This blog post is a response to a response by
Sean Malstrom to my blog post
"Question to Nintendo apologists: Hasn't Apple proven that you can appeal to both the public and your fan base at the same time?" that was posted on Destructoid earlier this week. I have never heard of Sean Malstrom prior to this but a quick search on Google suggests to me that this individual is the high priest of Nintendo supporters and so I suppose that I will take it as a honor that he has come down to enlighten a commoner such as myself. I am writing this response because I highly disagree with just about everything in his response.
To Hcapt, thank you for first informing me of Sean Malstrom and his response to my blog post. I am sure that your suggestion to "Please read it, as you might learn something" was made with the best of intentions and not in an arrogant "ha ha ha I got you" way.
To Sean Malstrom, a little note before I get started. I know that you consider yourself to be "hot shit" but I did not write my original blog to you nor did I send it off to be judged and misinterpreted by some arrogant prick who waves around theories with largely anecdotal evidence and more holes than a golf course. If you want to comment on my views blog, at least do it with some common courtesy and not churn out a personal insult to my views and intelligence.
"The old fans of Nintendo are not fans of N64 and Gamecube games. Old fans of Nintendo are SNES/NES/ Nintendo Arcade gamers. I remember playing Popeye when it came out in the arcade. Do you?" I'm going ignore that first part about old fans of Nintendo not liking the N64 or GameCube despite how wrong it is. I just want to say that if you consider
Popeye to be one of the hardcore favorites, that's mistake number 1 for you and that may explain why you are so completely clueless about the perceptions of the Nintendo fan base. Also, for your information, I was old enough to have played the
Popeye arcade game when it was out. However, being an immigrant with a poor family, I did not live the privileged lifestyle that would have allowed me to indulge in arcade games. So I am happy that you were rich enough to play
Popeye in the arcades. However, waving in my face like a badge of honor the fact that you had money at the time to blow in arcades, puts you in a league of pathetic that I have rarely seen.
Perception versus reality
My blog post is about the perception that Nintendo has abandoned its loyal fan base and how Nintendo's PR and marketing could be doing a better job countering that perception. You seem to be confusing the fact that there is a difference between Nintendo abandoning its loyal fan base and the perception that Nintendo has abandoned its loyal fan base. It is hard to say whether or not Nintendo has abandoned its loyal fan base unless we have a large amount of sales and demographic data to analyze how much of the Wii's sales can be attributed to that loyal fan base.
The question of whether there is a perception that Nintendo has abandoned its loyal fan base seems to me to be a resounding yes. I have heard plenty of complaints about XBox 360s red-ringing. I have heard plenty of complaints about the Ps3 being too expensive, having important features removed, not having enough games, etc. Moving away from this generation, I have heard complaints of the Ps2 having faulty disk drives. I have heard complaints about the XBox's crippled out-of-the-box DVD functionality and the size of the controllers. I have heard complaints of the GameCube's controller and mini-DVDs. Until the Nintendo Wii however, I have not heard with such fury and frequency the specific allegation of a company abandoning its loyal fan base. There is not a single video game console in history that I know of that has attracted this specific type of criticism and it is surprising that this same console is not only the best-selling console of this generation but one of the best-selling consoles in history.
If you want to argue about whether or not Nintendo has actually abandoned its loyal fan base, that is an entirely different argument which is completely unrelated to my original blog post, which is about the perception that Nintendo has abandoned its loyal fan base and how Nintendo has failed to deal with that perception in a meaningful fashion. For what it's worth though, since you dragged out the sales of
Mario Kart Wii and the game
Punch-Out!! as proof of Nintendo's love for the fan base, I should point out that the worldwide sales of
Mario Kart Wii, 15.4 million units thus far by my sources, is not enough to account for the 16.17 million unit difference between worldwide SNES sales and N64 sales. So even if you attribute all of the sales of
Mario Kart Wii to the loyal fans, Nintendo has clearly not earned them back yet. In addition,
Punch-Out!! is currently below 200,000 units sold and, as you point out, this is a game for long-time fans. Given the extremely low sales numbers for this game, I think it's safe to assume that the hard-core is not biting. If
Punch-Out!! is Nintendo's attempt to fish back the hardcore, perhaps Nintendo is using the wrong bait.
When did Nintendo's fans leave?
