Miyamoto Admits Nintendo Underestimated The Switch To HD

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/07/08/miyamoto-admits-nintendo-underestimated-the-switch-to-hd/

by scholia • 13 years ago

114 117 13 years ago

bitwize• 13 years ago

Feh. If they think HD is hard, just wait until everybody switches to 4K in a couple of years. (The true videophiles will have 8K or 16K.)

jiggy2011• 13 years ago

There tends to be quite a bit of lag between available video technologies and what people actually have at home, there's still plenty of Xbox 360s out there hooked up to SDTVs for example.

smackfu2• 13 years ago

The general "meh" towards Blu-Ray makes me wonder.

adam86306• 13 years ago

I think 4k will be a hard sell for most consumers kind of like 3D because 1080p is pretty damn good quality. I wonder when we will get to a point where it is good enough.

AndrewDucker2• 13 years ago

Unless you're sitting within 7 feet of a 70" screen 4k is completely pointless:

http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter/

sliverstorm• 13 years ago

THANK YOU. We might see 4k screens take off for computers, but they don't make sense for TVs right now.

DanBC2• 13 years ago

And yet people still buy gold plated HDMI cables.

sixothree• 13 years ago

10 feet away from a 90" screen is what many people with projectors currently enjoy.

sukuriant• 13 years ago

Having gone in to see one of the screens, I believe it was less than that from a 60+" screen that I could tell the difference.

Go to a store, e.g. Best Buy, and see. Obviously, the people with the standard 37-50" screens aren't going to see much of a change; but when you get large screens, it's pretty clear

swang• 13 years ago

HD is hard. Game companies are barely got to 1080p/60fps for their games with most of them cheating to get near that quality. This next generation they may be able to just throw process cycles at it for the PS4/XBone. I can't imagine how long it will take to get to the 4K/60fps quality rate.

warfangle2• 13 years ago

Which is funky, because I was playing games in 1600x1200@60fps in <2003.

LandoCalrissian• 13 years ago

I think that is a rater optimistic timeline since the next gen consoles will probably still struggle to do 1080.

jug6ernaut3• 13 years ago

Of the big three i easily have the most faith in Nintendo. Why? Because they know how to make games i enjoy, and have been doing so for well over 2 decades.

Nintendo put themselves in a tough spot, with dwindling Wii sales they were left with the choice of having no Console choice or having one with no games(very few). It can be argued which is the better option, obviously both suck.

I do not consider Nintendo in trouble, there base(as has been proven time and time again) will always be there(mainly because they stick to there guns, for better or worse). Point & case of this is the 3DS, when this was release for a good 7-8 months it was considered a horrible console, with its best game being a remake of "The Legend of Zelda OOT"(arguably). Look at it now it is considered to be the best running console available. Granted it some good games in this 7-8 month period, but not much.

My point is, when it comes down to it, games sell consoles, and the WiiU has no games, at all really. Once they come, and they will, the console will be in at least fine shape. I personally have not bought one, but it is on my list above both the xbox1 and the ps4.

My 2 cents...

rocky11382• 13 years ago

I wish Wii U was as open as the Ouya. It's cool, though, that they put that JS library up for getting button-mapping in-browser from the control pad.

I don't own a Wii U, either. It's way too expensive and I don't find any of the titles compelling. That, and when I played with one at Toys R Us I found the controller cheap to hold.

lauraura3• 13 years ago

Nintendo's been mainly working off their portables for years, really. The N64 didn't sell that great either, and the Gamecube did pretty awfully, ending up selling what few units it did almost entirely on the merit of its first-party games and a couple rare gems, like Tales of Symphonia. The Wii was unusual -- the Wii U is more "normal", by Nintendo sales standards!

Fortunately for them the 3DS is doing great, gathering dozens and dozens of great games, and probably makes a tidy profit margin too. They did a wonderful job pivoting the console; people pretty quickly lost interest in the 3D aspect, but there was no reason they had to market the console on those merits to begin with, so as far as I can tell they've mostly de-emphasized that aspect of the device (and nobody I know even uses it!)

