He does have a point, only a few of the other devs actually think in creative ways, most will just tack on stuff onto their ports or create copies of what already sells, its sad that even on the wildly popular DS that most of the big games are Nintendo games and not third party stuff

This is now a great reason for them to basically take over Clover, now SEEDS, and get some great new IPs. :)

At least, if the Wii guys read Kohler and Wired. HEY REGGIE!! LISTEN! HEY! READ GAMEBLOGS! :D

"My take: Lots of these non-games hitting the DS do reasonable business in Japan due to the current DS fad here. Not sure if that will translate to the US market."

Yeah, it's a fad. It will overtake the PS2 in months, so the PS2 must have been a fad too.

And the DS isn't popular in the US at all. I haven't seen one in shops for months, so the shops musn't be stocking them.

Lose money?

Virtual Boy says hi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Virtual_Boy

I bought my DS in Japan and was truly disappointed by the games I found when I returned to the states. The percentage of little kids stuff is astounding, not to mention the number of games is apparently 1/5 the number available in Japan. And it's not just games in Japan, its other software too. I picked out a few cooking recipe carts, and when I was in a museum they had a DS navigated audio tour available. Touch the map where you were standing and you'd get voice and associated extra images of the exhibit in front of you. Very slick.

It would be nice to get something other than games on the DS if they really want to get people other than kids and gamers to buy them. Americans still have the "games are for kids" stereotype to work through. Nintendo is the only one in a position to break it.

@D.Lo:

While the DS is doing well in the States, it isn't at the same level of insanity it is here in Japan. People are still lining up for it. Stores are still reimporting it from America.

And I wasn't using the word "fad" as a pejorative term.

Well most companies don't like to take risks, which is why we see sequel, sequeul, sequel and shooters, shooters, shooters. Nintendo are a good company to try do some 'risky' things that go against convention but I guess they're doing that already with motion control and the touch screen.

There can be less risk in going into uncharted waters as technically your competition in that genre is absolutely nil.

Me to Nintendo:
You seem to have a lot more experience successfully making video games than Wired does. So keep doing what you think is right and ignore "idea guys" who work for Condé Nast.

When you capture lightning in a bottle, you don't release it in the hopes to catch better lightning.

While its easy to say that Nintendo should just throw some money away and take a chance on a less-than-100% proposition, its much harder to put into practice (especially when they had to come up with a strategy to make their way through the lean years). Look at all the projects that haven't been so successful that they have taken on over the years. Its not like they have some massive computer or electronic division to pick up the slack if they have another lean run due to poor project decisions.

For all the minor disappointments that have come out of Nintendo, they still have those spaced-out blockbusters that keep everything going. It may not be the most endearing strategy, but it produces favorable results so I wouldn't expect it to change any time soon.

He'd like Nintendo to develop something new and original so that other publishers will make inadequate copycats? He wants the half-assed clones, not the originals? I get his point, somewhat, but the end result doesn't provide much for anyone.

That dude looks like he could use several injections of testosterone.

Nintendo took a chance with Elite Beat Agents but it didn't meet sales expectations. Although I agree that they should use the profits from successful titles to develop more risky IPs.

You know what would be crazy? World War 2 shooters. No, wait, sword and shield RPGS. Tetris knockoffs. Futuristic shooters with zombies and/or robots.

Or sequels to any of the above would be cool as well, provided the only change gameplay marginally.

I don't want anything new, I just want slightly polished classics.

====================
br549 said:

Me to Nintendo:
You seem to have a lot more experience successfully making video games than Wired does. So keep doing what you think is right and ignore "idea guys" ...
====================

My thoughts exactly ^

Isn't Nintendo already doing what the guy is asking anyway? That's kind of the game innovation process, isn't it?

"Hey, let's make a game where you * !" "Will it sell, ya think?" "I dunno, it might!" "Okay!"

Insert things like 'be a defense attorney,' 'take care of puppies,' 'learn to cook things,' etc, for *

With all the mess-ups Sony's gotten itself into, Nintendo should just keep doing whatever they're doing, and shouldn't change for ANYBODY.

*disclaimer: I realize Nintendo didn't develop the games I used as an example. They're just examples.*

I'm still waiting for my WFC enabled "Jam with the Band" for DS

comon Nintendo

So, how's that Electroplankton doing?

Hey...why can't I just get some "no-brainer" games for DS like Tetrisphere, Sin and Punishment and 1080. with the touch screen, RTS games should be a given... and where the hell is a dedicated fighter for the DS? Even GBA had Street Fighter..

I think this guy's phrasing is unfortunate-- "might probably lose money" is not something people can rally behind, a war chant to shout from the hill tops.

But

There are tons, or at least dozens of great games that have been released in Japan that would do at least moderately well here, possible extremely well. I'm talking games like:

Egg Monster Heroes
Wizardry Asterix
Daisenryaku/Modern Military Tactics (a turn-based strategy a la Advanced Wars with much deeper possible strategy and a more realistic look)
The Simple DS Series(countless decent games here of a budget title nature)
Jump Superstars
Various Naruto Titles
Bleach DS

And this is just what I can think of off the top of my head as titles that either I would like to play, or titles I know import shops/sites already sell a bunch of and have been great sellers in Japan.

Nintendo's best strategy would be to just sit back and count the money rolling in. Whatever they're already doing is working fabulously.

