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Nintendo's Iwata Skeptical of In-Game Ads, Episodes
Next Generation reports that Nintendo President Iwata has expressed skepticism about the benefits of in-game advertising and episodic content. From the article: "He added, 'Asking customers to pay something monthly, or something periodically, we can never expect that kind of revenue to become the significant, main resources for Nintendo.' Despite Nintendo's adherence to disruptive-thinking, the company is clearly wedded to the concept of up-front single payments for product as its main revenue source."
You know, I might be the only one to feel this way, but I am glad that Nintendo isn't planning on monthly payments to leech money out of its victim ... er ... consumer.
... then let's exploit them, charge them a monthly fee to do so and make their character collect cans of Jolt(TM) to "power-up." Good luck.
In the eyes of Sony, you are addicts willing to pay anything for a console. In the eyes of other console makers/game producers, you are merely sacks of money and they want the moneys from inside you. One year of playing an online game at $12/month comes out to $144. The amount of money they get from advertisers is also very large considering putting it in a game.
I think that today, communications and technology are cheap. I pay for my broadband internet service provider, why do I have to pay again for another service of essentially the same thing? I would prefer paying $400 with no monthly fee for World of Warcraft instead of $40 with a $13 monthly fee. Why? Because in the two and a half years that it has been out, you've accumulated a price of $40 + $13*30 = $420 and we all know it won't end there. Monthly payments are a means to milk your users. I would rather them charge me lots of money and promise the service until the company is bankrupt. I like that Iwata wants to develop that as a successful business model and I hate that everyone is moving the other way.
I also don't care for product placement in my games. We're so concerned about society not viewing games as art when really they should be! They are the next new media to for artists and it's things like capitalising off of the end user and sacrificing content for product placement that really destroy any efforts to make this happen. Let's make a game that evokes emotions and deep responses from the user
My work here is dung.
ok nintendo really looks like it gets it. Lets see, innovatinv gameplay, fun games, cheap console, free online service, no episodic content, no in game ads.
sounds too good to be true. But it is.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Why is Nintendo the only sane console company this year? Seems like Microsoft and Sony are fighting to get the top spot for shooting themselves in the foot with high console prices, while letting "has been" Nintendo walk away with the prize if the Wii is a runaway success at a lower price.
It's made of Win and More Win.
Ahem. That's Wiin and More Wiin.
This guy's the limit!
It should start episodic, and it should be cheap. First episode is $10. Second is $10. Third is $10....
And of course they have to be worth that much (a decent amount of content). $10 is enough that I'm willing to risk it, unlike the $60 you have to pay for a normal game. None of this "our game is $60, and then each episode is $15 after that" stuff. Don't use episodic content as an excuse for not completing a full expansion pack.
I don't think we'll see this done right ever. But the idea is there. That's how I'd be willing to buy episodic content (in fact I would be more likely to buy because of the lower risk I'm willing to tolerate when a game costs $60).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
The issue now is that single payments as the only real revenue stream IS dirsuptive thinking. More and more companies are looking at the 'pay now, then keep paying' school of design. This has been going on for quite some time (expansion packs for PC Games), but the addition of hard drives and on-line capabilities to the major console systems has made this a more feasible concept. We saw the first iteration of it with the last generation, but many of the next gen consoles (especially Sony) appear to be designed around 'upgradable content'. What used to be an anathema to console design is rappidly becoming a 'feature'. Add in the recent success of Blizzard, and now everyone is looking for the next big addiction inducing game that they can reap a constant stream of cash from.
I initially was extremely dissapointed by the lack of an HD in the Wii, but now it looks like a major selling point to me. I don't need to worry about patches, or incomplete games with additional "episodes" to complete the product. I'm also not worried about a lack of variety, as it's in Nintendo's best interest to produce a vast array of games to ensure that they keep selling product, and keep making money.
