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At some point, the games industry decided it wanted to be interactive Hollywood, and the consequences are entirely predictable. Meanwhile, Nintendo just quietly

At some point, the games industry decided it wanted to be interactive Hollywood, and the consequences are entirely predictable. Meanwhile, Nintendo just quietly shipped 3.8 million units of Tomodachi Life in two weeks, and 4 million of Pokopia in five. They're making actual games. Sony's obsession with prestige cinematic bloat, like Xbox, has also put them in a slow-motion death spiral that's going to become painfully obvious in a few years.

manytimesaway 3mo ago
Things are not that black and white. Nintendo also shipped Metroid Prime 4, with massive delays and unsatisfied customers, following the same "interactive Hollywood" philosophy which disappointed Metroid fans. Same thing goes for Star Fox, a remake of a remake of a remake, with poor visual and dialogue choices. And meanwhile, the same silent push for digital-only, forced upgrades and the like...
- speak_plainly 3mo ago
  What I mean by "interactive Hollywood" is a game with a $200M+ budget that relies entirely on high-fidelity graphics and cinematic stories to differentiate itself, while offering almost zero new gameplay innovation. Neither of your examples fit that description. Metroid Prime 4 wasn't chasing Hollywood cinematic design; it was a highly targeted attempt by producer Kensuke Tanabe to make a tight, isolated first-person exploration formula resonate (especially in Japan where it has consistently failed). Its goals are mechanical, not cinematic. Meanwhile, Star Fox is a classic arcade rail-shooter remake with modernized cutscenes, not a prestige movie-game. Early sales data shows it's actually working well, too, having just debuted at #1 on the physical charts in Japan and nearly doubling Star Fox Zero's launch week in the UK. Ultimately, Nintendo operates like a Consumer Packaged Goods company. They treat their library of IPs like a diversified product portfolio rather than betting the farm on individual interactive movies. They use massive, high-margin, mechanics-first games like Tomodachi Life and Pokopia to generate enormous cash reserves. They then use those profits to subsidize legacy IPs like Metroid or Star Fox to keep core fans happy and feed their broader brand ecosystem. Because Nintendo spreads its risk across a wide spectrum of lower-budget games, they can easily absorb a minor product flop. Sony's interactive Hollywood model sinks $300M into a single basket, meaning one bad miss can completely wreck a studio.
  - manytimesaway 3mo ago
    Ah, my bad. I agree with your analysis. Although Nintendo is still following the path of "gaming enshittification" with lesser budgets; and I would argue that Star Fox mostly sells because there's barely anything to play on that 500$ thing...
- saghm 3mo ago
  > Nintendo also shipped Metroid Prime 4, with massive delays and unsatisfied customers, following the same "interactive Hollywood" philosophy which disappointed Metroid fans. I'm not convinced that Metroid at least really is a great data point for "Nintendo is ruining things in-house". From Wikipedia[1]: > Nintendo announced Metroid Prime 4 with a teaser trailer during the Nintendo Direct presentation at E3 2017, and announced that Retro Studios, who developed the previous main Prime games, would not be involved.[15][16] In February 2018, Eurogamer reported that Prime 4 was being developed by Bandai Namco Studios in Japan and Singapore. > In January 2019, the Nintendo EPD manager Shinya Takahashi announced that development had restarted under Retro with Tanabe remaining as producer. Takahashi said the previous studio had not met Nintendo's standards and that the decision to restart was not taken lightly.[21] Shortly after, Nintendo reevaluated Prime 4 after noticing changing attitudes towards open-world games, but maintained the direction as the development was already taking longer than planned. The team ignored new developments in action and shooting games to prioritize the adventure elements. There's a perspective where this is almost the exact opposite of the problem being discussed about Microsoft. They chose to let it get developed externally, suffered delays, and by the time they moved it back in-house, the ecosystem had moved from under them. They probably could have chosen to rethink everything and delay it further, but they also arguably could have avoided having to make that call by keeping it in-house and letting the studio who made the previous entries work on it from the start and landing it in time that the original vision still fit what people wanted. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metroid_Prime_4:_Beyond#Development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metroid_Prime_4:_Beyond#Develo...
  - manytimesaway 3mo ago
    My point wasn't about Nintendo ruining things in-house rather than them following the exact same trends than Sony & Microsoft, only a few years late. MP4 is what OP was talking about, an "interactive Hollywood" experience that betrays previous Metroids, adds discutable open-world design cues, and locks features behind $30 figures.