It's also cheap enough that even as the Vita does finally pick up sales and actual games (and it's happening, finally), it probably won't hurt the 3DS' sales -- their game lists seem more mutually exclusive than not and if someone can afford a Vita, they probably already have a 3DS if they ever wanted one.

The Vita is really its own interesting story of a console with (initially) almost no games -- a lot of more minor and independent developers have found that they can get great sales on the Vita since the market is much less saturated. Amazingly, a few months ago, the top selling Vita game was actually a rather niche title that was released with no prior announcement on the e-shop and no marketing whatsoever. I kind of wonder if the Wii U will have a year or two (or ten??) of the same kind of thing -- it definitely could be an interesting platform for indie devs.

smacktoward• 13 years ago

It's true, they've pretty much owned portable gaming ever since the original Game Boy. But the problem they have there is that the portable gaming market is undergoing a huge shift from being about dedicated devices to being just another feature on smartphones. The 3DS' real competition isn't the Vita, in other words, it's the iPhone. And there's not a lot of evidence that Nintendo has a strategy to deal with this sea change.

DavidBradbury• 13 years ago

The N64 didn't sell that great either 32.93 million units sold.
Fortunately for them the 3DS is doing great 31.09 million units sold.

jockc• 13 years ago

Got my 3ds about 2 months ago and I absolutely love the 3d aspect. To my eyes the 3d view is beautiful to view/play and is oddly nostalgic (it reminds me of a Viewmaster).

macspoofing7• 13 years ago

Are you kidding? Of the big three, I consider Nintendo dead-man walking. The reality is that the console business is a big company game, and Nintendo is just too small. You need to sink billions of dollars to develop and subsidize the console, be willing to lose money for years and then do it all over again 6-10 years later. Microsoft can do it, and Sony can do it, Nintendo can't. They need to make money because unlike Microsoft and Sony, they don't have other revenue streams. This necessities them releasing under-powered consoles. They got lucky with the Wii. They are not so lucky with the WiiU.

They are still the king of mobile console gaming ... sort of. Tablet and smartphones are eating away their bottom line, and the trend will continue (the minute that Apple and Google decide to focus on mobile gaming in earnest will spell the end of Nintendo). The problem for Nintendo is that mobile gaming is an afterthought for Apple and Google. They don't need to do well in that area to survive, however every point of marketshare that Nintendo loses because little Johnny is fine enough playing games on his iPad instead of buying a 3DS hurts Nintendo incredibly. Everyone will have a smartphone or a tablet, so justifying a 3DS purchase is that much harder.

They make good games, yes, but it won't change the fact that they are in a lot of trouble.

Afforess• 13 years ago

I agree. I don't see Nintendo still being a hardware company in 10 years. They are either liquidated, sold to someone else for IP's, or transform into a software game company. I hope it's the latter. There is no money in hardware, it has no future outside of ever-tinier margins.

Keyframe• 13 years ago

People have been saying they're good as dead since N64. It seems to me they are doing just fine.

neovive• 13 years ago

This could be another Sega situation here -- trouble financing hardware, but great at making games.

banachtarski3• 13 years ago

This makes me sad. Nintendo games (even the sequels) exhibit creativity and appeal an order of magnitude beyond the "mainstream" games which simply rehash visuals and weaponry. I think they are the closest to mastering games as an "art form."

aviraldg• 13 years ago

I'd be willing to buy one of their consoles for every Fire Emblem game they release. Seriously.

lauraura3• 13 years ago

If only they localize Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem...

danielweber• 13 years ago

Ordered list of important things for a console:

1. Fun games.

(Okay, I'm ignoring a few things, like cost. But no one gives a hoot about a zillion pentagons per second. They care about fun games. If those zillion pentagons make the game more fun, then win.)

InclinedPlane2• 13 years ago

Nintendo used to have a big advantage.

