Nintendo's Only Hope Is Gone?

Hiroshi Yamauchi was the man who was behind everything good at Nintendo. Everything good that happened in the company was his doing, all the bad was also on his watch.

That bad that includes the Gamecube, the console that almost killed the company.

In Nintendo's darkest times Yamauchi was the one who steered the company in the direction of the DS which in his words saved the company. He also laid plans for the Wii.

Yamauchi stepped down and passed the DS and Wii to Iwata. Even Iwata's incompetence couldn't destroy the DS and it took years of abuse for the Wii to finally die in 2008.

Without Yamauchi's forward thinking Nintendo has been a shell of it's former self.

You have the 3DS which is a failure. Iwata had to reduce the price of the hardware by one third to get traction and even now it fails to bring in the software like Yamauchi's DS did.

The Wii U is failing and only gets worse every month. It's literally more money than it's worth for Nintendo.

Sadly Yamauchi died this year so there's no savior coming for Nintendo anytime soon. He was the only one at the company that had the vision to not only know what would work going forward but was also agile enough to fix problems without damaging the company.

Iwata is a problem, his bastardizations of Yamauchi's DS and Wii fail to perform and there's no help in sight to the point where Nintendo is bringing back the DS design with the 2DS.

So much praise is heaped on Miyamoto for his ability to innovate but it was Yamauchi that put him in that position to succeed. Under Iwata's leadership Miyamoto has been relegated to a bit player at Nintendo.

Yamauchi's long history with the company allowed him to see trends coming and going. Nintendo was never friendly toward third party devs under his watch but he was able to make the singular focus work.

No one currently at Nintendo thinks like Yamauchi and that's a very big problem for Nintendo going forward.

lolno.

Sorry, facts are facts

The DS sold better, faster, and made more profit then the 3DS did.

Even when Iwata cut the handheld by 35% the 3DS still did not perform as needed.

Best stat yet? There's an almost 70% decline in publisher and developer support on the 3DS compared to the DS.

Wait... what?

The 3DS had one rough year and did not sell like the DS, but it's currently the best selling handheld in the market and arguably the only console worth buying at the moment, even if there's "an almost 70% decline in publisher and developer support on the 3DS compared to the DS." If you think the 3DS is a failure, I would really like to hear your opinion on the competition.

How is Nintendo is bringing back the DS design with the 2DS? The only thing they have in common is no 3D.

If the Wii U continues to sell poorly throughout 2014, then Iwata will have something in common with Yamauchi. Yamauchi was responsible for steering the company in the direction of the Gamecube, which in your words is "the console that almost killed the company."

link to where yamauchi laid the plans for the wii and DS plz...

Two things

1. Yes the 3DS is the best selling handheld right now. It's also the best selling handheld leaving 35% profits on the table during every sale.

Imagine how that 35% would help Nintendo right now. Instead of cutting back on R&D and other areas they would have enough to cover the Wii U's failure plus allow the company to grow

2. Yamauchi was the one who was responsible for the Gamecube. He was also responsible for the DS and the Wii, the two things that saved the company and allowed Nintendo to grow.

Would you like to show me what Iwata has done to fix any of this besides deciding that Nintendo could do well losing one third of it's only viable commodity?

Stopped reading there. Not selling as much as a predecessor does not make it a failure. Then again, I don't know why I ever take your topics seriously.

Not selling as much, having to be severely discounted to make anyone want one, less support from devs and publishers

I mean how many signs do you want?

Or are you the sort who doesn't believe in things like "scores"? Everyone just plays to have fun?

Treat them like the funny pages, and you're good.

I don't need to show you anything. Nintendo's "only hope" was still responsible for "almost killing the company", whether or not he was also responsible for their success after he retired. Going by your logic, if Nintendo's "only hope" failed that bad with the Gamecube, then hope has left decades ago.

If the Wii U becomes the Gamecube 2.0, then I'll wait and see if Iwata steers the company to success with the next gen consoles, similar to what you claim Yamauchi did with the DS and Wii. Until then, discussing whether or not Nintendo's only hope is gone is completely pointless and hypothetical considering Yamauchi "failed" just as bad was Iwata.

Iwata's biggest problems - he doesn't understand the West and doesn't focus on it, and he isn't pushing the company forward anywhere near fast enough.

The Wii U isn't a sucess, but it won't be a total failure either in the end. Gamecube certainly didn't almost kill the company, lol but you know that.

I read this interesting bit a few times from somewhere, that the point of the Wii U's architecture and low power could be part of a plan to shrink that architecture for their next handheld. Essentially, having a high power version of that architecture in the next home console (quite a beefy machine but definitely under 100w), and a low power version in their handheld (not too far away from Wii U), so that the same tools can be used with both machines.

It makes perfect sense, but Jayson you know that when something makes sense it means Nintendo probably won't do it. If that happened though, with both of those machines being non gimmicky, that could put Nintendo back on the path to glory. They should overhaul and salvage Wii controls though, as a secondary option.

Worst troll thread ever. Mods should lock this nonsense quickly.

Just a question: Does anyone think (as a matter of fact if you want to take it that way) that Nintendo will survive as a company 10 years from now? Give me an answer and I'm willing to give you an opinion.

This!

The Wii didn't die in 2008 moron.

um....what? do you SERIOUSLY believe that? :?

Commercially, it was a failure. Hell, it was beat out by the Microsoft's Xbox, the new kid on the block. It did, however manage to generate profit - which I think is what @farrell2k was getting at.

Why does ANYONE care what Jaysonguy says? If you cannot tell if he is just an idiot or a troll, at that point he should just be ignored.

