo / Game Freak themselves.
- mcphage 10y ago
  > I was also surprised by how much the core mechanics have a vibe very similar to Ingress. It was made by the same developers—and the pokestops and gyms when the game launches were all ingress sites.

flgr 10y ago

> it focused on that over flashy graphics and shock-and-gore > They seem to me to be like the Pixar or Apple of games, or better. I think that what both Apple and Nintendo have in common is that they don't just try to put hardware components into a box and sell them to you for cheap (e.g. Dell). They have a chance of higher profit margins by taking themselves out of that race via trying to find creative ways to add value instead of optimizing raw performance / sale price.

aaron-lebo 10y ago
No, they just overcharge you for old or gimmicky hardware instead. :p They aren't afraid to take chances but not all of their chances are so great. The Wii U was a bit of a disaster.
- flgr 10y ago
  Exactly this! If you think Apple and their profit margins there's a big parallel. And both Apple as well as Nintendo have gone for gimmicks that weren't obvious big hits (the Wii U, 3D touch). (On the subject of the Wii U, in a lot of ways it seems like the Switch might be the second iteration for being hip and also making a tablet, where the Wii U was the first one.) Not sure if it's still true that all other console makers are subsidizing theirs.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > They aren't afraid to take chances but not all of their chances are so great. Isn't that the nature of taking chances? If there weren't failures, it wouldn't be called 'taking risks'.
- 2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
  The first Wii was pretty amazing IMHO. Resident Evil 4, Metroid Prime have the best controls of any FPS I've ever played on console. It was just so natural, I could get head shots in RE4 by just pointing my arm at the TV and pulling the trigger. Then they released the Wii U ...
- mcphage 10y ago

gshulegaard 10y ago

Pokemon Go was not Ninetendo, just Nintendo IP. There was an interesting market reaction once people realized this: http://www.polygon.com/2016/7/25/12270074/pokemon-go-nintendo-stock-price http://www.polygon.com/2016/7/25/12270074/pokemon-go-nintend... That's not to say that Nintendo did anything to mislead the public, they didn't, it was just a widespread misconception. As a gamer, Nintendo is somewhat "brilliantly innovative" but they also appear to be somewhat disconnected from their market. Pokemon Go is actually a good example. The Nintendo fan base is positively starving for content and Nintendo seems to consistently underestimate demand. Or as you suggest, perhaps they are more interested in being innovative rather than servicing their fan base. So while I think they should be praised for being innovative I would also say two things: * Pokemon Go is not at all their innovation * They definitely have problems

hackuser 10y ago
Thanks for the clarification. Do they at least get credit for backing and popularizing Pokemon Go? Where would it be without Nintendo? (Real questions; I'm not advocating for Nintendo.)
- cbhl 10y ago
  Well, that would just be Ingress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_(video_game)
- gshulegaard 10y ago
  As I understand it, not really. Niantic took their Ingress platform and modified it slightly to work with Pokemon IP with a minigame (casting poke-balls) inside. The original PokeStops were actually Ingress points of interest :)
  - hackuser 10y ago
    EDIT: Per Wikipedia, the idea for the game came from a Pokemon Company employee (owned 33% by Nintendo [0]), inspired by Ingress, and the game was developed at the Pokemon Company. Another link says "The Pokémon Company... and Nintendo jointly developed the app". Where does the story that it was all Niantic come from? Per Wikipedia: * Ingress: It was downloaded 8 million times "as of" 2015, about a year after its release, and claimed 7 million players in 2015. * Pokemon Go: 130 million downloads in its first month, 650 million within 8 months. PG was "the most active mobile game in the United States ever with 21 million active users" within a week of its launch; note that is in only one country. From a software development perspective Nintendo might not have done anything, but who had the vision to invest in bringing this to such a huge market? That also is an investment in creativity and innovation. (That's not meant to be a rhetorical question; I don't know the answer.)