You argue that I am mistaken in my attributing Nintendo's "loss" of its loyal fan base to the Wii because "Nintendo already were leaving behind their older fans especially those fans who bought the NES and SNES. The N64 and Gamecube installed base just kept shrinking....The declinine install base of NES to Gamecube clearly shows this." When I read this statement, I became confused as to what he was trying to say. I looked further around your site, trying to get an idea of what your ideas are, and I found this quote from the FAQ on the website which pretty much illustrates why I think you clearly missed the point of my blog.
"Nintendo made a number of mistakes post NES. People point to N64 as the decline, but I believe it began in the SNES. Nintendo won the 16-bit console war at the cost of losing the bearings that made NES successful in the first place. The point of the decline I would say is when Arakawa and other Nintendo marketers decided to sell products in a demographic segmented route which continues to plague the industry today."
My entire blog was about the perception of Nintendo's fans and why I feel that Nintendo could have done a better job appealing to its loyal fan base. It seems to me that you are basically looking at everything I wrote from the perspective of business and sales, which was not my intention.
The following are the worldwide sales numbers for all 5 main home consoles by Nintendo.
NES: 61.91 million
SNES 49.10 million
N64 32.93 million
GameCube 22 million
Wii 52.62 million
To you, the drop in sales from the NES and the SNES is the start of Nintendo's decline. If you is talking about it from a sales perspective, I cannot disagree with you. However, you instead attribute this to Nintendo not "appealing" to the "casual" non-gaming market, which you felt that the NES had. This is a claim that I do not think I can necessarily agree with. First, the NES was a massively famous product of its time and I would argue that much of the difference between the sales of the NES and the SNES comes from people who would have never been gamers in the first place but bought the NES anyway just to see what it was all about.
However, there is also a secondary interpretation (I am sure there are many) that also shows that your assessment is not necessarily right. The two big systems of the 8-bit era were the NES and the Sega Master System. Given that the Sega Master System sold 13.4 million units worldwide, that means that these two consoles combined resulted in 75.31 million 8-bit consoles sold all together. The Sega Genesis sold a total of 29 million units worldwide. Therefore, the combined 16-bit consoles sold over 78.1 million units.
You claim that the drop in units sold from the NES and SNES is due to non-gamers dropping out due to the SNES being more focused on gamers than non-gamers. I think that the sales record suggests another possibility: Nintendo simply lost those customers to Sega. To my knowledge, the Sega Genesis was just as focused on the SNES on gamers. In fact, the Sega Genesis not only focused on gamers but it positioned itself as the system of choice for the hardcore gamer. For the record, I acknowledge that there would be overlap that is not accounted for in case someone owns more than one system. Nonetheless, I think that data does support my interpretation of events.
If you are trying to debate this from a business point-of-view, I cannot agree more that targetting non-gamers was the best idea Nintendo ever had. However, my point was not about that: it was about how Nintendo has failed to manage the expectations of its fan base and in this respect, I do not agree with his view that the fan base is something is not worth Nintendo's time to appeal to.
Taking a bite out of the Apple
You rolled his eyes when I said that Nintendo and Apple are similar in that both rely heavily on expectations and perception. According to you, Apple and Nintendo are all about the user experience. I had to read this statement three times to make sure my eyes were not screwed up because of how utterly ludicrous this statement is. I can agree that Apple and Nintendo products are heavily focused on the user experience. That being said, how do you measure user experience? How do you gauge the user experience? The answer is that you cannot objectively due so because user experience is in its very essence a subjective feeling. I love the Windows Vista interface. My brother and my friends throw up in their mouths thinking about the Vista interface. I know people who love the MacOS X interface: I personally cannot stand it. To say that Apple and Nintendo are all about user experience is to completely miss the point that ultimately, it is expectations and perceptions that drive ones evaluation and satisfaction of that user experience.
Before I leave the subject of Apple, I wanted to address you calling me out on my telling of the 1997 MacWorld Expo appearance of Bill Gates in which I said that Bill Gates bailed out Apple.
"This is just not true.
Microsoft was caught stealing Quicktime’s code because they were struggling to get Video for Windows to work. The outcome was that Microsoft had to pay a $150 million dollar investment in non-voting stock in Apple, continue producing Office for Mac, and make a public endorsement of the Macintosh platform.
Ultimately, this outcome ended up being very good for Microsoft. Investing in Apple before their stock exploded allowed Microsoft to sell the stock for twenty times more than what they purchased it for. Microsoft never loses money selling software on the Mac. Mac users are more notorious for actually paying for their software unlike on Windows.