Anyone out there think Kohler's plan holds water?

Nintendo published some weird shit most other publishers would not have touched. Sometimes the games didn't do too well (Electroplankton or Elite Beat Agents, for example). Other times, they pretty much defined new genres (Brain Training, Nintendogs).

It's a sound strategy, and I hope Nintendo will do more of that.

And yes, the DS fad in Japan will soon be over, just like the PS2 fad is starting to, uhm, fade away.

Anyone out there think Kohler's plan holds water?

Yes.

Nintendo published some weird shit most other publishers would not have touched. Sometimes the games didn't do too well (Electroplankton or Elite Beat Agents, for example). Other times, they pretty much defined new genres (Brain Training, Nintendogs).

It's a sound strategy, and I hope Nintendo will do more of that.

And yes, the DS fad in Japan will soon be over, just like the PS2 fad is starting to, uhm, fade away.

I can see why you wouldn't want to take risk on software but in perspective it's not really even that much of a risk. If you look at the crazy money Sony and M$ are loosing on hardware and take into account how cheap games like Brain Age were to produce, it's really not that unreasonable to suggest that a company who could do anything and still make money hand over fist should use their stability to make some risky decisions. That and I'm sick of games not getting released in the US just because somebody somewhere thinks it doesn't have enough guns to sell to Americans. I don't think Electroplankton is a very good example for this failure because selling something online only really only apeals to the type that would just import it if it didn't release in the US. And even if Americans were too stupid to realize how awesome Elite Beat Agents was it really only makes a point that some games will sell and some won't and you can't make blind assumptions that such and such market won't like such and such game when there never released in that market.

Yeah I think this is a great plan for Nintendo. As can be seen in Nintendo's past, they are truly innovators in game software and hardware. Now these innovations can be hit or miss (hit: DS, Wii, Brain Age / miss: Virtual Boy, GC to GBA connectivity), but when it's a hit, it's usually a massive one that makes them a ton of cash.

Since their most recent innovations have been huge mega hits, there's no reason for them hesitate in going even further out there and trying more things with higher probabilities of failure. They've got the know-how to make some seriously entertaining products, and now they've got the cash to make it happen.

They could even start a whole new line of software called "Nintendo Oddities" and make the weirdness a part of their marketability.

Bring on the weird, Nintendo! I, for one, am ready to embrace it.

@ashcraft:
In all fairness, we can't line up in the US when there is no specific time or place that DS Lites are released.

Also, Electroplankton was an online only release, so it really can't be expected to sell in huge numbers. It did get limited release in some brick and mortar stores later, but that was not the original plan, and I believe that those were the stores that were selling online.

Ralph Wiggum: Nintendo lose money? That's unpossible!

John Lucas

"There can be less risk in going into uncharted waters as technically your competition in that genre is absolutely nil."

History has shown that it's a lot easier to pull off a win by charting the unknown, but it's also a lot more likely to lead to a financial disaster. Sounds contradictory on the surface, but what it really comes down to is that there's not a lot of middle ground for truly revolutionary games. Either they sell like hotcakes, or they sell like mudpies. Sequels of proven properties tend to do a steady business, though they don't bring in as high of a profit margin as the oddball stuff is capable of. Nintendo can get away with it because they've got both proven properties (Mario, Zelda, Metroid, etc.) that they know will sell gangbusters every time, and they tend to stay on the fringes of the pack and develop new concepts like crazy. Their old properties are probably less expensive to develop for (I mean, c'mon, the graphics on the average Mario game are nowhere near as complex as the average XBox/PS2 release, much less the average 360/PS3 release), but still sell really well, which increases their profit margin on those titles. And they have the right mentality to go after oddball concepts, which has enabled them to come up with a fairly steady series of wins. They also have the advantage of having both a reputation for oddball titles and a high concentration of them on most of their recent platforms, so the sort of gamers who are attracted to them can just buy the current Nintendo systems and never worry about running out of weird game concepts. Clover developed a handful of really high-buzz oddball titles that didn't sell well. Why? On a guess, I'd say it's because they were developing for a more traditional platform with the PS2. You'd have to buy a second console just to be able to pick up the occassional Clover title, and there weren't many other studios that were releasing even a single oddball title here and there, much less a regular string of them. Other than the Clover titles, the only other real oddball PS2 titles that I can think of are the two Katamaris and Psychonauts, and all of the Viewtiful Joe titles have been released on Nintendo platforms.

But it still all boils down to the fact that it's less costly to develop new concepts than it is to constantly try to eke out a tiny bit more performance from concepts that have already been around the block a few times. That's where Nintendo's high profit margin comes from. And in the end, profit margin is what business is all about. When I was in high school, I worked for a boat builder. He loved boats, he loved sailing in boats, and he loved building boats. But every time people asked him if he did it for a living because he loved doing it, he'd always tell them that the only reason he was doing it at all was because he could make a decent profit. Enjoying his work was just a bonus.

Well, in theory Nintendo could pull off a big win and offset their losses on the others, but it really depends on the quality of the games in question. A bad game in a new genre can turn people off of that kind of gameplay. A decent title would go a long way in a new genre.

@Froggore:

miss: Virtual Boy

May it rest in peace.

Nintendo to Wired: "Eh, how about, No?"