    - Apocryphon 3mo ago
      This isn't the first time Nintendo has outsourced a disappointing Metroid game, if Other M is any indication. Remains to be seen if this is part of a larger trend for that company.
- butlike 3mo ago
  I'm curious about the Star Fox comment. Tell me if I got this wrong: A remake (1) of a remake (2) of a remake (3) (1) A remake (Switch 2 Starfox, a remake of StarFox 64) (2) StarFox 64 (A remake of Super Nintendo's StarFox) (3) ??? I don't know what the 3rd level of remake you mention is, but I'm curious!
  - WorldMaker 3mo ago
    Between 1 and 2 was the 3DS remake which added levels and cleaned up the story some. The Switch Starfox includes those parts, too, from what I've heard.
    - philistine 3mo ago
      Nope. There are no new levels on 3DS.
  - manytimesaway 3mo ago
    Star Fox (SNES), Star Fox 2 (SNES mini), Star Fox 64, Star Fox 64 3D, Star Fox Zero and Star Fox (Switch 2), while having minor gameplay differences, are all retellings of the same in-game story (the eponymous Lylat Wars).
    - GoofGarage 3mo ago
      Moreover, Star Fox was kind of... programmed by teenagers. Miyamoto is credited as both the producer and designer, but both Cuthbert and Goddard were 18 or 19, and Wombell (artist and designer) was maybe in his mid-20s. Star Fox's development is an incredibly wild story where British teenagers argued what the SNES could do with bespoke hardware, and they ended up being shipped out to produce it because Nintendo felt they couldn't ever do it themselves. It all started with Argonaut's demo of what would eventually be released in Japan as "X". Entirely software-based 3D, on the original Game Boy. There's actually a very humble quote by Miyamoto where he learned that someone can't just get better as a function of age and experience, after he clearly realized that these teenagers could produce something no one else in Nintendo ever had a hope of. Perhaps it's why the franchise has done so little -- Nintendo's just not in a remotely similar headspace the Argonaut lads were. ----- Fun videos on the subject: "The Teenagers Who Taught Nintendo How to Make Star Fox" - People Make Games, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to4Ekb0kXiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to4Ekb0kXiE "The Making of Star Fox" - Strafefox, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDhNT2Qv-Mo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDhNT2Qv-Mo
- wincy 3mo ago
  I’ll concede that Metroid Prime 4 has been sitting on my shelf. But Star Fox? Phenomenal. Such a fun game. Luckily I have the pro controller so I could map A to the back paddle or else my poor old tendons couldn’t handle the rapid fire shooting required at the high levels, but I’ve had an absolute BLAST playing the remake.
- cyberrock 3mo ago
  I can understand complaints about Metroid but Star Fox fans were probably expecting jack squat from the start of the year. Putting it in the last movie is a pretty strong indicator for more content. A lot of Nintendo's remakes end up being training exercises for the real deal, such as Metroid 2 remake to Dread. Meanwhile, some of the laid off devs here might have never seen a properly produced title with zero crunch and anomalies. Not every title should be an auteur title, but we have too many auteurs and we want more auteurs.
  - rawbot 3mo ago
    Metroid 2 Remake, for all its warts (many), is at least a full-on reimagined remake. Star Fox 64's latest remake, is mostly a carbon-copy of the original, which already had an "HD" remake on the 3DS.
- cush 3mo ago
  There is absolutely nothing wrong with remaking a 30 year old game if it’s done correctly, and Nintendo usually does it right.
piltdownman 3mo ago
To some extent - but you can't get away with Hollywood Accounting Practices in the same way. Also one must consider the likes of Hideo Kojima who can sell ~7 million copies of a new IP that is effectively a cinematic Walking Simulator as an Auteur acrimoniously splitting from the traditional studio system. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 also shipped over 5.4 million copies as a AA, in what is also arguably an interactive cinematic on-rails RPG.
- theragra 3mo ago
  Nah, expedition has enough of a game in it. Parry mechanic is pretty addictive, and gameplay is kinda fun. Exploration, too, is strictly gaming aspect, not cinematic. God of war is plainly movie on rails compared to E33
- 999900000999 3mo ago
  A walking simulator that has you fighting between multiple dimensions and is one of the best looking games of its generation.
- dsfnajlsdfnafn 3mo ago
  > acrimoniously splitting from the traditional studio system. Yeah, he split from the traditional studio system to create... his own traditional studio system. Kojima is precisely what happens when you stop thinking of games as actual an interactive entertainment format and start thinking of it as a "cinematic experience" instead. Death Stranding is only a game by the narrowest of margins. What it is is a movie with Kojima's Spotify 'favourites' list as the soundtrack that so happens to have one interactive element or two thrown in there for good measure. It's pretty telling that all he's done after splitting away from Konami and surrounding himself with his own sycophantic group of developers is Death Stranding. Kojima is the direct result and pretty much the face of a lot that is wrong with the games industry right now.