Saying Microsoft ‘bailed out’ Apple is completely untrue. Microsoft got caught in a crime, their hand got caught in the Quicktime Cookie Jar code. And they paid dearly for stealing Apple’s code."
First of all, when a company in a very poor financial position receives a ton of money to keep it alive, I call it a bailout. I don't think that my wording is wrong from a technical point of view. Now, I will admit that your story is indeed true and I was not aware of this angle of the story. However, I do not agree with your conclusion about the deal. If you wants to blame me for portraying this settlement as a bailout, then you might as well blame everyone because that's pretty much how that was portrayed in the names and it is the interpretation that I hear from die-hard Apple fans until reading your response. You claim to be a lawyer by profession. If that is the case then you should know that Microsoft could have dragged out this case for a long time and that could have been devastating for Apple, especially since Microsoft had at this point announced that they were no longer going to develop Office for Macs anymore. If Apple wanted to prove their case in a court of law, they should have pressed the case forward and seen it to its logical end. It is clear that Apple was in a position where it needed money and it knew that the lack of Office on their systems would hurt them greatly and so they took a settlement. Again, I don't think it is unfair for me to call it a bailout and I think that's pretty much the way the world generally saw it. Let me put it this way: if Bill Gates was seen as paying "dearly for stealing Apple's code," there would be no reason for people to have been angry or outraged at his appearance at the MacWorld Expo. If anything, he should have been greeted with laughter for getting caught with the hand in the cookie jar.
The N64 and the GameCube
"To be blunt, the N64 and Gamecube were carried by children, not ‘hardcore gamers’. Sorry dude.
In the same way, most customers of the GBA were children. There is a reason why Sony and Microsoft marketing keep joking that Nintendo’s latest offering (whatever it would be) is just trying to appeal to the Pokemon crowd. Gamecube was called a ‘kiddy console’, for better or worse."
Sorry dude, you are completely wrong. I never said "hardcore gamers" I said "hardcore fans." With respect to the N64, I don't think you can make the claim that it was carried by children and if so, I'd like to see your evidence. With respect to the GameCube, again, I would like to see the evidence for your conclusion. However, I will say that if there is a reason why Microsoft and Sony joked that Nintendo's GameCube was for the "Pokemon crowd" and a "kiddy console" I would argue that Nintendo invited such jokes when they kept talking about how thier controller design was made more simple. I am sure the fact that games like "Capcom vs. SNK 2" would come out for the GameCube with the subtitle EO for "Easy Operation" and a stripped-down control scheme certainly supports that type of claim. With respect to the GBA, I did not talk about the GBA in my article at all. However, I can agree with this on the basis of the massive fans of Pokemon. However, I do not believe that other than the
Super Smash Bros series, which is a hardcore game, that the home consoles found themselves helped or harmed significantly by Pokemon.
Let's assume for the moment that you are right and that the N64 and GameCube were "carried by children" and not Nintendo's fans. If that is the case, then why is it that we never saw the type of "Nintendo abandoned us" hate back with the N64 and GameCube? The reason is because Nintendo balanced the Pokemon games out with the Zelda games, the Mario games, and the promise of new IP such as Pikmin. Let me admit that I absolutely hate the Mario Party series. It is a collection of lazy and poorly-done minigames strung together with a virtual board game that is not very fun. I know many people in agreement with me, especially when they were bringing out one game a year. Still, Mario Party never invited the type of hate that Nintendo gets now because Nintendo balanced the expectations of its fans better at that time.
You said that "The hardcore are reminding me of the spoiled older sibling when the younger sibling is born. Now, the child is no longer an ‘only child’. Attention is going to be divided." Sorry, but you are completely wrong. Any Nintendo fans knows that its systems have appealed to different audiences all the time. The difference is that previously Nintendo fans felt that they were all being treated equally well. Now Nintendo is completely in love with this one sibling called the "non-gamer" crowd and only paying lip service to its fans. To use your analogy of a child, all the Apple quotes strike me as the type of silly crap like "mommy didn't buy me my favorite toy" or "mommy grounded me for peeing on the TV." Those are the time of complaints that you hear and you look the other way. The complaints that Nintendo fans have are not as silly as the Apple complaints you bring up, it is saying that "mommy gave the new kid a giant Lego castle but gave me a sweater."
Perception is the key
I am confused as to your response to me in general because it contains so many leaps of interpretative faith and a lack of understanding of my original point.