PS2's largest appeal was the library of games available. The console was neither the most powerful, nor necessarily the most affordable, but people wanted to get it because of the vast selection of games they could choose from. Sony appears to have tossed all that out the window by making a console that is (reportedly) significantly more difficult to program for, thus creating a much greater barrier to entry for new titles. Nintendo, on the other hand, appears to be saying "Here is a relatively easy console to develop for with a brand new opportunity for interface, develop what you will". They did something similar with the DS, and look at it's market share in comparison to the PSP.
The thing that has impressed me the most about Nintendo is that they've figured out the "right" changes to make. When they came out with the DS as their next gen gameboy, the vast consensus was WTF? But they still managed to change the way we play handheld games, and the gaming community is better for it. They're doing the exact same thing with the Wii, everyone let out a collective WTF, but it seems like more and more people feel that Nintendo just gets it. Count me in.
Microsoft and SONY probably thought they had an implicit kind of understanding that often happens these days when there are only a few companies in a market. They probably thought everybody wins if they each overcharge or make a too-expensive product. People are still going to buy, so if they all have high prices they all benefit.
It's like on Jeopardy when the person in 3rd place bets $0 instead of all their money then wins because nobody expected them to do that and it was a question nobody knew. Nintendo basically bet nothing, just updating their system to current tech instead of expensive future tech, and is going to win big time because the other guessed wrong. Even without their new controller they would win this round.
The "gamer" demographic is not growing significantly in size and the games are getting more expensive to make. The apparent solution, in the eyes of Sony and Microsoft, and all of the developers who aim to produce cutting edge visuals with their games, is give people a relatively short game for $50-60, then squeeze them for a few extra dollars here and there by having them download new episodes, weapons, horse armor, levels, or whatever.
This is the price we're going to have to get used to paying for detailed graphics, because until we see some substantial breakthroughs in the way advanced graphics are produced, then I don't think things are going to change. The publishers have to maintain profitability somehow.
I've been hearing for the past 10 years from gamers that "gameplay is more important than graphics", but it's the graphics that have been driving the industry, for the most part. Nintendo is finally holding gamers to their word by saying "Okay, you wanted gameplay over graphics? Here you go." The fact that the Wii doesn't have all of the shaders, the memory, or the raw CPU/GPU power of its competitors means that developers don't have to invest all those resources in creating the most visually stunning games (unless they do it by employing a bold style that like Okami for the PS2) because there is no prayer of anything on the Wii looking as realistic as the most realistic games on the PS3.
The pressure to one-up the competition with graphics is gone on the Wii, leaving a focus on the quality (and quantity) of gameplay.
The Pokemon series is more about merchandising than it is about in game advertising.
If Pikachu (sp?) had to drink Red Bull constantly or lose it's power, then that would be in game advertising.
I like to compare Pokemon to Star Wars. George Lucas didn't make the bulk of his fortune off the movies, he made it off the merchandise.
I'm not saying it is right or wrong, good or evil. It is just a different topic.
In game advertising is garbage. It's nothing but yet another scheme to squeeze out every last penny from our pockets.
Companies have realized that the time is right for introducing this sort of scheme because consumers are generally the biggest suckers out there and are willing to accept anything. It's like they can't throw away their money quickly enough.
We all know that crappy ads thrust in your face every 15 seconds makes a game more immersive. I suppose some people could rationalize getting hit in the head by a baseball bat because it would make a game more immersive. Just wait until developers have to adjust content to satisfy the advertisers. "This headshot brought to you by Tampax tampons!"
People time and again forget that these people have few scruples and don't give a damn about immersion or gameplay quality. They care about one thing, revenue. When a company puts greed above all else the end result is invariably a low quality product.
I'm very pleased to see someone thinks differently. Certainly Nintendo is looking for success, but it's clear that they place great value in what they create. There's a reason why Nintendo has a very loyal fanbase.
I think it would be silly to expect people to pay per-game for old NES properties that are worth at most a buck each (when you take into account the lack of tangible media and the destruction of scarcity that the Virtual Console would cause). A subscription fee like Gametap uses would make a lot more sense.
Rob
The interesting thing about Pokemon is that, while the current marketing behemoth it has become is unquestionable, it started off (at least in Japan, possibly even in the US) with virtually no advertising - it became popular through word of mouth. So it is not quite analogous to Viva Pinata. With Pokemon, Nintendo started off by trying to make a good game, succeeding, and then setting the marketing machine to work. Viva seems to be trying its best to get the marketing machine going first, and hope this translates into people buying the game ...