First off, it always sold everything at a per-product profit from day one. Games, consoles, everything. That made it hard for them to lose money unless they failed to cover development costs by selling too few consoles, for example.

Second, they had the only portable gaming system that was extremely popular worldwide and just as profitable.

Third, they had a huge 1st party game lineup that always brought a lot of fans.

Fourth, they were able to make a different kind of game than the rest of the industry. Generally gameplay and character based games instead of visual appeal / physics based games like many of the traditional major AAA games. This dramatically lowered their production costs. Add to that the lure of motion controls during the glory years of the Wii.

Compare, for example, titles such as Halo 3 or Call of Duty: MW2 vs Super Smash Brothers Brawl or New Super Mario Bros Wii. Halo 3 sold something like 12 million copies and MW2 sold about 22 million. Those are impressive numbers, pushing gross revenue up near the billion dollar range. However, these are also very expensive games to produce, due to all the art assets, voice acting, the complexity of the game, and so forth. In contrast Brawl sold about 12 million copies and New SMB Wii sold about 28 million. But what's the development budget on Smash Bros. or even New SMB Wii in comparison? They don't have the same high-def 3D rendered immersive, interactive environment requirements as a modern AAA FPS or adventure game, they have a pitiful amount of voice acting, and typically so little that internationalization is comparatively trivial, and they just aren't as complicated of games overall.

Nintendo was able to sell its quirky little gameplay centric games and earn AAA revenue on the back of fractional development costs compared to most AAA titles. That translated into, as they say, "printing money".

But there are some problems. People stopped buying Wiis and playing Wii games. So Nintendo felt they needed to come out with a new console to try to deal with the competition. Unfortunately, the Wii-U isn't a coherent or inspired design, it's just designed by a committee who has no conception of what's happening in gaming right now. The result is a sort of weird little HD Wii with a questionably useful tablet controller.

Meanwhile, the rest of the gaming industry has been changing a great deal. Digital distribution has become not just a part of the industry but has gained enough momentum to seem like it will be the future core of the industry. And partly because of that indie games have had a renaissance. Additionally, smartphones and tablets have inserted themselves as pillars of the mobile gaming market. And both Microsoft and Sony have produced better motion control hardware schemes than Nintendo has managed to develop.

Nintendo is now being threatened from every side. Its motion control advantage is now lost. Its quirky gameplay centric advantage is now under assault by a veritable army of indie game devs, some of whom can finance their games on kickstarter and sell them for $10 or less through digital channels. Its mobile gaming systems are finding it tough to compete with more advanced tablets and smartphones with burgeoning game libraries. And its persistent weakness in online communities and underlying game system OS technology has started to take its toll in an era where everyone is more connected than ever.

Almost nobody is seriously excited about the potential of the Wii-U hardware, it's boring and largely already obsoleted by other console hardware and by the Xbox One and PS4 hardware. Pretty much the only thing keeping Nintendo alive is their 1st party titles, but how much will that encourage people to buy into their console hardware, potentially at the cost of not being able to buy an iPad or either of the other 2 new consoles coming out this year?

The Wii-U has already had a huge price drop since launch about half a year ago and sales are still anemic, that's not a good sign considering that sales are unlikely to be better 6 months from now when the xbox and playstation next gen consoles are on the market, let alone after the next ipad rev. hits. If they were smart they'd transition into a software only company.

Edit: to add to this, I used to own a Wii (though I sold it after I realized I hadn't even bothered to turn it on for about a year), and I've used the Wii-U extensively. I love some of the games for the Wii-U but I'm not sure they have enough pull to get many gamers to buy a whole new console. Also, the Wii-U software is a nightmare. For a device that is entirely based on solid state storage it takes a remarkably long time to do anything. Also, the very first update for the console took an hour (literally, a full hour, regardless of internet connection speed). And the battery life on the gamepad is decidedly underwhelming, as is the lack of multi-touch. Overall these aren't good selling points to the average consumer, or even to the Nintendo enthusiast.

cube13• 13 years ago

The Wii-U has already had a huge price drop since launch about half a year ago and sales are still anemic, that's not a good sign considering that sales are unlikely to be better 6 months from now when the xbox and playstation next gen consoles are on the market, let alone after the next ipad rev. hits. If they were smart they'd transition into a software only company.