You countered my view of Apple fans by claiming that I don't "know Apple fans. Many Apple fans are not too happy about Macs becoming more popular. When they heard that Apple wants to start selling Macs at Wal-Mart, they blew a gasket." Are you serious? These are the examples you choose to cite? There's a difference between saying that you are upset because Apple wants to make their products more available to others and saying that you are upset because Apple has totally abandoned the fan base. I can only imagine that you do not understand the difference. Nintendo fans are not angry because the products are attracting more sales: they are angry because Nintendo's marketing has completely failed to convincingly show that they view their long-time fans as high priorities. If you are trying to compare the quotes you gave me to the complains Nintendo fans as being equivalent, then I can only say that like Nintendo, you are completely clueless about Nintendo fans and what they are thinking.
"Everyone knows that the best selling N64 and Gamecube games are the Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Smash Brothers, and Paper Mario ones. Yet, sequels to these games do not satisfy the hardcore."
If this is your opinion of the hardcore then you clearly are just as clueless as Nintendo. People cared about
Super Mario 64,
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time,
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and
Super Smash Bros. because they were innovative games of their time that brought something new and fun into the Nintendo lexicon. In the N64 era, fans were excited about the potential of the 64DD drive and the promise of a new
Earthbound game based on that drive.
You claim that the sequels are not satisfying the hardcore but you are ignoring the fact that these sequels are themselves arguably less satisfying on an intrinsic level. The third
Metroid Prime game is fundamentally still the same as the previous games in the series.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess did not innovate in the way that both previous Zelda games did with respect to their predecessor. The wolf game play was done better in the game
Okami which came out earlier.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl dropped popular characters, had a pathetic and aggravating single-play story mode, and was marred by horrible online game performance. Like Nintendo, you blindly assume that just because it's a sequel, that Nintendo fans will bite and love the game. Nintendo fans, for the most part, are not that stupid. They want innovation and if you are going to offer a sequel, you better make sure that it is really really good. You can't just throw out a sequel that feels less interesting or ambitious than its predecessor and then wonder why the fans aren't happy.
It is this same reason that I question why you feel that Virtual Console is proof that Nintendo loves the hardcore fan base. If Nintendo loves the fan base, it would make more new games like those games and not just make a quick buck by dragging out old games that most of these "hardcore fans" already knew how to pirate and emulate for years.
I am disturbed by your comment that "I can understand if Nintendo is no longer making the games you want. But I find it disturbing that people’s happiness depends on whether a corporation coddles them. Take a hint from the Expanded Market and get a life." I am not sure where you get this idea from that people's happiness are depending on Nintendo's actions. Passionate comments about Nintendo's direction are due, not because the individual is actually bawling out their eyes Chris Crocker style, but to fans who genuinely feel that Nintendo has lost their direction and has abandoned the legacy that they themselves have touted. Granted, given the other ludicrous comments you have made already and your inability to understand what it is that Nintendo fans are unhappy about, I am not surprised that you think this way.
"You have two other consoles that appeal directly to the ‘hardcore’. Why must all three consoles do so? Are they so selfish that ALL GAMES must cater to their taste?"
Again, it is not selfish to be angry when the company whose works you have supported for years, who has spent years touting its legacy and its commitment to its fan base, has decided that you are no longer important to them. To you, games are just games. For many people, the products that Nintendo create are works of art that have touched and affected people for many years and shaped their growth. In contrast, I do not think an Apple product has every made someone feeling emotion or cry in the way that certain video games Nintendo has made has. People are passionate because of the experiences that Nintendo has created.
To summarize, open your eyes and look around you. Nintendo fans are annoyed and feel betrayed and this is something new for Nintendo. Your view is that Nintendo should say "screw the hardcore" because they are making tons of money off of the "disruption" that is the Wii. To criticize your theories on disruption is far beyond the scope of this blog. That being said, I will say that I do not agree with your impression that disruption is as easy and obvious a strategy to pull off as you claim. It is very hard to pull off what Nintendo did with the Wii and it is likely that they will not be able to do it again. You make fun of my conclusion, comparing me to a teenage girl, but my point has already happened and been proved when Nintendo failed with the N64 and GameCube and found itself appealing, focusing, and targeting its fan base more and more. History has already proven that Nintendo runs back to its hardcore fans when it does badly with the mainstream. The difference is that this time they have thrown its fans under the bus.