  - bigstrat2003 3mo ago
    > Kojima is precisely what happens when you stop thinking of games as actual an interactive entertainment format and start thinking of it as a "cinematic experience" instead. And for Western devs, we have Rockstar doing that. RDR2 is a wonderful movie, but a pretty poor game. Unfortunately, they forgot what medium they were working with.
wincy 3mo ago
My kids begged for me to buy Tomodachi Life and Pokemon Pokopia and they’ve been absolute smash hits in the house. Pokemon got me hooked for a month or two until I mostly beat it, and the kids play Tomodachi Life every day and have funny little stories to tell. So many modern games just aren’t fun, it doesn’t matter what the graphics look like if the game is boring.
- thih9 3mo ago
  Sandboxes. Minecraft was one. Now it’s getting called a platform, at least in the submitted article. That’s good for engagement and monetization I guess, but sounds way less fun.
  - Cthulhu_ 3mo ago
    Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, MMOs, Second Life, there's heaps of sandbox games where people can just hang out and do their own thing. It's the metaverse that Facebook / zucc just completely misunderstood. They could've just bought any one of these titles and they'd have a better metaverse than whatever it was they pumped billions into.
  - philistine 3mo ago
    Pokopia and Tomodatchi only look like sandboxes at first glance. They are far more directed. They're not a perfect square with you in the middle. They're a star shape with you in the middle.
    - dieselgate 3mo ago
      I genuinely don't understand the relevance of the square vs. star map layout - does that matter or is there an analogy I don't understand?
      - philistine 3mo ago
        It’s not literally the map of the game: it’s about what the player can do. A square means total freedom. A star means freedom to choose guarded experiences with internal choices.
bashmelek 3mo ago
That is encouraging, but my stock portfolio paints a different picture. Nintendo is unfortunately doing terribly this year. I still believe in their core mission, even if some of their litigiousness and anti consumer practices have put me off
- sunaookami 3mo ago
  Nintendo is also a Japanese company and japanese stocks aren't doing great due to their economy and the weak yen. Also, stock price does not correlate with good games or a healthy business.
  - dec0dedab0de 3mo ago
    Nintendo is also much older than Sony and Microsoft. They don't really chase short term gains to appease shareholders.
  - kanwisher 3mo ago
    Weak yen should be great for Nintendo, most of their costs are Japanese staff which are now cheaper. Maybe the local Japanese market is softer. More likely the trouble is the increasing memory pricing is eating their margins
- johnnyanmac 3mo ago
  Basing an art form on your stock portfolio is a good half of everything wrong with the industry. And it's not surprising Nintendo isn't doing well in this clown market. They are taking a hit because they resisted pressures from shareholders who wanted them to raise prices on its new system. Nintendo eventually gave in, but with a much smaller price increase and a delayed effect from announcement to implementation (~4 months forewarning). And on top of all that they are not hyping AI to the moon. And I haven't even gotten to the overall economic climate of Japan yet. Nintendo's stock falls would happen regardless of if they followed the above. These are good, pro-consumer moves. It shows that more companies need to think past next quarter and resist the whims of people who don't have your company's long term interests in mind. You're the expert here, not them.
flaunf221 3mo ago
I'll personally take spirals, ups and downs of the whole industry over Nintendo selling yet another Mario, Zelda and Pokemon for 40 years straight.
- johnnyanmac 3mo ago
  I'm glad Nintendo does a bit of everything. Taking the time to try out new IPs, give older ones a chance to rise, and go truly off in the weeds with series no one else can really do (the Fit series and Labo being some of the biggest examples). It really feels like there's something for you there, no matter what kind of games you like (unless you only play the GTAs/CODs/Maddens of the industry). Even if you're not actually someone who games. My mom loves the Fit games.
  - flaunf221 3mo ago
    Nintendo does family-friendly games. Which have their place. However if for example movie industry had its crisis, and someone were to point out how Pixar is doing great, and latest Toy Story is a big hit (it is btw), I'd say "And what if I want to watch anything that is not a family-friendly movie?". Could Nintendo ever make Baldur's Gate 3? Not in a million years. Doesn't fall into children-friendly bucket and so would completely run against Nintendo brand image.
    - lucas_t_a 3mo ago
      Baldur's Gate 3 and other games would them just release on a nintendo console, i don't think nintendo would outright refuse to take a whole sect of kinds of titles, the companies making the console and setting the ecosystem do make a difference but you exaggerate a bit.
