A Link to the Wrong: Nintendo's Problems

Nintendo's current situation has been well documented for months now.  The Wii U is currently the worst selling console on the market and despite incredible sales, the 3DS is not selling enough to make up for the Wii U's dismal sales.  A part from those points, third-party publishers this side of the Pacific are abandoning Nintendo and their systems like they are a sinking ship.  The talk surrounding Nintendo is in such an ugly place that an article that either praises or dismisses the Wii U is front page news on any video game website every week.  As an avid fan of Nintendo, I personally do not like the battle between positive and negative press flying around all mediums of communication.  Even if the Wii U does not pan out, Nintendo has an enormous amount of money saved from their successes like the Game Boy, DS and Wii to support themselves into the future.  Another point, the Wii U is only in its second year on the market.  There is still time for Nintendo to turn things around with the system.  The 3DS is a prime example of the possible turnaround that could happen with the Wii U.  With all that said, Nintendo's current situation is entirely their fault.  While the marketing for the Wii U has been a mess since the very beginning, it is not the main cause of their situation.  There are a good number of issues that Nintendo as a company has not been aggressive in tackling or have avoided altogether which have created this perfect storm.  These issues are not independent to one of Nintendo's systems; they involve Nintendo as a whole.

1)  No Party for Third-Parties

Nintendo's problems with securing third-party support has been an ever-present issue with their systems since the days of the Nintendo 64.  One would expect this issue to be solved sometime between the three console generations since the N64.  Funny enough, it has only gotten worse.  Third-party support outside of Japanese publishers and Activision is nearly non-existent.  Even Ubisoft, which has been a big supporter of Nintendo products the past couple generations, is severely cutting back their support aside from downloadable titles and yearly Just Dance installments.  Third-party publishers seem to be moving away from Nintendo products because they believe they cannot make a profit on them.  That impression is not one Nintendo should continue to let foster.  The Big N has shown off some of the partnerships they have forged with Japanese companies like Sega, Atlus and Tecmo Koei, but Nintendo needs to make strides with the publishers in which they have had problems enticing in the past.  First-party games, no matter their great quality, can only take you so far.  Third-party games are needed to pad out the times where there are a lack of first-party titles.  Better for Nintendo to aggressively seek fixing this issue now rather than let it fester any longer as it will be hard repairing these relationships later.

2)  Stalling with Online Multiplayer

Nintendo has dabbled in online multiplayer with games like Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart.  Compared to the efforts of their competitors, Nintendo's efforts have been lacking.  More games in their portable lineup have received online multiplayer to great success.  These portable games show the great potential of Nintendo-crafted online multiplayer.  Now Nintendo just needs to start adding an online component to games that should have it.  The lack of online multiplayer in games like Nintendo Land, New Super Mario Bros. U, Super Mario 3D World and Pikmin 3 is a missed opportunity in this writer's honest opinion.  Personally, I am a huge advocate for local multiplayer, but those days have been replaced by playing with others without leaving the comforts of your home.  Nowadays, online multiplayer is expected to be included in most games.  Nintendo does not need to add online multiplayer to all their games, but they need to start adding some sort of online component to those which already include local multiplayer.  I have had great times playing games like Nintendo Land, New Super Mario Bros. U and Super Mario 3D World with my friends locally.  Just imagine being able to recreate that fun at anytime without the hassle of trying to gather a group of people every single time you wanted to play some multiplayer.

3)  Stuck on Gimmicks

Nintendo has never been a powerhouse when it comes to graphics.  Their strength has always been gameplay, but sadly the world has become obsessed with the amount of polygons you can cram on a screen.  It is hard to communicate gameplay without giving people the game to actually play.  Case and point, Super Mario 3D World.  Upon first impressions, everybody thought 3D World would just be a up-scaled port of 3D Land.  Once people got their hands on the game, their opinions completely changed for the better.  Nintendo combated this superficial obsession with cutting-edge graphics by introducing unique gimmicks to their consoles and games from the two screens of the Nintendo DS to the motion controls of the Wii.  Nintendo's focus on gimmicks did pan out with the DS and Wii, but they have become a little too reliant on gimmicks to push their games and consoles.  Gimmicks work only when you design games that take advantage of those gimmicks in new and creative ways.  In the Wii U's case, Nintendo has not made any games that truly take advantage of the hardware within the Wii U Gamepad which has caused it to backfire on them.  Gimmicks are not a bad thing, they just become tiresome when you rely on them far too much.  If Nintendo is going to stick with using gimmicks to separate themselves from the competition, they need to be more careful in adding gimmicks that truly institute creativity and innovation rather than just adding gimmicks for the sake of having them.