The Wii U hasn't had a price drop yet.

JohnBooty• 13 years ago

  > Generally gameplay and character based games 
  > instead of visual appeal / physics based games 
  > like many of the traditional major AAA games. 
  > This dramatically lowered their production costs.

Are we sure this is true?

Refined gameplay is the result of many, many, many extra person-hours (and therefore money) of iteration, testing, refinement, and so forth.

It's one of the reasons (certainly not the only reason) there's (for example) a flagship Zelda game every 5+ years, not every single year like Madden 2013 or Call Of Medal Of Honorable Black Splinter Ops.

b3b0p• 13 years ago

I agree and I am not an accountant, but financially I think Nintendo may be fine, at least according to the Financial Times balance sheet here:

http://markets.ft.com/research//Markets/Tearsheets/Financial...

It looks like they have plenty of cash in the bank as well as zero debt.

A Wii U is also on my list. I have no interest in Xbox One or Playstation 4. Almost all the games are multiplatform now and many are now coming to Steam. There are also so many games coming out and the fact I have limited time to go around I'm limiting my options this generation to Nintendo and Steam. That gives me plenty of gaming. I don't need to play everything, but I do need to play Mario, Zelda, and Metroid.

Does Nintendo really need to bother competing with Sony and MSFT? Especially with almost all games being multiplatform now. Isn't the main reason to buy a console for the exclusives and content it provides?

hudibras• 13 years ago

Don't forget Pikmin 3. A lot of people (including me) have been holding off buying a WiiU until that game comes out.

I've been waiting nine years to accidentally kill me some more Pikmins!!

/fanboy

Zergy• 13 years ago

Nintendo makes great games.

So does Playdead So does Turn 10 Studios So does BioWare So does Bethesda So does Dice So does Team Meat

I could actually go on for a bit but I think I make my point that having Nintendo make good games consistently doesn't compare to a more open platform that has dozens of developers many of who consistently put out excellent games.

Nintendo is far behind in terms of hardware and completely relied on their blue ocean strategy to carry them last time. They tried again and it’s not looking too good. Sales will pick up I'm sure when games actually come out but between half the people I know thinking it’s a peripheral and it having to actually compete because people are not going crazy over a gimmick I don’t think its going to do well this generation.

aclevernickname4• 13 years ago

So does Playdead So does Turn 10 Studios So does BioWare So does Bethesda So does Dice So does Team Meat

Nintendo has made more great games in the last 10 years than all the above companies combined have made in their lifetimes. It's pretty disingenuous to dismiss them so lackadaisically.

ekianjo6• 13 years ago

Is this a joke? Nintendo has just been lucky ONCE with the Wii, and you call that "doing so well" for 2 decades? Let's not forget they lost the console supremacy with the N64. That the Gamecube was a dead console when it came out. The only reason Nintendo is still alive nowadays is because of their portable consoles business. That's where they go unchallenged. And no, Sony is not very successful in that field, except in a few markets (the PSP(first one) did very well in Japan, and is still going on strong).

Their base "will always be there" is exactly the kind of statement that brought Sony down in the last generation. They thought they could sell PS3 at the price they wanted. Nintendo made the same mistake with the 3DS, by pricing it very high at launch timing and facing extremely disappointing sales until they cut the price and released more games for the system. It was one of the worst Nintendo launches EVER.

Even if the games come on WiiU, it's too late for Nintendo. There will be fantastic-looking games for the PS4 (and XBox one) which will catch the attention of gamers for a while. And the WiiU did not repeat the same thing as the Wii in the first place: most people dont "get" the concept, because it's not a very cool concept in the first place.

