Report: Nintendo Employee Worried About Company Future, Iwata’s Tenure, Third-Party Relationships
Posted on August 27 2011 by Nathanial Rumphol-Janc
Recently I haven’t been too sure how seriously to take the slew of reports coming out of 01net regarding Nintendo’s current position and future goals. On the one hand, Nintendo did just breeze through Europe for Gamescom last week, meaning the time is ripe for media to be combing for new information. We certainly got a lot out of Miyamoto during his last trip through the region, for instance. On the other hand, though, the content and sheer number of these reports seems a bit too convenient for 01net. Still, it’s something to talk about.
Apparently the site pinned down a Nintendo employee for an interview who spilled a combination of concerns and high hopes for the company going forward – whether Iwata will last much longer as President, working to ensure third-party developers want to bring content to Nintendo systems, and improving the 3DS and Wii U.
There’s no official translation for this yet, so a rough ‘net interpretation will have to suffice for now.
If we are to believe our source, the chairman of the board, Satoru Iwata, is now in very delicate position, if not on an ejection seat. Iwata is generally appreciated by the staff of the company, many employees worried about his fate. Also according to our source, the fact that he publicly assumed responsibility for a difficult start to the 3DS and voluntarily cut his salary in half may not be enough to save his place in the medium term.
This isn’t really too surprising to me. Given that Iwata clearly helped engineer the Wii and DS successes (or at least oversaw them), the fact that the 3DS did not replicate or at least build on that success would suggest to investors and “the board” that he may not be a particularly reliable or consistent business leader. For those who really are in the business to make money, and who ultimately make what happens at Nintendo possible, you can bet they will not take the struggles faced by the 3DS lightly.
Some people think that this can’t possibly be true because only someone very high up at the company could know this, but I disagree. Anyone who has any kind of sense of business politics knows that the person in charge is in very hot water when a company is not as successful as it should be. This could have come from someone very low on the totem pole.
After our interview, we could not stop us from asking about our source’s feverish motivation behind these unusual revelations. (my attempt to make sense of this sentence) He replied almost verbatim: “It’s sort of a political act. As an employee of Nintendo, I have dedicated my life to this company. Given the turn of things, many of us fear what the future holds. If I address you, because I think the players and the shareholders deserve to know what happens behind the scenes. I think they represent our best chance to drive the necessary changes to Nintendo finally takes radical decisions necessary to adapt to new market constraints. I do not think that the situation can continue long in that state. We must completely rethink our policy of cooperation with developers and publishers. We must offer them the means to give the best of themselves. They are more likely than ever to want to work with us, but the conditions we provide are for the time being the least favorable in the industry. I do not think they will stay very long if we do not make a decisive move in their direction. “
Nintendo was banking heavily on third party support for 3DS and claim to be doing the same for Wii U. This likely is connected to the much longer development times required for games that use the full power of these systems. But there’s a growing sense that consumers – and those third parties – simply aren’t as excited about these systems as Nintendo believed they would be. Already we’ve seen projects like Mega Man Legends 3 cancelled entirely and this has affected other developers laterally, with many of them now hesitant to proceed with the system until performance picks up. The 3DS has sold drastically under expectations, which has caused profit forecasts to take a 82% dive – that’s huge.
Personally I don’t particularly care so much about a lack of third-party support as long as there’s first-party content to satisfy, but the aforementioned longer development cycles mean that first-party content is going to come at a much slower trickle. Besides, the fact that I’m so indifferent about third parties is probably part of the problem. Of course, it’s hard to say whether Nintendo or the outside companies are really at fault for the lack of compelling third-party content on Wii – there’s nothing really stopping those companies from making good games, but Nintendo definitely didn’t give them the tools they asked for.
It’s a complex conundrum, and going forward it’s hard to say what the correct way of thinking is. Will adding more features to satisfy third-party developers really breathe more life into Nintendo systems, or will it limit accessibility to the audience that embraced Wii due to higher prices or less mass market appeal?
The difficulties are real, sometimes critical, and should not be underestimated. But if the necessary reforms are implemented, I believe that Nintendo will remain the leader in its field for much longer. No competitor has such a range of characters and franchises universally adored – to the envy of Disney – or such a capacity to create new ones, as strong in the future. Out a portable machine dedicated to the game but equipped with one analog stick in 2011 was a mistake. The fact that we have recognized, and we do what is necessary to remedy this, let me suggest that 3DS has before it many years of success.
Smartphones continue on their way, but I think it will exist long been a separate market for machines that care primarily of players.
As for the Wii U, despite its serious problems of development – you can be sure – will be resolved, it is probably the best idea we have had for ages.
The press, like players, do not seem to fully realize the potential of this revolutionary machine. It’s a whole new way to create and play before us. And given the graphics quality achieved by the hardware of the present generation, I think the technical superiority of our future competitors in the market for machinery room will not weigh heavily in the balance, faced with what we will bring in terms of gameplay. The Wii U is the future of gaming. You will not soon realize it!”
The controversial tone of the rest of these “revelations” had me suspicious, but then this – what seems to be a direct quote – sounds exactly like something a Nintendo employee would say. Or, to be more precise, it sounds basically like what Iwata and other Wii U developers have already said.
Not sure I’d agree with the “best idea we have had for ages” point – it’s a neat reach to the hardcore (by offering traditional control options, HD graphics, better online, etc.), and an attempt to bring the Wii and DS ideas together, but I’m not entirely sure that the public reception so far is anything like what we saw with Wii…yet.
This source again talks about the single analog stick of the 3DS, and says they’re “doing what’s necessary to remedy this,” but it’s not entirely clear what that means.
So there you have it. Take it with as many grains of salt as you will, but this is probably the only “breaking” story related to Nintendo to surface in the last week, so it’s all we’ve got. I’ll be turning my eye to PAX now to see if there’s anything exciting to show…but to be honest, I’m not especially hopeful.
Source: 01net, via NeoGAF
