Some of my earliest memories include gathering as a family on Monday evenings to play something on our Nintendo Entertainment System (that’s the NES for you youngin’s). We’d take turns with Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, Eggslode!, Silent Service, Monopoly, and Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers to name a few. I also went even more old school on trips to Grandmother’s house where I could play an Atari 2600 (Pitfall rules y’all!).
When we got a bit older, my father’s parents purchased a Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) for us, complete with Super Mario All Stars. Further down the road, I worked for over a year to save up the money to buy a Nintendo 64. In middle school, I purchased a GameBoy for Pokemon Yellow, and later I acquired a GameBoy Color. In high school, I got a launch day Gamecube. I picked up a Virtual Boy at a thrift store. I got the GameBoy Advance for Christmas one year and a launch day Nintendo DS a few years later.
In my “adult” years, I purchased a Nintendo DS Lite, Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo 3DS XL, and Wii U. I stopped counting my library of games long ago.
I survived the Sega war of the early 90’s, the betrayal/snafu of Sony, and the haphazard entry of Microsoft to the console gaming world. I’ve dedicated countless hours of my life to collecting & playing games. I’ve also spent many hours following the industry news and business trends--I made it a regular point to read the quarterly and annual revenue reports from the various gaming companies I followed.
Where am I going with all of this?
Well, I feel I’m not out of place when I say that I’m as knowledgeable about the industry as you can be without actually having been employed in it.
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| If this is you after reading that last sentence then you need to just calm down and reevaluate your life choices. (Source) |
The last decade in general has made me very concerned with the direction the gaming industry is going (that needs to be its own post), but recent events have made me very displeased with the direction Nintendo has decided to turn.
Nintendo is often criticized (sometimes even correctly) for not jumping on the bandwagon and doing the things all the other game companies do. Sometimes these actions--such as a lack of any online infrastructure--have hurt them. Other times, it has let them excel in the industry--the unconventional game stylings of the Wii made them the most profitable 1st party developer of the last console generation. But now Nintendo has taken a turn for the worse by jumping on the bandwagon with some of the things I dislike most in the gaming industry.
Case 1 - Hyrule Warriors:
Nintendo is offering various pre-order bonuses for reserving a copy of the game before its release. Normally, this would not be an issue, but here’s the problem: you get different bonuses depending on where you reserve a copy of the game. Ordering from Gamestop gets you alternate character costumes based on the Ocarina of Time; Amazon will give you costumes from Twilight Princess; Best Buy will give you costumes from Skyward Sword.
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| They will totally pay more money for this... right? (Source) |
Now you’re not going to purchase 3 copies of the game, so how are you to get the other 2 packs? Simple: pay money for them online. And it makes sense, right? You just bought a $60 game, so why not spend $6-12 more for some extra costumes? Extra costumes available on the first day that for some reason are not included in the game. Extra costumes that don’t impact gameplay in any way--they’re just there to look cool. First day paid DLC (downloadable content) is one of the worst crimes of the gaming industry. The game developers purposely remove pieces of the game that should be included only to charge you extra for it later. It’s the equivalent of selling you a car but charging extra for the hubcaps, gas cap, and windows. Until now, Nintendo hasn’t played that game. But now they’re joining in with all the other gaming companies.
Case 2 - New 3DS & New 3DS LL:
In a surprise announcement, Nintendo revealed the upcoming release of two new pieces of hardware. They are an upgrade to the current 3DS models. They come with significantly increased CPU power, 2 extra shoulder buttons, improved 3D technology, and a toggle for camera controls to name a few features. The first announced game for this new hardware is a rerelease of Xenoblade Chronicles. In short, this was originally a Wii game with 100+ hours of content. The idea that this game can be played on a handheld is incredible.
This presents us with two potential outcomes:
Option 1) The new hardware allows for more gaming options. Since these games need more CPU power and buttons, they will be incompatible with older 3DS models. Effectively, this means anyone who purchased 3DS units is hosed.
Option 2) The new hardware models will not have a high enough adoption rate to warrant developing games that only work on the new hardware, and so adopters of the new hardware will get nothing in return for their investment.
If we look at the case of the PSP (Playstation Portable--Sony’s handheld), we see that in 7 years, they released 5 models. These models even had differing media types (UMD, Memory Stick Pro Duo, & Memory Stick Micro). Early adopters of the PSP were in essence punished by the release of the later models.
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| Early adoption pains? I know that feel bro. (Source) |
“But wait a minute, Alpha Geek,” you say, “Nintendo had 3 versions of the GameBoy Advance.” Yes, that is true, but here’s the core difference--with the exception of adding a backlight, the later two models only offered a cosmetic redesign. No new functions were added nor were they removed. You could play your GameBoy Advance games on any of the models you liked. Now with the New 3DS and New 3DS LL, adopters of the 3DS are potentially excluded from upcoming games.
Case 3 - Paid DLC in General:
Nintendo has long been the black sheep of downloadable content. The game you purchase on launch day is the same game you’ll have years down the road. The minor asterisk I’ll place on this is the occasional game patch, but you’re not getting new content.
Nintendo has stuck their toe in the water on this one lately with extra missions in both Fire Emblem Awakening and Mario vs. Donkey Kong. Those were small experiments and the game was wholly enjoyable without the extras. Many argued that these extras did not add much to the games.
Now we see Nintendo announce the upcoming release of additional racers, karts, and courses in Mario Kart 8. Honestly, the first 2 should be free. I can see an argument being made for paying for the courses as those require more development resources, but I think in the case of Mario Kart 8, this goes back to my complaint of charging for items that should have been in the original game. Mario Kart 8 is fun, but I remember thinking in the first week, “Huh. I thought there would be more content to this game.” I was honestly disappointed by the short length of the game. Nintendo certainly did not fill the disc with as much data as they could, so there was certainly more room for additional race courses. Nintendo has 7 previous games to pull content from, so the shortness of the games was annoying.
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| You mad bro? (Source) |
Recently, a video was leaked online and subsequently removed. It purports to be an internal Nintendo video showing off some as of yet unannounced Super Smash Bros characters. This is all very rumor heavy and unconfirmed, but the video claims that after the game releases, more characters will be added to the fight roster via paid DLC. This has been done with other games with mixed success (see Marvel vs. Capcom 3).
Conclusion:
I’ve never been excited about Satoru Iwata as the President of Nintendo. Again, that is the subject of another article perhaps, but for some time now, he’s been facing pressure from investors to jump on the bandwagon with other companies in adopting these and other practices. Until now, he’s stood firm and not given in to these disgusting industry models. Now, it seems Nintendo has thrown in the towel and turned on the gamers.
Next stop, season passes for DLC, passing off mediocre multiplayer modes as substitutes for solid campaigns, and cutting off your son’s hand when he refuses to join you in ruling the galaxy.
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| Why Iwata-san? Why?! (Source) |
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