6 ms·

The Wii U and Virtual Boy aside, how do they do it? Even the 3DS people came around on. Really wild how much weird shit ('innovation'?) this company can get awa

The Wii U and Virtual Boy aside, how do they do it? Even the 3DS people came around on. Really wild how much weird shit ('innovation'?) this company can get away with.

jackson1442 5y ago
It's unlike anything else- with Xbox and PlayStation you can get mostly the same experience on the "opposite" console, or even on a PC. All of nintendo's consoles have followed a similar thread where it adds something that you just don't have on other consoles. Nintendo exclusives don't hurt, either. But Xbox and PS have exclusives, too.
- ajmurmann 5y ago
  It's interesting that for a lot of more hardcore gamers these innovations are often seem as a deterrent.
monocasa 5y ago
Realizing that specs are orthogonal to enjoyment, and putting out good games you can't get anywhere else.
- fallat 5y ago
  This. Nintendo understands FUN. That's what it comes down to.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    Every single other big developer seems to focus on high end graphics and extensive scripted stories, not sure how Nintendo managed to keep the focus on FUN instead. Graphics and stories are much easier to produce than FUN, Nintendo somehow managed to avoid that. I wonder if this is the culture barrier? Making a game people want to buy without a story or graphics is really hard, but Nintendo chooses that hard path anyway. Very different from the Hollywood games we see from USA where most of the money is spent on motion capture, graphics, effects, storytelling etc.
  - ecliptik 5y ago
    Game Maker’s s Toolkit had a great take on this, Nintendo - Putting Play First https://youtu.be/2u6HTG8LuXQ https://youtu.be/2u6HTG8LuXQ
ComputerGuru 5y ago
It's not even new - I know at least the GBC was intended to be hooked up and played on the TV from the very start.
wyre 5y ago
Pokémon, Legend of Zelda, and Smash Bros all sell consoles and their innovation is child-targeted so they innovate in weird ways cuz kids don’t care really about processor speed or graphics cores.
- xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
  I think you wildly underestimate who purchases these consoles. There is certainly an element of catering to a younger audience, but young adults are the real money maker. In my experience, at Pokemon release events in Japan and in the United States, the majority of attendees lining up are adults, most under 30.
  - lukas099 5y ago
    Those 30 year olds likely fell in love with those franchises when they were kids. i suspect Nintendo know this and see catering to kids as an investment.
  - cgriswald 5y ago
    What you’re describing is Nintendo reaping the rewards of having previously targeted kids. If you play a modern Pokémon game with a non-nostalgic eye (as it is easy for me to do, since I am too old to have grown up with them) you can see that however fun these games can be for an adult, they are definitely made to appeal to children.
    - ajmurmann 5y ago
      This is definitely true. I had a SNES, but skipped the N64 and also for some reason never played Pokemon as a kid. It's still reflected in what Nintendo games I like. Zelda a Link to the Past was my favorite game. So I loved A Link Between Worlds. However, I really struggled getting into any of the 3D Zeldas because of lack of Ocarina of Time nostalgia. Same with 3D Mario games. I bought Pokemon for 3DS during a lot g layover on my first trip to Japan. I thought this would be the perfect drosetup to get into the series but without nostalgia it's too easy, to repetitive and I honestly saw no reason to get more than a handful of Pokemon. Planting the seed early and reaping rewards for the entire life is definitely what works for them.
AussieWog93 5y ago
>The Wii U and Virtual Boy aside, how do they do it? Nintendo's top-tier exclusives, and a constant focus on end-to-end user experience. The PS4/Xbone (and even, to an extent, the 360/PS3) have so much jank when it comes to playing a game on them. My experience with The Last of Us Part II basically consisted of inserting the game, waiting nearly 25 minutes for it to install, going through that entire process again, twice, because there was a smudge on the disc, then waiting another 20 mins to download a 10GB patch, only to load up the game and sit through hours upon hours of boring-as-fuck intro content before I saw a single zombie. With Super Mario Odyssey, I put the game in, downloaded some optional 50MB patch in about 20 seconds, then started jumping around collecting coins and throwing my hat at everything. They just "get it" in ways that Sony and Microsoft don't (or at least, haven't "got" since the original PS2/Xbox era).
- maccard 5y ago