4)  Wanted:  New Blood

It is hard to think of the last new franchise Nintendo introduced on such a large scale.  You would have to go back to 2006 with the introduction of Wii Sports.  In all honesty, nobody thought Wii Sports would spawn into a franchise which would include Wii Play, Wii Fit, Wii Music and Wii Party.  Looking at that fact, it has been eight years since Nintendo last introduced a major franchise.  Nintendo has introduced new IPs such as Rhythm Heaven, Professor Layton, Pushmo/Crashmo and HarmoKnight, but they all have been confined to handheld or downloadable space instead of major releases on their consoles.  Although it is only one game, there is hope in the mysterious new IP Shigeru Miyamoto is currently working on.  Hopefully, the possible success of this unknown game could spur Nintendo into taking more risks in developing games outside their comfort zone of Mario, Zelda and Pokemon.  Nintendo can even dive into their back catalogue and make new entries in series such as Star Fox, F-Zero, Earthbound or Metroid to alleviate some of the franchise fatigue affecting their most relied upon series.

The Seventh Generation: Nintendo Wii

While it has been much longer than just a couple weeks, The Seventh Generation is back.  The first console to look back on is Nintendo's biggest gamble, the Wii.  Coming off of a turbulent run with the Gamecube (Nintendo's weakest selling game console at the time), Nintendo came to terms with the fact that they could not compete with Microsoft and Sony when it came to computing power.  Nintendo looked at their strengths, gameplay and design, and the risk taken with the Nintendo DS for inspiration for their newest console.  Instead of directly competing with the Xbox 360 and PS3 in terms of power, the Wii focused its entire design around one core mechanic, motion control.  Motion controls were attempted in earlier console generations, but they were never refined to the point of actually being more than a non-functional gimmick.  The Wii brought motion controls to the forefront of the video game industry and nobody could have predicted the success to follow.

Apart from the hardcore Nintendo fans that flocked to the Wii for the newest entries in Nintendo's venerable franchises (Mario, Metroid, Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong and Super Smash Bros.), the Wii caught the attention of people who never considered playing video games as an activity for them.  The simplistic design the Wii Remote, which was intentionally designed to look and feel like a TV remote, and the familiarity of the sports included in Wii Sports, the game packed in with every Wii system, broke down the large barrier of entry video games had before this point in time.  No longer did people have to learn complex button presses to play games, they just had to mimic certain motions to get involved.  This universal appeal equated to monstrous sales for the Wii.  While the Wii may had been a minimal improvement over the Gamecube in terms of power and graphics, it easily outsold PS3 and Xbox 360, incredibly more powerful machines, this past generation.

Being the most successful system of the past generation did not mean the Wii was the best console of this past generation.  In actuality, the Wii was quite the opposite.  Although Nintendo and a few other developers used the Wii's under-powered specs to create artistically stunning games, the majority of Wii games can be considered lacking at best.  During the early years of the Wii, there was such a large number of shovel ware released on the machine that it was hard to discern between the good and the bad.  For every Super Mario Galaxy, there were dozens of shovel ware like Carnival Games and Chicken Shoot.  The Wii, much like the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube, suffered from a lack of third-party support.  While there were publishers like Sega, Ubisoft and EA that supported the Wii with numerous games, a good number of publishers such as Bethesda and Take-Two passed over the Wii due to its lack a processing power.

For Nintendo fans, the Wii offered a lot of great games both old (through the power of the Virtual Console) and new that you could not experience anywhere else.  Apart from the core Nintendo faithful and the new slew of casual gamers, the Wii did not offer enough to sway people away from the most cutting-edge systems in the PS3 and Xbox 360.  The Wii may be among Nintendo's most successful video game consoles, but it will never be remembered as fondly as its predecessors.