Sean Malstrom, the argument I have been having, which is the predominant complaint fans have been having, is simply about perception. We already know that Nintendo has done well financially. If you want to go study that, feel free to go for it. When it comes to an argument about Nintendo and its ability to handle perceptions, I think you are way out of your league. Regardless of how well Nintendo's business is doing, it is never a good idea to have tons of people hate you. It is even worse then that group of people are your long-time fans.
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Well-said. Your blogs are long as fuck, but I love reading them.
I'm going to keep this short and simple.
People dropped out of the NES and SNES eras. That is not a myth. It is a fact. Those are called lapsed gamers, people who played games at one point but left for one reason or another. You can find many people who had an NES back in the day who don't play anything anymore. They didn't all just move to the Genesis or PlayStation. The Wii does a lot to target those gamers, who according to the definition were core consumers who no longer felt satisfied and dropped the hobby.
If the Wii is losing favor with the long-standing gamer, I say that's no big deal. I say screw balance. This industry has never really been "balanced" to begin with. There are two other major consoles that cater to those people's whims. Let the Wii do its thing.
Also, I will hereby put my foot down and claim that the negative perception against the Wii was entirely created by fans and third parties, not Nintendo at all. At all. Nintendo has always been upfront about its tactics and plans, and their games with the exception of, like, Wii Play and Wii Music are regarded as the best on the Wii. Fans criticized the machine's lack of power from day one. Companies picked up on that decided not to put their full support behind the machine. Is it any mystery why this cloud of hate would form around the Wii?
If all the "hardcore," and I really hope you stop using that term and start using a more appropriate one like "enthusiast gamer," want to quite Nintendo cold turkey, let them. Sony is getting motion control. Microsoft is getting motion control. They're doing their best to recreate what Nintendo has done. I'm going to love when those controllers come out and a big marketing push is made to make them the main focus of the consoles. The consumer base could use a little pruning.
megaStryke is 100% correct. Your response to Sean was not only immature, but highly inaccurate and shows ignorance of the topic at hand. I suggest the next time you hastily respond to someone in anger, you stop and think for a minute.
I'm sure he's writing up his response as I type. Expect it within the next 24 hours.
One last thing. The people hating on Nintendo were never 'fans'. Most of them grew up with the Playstation, and grew up disliking Nintendo. I and many others take offense to them being considered fans.
@Justice Pain, if you have anything positive to contribute, feel free to do so. If you think my blog is inaccurate, speak up and tell me why instead of just complaining. If you think my response is immature, take a look at his original response. Sorry, but you are clearly a troll and most likely one of Sean's fanboys. If you want to engage in a conversation, my door's open.
A company can be hated on by its (former) customers and still be wildly successful. How many people started with a Microsoft OS and moved to Linux or something? A shitload, that's how many. Yet Microsoft still survives, mostly from casual PC users that like their user friendly and easy-to-use interface, despite the bugs. So even if the Nintendo fans are leaving in droves (which I don't think they are), they'll still be fine.
And when Sean talks about older gamers, he's not talking about enthusiast (that is a better word, thanks MegaStryke) gamers, he's talking about casual gamers that got started on the NES and got disinterested in gaming when it got more complicated.
And no shit the SNES sold less because of Sega in the 16-bit era. But that is indeed because Nintendo focused solely on enthusiast gamers when Sega already beat them to a large chuck of that demographic. If they had catered to casual gamers more, they would have remained the powerhouse they were in the 8-bit era.
Hating on SSBB LoZ:TP and MP 3 is just grasping at straws. These games were highly reviewed and loved by the fans, despite their flaws. But thanks for insulting the intelligence of people who liked these games. I appreciate it ;).
@megaStryke, I do not dispute that people dropped out during the NES and SNES era. However, as I showed above, I don't think there are nearly as many of them as people claim. In addition, I also showed that if you look at the big picture and expand outside Nintendo's console, it would appear that a good many of those lapsed gamers from the NES moved onto the Sega Genesis. However, let's talk about lapsed gamers as you describe them. If you left video games during the NES and SNES era and didn't "move on" to the Genesis, any other console, or PC gaming and you are not leaving due to money, I say that you are simply not into video games and you latched onto the NES or the SNES because it was the fad of the time.and you tried it and didn't like it. The reason I disagree with you and Sean Malstrom is that you both interpret the drop in sales as being a result of Nintendo somehow not satisfying that audience. Again, the whole lapsed gamer argument also ignores the fact that Sega successfully stole a good amount of business away from Nintendo with their advertising in the 16-bit era and the fact that the introduction of Windows 95 and DirectX brought many people into PC gaming.