dzonga 3mo ago
Sony - having cinematic bloat makes sense for them. They've nailed the story driven games such as Last of Us. however for Xbox they were not really good at story driven games, but good at Live Games such as Halo. with Live Games - you iterate on game play, maps, skins - live events i.e community building without alienating people by dabbing in social justice. End of day - these are all marketing problems & lack of capable leadership who knows their core audience.
LunaSea 3mo ago
Nintendo survives on a few banger licenses. Innovation left the house a long time ago.
- honeycrispy 3mo ago
  I find it really sad that the GameCube and N64 were where they were the most innovative and also happens to be where they floundered the most in sales.
- johnnyanmac 3mo ago
  I don't know how you can say that when some of their most recent well received games include Tomodachi life and Rhythm Heaven. Those aren't the kinds of games made from those maximizing bean counters.
  - LunaSea 3mo ago
    Rhythm Heaven is a 18 year old and Tomodachi life is a 13 year old license.
    - johnnyanmac 3mo ago
      Yes. And an environment like Microsoft wouldn't think a dormant, niche franchise like that would be able to achieve an overwhelming success after 2 generation. But sure, if you want the last new IP, Nintendo has played it safe with Arms and focused more on bolstering dormant IP's on the switch. With Animal Crossing and Zelda in particular finding new winds. Splatoon was their last huge success as a new IP in 2015. Labo came in 2018, but I have no idea how to evaluate the success of that.
      - Gigachad 3mo ago
        Microsoft is sitting on a bunch of these they will probably never use. Wish we would get another Viva Piñata game.
    - extraduder_ire 3mo ago
cgh 3mo ago
Elden Ring sold 30 million copies. Even Bloodborne, a PS4 exclusive, sold over 9 million copies.
aranelsurion 3mo ago
> Sony's obsession with prestige cinematic bloat Sony has been pretty successful with that though, and there was a time where they pushed many fan favourites in the cinematic genre. They aren’t arcadey games like Nintendo ones of course, but something like The Last of Us has its own value and audience. It sells too.
- bigyabai 3mo ago
  Sony's had to bet the house on those types of blockbuster, crowd-pleasing experiences. The PS5 has yet to crest the cinematic peaks of the PS4 (PT, Bloodborne, Uncharted, etc), so people are rightfully getting a little worried that this gamble won't pan out. The bestselling PS5 exclusive is currently Ghost of Yōtei, behind eight better-selling crossplatform titles. Nintendo's exclusives outsell Sony's by a significant margin, and they're usually simpler games that are broadly accessible. They leaned the right lessons from the indie gaming boom, and didn't try to resist it by pumping billions into making the next Overwatch killer or whatever.
- KennyBlanken 3mo ago
  I played TLoU and while the story was interesting, the feeling of being steered, forcefully and constantly, was very frustrating. "Press this button exactly when the game tells you" and "as soon as you cross this exact point, this exact enemy will appear" - that's year-2000-ish (or worse) gaming tech. The final confrontation was essentially ruined because the designers apparently never thought you'd use a sniper rifle, so you can set off a deafening shot that kills an enemy and the other enemies don't even notice the shot because it apparently happened outside their detection range.
- johnnyanmac 3mo ago
  They have. Which makes this hard skew towards live service all the more baffling. Having your premier studio basically miss the generation trying to make a multiplayer version of one of these games then cancelling it really shows how much they overextended. And it's not like it had to be Naughty Dog: They had some dozen titles published or in house being prepared (including one that sunk what could have been an amazing remaster/remake studio). And in the end they really had one come out as the dark horse, with one megaflop, and 2-3 stragglers that don't seem long for this world (one of which seems to be taken down the existing, safe life service Sony spent billions on). Gen 9 will be a huge blemish carried by their very smart acquisitions of Insomniac and Housemarque, with some decent support coming from Santa Monica and Guerilla. But at what cost?
zeratax 3mo ago
sony's cinematic games sold well and are well regarded, but when was the last time they released any such game or even just a single player game? when they rerereleased the last of us?
account42 3mo ago
If the game industry managed to come even close to the top writing and cinematography from Hollywood then it would already be much better than it is now. Instead the part of Hollywood they are chasing seems to be the big budget wide appeal movies that will be forgotten in a decade.
gunsle 3mo ago
Yeah, I kind of loathe the cinematic direction Sony and others have taken. Their games aren't really innovative or fun but people lap them up for being B tier movies. It makes no sense to me. They don't bother making Bloodborne anymore, just more open world cinematic slop like Horizon.
fleroviumna 3mo ago
[dead]