  > They just "get it" in ways that Sony and Microsoft don't (or at least, haven't "got" since the original PS2/Xbox era). I fundamentally disagree. There are some great games for the switch out there but they are absolutely hampered by Nintendo's outright refusal to provide modern features. Animal crossing was a lovely game except for the fact that it didn't support more than one island meaning either me or my girlfriend had to skip it. the "visit your friends island" experience is reminiscent of the late 90s in online gaming. Their support for peripherals has lead to this [0] being considered a reasonable solution to voice chat. That's before you get into the whole ninetendo switch online + expansion pack. [0] https://www.gamesradar.com/reactions-to-nintendo-switchs-terrible-voice-chat-solution-are-predictably-salty/ https://www.gamesradar.com/reactions-to-nintendo-switchs-ter...
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    Oh, of course. Nintendo don't "get" online gaming in the way that the other two seem to. The ROM hack of Melee made by one guy famously has better online than Smash Ultimate does. They are the only company still serving up the classic experience, though.
    - 5y ago
klodolph 5y ago
3DS was pretty long in the tooth when Switch came out.
- nirvdrum 5y ago
  I was really hoping for some sort of backwards compatibility. Nintendo had been doing that with their handheld for the past couple of generations. The dual screen would have had to have dealt with, naturally. But the 3DS has an amazing library. I have both systems now, and enjoy my Switch, but I still prefer the 3DS. I hope whatever the Switch successor is goes back to adding a backwards compatibility mode.
  - klodolph 5y ago
    Considering the Switch hardware is just incredibly boring — ARM, capacitive touchscreen, standard gamepad — I’m hoping it will have good backwards compatibility for a while yet. Just like the DS and GameCube.
kipchak 5y ago
I have to imagine the changes have to have been somewhat more driven by developers coming up with fun gameplay ideas while messing with new hardware. Super Mario 64 DS for example includes a collection of minigames with varying gameplay mechanics that explore different ways to use the dual screens along with the pack-in metroid demo, the Wii U had Nintendo Land, and the 3ds faceraiders, Mii Plaza and some AR demos, which all seem like polished proof of concepts for how to take advantage of the new hardware.
- WaxProlix 5y ago
  And fostering a culture at the upper echelons of management that enables, encourages, and embraces that mentality - that's the magic. Decades of fun goofy shit, and it hasn't yet been eaten by the business turds.
  - bitwize 5y ago
    Nintendo also has a culture of sharing institutional knowledge regarding game design. Shigeru Miyamoto is not very involved in the day to day of Mario and Zelda development anymore. Other designers and producers who have worked with and learned from him have taken the reins of those franchises and taken them to new heights. Contrast that with, say, Sega, who never found their footing with the Sonic franchise ever since the late 90s. Sonic games were developed by whatever developers happened to be available -- sometimes American or mixed Japanese-American teams; and the design ideas from the first few games that made them so great were lost once new hardware generations came along that couldn't use the original engine code. Sonic went a whole console generation (fifth generation, Saturn era) without a new full game in the main series, and the games featuring him after that have been a real mixed bag. (No, Adventure 2 is a mess. The controls are some of the most slippery imprecise shit in the 6th generation.)
bitwize 5y ago
It's called Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology. It was Gunpei Yokoi's credo. Other console makers start off with, okay, we are going to design a system around the latest and best technology and really wow people with our graphics. Nintendo starts off with, what can we build using old technology that we can pick up for a song and second-source easily if need be? So it becomes a question of, how do you combine these old technologies in new ways that would have a fun gameplay story in them? When you do LTwWT, you really have to focus on gameplay and fun, because you don't have much to fall back on. And then on the software side the question becomes, what kinds of games can we write for this system that a) play to the system's strengths; b) look, sound, and feel great, even with the hardware's more limited capabilities? Developing for a Nintendo system is not for everybody. It's like being a Mac developer only more so: you have to write software that integrates smoothly with the hardware and contributes to the grand narrative of the vendor.