Another reason the WiiU is dead is that they have no 3rd party developer support. There's no games for it because most developers are working for other systems already. They don't bet on the WiiU. It will be obsolete in no time.

adw• 13 years ago

The GBA and DS lines were pretty significant hits.

afreak• 13 years ago

It remains to be seen if Nintendo?s laundry list of beloved exclusives can carry them for another console generation. I recently asked Xbox loyalists if Microsoft?s continued employment of Master Chief and Halo was enough to keep them excited about the console. Most said no, and I wonder if the numbers will finally start to turn for Nintendo as well.

I think that this part misses the point about the differences between Halo and Mario. Halo is and always has been aimed towards the types that have been long term gamers and has only been recently usurped by the likes of Call of Duty et al.

Mario and its entire universe has brand value with parents and is geared towards practically anyone who can figure out a d-pad.

While I think that most of the Mario franchise is just a rehash of a rehash (Mario Bros. Wii being the last rehash I liked), for as long as parents see the games that way, Nintendo can keep pumping them out.

GVIrish2• 13 years ago

True, but how long can Nintendo stay afloat with only the strength of the Mario franchise to lean upon. 3rd party developers are giving the WiiU no love, and the WiiU doesn't have the hook to attract casual gamers the way the original Wii did.

I think parents will still choose Mario, but that number is going to get smaller and smaller as time goes on. Why spend $300 for a console that only has Mario games? That's not a good way forward for Nintendo.

aclevernickname4• 13 years ago

True, but how long can Nintendo stay afloat with only the strength of the Mario franchise to lean upon.

Perhaps we can ask Disney the same question about Mickey Mouse.

smackfu2• 13 years ago

Seems pretty inexcusable to me. Nintendo was able to coast through the entire last-gen not doing HD games at all. Now they have to do HD on their new console, and it was perfectly clear they were going to have to do HD, and it's too much work for them to get games out on time??

atourgates• 13 years ago

Also, the fact that Wii games emulated on Dolphin in 1080p look pretty fantastic makes this seem a bit hard to believe.

roc5• 13 years ago

That's just Nintendo being Nintendo. They (seemingly) don't ever watch their competitors or consider the lessons their competitors are learning.

It's not so different than their being dragged kicking-and-screaming into connected services and then introducing initial offerings that look and function as if none of them had ever even seen the Internet before, let alone used any connected services that had been on offer from the industry.

Also: their games are always slow to materialize. Despite SD resolutions, the Wii was a similar-scale software-wasteland for at least its first year. (or longer - depending on how generous you're feeling)

The only real difference is that its launch titles retained novelty and popularity as more and more people were being first-introduced to waggle-gaming. Now that it's old hat, and every visitor isn't demanding to try it out, no-one's logging a hundred hours on a launch title and the lack of software is more glaring.

mkr-hn6• 13 years ago

Nintendo being Nintendo has served them well for decades. It's not reasonable to expect them to throw their entire corporate identity out just because they have a huge Wii-shaped bump in their stock chart.

What makes Nintendo unique among console makers--and what carries them through each generation--is focusing on making fun games, not abiding the latest trends. Nintendo does roughly what Apple does: let the competitors make all the big mistakes and take the PR hits, then come behind and release something that gets it right on the first try.

chaostheory3• 13 years ago

I think the only console manufacturer, in this generation, that focused on ease of programming from the hardware side was Sony; to make up for the mistakes they've made in the past with resulted in PS3's Cell. That said, I didn't hear anything about Wii U having a weird architecture like PS3's Cell. The only thing I keep reading is that the Wii U's specs are actually even weaker than the Xbox 360's hardware.

talmand3• 13 years ago

But the PS4 and the Xbox One have weaker specs than my one-year-old PC so I guess whatever point you're making about the Wii U applies to those consoles as well.

chaostheory3• 13 years ago

Not really. Both PS4 and XBox One pretty much sport near off the shelf PC CPUs and GPUs. They're a lot closer to a PC architecture wise than a Wii U is. Well the Xbox One is a little harder to program for since it doesn't have unified memory.