Let me put it this way, there are tons of people that bought a Harry Potter book or went to see the film and then never read or bought another one? Did the book or film do something wrong? It seems that, given the argument that you and Sean Malstrom present, that the fault is J.K. Rowling's and the filmmakers for not holding onto that customer. While it is certainly possible that many people may have been turned off of something about the book or movie that could have been done better, I think it is fair to say that a good many people simply went in to see what the fuss was all about and realized it wasn't for them. I claim that this may have also been the case with the NES.
You and Sean Malstrom give so much credit to these lapsed gamers and I simply do not understand why because it seems to me that they are essentially accidental customers that cannot be relied on to have brand loyalty. This is especially true with fads and toys. There are tons of people that never liked Tickle-Me Elmo that bought it because it was the hip thing of the time and never bought another one again. You can't say that Tyco did anything necessarily wrong when the sequel didn't do as well because it was the luck of the draw.
The fact is, Nintendo got lucky with the NES and they got lucky with the Wii. This is not to say that the success of the NES and the Wii is completely due to luck. However, it cannot be ignored that both good and bad products have done ridiculously well throughout history as a result of being the positive beneficiary of a fad. This is exactly what my problem with Nintendo is. The problem is not that Nintendo got lucky with the Wii being the cultural fad that it did. No one is jealous or angry that Nintendo found something that attracted lapsed gamers. It is that Nintendo has since then shifted their priority to try and constantly cater to that fad mentality.
Is the Wii Balance Board or the Wii Wheel really that good of a product? I don't think so and I don't even think they do their job very well even wirth the games they are packaged with (especially Mario Kart Wii which I think is extremely aggrevating to play with the wheel). These products are the way they are because it appeals to what Nintendo thinks will be the next big fad. Do you honestly think that there are any unique and interesting games that will make good use of the Wii Vitality Sensor? The product exists because it caters to what Nintendo thinks is a fad and luckily for Nintendo, they know that weight loss is always a fad in the U.S. It's the same reason WiiMusic exists: the game is utter shit but it was churned out because Nintendo believed that there would be a fad for a music game that targets very young gamers.
No offense megaStryke, but Nintendo does contribute to the perception people have of them. How do you explain the enthusiast gamer not giving a shit when Nintendo was catering to the Pokemon crowd back in the day? You say that Nintendo wasn't hating on Sorry, but the enthusiast gamer is not stupid and greedy as you and Sean like to believe. You keep on telling me that I am looking at the past with rose-tinted glasses but you are doing the same. You are ignoring the fact that Nintendo has always balanced their various audiences with the exception of the Wii era when the lapsed gamer became overwhelmingly attracted to the Wii. When a significant portion of both E3 conferences have been focused on this audience and when Reggie responds to criticism from enthusaists with some of the most uninformed comments, I do think that Nintendo invites this type of scrutiny and criticism.
@Laird, if you are Microsoft, yeah, perhaps you can get away with that. It's actually kind of hard to switch from one OS to another for most people, which keeps people with Microsoft. Most people are used to Microsoft and so they stick with it even if they don't like bits and pieces of it. Plus, most companies run off of Microsoft products, which ensure that they will not be replaced due to how slow companies are to switch IT infrastructure. I don't think this is a relevant comparison given that Nintendo's products are not difficult to switch from: you just buy a new system.
I'll concede that I like megaStryke's nomenclature, but with respect to the "lapsed gamer" crowd he describes, I think you guys give them too much credit. Sorry, I would really like to understand the mindset of someone that liked the NES but thought the SNES was too complex. That doesn't even seem possible to me.
Finally, show me where I bashed and attacked SSBB, LoZ:TP, and MP 3. Please show me where I attacked those games. I simply said that they have flaws, as you admit, and are arguably less innovative and interesting than their predecessors. If you think that I am "insulting the intelligence of people who liked these games" then you are the most sensitive person here because I don't see where I did what you accuse me of.
