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Nintendo's President Hopes To Avoid 'Return to Arrogance'
Today Newsweek's N'Gai Croal has up an interview originally held back at E3, speaking with current President of Nintendo Satoru Iwata. The piece is an interesting look inside one of the top minds at a company that has experienced unprecedented success in the last year. In the interview, Iwata states that one of his most important tasks right now is to avoid allowing the company to appear arrogant. Just because people now assume Nintendo will succeed, he needs to make sure that's not the company's view as well. "This time, we were very lucky and very fortunate that people were accepting and positive about the introduction of the Wii Balance Board and the Wii Zapper. Now, what we have to do, what's very important for us is to make sure that when those products are actually launched, we not only meet their expectations, but we surpass them so there's that gap--we thought it was going to be this, when actually it's here. We need to create that buzz. We need to create that word of mouth and that's our challenge."
I'm not so sure anything old Nintendo did is worse than the things Sony and Microsoft have done. Maybe their game divisions haven't done things as bad, but c'mon, both of those companies have done some seriously awful stuff: Rootkits, Windows ME...
Some of Nintendo's policies in the past, like limiting games per year, had to do with avoiding a repeat of the crash. Others were just stupid legalese (suing over the Game Genie, for example) and every big company does stupid things with lawyers.
Not listening to you, maybe.
They're listening to me just fine: If I want online play, I'll play WoW. I have zero interest in online from my console, and I want them to spend that money instead on things I do want.
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Mario Strikers Charged has been out for over a month now and you can play it online. It does use the friend code system, but also uses a matching system to play against total strangers. The new Madden game has online play, and it does not use Nintendo's friend code system. I've not played this to see if it is any good yet, but it is a third party game using the Wii's online play which is a good step in the right direction
That crap has far more production value than the crap Nintendo was trying to avoid.
This is my sig. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
Most the 3rd parties still made gobs of money and are still existing in one form or another. Nintendo went on to create more great systems and games (yes, even the N64... Virtual Boy? not so much).
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
Yeah, if only Christian games were half as good as contemporary Christian music (P.O.D, Lifehouse, etc...)
DRM restricts the user. 10NES restricted the developers.
The chip was designed for two purposes, keep crap games off the system and give Nintendo control to that effect. Was it 100% effective? Certainly not, but neither are most Spam filters. That, and there's no accounting for taste.
Take the time to read Game ver, you'll have a better idea of what went on.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
But the "quality control" isn't for "how fun a game is." There's no requirement that "the game is fun" in the list of stuff you have to pass to get certified by one of the big publishers. Basically, they're looking though a few categories of things:
a) You don't violate various trademarks of the publisher.
b) Your game doesn't crash, drop out the sound, render at 2 frames a second, sit on a black screen for 2 minutes while loading, etc.
c) Consistent UI experience
d) Do bad things that would break the system or introduce security holes.
"Crap" has nothing to do with the content but the fact that you're delivering what could be considered a valid, working piece of software. Whether or not its any good to play is up to the market to decide.
Anyone who lived through the Atari era will know that every game on NES was gold compared to the amount of steaming shit that was put out for the 2600. Comparatively, the NES had great quality control.
Scorta futuere amo!