manytimesaway 3mo ago

Things are not that black and white. Nintendo also shipped Metroid Prime 4, with massive delays and unsatisfied customers, following the same "interactive Hollywood" philosophy which disappointed Metroid fans. Same thing goes for Star Fox, a remake of a remake of a remake, with poor visual and dialogue choices. And meanwhile, the same silent push for digital-only, forced upgrades and the like...

speak_plainly 3mo ago
What I mean by "interactive Hollywood" is a game with a $200M+ budget that relies entirely on high-fidelity graphics and cinematic stories to differentiate itself, while offering almost zero new gameplay innovation. Neither of your examples fit that description. Metroid Prime 4 wasn't chasing Hollywood cinematic design; it was a highly targeted attempt by producer Kensuke Tanabe to make a tight, isolated first-person exploration formula resonate (especially in Japan where it has consistently failed). Its goals are mechanical, not cinematic. Meanwhile, Star Fox is a classic arcade rail-shooter remake with modernized cutscenes, not a prestige movie-game. Early sales data shows it's actually working well, too, having just debuted at #1 on the physical charts in Japan and nearly doubling Star Fox Zero's launch week in the UK. Ultimately, Nintendo operates like a Consumer Packaged Goods company. They treat their library of IPs like a diversified product portfolio rather than betting the farm on individual interactive movies. They use massive, high-margin, mechanics-first games like Tomodachi Life and Pokopia to generate enormous cash reserves. They then use those profits to subsidize legacy IPs like Metroid or Star Fox to keep core fans happy and feed their broader brand ecosystem. Because Nintendo spreads its risk across a wide spectrum of lower-budget games, they can easily absorb a minor product flop. Sony's interactive Hollywood model sinks $300M into a single basket, meaning one bad miss can completely wreck a studio.
- manytimesaway 3mo ago
  Ah, my bad. I agree with your analysis. Although Nintendo is still following the path of "gaming enshittification" with lesser budgets; and I would argue that Star Fox mostly sells because there's barely anything to play on that 500$ thing...
saghm 3mo ago
> Nintendo also shipped Metroid Prime 4, with massive delays and unsatisfied customers, following the same "interactive Hollywood" philosophy which disappointed Metroid fans. I'm not convinced that Metroid at least really is a great data point for "Nintendo is ruining things in-house". From Wikipedia[1]: > Nintendo announced Metroid Prime 4 with a teaser trailer during the Nintendo Direct presentation at E3 2017, and announced that Retro Studios, who developed the previous main Prime games, would not be involved.[15][16] In February 2018, Eurogamer reported that Prime 4 was being developed by Bandai Namco Studios in Japan and Singapore. > In January 2019, the Nintendo EPD manager Shinya Takahashi announced that development had restarted under Retro with Tanabe remaining as producer. Takahashi said the previous studio had not met Nintendo's standards and that the decision to restart was not taken lightly.[21] Shortly after, Nintendo reevaluated Prime 4 after noticing changing attitudes towards open-world games, but maintained the direction as the development was already taking longer than planned. The team ignored new developments in action and shooting games to prioritize the adventure elements. There's a perspective where this is almost the exact opposite of the problem being discussed about Microsoft. They chose to let it get developed externally, suffered delays, and by the time they moved it back in-house, the ecosystem had moved from under them. They probably could have chosen to rethink everything and delay it further, but they also arguably could have avoided having to make that call by keeping it in-house and letting the studio who made the previous entries work on it from the start and landing it in time that the original vision still fit what people wanted. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metroid_Prime_4:_Beyond#Development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metroid_Prime_4:_Beyond#Develo...
- manytimesaway 3mo ago
  My point wasn't about Nintendo ruining things in-house rather than them following the exact same trends than Sony & Microsoft, only a few years late. MP4 is what OP was talking about, an "interactive Hollywood" experience that betrays previous Metroids, adds discutable open-world design cues, and locks features behind $30 figures.
  - Apocryphon 3mo ago
    This isn't the first time Nintendo has outsourced a disappointing Metroid game, if Other M is any indication. Remains to be seen if this is part of a larger trend for that company.
butlike 3mo ago
I'm curious about the Star Fox comment. Tell me if I got this wrong: A remake (1) of a remake (2) of a remake (3) (1) A remake (Switch 2 Starfox, a remake of StarFox 64) (2) StarFox 64 (A remake of Super Nintendo's StarFox) (3) ??? I don't know what the 3rd level of remake you mention is, but I'm curious!
- WorldMaker 3mo ago
  Between 1 and 2 was the 3DS remake which added levels and cleaned up the story some. The Switch Starfox includes those parts, too, from what I've heard.
  - philistine 3mo ago
    Nope. There are no new levels on 3DS.
- manytimesaway 3mo ago
  Star Fox (SNES), Star Fox 2 (SNES mini), Star Fox 64, Star Fox 64 3D, Star Fox Zero and Star Fox (Switch 2), while having minor gameplay differences, are all retellings of the same in-game story (the eponymous Lylat Wars).
  - GoofGarage 3mo ago
    Moreover, Star Fox was kind of... programmed by teenagers. Miyamoto is credited as both the producer and designer, but both Cuthbert and Goddard were 18 or 19, and Wombell (artist and designer) was maybe in his mid-20s. Star Fox's development is an incredibly wild story where British teenagers argued what the SNES could do with bespoke hardware, and they ended up being shipped out to produce it because Nintendo felt they couldn't ever do it themselves. It all started with Argonaut's demo of what would eventually be released in Japan as "X". Entirely software-based 3D, on the original Game Boy. There's actually a very humble quote by Miyamoto where he learned that someone can't just get better as a function of age and experience, after he clearly realized that these teenagers could produce something no one else in Nintendo ever had a hope of. Perhaps it's why the franchise has done so little -- Nintendo's just not in a remotely similar headspace the Argonaut lads were. ----- Fun videos on the subject: "The Teenagers Who Taught Nintendo How to Make Star Fox" - People Make Games, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to4Ekb0kXiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to4Ekb0kXiE "The Making of Star Fox" - Strafefox, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDhNT2Qv-Mo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDhNT2Qv-Mo
wincy 3mo ago
I’ll concede that Metroid Prime 4 has been sitting on my shelf. But Star Fox? Phenomenal. Such a fun game. Luckily I have the pro controller so I could map A to the back paddle or else my poor old tendons couldn’t handle the rapid fire shooting required at the high levels, but I’ve had an absolute BLAST playing the remake.
cyberrock 3mo ago
I can understand complaints about Metroid but Star Fox fans were probably expecting jack squat from the start of the year. Putting it in the last movie is a pretty strong indicator for more content. A lot of Nintendo's remakes end up being training exercises for the real deal, such as Metroid 2 remake to Dread. Meanwhile, some of the laid off devs here might have never seen a properly produced title with zero crunch and anomalies. Not every title should be an auteur title, but we have too many auteurs and we want more auteurs.
- rawbot 3mo ago
  Metroid 2 Remake, for all its warts (many), is at least a full-on reimagined remake. Star Fox 64's latest remake, is mostly a carbon-copy of the original, which already had an "HD" remake on the 3DS.
cush 3mo ago
There is absolutely nothing wrong with remaking a 30 year old game if it’s done correctly, and Nintendo usually does it right.

