Lost Garden: Thoughts on the Revolution’s New Controller
An interesting article deconstructing the curve ball that is the Nintendo Revolution and the philosophy behind it.
Focusing on product innovation at the expense of commodity markets is a classic business strategy that is used successfully in non-game companies around the world. Companies like 3M are required as part of their strategic plan to have 30% of their revenue come from new products. They are constantly exiting markets when strong competition emerges and constantly competing with themselves by offering new products that outdate their existing products. Nintendo releases new genres where other companies release new products, but the basics are the same.
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That’s great. Now when will they “Revolutionize” their game lineup to do something other than rehash Mario, Zelda, and the other 80’s classics.
In a world where Halo is popular and yearly installments of just about every popular game franchise (meaning the same game that made money last year) are commonplace, no one has any right citing Nintendo as the kings of re-hashing. They may use the same characters, but I dare you to prove to me that more recent Mario, Zelda and Metriod games are just clones of their 80s counterparts.
Agreeing with Parallax, don’t confuse them using Mario and crew in a lot of games to be the same thing as simply rehashing. The article even covers that behavior, citing that Nintendo simply likes using some of the same across genres.
You can’t equate the words “Clone” and “Rehash” as the same thing. Fact of the matter is they have rehashed mario zelda and the others up to dozens of times (In the previous two titles listed) for 25 years.
Sure other people remake games, but they are either newer creations, or older creations that have been rehashed once or twice (In the case of battlezone among other)
The fact that there controller is more “Revolutionary” then their game lineup stands.
The article cited reminds me of how intricate your analysis of an essentially simple topic you can get — when obsessed. Reminds me of early skateboard days.
The author’s market analysis is superb. Could be talking about Microsoft and Office, as well.
The only innovative game they’ve released with mario in my opinion recently has been Smash bros Melee and Paper mario one. Melee ofcourse is a copy of Smash bros, There is a paper mario two which is supposed to suck. As for rehashing, Mario party 1-7 possibly 8 now, how many mini games can you possibly come up with.
They have rotated through the sports with tennis and now baseball, I’m sure the reason they haven’t licensed madden football (possibly the ultimate rehash) is so they could do the same with Mario football next year.
Its stifiled creativity They refuse to grow beyond a certain point. Walk to the nintendo section in your local software store and look at the nintendo section. I guarentee you 30-40% of the games on the shelve will involve mario. I understand that they’re supposed to market to kids, but when you’re rereleasing the old mario games on GBA with “Drastic improvements” that consist of using the characters from Mario 2 in Mario world among other, that is diffinently a rehash. Even people who grew up playing nintendo like me get sick of it.
The picture above fits nintendos marketing strategy. After there next system comes out, I don’t forsee them getting lucky like they did last quarter and breaking the profit margin. They’ll return to their previous 3-4 profitless bottomlines. I’m sure they’ll always do well in Japan, but they seriously need to get some kind of third party developers to make good games for them at least semi consistanly.
I did like the way the metroid game was on GBA, but I hear alot of complaints about it myself. I never play it.
And I would agree the industry as a whole is lazier. Devil Man cry 2 proves that.