Nintendo Ended with Iwata. The logo and brand of Nintendo is very much alive and thriving in a purely financial capacity, and I think the company will continue to do very well financially for the foreseeable future. This video isn't about money. It isn't half-baked market analysis. Today I am talking about the creative identity of Nintendo -- their direction as artists and game developers. In this respect, I think the future of Nintendo is bleak (or bland at the very least) and that the strong creative direction that Nintendo had from the 2000's to the the early Switch era is directly due to Satoru Iwata and his creative vision for game design and hardware integration -- a vision that I think we all are starting to miss now that it is gone.
Iwata is the only Nintendo president that came from a game design and programming background -- and at this rate he will probably remain the only person to helm the company with this direct game design experience. Because of his core as a developer, rather than a businessman, Iwata made a lot of against-the-grain decisions (like being against mobile and emphasizing physical interaction with video games) that expanded game design and definitely cost him financially at certain points. As much as the Wii has been dismissed as an ultra-casual console, I think the game design philosophy behind the Wii, WiiU, DS, and 3DS all have a deep arcade root that Sega themselves were exploring in the Dreamcast era before their hardware development collapsed and exploded.
It is interesting actually that the only two game companies that seriously pursued hardware design and game design integration were Sega and Iwata-Era Nintendo, and both ended up suffering massive financial consequences (thought the Wii and DS found the sweet spot I think -- WiiU was too hardcore for the general player, ironically, ha. Remember Polygon refused to even attempt to review Star Fox Zero due to gyro aiming and dual screens).
Without Iwata, however, I am seeing the direction Nintendo is going in now -- which I like to call the Disney Era -- where instead of focusing so heavily on innovation as Iwata did, the new Nintendo president (a guy who came from the financial department) seems to be steering the company towards the tried-and-true western studio practices of falling back on remakes, remasters, legacy content, branding, with a nasty addition of aggressive copyright lawsuits.
Nintendo have always had a talent for catering a devoted fanbase and creating extremely lucrative branding that is 2nd only to Disney, their characters and merch are now multi-generation (I should know I buy my kids Pokémon merch and so forth) and I think the company is now free and clear to make the shift towards being more of a general media company than some kind of specialized game developer. No more "in my heart I'm a gamer" nonsense.
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00:00 This isn't about MONEY, It's about ART
04:02 Why the Iwata Era was Specifically Innovative
07:40 The Arcade Philosophy of Iwata
12:20 A Moment to Recognize Iwata as a Homie
14:24 The DS is Iwata's Masterpiece
17:13 The Lost Future of Nintendo
20:42 We are Now in the Disney-Era
24:54 The New Plan = Merch + Lawsuits
28:50 Final Thoughts - Legacy Branding Achieved
#nintendoswitch, #nintendods , #nintendowii