Nintendo pisses me off so much that I can’t even bring myself to defend them anymore!
Before recording the latest Digital Crack podcast, my good friend and podcast compatriot, Grumpy Joe, dropped some news that made me give up on the Big N forever. They finally announced their first-ever game for mobile platforms. After decades of doing their thing on their own hardware, they were branching out and taking chances outside of their ecosystem. And what did I get from them?
Miitomo, a mobile app that lets me use my Wii U’s Mii to enjoy a more “social experience.”Well,
Nintendo, here’s a loud “social experience” for you:
SCREW YOU AND YOUR “SOCIAL EXPERIENCE” CRAP! WAKE UP, STOP SNIFFING YOUR OWN FARTS, AND GET BACK TO BEING THE BEST GODDAMN VIDEO GAME PLATFORM ON EARTH!!!
OK, I’m calm now. I took a few shots of Grey Goose and I’m slightly mellower. I don’t usually like venting like that, but Nintendo has been pissing me off for decades now. I don’t claim to be the guru of gaming, but I know my history enough to know when Nintendo stopped being awesome and started being shit. I took off my rose-tinted glasses long ago; time to don the rekt shades!
When people discuss the downfall of Nintendo, many talk about the disappointment that is the Wii U. This latest console was practically DOA since its E3 announcement in 2011, and has shown only the smallest signs of life since. Others, like the aforementioned Grumpy Joe, point to the GameCube as the start of Nintendo’s downfall. I, however, am not as generous as any of them. When I look at the moment when Nintendo betrayed its gamer base, I look further back. I point my finger to Nintendo’s Big Bang moment and declare it as the reason why Big N has become the afterthought it is now: the NES. Not the console itself, but everything that came from it and after it.
For the younger readers, that may be odd to read. For the more nostalgic, that may seem as blasphemous as running into the Vatican and screaming, “GOD IS DEAD!” But if you sit long enough to read my words, maybe you will understand why I am slagging off the console many old-school gamers revere as the Chosen One of video games.
I have mentioned the Crash of 1983 a couple of times in previous articles. This was known as the Dark Age of video games, the moment when the second generation of consoles (Atari 2600, Mattel Intellivision, ColecoVision) died and almost took the whole industry with it. I won’t get into too many details (I PROMISE I will eventually!), but this is the point where many pundits agreed that video gaming was over.
Nintendo made the decision in 1985 to import their Family Computer (Famicom) stateside, naming it the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). After trying and failing to secure a distribution agreement with Atari – and trust me, THAT story is a doozy – they went at it alone and debuted the NES at the 1985 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). It was released in 1986 after a shaky New York test launch, and the rest is history.
The NES completely revitalized the video gaming market back then. It was a runaway success after its rollout, and it became the standard for video gaming in North America. Its name became synonymous with gaming. People weren’t playing video games; they were playing “that damn Nintendo!”
So how can the console that resurrected video games in the Western Hemisphere be the console responsible for its creator’s stupidity? The answer is actually simple: its success became the very seed of its arrogance!
Everyone is at least passively familiar with Nintendo’s “Seal of Quality” sticker. That emblem grew from Nintendo’s fear of shady developers making shit games for their system. Atari failed because it never tried to protect its brand; the 2600 was essentially an open system which allowed anyone who can write crappy code the ability to make games. This allowed fly-by-night developers looking for a quick score to release steaming piles of crap for the system, flooding the market and Atari’s brand image. Nintendo realized, smartly, that it had to find ways to restrict the ability to make games for its console. Thus, the era of licensed third-party developers was born!
Nintendo decided on an effective pair of systems to prevent bad NES games from flooding the market. The first system was hardware-based, consisting of a special lockout chip, dubbed “10NES”, which prevented unlicensed games from playing on the console. Prospective developers were forced to enter into licensing agreements with Nintendo in order to bypass the 10NES chip. These agreements were very Draconian and required developers to purchase hardware from Nintendo directly, including the programmable read-only memory (PROM) chips that were needed to make the games. Nintendo insisted that this first system was necessary in order to ensure absolute quality in the finished product.
The second system was built into Nintendo’s licensing agreements with developers and was more restrictive still: developers were not allowed to produce more than five games a year for its console, and forcing them to agree to make those games exclusive to their system for a period of about two years. Limiting the number of titles per developer would prevent oversaturation and ensure that any games released were of sufficient quality to merit release; preventing third-party developers from making ports for the competition would help keep the best games in-house. Some developers, like Konami, found a way to bypass the release restriction by creating separate licensing agreements with Nintendo using different company names, like Ultra. After time, third-party developers fought Nintendo’s competition restriction as well.
Though the systems Nintendo put in place for the NES did prevent oversaturation and established a quality standard, it set another precedent: it gave Nintendo the notion that it could bully any third-party developers that wished to work with them. Since Nintendo dominated the video game market, they believed that everyone had to go through them and follow whatever rules they set. That belief persisted through the fourth generation, where their SNES battled and eventually beat Sega’s Genesis. But that idea hit a brick wall with the Nintendo 64, their fifth-generation console.
When Nintendo announced the Nintendo 64, they played their arrogance for all it was worth. The CD format was the future, and Sony and Sega were on board that train with their Playstation and Saturn, respectively. But Nintendo, trained since the NES days to believe that whatever they did was sacrosanct, decided they were going to stay with cartridges. Nintendo’s licensing agreements still required that third-party developers get their chips from them, which helped their bottom line. Further, Nintendo required third-party developers to commit to making large initial batches of cartridges prior to release. This resulted in huge initial expenditures for third parties looking to develop for the new Nintendo console.
Since they were Nintendo, they deluded themselves into believing everyone would fall in line, pay them whatever they wanted, and make all their games in the cartridge format. Third-party developers, however, found a better solution: Sony’s licensing agreement for the Playstation was much less restrictive, allowing third-party developers to switch to the cheaper CD format and giving them greater control over how many copies the made initially. Nintendo’s arrogance finally bit them in the ass; NES stalwarts like Capcom and Konami began an exodus to the competition, ending Nintendo’s stranglehold on gaming.
Sure, the Nintendo 64 was a success, and the GameCube had some big successes mixed in, and even the Wii was a surprise runaway sales success. But Nintendo was no longer seen as a true trailblazer. They were no longer the market leader. Sony staked its claim as the trendsetter with the Playstation brand, and Microsoft’s foray into the video game market produced a viable competing brand in Xbox. Nintendo, however, lagged way behind, content in its brand name and its properties, like fattened kings sitting on a rusted throne. They would keep their dominance in the portable market, but they would be an afterthought in the hearts and minds of a new generation of console gamers. As I sit and reminisce about the joy that their consoles gave me, it hurts to say that the roots of their failure lay their pig-headedness. And that pig-headedness sprouted from their greatest success: the NES.
Grumpy Joe needles me constantly when I mention anything that involves Nintendo. He contends that Nintendo had its time in the shade but never capitalized on its dominance. And he is right; Nintendo is as outdated as DVDs and MP3 players! But what he doesn’t get is that, if Nintendo wanted, they could kiss the third-party developers’ asses, retake it all and make everyone sing their praises like hymns in a church choir! If Nintendo wanted to, they could swat Sony and Microsoft aside and make them its bitches! Even Grumpy Joe would extol Nintendo’s virtues if they cared!
Instead, we get Miitomo on mobile. No Mario or Pokémon, just our Miis.
If I ever found a way to tell Nintendo to slag off harder, I would crack the planet’s crust in the process!