aanm1988 10y ago

Nintendo is an odd company. They are extremely conservative in some ways, but game design isn't one of them. At the same time, nothing in Zelda is really that innovative, it's just put together very very well. They didn't develop pokemon go. > But they don't get enough attention and praise IMHO It's because they pull constant bullshit. Everything is a shortage. NES classic, amiibos, etc... Their online systems are years behind. They try to get people to pay again and again for the same ancient games. You can't transfer games bought on the virutal console between different consoles, why? Fuck you that's why. They are at times more concerned with being "innovative" then just providing a good core experience. You praise the wii but it wound being filled with shovelware and the motion controls are still just meh. They are extremely hostile towards their own community. They zealously "protect" their IP (as is their right) from people doing lets plays and reviews and such on youtube. I love nintendo the game maker, but they are not the best company around.

vlunkr 10y ago
I love Nintendo and I also agree with everything you say :P
wapz 10y ago
I really never understood why Nintendo so stringently protects their IP to the point of essentially not allowing youtube videos. I understand why they require always on for Mario run but I just feel like their choices aren't the best. If 10,000 people pirated Mario run, how many of those would have purchased it in the first place? I can't imagine more than 5-10% of them. And the whole purchase on every single damn system made me stop buying their digital content.
mercer 10y ago
I love and hate both Nintendo and Apple for pretty much the reasons you describe. There's a maddening idiosyncrasy (I feel there's a better word I can use... eccentricity?) to both companies where they do enough things right that I feel a kind of loyalty that I rarely feel for a company, but then they do plenty of things so spectacularly wrong that I feel a bit stockholm-syndromed for 'loving' them.

elastic_church 10y ago

I would say your impression is wrong. They do have their strong points that they capitalize on, around an equally large graveyard of failure. They aren't exceptional in the idea that none of the big game developers are really experimenting. Games today are very similar to the games 15 years ago in mechanics, and let alone title. Even with Nintendo in the mix pushing for collaboration and positive experience you still have to turn to the indie developers willing to take the risk on a new IP with innovative gameplay. When done right is better than any flagship title since they are all the same.

vlunkr 10y ago

I would say that they are like Apple in that opinions on them are often highly polarized.

jldugger 10y ago

Honestly, I don't think they're particularly innovative. Plenty of people had been working with accelerometers before Nintendo put them in a Wii controller. I had some circuit boards on my desk at work. The difference seems to be that the executive team is less risk adverse than you would imagine a 100+ year old family owned business to be. If anything, I figure that Nintendo's brand stable allows them to take on bigger hardware risks than others. Sony and Microsoft both have motion control technology, but Nintendo was the only one to ship it to customers by default. Third party publishers were absolutely not on board with that -- they more or less treat consoles as underpowered PCs-- leaving Nintendo more or less standing alone. I don't think Wii ever really had top tier 3rd party support, because they're focus is on publishing a consistent experience across a variety of device types (well, that and Sony / MS using their capital to buy up IP). tl;dr: Nintendo engineers are just as creative as anyone else's, but their management team is comfortable encouraging and placing large bets on them.

alpha_squared 10y ago
I think it's fair to say that innovating a play style is on the whole innovative. Sure, the fact that they're not that risk-averse is true, but they do put a solid effort in redefining how we traditionally think of game systems.

foobarchu 10y ago

I think it's really interesting that you have this impression, as an mostly outsider. If you look at real discussions between fans and gamers these days, ignoring the die-hard 'Nintendo can do no wrong' people, they're not doing so hot in the reputation department. - Wii was more than a decade ago, and is widely considered one of last things they did right. - Pokemon Go has nothing to do with Nintendo outside of their stake in the IP. Additionally, it's not remembered fondly by most people above the age of 13. - Wii U was a massive failure, and has been buried by Nintendo - The Switch was bungled pretty heavily, it's been nothing but criticized as far as I can tell. I haven't heard a single good thing about it, except that it has Zelda. As far as innovation goes, they haven't innovated in years. They've introduced gimmicks that get ignored or ridiculed, not remembered.