Why is Nintendo the only sane console company this year?
According to Wikipedia, Mr. Iwata is a former programmer, game developer, and graphic artist -- in short, someone who most likely actually plays games instead of merely selling them.
Seems like he'd be in a good position to know what gamers really want. "If I were playing this, would I want to cough up $15/month for this? Hell no!"
More power to the gamer geeks!
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
I am curious. If Nintendo offers a reasonably priced console, standard priced games and free online playing, then who is going to be paying for the online services? I mean after all, there is bandwidth and infrastructure to be paid for at the content provider end. They don't need to be making a profit on the network play, but not making a loss is also important.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I have a couple of words for Nintendo:
Pokémon Red
Pokémon Blue
Pokémon Green
Pokémon Yellow
Pokémon Gold
Pokémon Silver
Pokémon Crystal
Pokémon Ruby
Pokémon Sapphire
Pokémon Emerald
Pokémon FireRed
Pokémon LeafGreen
Pokémon Colosseum
Pokémon XD
Pokémon Ranger
Pokémon Pinball
Pokémon Pinball: Ruby and Sapphire
Pokémon Diamond and Pearl
Pokémon Trozei
Pokémon Stadium
Pokémon Stadium 2
Pokémon Snap
Pokémon Dash
Mind you, this isn't over the entire history of the company. This is the last ten years. In the US, it's a Pokémon game, on average, every four months. And side from the occasional pinball or racing game, the games were popular not for new game mechanics but for new Pokémon (or as I call it, "new episodic content").
And no in-game advertising? The entire game is advertising... for itself! The pile of money made from the sales of Pokémon cards, carrying cases, movies, books, toys is enough to suffocate anyone.
Now... I'm actually a big Nintendo fan. A HUGE one. I even liked Pokémon to an extent (Pokémon Stadium 2 has great party games). But I have to call out someone on their BS, even if it's a Nintendo exec.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
I havent read the comments, but I much prefer real life advertisements to fake ones. If they want to simulate the real world, they should have advertisements. Nothing though, ticks me off more than fake products.
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A few months back, in some obscure post, someone talked about the "Uncanny Valley", the place wherein trying to achieve realism, you get something that's ALMOST realistic, but because of its slight differences, is actually very disconcerting. It may be that games in this next generation may be approaching this area, which would be a total disaster for gaming companies. From what it looks like, Sony and MS have staked their systems livelihoods on graphics that fall right in the middle of the Uncanny Valley. Nintendo, on the other hand, with it's attention on things other than UltraRealism(tm), may be sitting safely on the other side. As realistic as the graphics look like they may be on the PS3, I would never mistake them for motion picture footage. Even with massive render farms, computer graphics have only just begun to fool the brain into thinking their looking at movie footage in the last 4 years or so, it will take real-time rendering quite a while to do that and safely climb out of the valley, MAYBE by the next generation, but I'm not even betting on it. Two generations from now, we'll see.
Nintendo has done something very intelligent over the years, by staking the bulk of their titles on purposefully unrealisticly styled graphics: no matter how good the graphics of a game get, the game next year will make the current game look "old" and somewhat less playable. Other entertainment and art forms aren't so starkly "now" and "then". When I go down to the local movie rental house, I'm probably just as likely to pick out a movie from the 1960s as I am to pick out one that came out last year, and the same goes for music: Beatles albums still sell. There may come a time when a great game will sell, steadily, for many decades. When I look back, I'm probably just as likely to replay Zelda: Ocarina of Time as Wind Waker, in fact, I still haven't decided which game APPEARS more contemporary, they're just different. However, the choice between Quake 2 and Halo 2 becomes much more apparent. In a year and a half, Halo 3 and the next generation of FPSs will obscure Halo 2, and Halo 2s sales will immediately cease. Gameplay, dialog, storyline, these things are practically ageless, and thus have much longer market value.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.