The Wii U and Virtual Boy aside, how do they do it? Even the 3DS people came around on. Really wild how much weird shit ('innovation'?) this company can get away with.

jackson1442 5y ago

It's unlike anything else- with Xbox and PlayStation you can get mostly the same experience on the "opposite" console, or even on a PC. All of nintendo's consoles have followed a similar thread where it adds something that you just don't have on other consoles. Nintendo exclusives don't hurt, either. But Xbox and PS have exclusives, too.

ajmurmann 5y ago
It's interesting that for a lot of more hardcore gamers these innovations are often seem as a deterrent.

monocasa 5y ago

Realizing that specs are orthogonal to enjoyment, and putting out good games you can't get anywhere else.

fallat 5y ago
This. Nintendo understands FUN. That's what it comes down to.
- Jensson 5y ago
  Every single other big developer seems to focus on high end graphics and extensive scripted stories, not sure how Nintendo managed to keep the focus on FUN instead. Graphics and stories are much easier to produce than FUN, Nintendo somehow managed to avoid that. I wonder if this is the culture barrier? Making a game people want to buy without a story or graphics is really hard, but Nintendo chooses that hard path anyway. Very different from the Hollywood games we see from USA where most of the money is spent on motion capture, graphics, effects, storytelling etc.
- ecliptik 5y ago
  Game Maker’s s Toolkit had a great take on this, Nintendo - Putting Play First https://youtu.be/2u6HTG8LuXQ https://youtu.be/2u6HTG8LuXQ

ComputerGuru 5y ago

It's not even new - I know at least the GBC was intended to be hooked up and played on the TV from the very start.

wyre 5y ago

Pokémon, Legend of Zelda, and Smash Bros all sell consoles and their innovation is child-targeted so they innovate in weird ways cuz kids don’t care really about processor speed or graphics cores.

xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
I think you wildly underestimate who purchases these consoles. There is certainly an element of catering to a younger audience, but young adults are the real money maker. In my experience, at Pokemon release events in Japan and in the United States, the majority of attendees lining up are adults, most under 30.
- lukas099 5y ago
  Those 30 year olds likely fell in love with those franchises when they were kids. i suspect Nintendo know this and see catering to kids as an investment.
- cgriswald 5y ago
  What you’re describing is Nintendo reaping the rewards of having previously targeted kids. If you play a modern Pokémon game with a non-nostalgic eye (as it is easy for me to do, since I am too old to have grown up with them) you can see that however fun these games can be for an adult, they are definitely made to appeal to children.
  - ajmurmann 5y ago
    This is definitely true. I had a SNES, but skipped the N64 and also for some reason never played Pokemon as a kid. It's still reflected in what Nintendo games I like. Zelda a Link to the Past was my favorite game. So I loved A Link Between Worlds. However, I really struggled getting into any of the 3D Zeldas because of lack of Ocarina of Time nostalgia. Same with 3D Mario games. I bought Pokemon for 3DS during a lot g layover on my first trip to Japan. I thought this would be the perfect drosetup to get into the series but without nostalgia it's too easy, to repetitive and I honestly saw no reason to get more than a handful of Pokemon. Planting the seed early and reaping rewards for the entire life is definitely what works for them.

AussieWog93 5y ago

>The Wii U and Virtual Boy aside, how do they do it? Nintendo's top-tier exclusives, and a constant focus on end-to-end user experience. The PS4/Xbone (and even, to an extent, the 360/PS3) have so much jank when it comes to playing a game on them. My experience with The Last of Us Part II basically consisted of inserting the game, waiting nearly 25 minutes for it to install, going through that entire process again, twice, because there was a smudge on the disc, then waiting another 20 mins to download a 10GB patch, only to load up the game and sit through hours upon hours of boring-as-fuck intro content before I saw a single zombie. With Super Mario Odyssey, I put the game in, downloaded some optional 50MB patch in about 20 seconds, then started jumping around collecting coins and throwing my hat at everything. They just "get it" in ways that Sony and Microsoft don't (or at least, haven't "got" since the original PS2/Xbox era).