Yes, all of those things happened. The 3DS had a relatively weak start. Still, Iwata managed to turn it around into the soaring success it is today. He may have caused problems, but he's also capable of turning them into successes. Sounds like a positive thing to me.

Meanwhile, the Wii U also had a slow start. We'll have to wait and see whether Iwata can turn it around, like he did with the 3DS.

no, success is not judged by whether or not a profit is made. if a company barely makes any money off of something, its a FAILURE. especially with nintendo where their MAIN FOCUS is the consoles. the gamecube is a FAILURE. saying anything else is a flatout LIE.

I usually do, but sometime I fall into the trap. I'm not perfect. :)

Iwata needs to go, there have been so many golden opportunities blow over the last few years that they need a change in philosophy and approach .

where's Cammie when you need her?

GS "Worst Sentence Of The Year" goes to... ^

so you think nintendo's goal was to just barely get by and make a miniscule amount of money? no. compared to the goals they had set for their shareholders, it was ABYSMAL. how do you not get this?

wow. just wow. looks like you're not going to understand this so i'm done trying.

Ladies, you're both pretty. Agree to disagree and move on. This is degrading to SW material.

I find it very funny how people think that losing one third of every sale is the sign of something doing great lol

Also the Gamecube conversation is past idiotic with the "well it made money" there's more to staying black then selling hardware and coming out even.

@Jaysonguy:

DS has was out what 6 years? 3DS has been out for 3. It is unrealistic to think each next system will sell more and more and more then the last. 3DS is the most dominate system in the world currently, and it has been for over a year now. Jasonguy stop trolling.

LOL Jayson guy thread....

does anyone take this twat seriously?

Everyone else already said this, but I'd like to say it too: The 3DS is NOT a failure. I love my 3DS. Don't care for the 2DS (still don't understand why they made the thing).

Also: "The DS sold better, faster, and made more profit then the 3DS did." It's not exactly fair to compare the sales and profit between the 2 systems when they haven't been around for the same amount of time. Wait until the 3DS has been around for about 7 years, then compare them.

As for the Gamecube and the WiiU, that's debatable. I don't really know if the Gamecube was a success or not. The WiiU, on the other hand, needs to pick it up, or it will be a failure.

@EnoshimaJunko: The 2DS was made for kids who will not utilize the 3D feature. That is the intention.

I will make a couple brief points. First, Iwata positioned the Wii U terribly by not learning from the 3DS mistake - which was no games within the first year. That was rectified with the 3DS and I'm sure everyone on this board would agree that they all hope Wii U has the same uprising of software. The only issue being is that the type of games being made for a home console take longer in development than a handheld.

Secondly, jaysonguy you argue that the price drop is profits Nintendo is losing out on. True, had the price been higher - presuming they sold the same amount of 3DS' - the extra profit would be huge. However, had the price stayed the same, would people still be buying it? So this goes to the Walmart/Costco approach. You sell a product for less profit, but you sell a higher volume (more) of the product which makes up for the difference.

Personally, I don't think Nintendo would have sold the amount of 3DS' it has without the price drop.

@Jaysonguy: The 3DS will never be the DS, we get it. Doesn't make its likely 75-100 million sales in 5-6 years a disaster or a failure, okay? Especially considering Nintendo will profit billions on hardware + software sales when all is said and done. You're just dramatic on this forum for the sake of riling up users (like you're doing to me right now) and having fun with them.

I literally think of a topic idea every now then like "Should Nintendo do X with Y" etc and I almost always stop from posting because I think "oh man JaysonGuy will just come in, derail the thread and destroy any rational discussion we could have".

Not even the GameSpot redesign makes me want to stop coming to these forums as much as you do.

On topic: No, I think Nintendo needs less people like him. They need people not stuck in their old ways, anyone who ever thought like him should leave. They need to make hardware to please third parties, not hardware just suitable to run Nintendo software.

Interested to see what RealJaysonGuy has to say about this lol

They rely waaay too much on the old people...just wait till Miyamoto announce his retirement, by this I mean leave Nintendo..just watch the Nintendo's stock price plummet when he does.

Nope. Smash Bros will save Nintendo Wii U.

except that's also coming out on 3DS. :P

Well I think that's because the 3DS isn't that great of a device compared to the DS.

Under Yamauchi Nintendo's handheld plan was rather clear cut. You put out hardware, offer different versions of the hardware, and then make a jump to new hardware.

It's the classic Apple strategy.

The problem is that the 3DS wasn't a jump, it was lateral move and it's obvious it was done because Yamauchi isn't there pushing forward anymore. Instead of thinking of new things Nintendo took on one of the biggest fads going and wanted to make that a cornerstone of their company. By the time the 3DS was released 3D was already a passing fad.

In Yamauchi's absence Nintendo has a real problem. While it's true that while Yamauchi was running the company it was game centric only Yamauchi knew how to value game centric devices. He knew the difference between a step forward and a step to the side.

Iwata doesn't understand this. He wants to take on Microsoft and Sony and Roku and everything else under the planet. He thought that the 3DS was worthy of it's sticker price because of 3D. Yamauchi never relied on fads to power his hardware. Nintendo was never known for horsepower but it did see a constant stream of advances as far as useability.

The whole idea of "just provide games" has never been Nintendo's strategy. What's been their strength was value towards the consumers and useability, games are an afterthought.

wasnt yamauichi still alive when the 3DS released?

so yamauichi laid the plans for this too lol...and the wiiU

No, learn your history.

Yamauchi stepped down in 2002

so how did he lay the plans for the wii and DS?

Yamauchi stayed on the board of directors til 2005. The DS was his idea. As for Wii, I dunno.

but iwata was the ceo.... he was in charge,,, how do you know yamauchi invented the 3DS....that was iwatas baby...same with the wii.