piltdownman 3mo ago

To some extent - but you can't get away with Hollywood Accounting Practices in the same way. Also one must consider the likes of Hideo Kojima who can sell ~7 million copies of a new IP that is effectively a cinematic Walking Simulator as an Auteur acrimoniously splitting from the traditional studio system. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 also shipped over 5.4 million copies as a AA, in what is also arguably an interactive cinematic on-rails RPG.

theragra 3mo ago
Nah, expedition has enough of a game in it. Parry mechanic is pretty addictive, and gameplay is kinda fun. Exploration, too, is strictly gaming aspect, not cinematic. God of war is plainly movie on rails compared to E33
999900000999 3mo ago
A walking simulator that has you fighting between multiple dimensions and is one of the best looking games of its generation.
dsfnajlsdfnafn 3mo ago
> acrimoniously splitting from the traditional studio system. Yeah, he split from the traditional studio system to create... his own traditional studio system. Kojima is precisely what happens when you stop thinking of games as actual an interactive entertainment format and start thinking of it as a "cinematic experience" instead. Death Stranding is only a game by the narrowest of margins. What it is is a movie with Kojima's Spotify 'favourites' list as the soundtrack that so happens to have one interactive element or two thrown in there for good measure. It's pretty telling that all he's done after splitting away from Konami and surrounding himself with his own sycophantic group of developers is Death Stranding. Kojima is the direct result and pretty much the face of a lot that is wrong with the games industry right now.
- bigstrat2003 3mo ago
  > Kojima is precisely what happens when you stop thinking of games as actual an interactive entertainment format and start thinking of it as a "cinematic experience" instead. And for Western devs, we have Rockstar doing that. RDR2 is a wonderful movie, but a pretty poor game. Unfortunately, they forgot what medium they were working with.

