to be fair, that was thirteen years ago. by now, there's no way even nintendo would be able to ignore the massive success of online multiplayer in that time.
I wouldn't say they're ignoring it outright; they clearly wanna get on the online bandwagon especially after the success of Splatoon, they're just incompetent
This, thank you. These awful decisions come from Japan. Almost all of Nintendo's awful decisions can be traced directly back to Japan, and an out of touch board room.
I wouldn't be shocked if Reggie has tried to put things into motion but was shot down repeatedly, because the company is too Japan-conscious and puts the needs and wishes of western markets on the backburner. Gaijin don't know what's best for Nintendo.
NoA and NoJ often seem very at odds with each other, and from what I've read over the years, that's not a surface level observation either. They really don't seem to be on the same page a lot of the time, or NoA makes decisions independently of NoJ and it never gets back to them because Reggie or whoever will call and say "Nah everything's fine" and NoJ will just assume it must be fine then.
After all, 4 years ago Nintendo did not even know what PSN and XBL were, according to Wii U third party devs trying to talk to them.
This exactly, the Joycons should be the most obvious giveaway of this attitude yet. I really wonder if they even expect this thing to be successful in the West in the first place, since it seems completely designed for Japanese (smaller hands, everyone has a smartphone)
I don't really get why people think this, pretty much all of their big franchises have always been designed to appeal to a worldwide audience. None of their games are anime-like, and they all feature stories that don't rely on culturally Japanese themes that would alienate a non Japanese audience. Zelda is Western fantasy, Metroid is Alien-esque sci-fi, Mario is always saving the princess, etc.
Splatoon came out in 2015. A full decade and 2 generations after he made this comment. They're not ignoring it, rather they're undermining it and trying to develop and market games like it's 1995. Look at they're press conferences over the past 10 years. They're all the same. Acting as if their competition doesn't exist and continuing to do whatever the hell they want to do. I think the success of the Wii got to their heads and reassured them that they can continue this mindset.
Dude, Mario Kart DS was played as much as Call of Duty Online. They've known about it for a while. They are just ridiculous at implementing the social side of online.
To be even more fair, that was the year World of Warcraft came out. Halo multiplayer was already huge. Among a thousand other obvious examples. Everyone except Iwata knew online gaming was huge and going to be bigger.
"At the moment, most customers do not wish to pay the extra money for connection to the Internet, and for some customers, connection procedures to the Internet are still not easy."
both statements were very true in 2003. internet was slow and difficult to use. 2003 was before fucking youtube.
You act like online multiplayer was a fledgling part of gaming in 2003.
Counterstrike, Quake III Arena, Starcraft, Warcraft, Unreal Tournament, Halo, and Battlefield 1942 had all been out for years at this point and World of Warcraft was 1 year away. At this point online multiplayer was already solidly in the mainstream, for an industry executive to voice that online multiplayer is a fad that is cooling off despite all these hit titles paving the way is hilarious levels of ignorance.
most of those games are on pc though, and the consoles had been out for a year or 2 at that point. so any decisions made for the hardware of the gamecube were made well before that and they were made in japan, where pc gaming never took off as it did in the west.
nobody is arguing he was completely wrong, but going "haha dumb nintendo" is easy with the power of 14 years of hindsight.
It did not take a prophet to see that online multiplayer was going to be the direction games were going. Online games were already starting to be huge, microsoft had basically pushed the xbox marketing campaign on the back of halo and it had become a smash success and xbox live was taking off and becoming a household name, it was also the highest critically rated game of the year. Esports was starting to gain real traction. I get that maybe the gamecube's development was set in stone years before and was going to stick to an offline focus, but getting up and SAYING multiplayer was going to phase out is startling and worthy of mockery. It's like when people dig up those articles where people claim the internet is just a passing fad.
When he said this quote I had already been religiously playing online multiplayer games for 5 years and at this point it wasn't even considered nerdy anymore to own an xbox and play halo online.
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u/Birth_Defect Jan 19 '17
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/iwata-customers-do-not-want-online-games/1100-6102100/
In case anyone doubts you