Naturally, I did not mean it in the haha way. I like Malstrom because he is actually the most intelligent "analyst" there is, and I thought you could learn something from him. His most well known article is "Birdmen and the casual fallacy" :http://malstrom.50webs.com/birdman.html
If you want him to respond to your blog, he responds to e-mails, and his email address (according to his site) is:
seanmalstrom@yahoo.com <seanmalstrom@yahoo.com>
EDIT: "Birdmen and the casual fallacy": http://malstrom.50webs.com/birdman.html
Hcapt, I looked over his site earlier today and while I agree with the logic he takes to arrive at his ideas, I don't quite agree with his interpretations. In addition, I have to confess that, despite having written a blog where I defended Michael Pachter, I generally don't trust popular business ideas like the ones from Harvard Business School that he pitches. I suppose I am just distrustful of all-encompassing ah-ha theories that seem to present all the answers but are largely based on selective sampling.
And for your information, I don't think I want to contact him. Hell, I don't even want to write anything anymore about Nintendo. If any of you guys want to further discuss Nintendo, contact me and let's get on vent or something. Easier to discuss there.
Even shorter and even simpler.
I'm going to wrap up the "lapsed gamer" argument by pointing out the PS3. The PS2 sold over 138 million units worldwide. The PS3 sits at close to 24 million. Even if we were to assume the every PS3, 360, and Wii owner was a former PS2 owner, you are still left with around 30 million people. At some point, you have to realize that there are millions of customers who owned a PS2 and do not or may never own a current generation console. It's impossible to pinpoint a specific number, but c'mon. It has to be significant.
And I'd like to clear up that I do know Nintendo has made a few PR errors over the past couple of years, but they get blown way out of proportion. EVERYONE'S problems are blown way out of proportion.
To be fair megaStryke, the Ps2 commands a unique position in video game console history because it was at one point the best DVD player one could buy for the least amount of money. I know tons of people who bought a Ps2 with zero interest in games but did it only for the DVD functionality. I am sure that Sony hoped to capitalize on that with the Ps3 with Blu-Ray but obviously that has been a far harder sell to the public.
Finished reading your article.
There is a difference between an arcade gamer and a cinematic gamer. He believes that there are currently 4 types of gamer - the table top gamer (when games were texted based), the arcade gamer (liked arcade style gameplay - fast and tough games ruled), the cinematic gamer (games as movies), and the interface gamer (today). Clearly, the arcade game with it's pick-up-and-play nature is radically different than the Cinematic game with it's deep storylines, so much so that it is safe to say it attracts a different audience.
- http://thewiikly.zogdog.com/article.php?article=3&ed=1
The reason I call Malstrom the best "analyst" there is comes from his high degree of buisness knowledge. He was also the first person to both predict the Wii's success and understand the reasoning behind it, proven by an old segment he did for the Wiikly.
http://thewiikly.zogdog.com/author.php?author=8
When responding to someone on material I find interesting, I often show them as much material as they could want, perhaps moreso. However, because the most popular and well known article he has ever written (and possible the most humerous one) is the "Birdmen and the Casual Fallacy" article, it is incredibly useful for understanding disruption and the mindset of people who quote malstrom.
I wrote my last comment before seeing your response to my first comment. Sorry about that.
Just like it is hard for many people to switch to a complicated new OS (and thus would be costly in productivity and training for a company to make the switch), it is hard for many people to play the complicated games that are made for the gaming enthusiast. They are played with many buttons and are chock full of tutorials and in-game items and all kinds of stuff to learn. Sure, they could just buy a new system, but they wouldn't be interested in playing it for the above reasons. It's actually much easier getting a new OS, but learning the new OS is the problem.
That is why many NES gamers started to be turned off by the SNES/N64/Gamecube. They made things progressively more complicated. The Wii simplified things and brought them back in. Like the NES, anyone can just plug in and play Wii Sports or whatnot.
My parents loved the NES, but they wouldn't touch the SNES or Genesis with a ten-foot pole.
You're not seriously proposing that many people plopped down a couple hundred bucks (in 80's dollars) just to try out the NES, are you? Who in the world would do that? It seems like a better plan (even back then) to just find a friend who has one and try his out or just rent one.
There is no evidence that suggests that Nintendo is simply benefiting from a fad or that they simply had luck of the draw. I'll take this claim seriously when I get some proof. You bring up Tickle Me Elmo, but fail to show any similarities between that the Wii.
Saying all those negative things about SSBB and the like seemed like an attack on them to me. But whether it was an attack or not isn't the point. If Nintendo fans were truly dissatisfied with these games, they wouldn't be giving them the same high scores that they gave to the classic games of old.