maccard 5y ago
> They just "get it" in ways that Sony and Microsoft don't (or at least, haven't "got" since the original PS2/Xbox era). I fundamentally disagree. There are some great games for the switch out there but they are absolutely hampered by Nintendo's outright refusal to provide modern features. Animal crossing was a lovely game except for the fact that it didn't support more than one island meaning either me or my girlfriend had to skip it. the "visit your friends island" experience is reminiscent of the late 90s in online gaming. Their support for peripherals has lead to this [0] being considered a reasonable solution to voice chat. That's before you get into the whole ninetendo switch online + expansion pack. [0] https://www.gamesradar.com/reactions-to-nintendo-switchs-terrible-voice-chat-solution-are-predictably-salty/ https://www.gamesradar.com/reactions-to-nintendo-switchs-ter...
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  Oh, of course. Nintendo don't "get" online gaming in the way that the other two seem to. The ROM hack of Melee made by one guy famously has better online than Smash Ultimate does. They are the only company still serving up the classic experience, though.
  - 5y ago

klodolph 5y ago

3DS was pretty long in the tooth when Switch came out.

nirvdrum 5y ago
I was really hoping for some sort of backwards compatibility. Nintendo had been doing that with their handheld for the past couple of generations. The dual screen would have had to have dealt with, naturally. But the 3DS has an amazing library. I have both systems now, and enjoy my Switch, but I still prefer the 3DS. I hope whatever the Switch successor is goes back to adding a backwards compatibility mode.
- klodolph 5y ago
  Considering the Switch hardware is just incredibly boring — ARM, capacitive touchscreen, standard gamepad — I’m hoping it will have good backwards compatibility for a while yet. Just like the DS and GameCube.

kipchak 5y ago

I have to imagine the changes have to have been somewhat more driven by developers coming up with fun gameplay ideas while messing with new hardware. Super Mario 64 DS for example includes a collection of minigames with varying gameplay mechanics that explore different ways to use the dual screens along with the pack-in metroid demo, the Wii U had Nintendo Land, and the 3ds faceraiders, Mii Plaza and some AR demos, which all seem like polished proof of concepts for how to take advantage of the new hardware.

WaxProlix 5y ago
And fostering a culture at the upper echelons of management that enables, encourages, and embraces that mentality - that's the magic. Decades of fun goofy shit, and it hasn't yet been eaten by the business turds.
- bitwize 5y ago
  Nintendo also has a culture of sharing institutional knowledge regarding game design. Shigeru Miyamoto is not very involved in the day to day of Mario and Zelda development anymore. Other designers and producers who have worked with and learned from him have taken the reins of those franchises and taken them to new heights. Contrast that with, say, Sega, who never found their footing with the Sonic franchise ever since the late 90s. Sonic games were developed by whatever developers happened to be available -- sometimes American or mixed Japanese-American teams; and the design ideas from the first few games that made them so great were lost once new hardware generations came along that couldn't use the original engine code. Sonic went a whole console generation (fifth generation, Saturn era) without a new full game in the main series, and the games featuring him after that have been a real mixed bag. (No, Adventure 2 is a mess. The controls are some of the most slippery imprecise shit in the 6th generation.)

bitwize 5y ago

It's called Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology. It was Gunpei Yokoi's credo. Other console makers start off with, okay, we are going to design a system around the latest and best technology and really wow people with our graphics. Nintendo starts off with, what can we build using old technology that we can pick up for a song and second-source easily if need be? So it becomes a question of, how do you combine these old technologies in new ways that would have a fun gameplay story in them? When you do LTwWT, you really have to focus on gameplay and fun, because you don't have much to fall back on. And then on the software side the question becomes, what kinds of games can we write for this system that a) play to the system's strengths; b) look, sound, and feel great, even with the hardware's more limited capabilities? Developing for a Nintendo system is not for everybody. It's like being a Mac developer only more so: you have to write software that integrates smoothly with the hardware and contributes to the grand narrative of the vendor.