How Nintendo keeps turning back the clock and finding success
March 11, 2008Nintendo as a console manufacturer was essentially left for dead during their Gamecube generation. They were clearly in third place when it came to the home console market, and some questioned if they would even remain a console maker for much longer.
My, how things have changed. Now the Big N is dominating the console sales charts with the Wii.
The question is, where can you attribute such a turn around in sales success?
Admittedly, the Wii is not a powerhouse machine with the capability of next generation graphics like the PS3 or 360. It’s games don’t push the envelope as far as new ideas or radical new franchises like Gears of War or Killzone.
In truth, extreme innovations and franchise rennovations were Nintendo’s mistake with the Gamecube: Mario with a waterspray cannon, Luigi with a vacuum in a haunted mansion, A cel-shaded Link, a double-team style of Mario Kart, and a first person Metroid.
What’s the theme? All of the characters and places seemed familiar, but everything about the games was just too different.
Then add the uniqueness of Pikmin, Mario baseball, and Eternal Darkness. All of which are quality titles, but fell far from the traditional style of Nintendo games.
That was Nintendo’s problem. People play Nintendo games to reminisce, and they couldn’t do that with most titles on the Gamecube.
With the Wii, Nintendo brought back a lot of familiarity in their franchises. A traditional Zelda, A more familiar style of Mario game play, even the concept of a first-person Metroid had a comfortable feel to it thanks to its market on the Gamecube.
The new concepts still exist, albeit in a different form: their control.
The Wiimote has allowed Nintendo to innovate while keeping people in familiar worlds. The Wii doesn’t have the power to produce fantastic graphics. However, with great art design, new and improved controls and a gamut of games from very casual to very hardcore, Nintendo has found success.
The hardcore gamers have the Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Metroid Prime 3. The middle-of-the-road people have Twilight Princess and Super Mario Galaxy. New video game players have Mario Party 8, WarioWare: Smooth Moves, and WiiSports. All of these games combine responsive and innovative control schemes with fantastic art and game design. Those are the reasons why nearly everyone played Super Mario Brothers and a number of games on the NES. It was new, fun, addictive and accessable.
Those same reasons have driven Nintendo’s return to power. With the Wii, Nintendo has made their games new, fun, addictive, accessable and familiar.
Forget the Wii’s novelty. Novelty alone doesn’t sell tens of millions of units and create empty shelves 2 years after a system’s release. Nintendo is going back to their roots, all while bringing the video game industry, lots of money and the general public with them for one heck of a fun ride.
- Drew Quandt
My, how unoriginal.
First of all, those GameCube titles you mentioned weren’t extreme innovations. Water pack, cel-shading, and a vacuum? Terrible examples. Secondly, people do not play Nintendo games to reminisce. On the GameCube, they did that because that’s where Nintendo’s marketing focus was, on their own Mario/Zelda/etc games, and the little else that was on offer didn’t really catch fire. In other words, Nintendo fans hadn’t much choice to do otherwise because 3rd parties weren’t really around.
Thirdly, Nintendo isn’t back “on top” because of their franchises. If you look at the charts, their non-games and mini-game offshoots are what’s brought them their profits. DS is a much bigger contributor to this swell, but Wii is also a benefactor of this strategy. Of the Wii games you mentioned, only 3 have sold enough to support your point: Mario Party 8, Brawl, and Wii Sports — apart from the mega-marketed Brawl, all of them casual-centric titles. Feel free to correct me, but those are the only ones that have sold past a million.
You seemed to contradict yourself a little bit. You say that this innovative streak is what killed Nintendo in the last generation, but now it’s good because it’s familiar? Mario was never unfamiliar, fludd or no fludd, and the Wii controls don’t make anything more familiar to anybody. Have you played Mario Galaxy? Pretty different from Sunshine, which was already different from the 64 version. Galaxy and Twilight are definitely not “middle-of-the-road” titles, btw.
And in my humbly expert diagnosis, no Wii titles that i have played have been addictive in any way.
How old are you, 17? You need to spend less time on Nintendo message boards and more time eavesdropping on real industry discussions. There’s no need for you to be aggrandizing Nintendo when they’re already at the top of the sales charts.
I agree with Rollin. The Gamecube did not have Nintendo in a “dead” zone. The Gamecube was great. I’ve only found one Wii game good, and that Galaxy, but thats becasue I had played and beat and loved Sunshine. I may not have a Wii, but my friend does, and I have played every single of his games. From Pikmin to Twilight Princess. I play Carbon on the Wii and on the Cube, the Cube version was way much better, and easier to navigate. Smooth Moves was boring and was just out there, making no sense. They tried to make it funny in a no sense way, but didn’t work. Twilight Princess in general was no fun. I mean a wolf? Thats like turning Mario into a fire ant! Brawl had cool effects and great characters (Captain Olimar and Delfino Plaza), but Subspace Emissary was boring. I mean Tabou or whatever, made no sense. Even thought I beat him both times on the two player mode (friend died and I was on Link, my best character)The Battles were slow moving, unlike Melee, which is why Brawl did better. People expected of that from Melee: they didn’t get it. The N64 and GCN were two back to back all around awesome systems. The SNES and NES were back to back good too! I think Nintendo should go back into production of the N64 and GCN, Microsoft to technology like software, but could still stay in video game production. Sony, hell, I think they should stick to making Tv’s and computers, not video games. But hey, Im only 14, and everyone thinks different.