wincy 3mo ago

My kids begged for me to buy Tomodachi Life and Pokemon Pokopia and they’ve been absolute smash hits in the house. Pokemon got me hooked for a month or two until I mostly beat it, and the kids play Tomodachi Life every day and have funny little stories to tell. So many modern games just aren’t fun, it doesn’t matter what the graphics look like if the game is boring.

thih9 3mo ago
Sandboxes. Minecraft was one. Now it’s getting called a platform, at least in the submitted article. That’s good for engagement and monetization I guess, but sounds way less fun.
- Cthulhu_ 3mo ago
  Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, MMOs, Second Life, there's heaps of sandbox games where people can just hang out and do their own thing. It's the metaverse that Facebook / zucc just completely misunderstood. They could've just bought any one of these titles and they'd have a better metaverse than whatever it was they pumped billions into.
- philistine 3mo ago
  Pokopia and Tomodatchi only look like sandboxes at first glance. They are far more directed. They're not a perfect square with you in the middle. They're a star shape with you in the middle.
  - dieselgate 3mo ago
    I genuinely don't understand the relevance of the square vs. star map layout - does that matter or is there an analogy I don't understand?
    - philistine 3mo ago
      It’s not literally the map of the game: it’s about what the player can do. A square means total freedom. A star means freedom to choose guarded experiences with internal choices.

bashmelek 3mo ago

That is encouraging, but my stock portfolio paints a different picture. Nintendo is unfortunately doing terribly this year. I still believe in their core mission, even if some of their litigiousness and anti consumer practices have put me off

sunaookami 3mo ago
Nintendo is also a Japanese company and japanese stocks aren't doing great due to their economy and the weak yen. Also, stock price does not correlate with good games or a healthy business.
- dec0dedab0de 3mo ago
  Nintendo is also much older than Sony and Microsoft. They don't really chase short term gains to appease shareholders.
- kanwisher 3mo ago
  Weak yen should be great for Nintendo, most of their costs are Japanese staff which are now cheaper. Maybe the local Japanese market is softer. More likely the trouble is the increasing memory pricing is eating their margins
johnnyanmac 3mo ago
Basing an art form on your stock portfolio is a good half of everything wrong with the industry. And it's not surprising Nintendo isn't doing well in this clown market. They are taking a hit because they resisted pressures from shareholders who wanted them to raise prices on its new system. Nintendo eventually gave in, but with a much smaller price increase and a delayed effect from announcement to implementation (~4 months forewarning). And on top of all that they are not hyping AI to the moon. And I haven't even gotten to the overall economic climate of Japan yet. Nintendo's stock falls would happen regardless of if they followed the above. These are good, pro-consumer moves. It shows that more companies need to think past next quarter and resist the whims of people who don't have your company's long term interests in mind. You're the expert here, not them.

flaunf221 3mo ago

I'll personally take spirals, ups and downs of the whole industry over Nintendo selling yet another Mario, Zelda and Pokemon for 40 years straight.

johnnyanmac 3mo ago
I'm glad Nintendo does a bit of everything. Taking the time to try out new IPs, give older ones a chance to rise, and go truly off in the weeds with series no one else can really do (the Fit series and Labo being some of the biggest examples). It really feels like there's something for you there, no matter what kind of games you like (unless you only play the GTAs/CODs/Maddens of the industry). Even if you're not actually someone who games. My mom loves the Fit games.
- flaunf221 3mo ago
  Nintendo does family-friendly games. Which have their place. However if for example movie industry had its crisis, and someone were to point out how Pixar is doing great, and latest Toy Story is a big hit (it is btw), I'd say "And what if I want to watch anything that is not a family-friendly movie?". Could Nintendo ever make Baldur's Gate 3? Not in a million years. Doesn't fall into children-friendly bucket and so would completely run against Nintendo brand image.
  - lucas_t_a 3mo ago
    Baldur's Gate 3 and other games would them just release on a nintendo console, i don't think nintendo would outright refuse to take a whole sect of kinds of titles, the companies making the console and setting the ecosystem do make a difference but you exaggerate a bit.

dzonga 3mo ago

Sony - having cinematic bloat makes sense for them. They've nailed the story driven games such as Last of Us. however for Xbox they were not really good at story driven games, but good at Live Games such as Halo. with Live Games - you iterate on game play, maps, skins - live events i.e community building without alienating people by dabbing in social justice. End of day - these are all marketing problems & lack of capable leadership who knows their core audience.