I now realize you were referring to people who buy a game just because it is a sequel and not people who liked those particular games when you said that most fans aren't that stupid. So my last criticism is cheerfully withdrawn.
I'm going to respond to all three people here. First up megaStryke.
megaStryke, sorry, but the more I think about it, the most problems I have with your lapsed gamer terminology and I think a large part of it is because of your comment on the Ps2's sales. I know tons of people who bought the Ps2 because it was the cheapest DVD player at the time and a damn good one too for the time. To you, these are lapsed gamers. I see them as non-gamer customers that latched onto a particular function and role that the Ps2 had at the time that could not possibly be replicated today.
There are lapsed gamers out there. However, I feel that, especially in the discussions we have been having lately, what you are describing are not them but rather people whose interests in video games are basically fleeting to nonexistent.
Laird, let me ask you this since you claim that your parents would fall into the lapsed gamer crowd as megaStryke describes it. Is it not possible that your parents just simply aren't that interested in video games? I just don't see what is wrong with admitting that not everyone can be counted on to be a customer of your product. As I said, there are people that simply don't like to read novels. There are people that simply don't like films that are not mindless fun. There are people that simply don't like any type of food that isn't fast food. Should we fire the CEO of Scholastic Press, Warner Bros, or the P.F. Chang's just because they can't reach that audience?
You ask for proof or evidence that the Wii is a fad. I'm not sure what evidence you want or whether or not this can even be determined until many years down the line. However, given the number of stories that are out there of people that have bought it because it looked cool and interesting (particularly older individuals) and then left it the corner collecting dust within a few days, I think it's fair to speculate that there are a lot of elements to the Wii's success that suggest that it is a fad.
With respect to SSBB and the other games, I am going to simply kindly suggest that you are oversensitive if you feel that criticism of a game is an "attack" or "hating." It is not an attack to state that something has X, Y, and Z as problems, especially since, in reading over what I wrote, I think I addressed that section in a calm and fair tone.
You are mostly right with respect to my intent about bringing up those games. My point was simply to say that, at least for me, even if I were the "hardcore gamer" that Reggie says I am, there are flaws with the games I mentioned that I think for me personally, are somewhat significant. Almost all of my friends that play games live far away from me so I don't think it's unfair for me to say that the fact that the online play in SSBB is not good as a deal-breaker for me. I personally found the Wii controls for Zelda: TP so awkward and imprecise that I actually sold the game back and picked up the GameCube copy instead. Likewise, I think that playing Mario Kart Wii with the wheel attachment is beyond frustrating.
Again, I understand that some of these are personal preference issues. However, I have seen many many reviews, even ones that scored the game favorably, that acknowledged these problems and so I don't think it's fair for you to assume that I am just crazy or something. Again, my point was simply to say that I do not like it when Reggie acts as though the existence of these games prove that he is committed to the "hardcore" because, at least for me, the fact that there are flaws in these games that can range from mild flaws to very annoying flaws depending on the person makes me less interested in these games and what they allegedly provide to the "hardcore" demographic.
Hcapt, I read the Birdman article and while it is only a small part of his views, I think it illustrates many of the problems that I have with his ideas.
I am way too tired right now to write up a full critique of his article. However, I will say that my main problem with his article is the same that I have with most business theories: it is based on pretty much only the success stories (and generally ignores the failures), oversimplifies the situation in order to fit the theory, and does not acknowledge the strong influence that luck and timing can play in business.
Well, my parents still like simple flash games and Wii games.
My point isn't that companies that appeal to less mainstream tastes are wrong. My point is that Nintendo is not wrong to appeal to these mainstream tastes.
A small segment of enthusiast gamers say they ditched their Wii, all the while casual and lapsed gamers buy Wii Sports Resort to the tune of 2 million in a single month. And, I repeat, there is no evidence that these casual folks will suddenly decide after 3 years of playing the Wii they suddenly don't like the casual games Nintendo puts out. I doubt that they can't be counted on as customers if they've been at it this long.
Video games were called a fad, but after the crash they came back with a vengeance and haven't showed signs of slowing down. Pokemon was called a fad. It's been around for over 10 years and it still sells strong. The customers keep coming back and plenty of new ones are brought in to keep things successful.
I don't know what else to say about the perception that Nintendo's flagship games are dipping in quality except what I've already said. If the majority of Nintendo fans perceived these games to be inferior, they would rate them lower. They haven't.