Millennium• 13 years ago

There are three things Nintendo understimated: how much HD would add to the cost to create a game, how little HD would add to the value of a game, and how badly third parties would insist on it anyway.

Nursie• 13 years ago

That's OK, been playing my Wii games in HD for ages on Dolphin...

No seriously, my only complaint about the Wii graphics was that they weren't very smooth on a 50 inch screen. They didn't need to be photo-realistic, but a bit less blocky would have been nice. Hence Dolphin.

m_st• 13 years ago

I think Nintendo, but also Sony and Microsoft will have a hard time convincing people to buy a console or portable once Apple releases iOS 7 with the rumored game controller support. You can be sure controllers will be made available for other popular phones too and in about a year there'll be plenty of good games on the market, for much less than classic console and portable games.

If you can get such a controller for less than 50$ and already have a smartphone or iPod touch like device, then I just don't see why you'd want to buy yet another gaming device.

Now give me a good and comfortable controller for my iPad and I won't buy any console anymore.

GVIrish2• 13 years ago

Look at the top selling games on consoles. Grand Theft Auto, Mario games, Halo, Call of Duty, Madden. How many of those games can be done on a tablet or phone? Zero.

Home console gaming currently offers gaming experiences that cannot be done on mobile devices. Mobile devices are only a threat to mobile consoles.

chaostheory3• 13 years ago

It's a given that the hardcore gamers will either stick with the consoles or go PC.

However it's good to note that GTA, Call of Duty, and Madden are all on the tablets and phones now. The publishers can't ignore the large casual gaming market.

ameen• 13 years ago

GTA / Madden | Fifa / CoD | Battlefield / Mario-like platformers are on iOS right now. Most of them quite decent. They'll get better if an official Controller (or) an API is launched. I think there's an opportunity for a proper platformer IP exclusively made for mobile seeing as how its exploding onto traditional consoles (Ouya/etc)

Remember Nintendo's investors threatened the board and wanted them to release Nintendo IP on Mobile appstores [1].

[1] http://www.idownloadblog.com/2011/09/15/nintendo-no-games-ap...

r0s• 13 years ago

This is hilarious.

parfe• 13 years ago

Lot of doom and gloom about the only gaming company that doesn't dump their product on the market at a loss. Sony and Microsoft piss away literally billions of dollars for years waiting for their consoles to become profitable.

And here's a redditor putting the Wii U game library in context: http://www.reddit.com/r/wiiu/comments/1gurfs/is_nintendo_pre... The Wii U receives slightly better than average third party support vs other Nintendo consoles.

rschmitty• 13 years ago

Really good book for those wanting more on Nintendo history: http://www.amazon.com/Super-Mario-Nintendo-Conquered-America...

I just finished the audio version during workouts, while it was not _thrilling_ it was definitely interesting

programminggeek• 13 years ago

Here's something people easily forget... The gamecube wasn't that successful either and the Wii was derided in the press for having a dumb name initially. Even the hardcore didn't quite "get it" at launch.

It wasn't until Wii Sports created this group gaming that was accessible to everybody in the family that it really took off.

The place where Nintendo is not going to lose to Sony or Microsoft is the family friendly entertainment that you just can't get on the PS3 or 360 (or PS4 or XBOne). I've got young children and I can't play Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty, Halo, etc. in front of them if I don't want to expose them to graphic violence, blood, etc.

Nintendo games biggest challenge is going to be on the dealing with "app" type consoles filled with tons of casual games that are cheap or free to play. Think Ouya or Apple TV or some other console with F2P or $1 games like Sonic, vs mario for $50+ and I think Nintendo's ability to create experiences people will pay a premium for is going to be harder, but not impossible.

Miyamoto Admits Nintendo Underestimated The Switch To HD

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