LunaSea 3mo ago

Nintendo survives on a few banger licenses. Innovation left the house a long time ago.

honeycrispy 3mo ago
I find it really sad that the GameCube and N64 were where they were the most innovative and also happens to be where they floundered the most in sales.
johnnyanmac 3mo ago
I don't know how you can say that when some of their most recent well received games include Tomodachi life and Rhythm Heaven. Those aren't the kinds of games made from those maximizing bean counters.
- LunaSea 3mo ago
  Rhythm Heaven is a 18 year old and Tomodachi life is a 13 year old license.
  - johnnyanmac 3mo ago
    Yes. And an environment like Microsoft wouldn't think a dormant, niche franchise like that would be able to achieve an overwhelming success after 2 generation. But sure, if you want the last new IP, Nintendo has played it safe with Arms and focused more on bolstering dormant IP's on the switch. With Animal Crossing and Zelda in particular finding new winds. Splatoon was their last huge success as a new IP in 2015. Labo came in 2018, but I have no idea how to evaluate the success of that.
    - Gigachad 3mo ago
      Microsoft is sitting on a bunch of these they will probably never use. Wish we would get another Viva Piñata game.
  - extraduder_ire 3mo ago

cgh 3mo ago

Elden Ring sold 30 million copies. Even Bloodborne, a PS4 exclusive, sold over 9 million copies.

aranelsurion 3mo ago

> Sony's obsession with prestige cinematic bloat Sony has been pretty successful with that though, and there was a time where they pushed many fan favourites in the cinematic genre. They aren’t arcadey games like Nintendo ones of course, but something like The Last of Us has its own value and audience. It sells too.

bigyabai 3mo ago
Sony's had to bet the house on those types of blockbuster, crowd-pleasing experiences. The PS5 has yet to crest the cinematic peaks of the PS4 (PT, Bloodborne, Uncharted, etc), so people are rightfully getting a little worried that this gamble won't pan out. The bestselling PS5 exclusive is currently Ghost of Yōtei, behind eight better-selling crossplatform titles. Nintendo's exclusives outsell Sony's by a significant margin, and they're usually simpler games that are broadly accessible. They leaned the right lessons from the indie gaming boom, and didn't try to resist it by pumping billions into making the next Overwatch killer or whatever.
KennyBlanken 3mo ago
I played TLoU and while the story was interesting, the feeling of being steered, forcefully and constantly, was very frustrating. "Press this button exactly when the game tells you" and "as soon as you cross this exact point, this exact enemy will appear" - that's year-2000-ish (or worse) gaming tech. The final confrontation was essentially ruined because the designers apparently never thought you'd use a sniper rifle, so you can set off a deafening shot that kills an enemy and the other enemies don't even notice the shot because it apparently happened outside their detection range.
johnnyanmac 3mo ago
They have. Which makes this hard skew towards live service all the more baffling. Having your premier studio basically miss the generation trying to make a multiplayer version of one of these games then cancelling it really shows how much they overextended. And it's not like it had to be Naughty Dog: They had some dozen titles published or in house being prepared (including one that sunk what could have been an amazing remaster/remake studio). And in the end they really had one come out as the dark horse, with one megaflop, and 2-3 stragglers that don't seem long for this world (one of which seems to be taken down the existing, safe life service Sony spent billions on). Gen 9 will be a huge blemish carried by their very smart acquisitions of Insomniac and Housemarque, with some decent support coming from Santa Monica and Guerilla. But at what cost?

zeratax 3mo ago

sony's cinematic games sold well and are well regarded, but when was the last time they released any such game or even just a single player game? when they rerereleased the last of us?

account42 3mo ago

If the game industry managed to come even close to the top writing and cinematography from Hollywood then it would already be much better than it is now. Instead the part of Hollywood they are chasing seems to be the big budget wide appeal movies that will be forgotten in a decade.

gunsle 3mo ago

Yeah, I kind of loathe the cinematic direction Sony and others have taken. Their games aren't really innovative or fun but people lap them up for being B tier movies. It makes no sense to me. They don't bother making Bloodborne anymore, just more open world cinematic slop like Horizon.

fleroviumna 3mo ago

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