The PlayStation 4 is succeeding for the same reasons the PlayStation succeeded back in the 90s. Sony made a polished, powerful console specifically for gamers and developers. With an easy development environment, and a excellent marketing and PR. But crucially, Sony was also able to avoid the mistakes it's contemporaries were making. Nintendo had no idea what they were trying to do with the Wii U, thinking they could cash in on the Wii's success, without understanding why the Wii was a success, and being oblivious to a rapidly changing gaming landscape. And Microsoft, wanted to come in and pretty much bully gamers into conforming to their proposed always online, heavily restrictive, big brother is always watching practices that were both anti-consumer, and very shady. Really, Nintendo and Microsoft gave Sony 8th gen console dominance on a silver platter, making Sony's lives even easier. Had Nintendo and Microsoft not been messing up, the PS4 would be facing much stiffer competition.

Iwata was not a disaster for Nintendo. He had his flaws as a CEO sure, but he led Nintendo's most successful era and helped lay the blueprints for the current casual market.

Eventually people got tired of wii and moved away to other products that did things better like tablets / mobiles and ps3/xbox360 ( ps3 end of its life time basically ) because wii was doa when it came on software a few years into its life span already.

The Wii didn't start having significant sales declines until the 2010s. While I do stand by the fact that Iwata should've been better prepared for the next generation, making just a PS4 with Mario games wasn't the answer.

@MirkoS77: I'm not absoving Iwata of fault. Like I said, lack of planing for the future post-Wii and DS was his biggest shortcoming as a CEO. I'm just saying not everything wrong with Nintendo is entirely his fault. The reason Yamauchi ruled Nintendo with an iron fist was because Nintendo was a very different company back then, it's corporate structure was nothing like what it is today. Unlike Iwata who focused on group decision making, Yamauchi wanted keep Nintendo and the industry in-check. He had the ability to make things happen through sheer force of will, and it was his way or the high way.

Of course, this also led to Yamauchi's biggest flaw as a CEO, his ego. His own arrogant attitude was what created the PlayStation in the first place, and his need for Nintendo to rule the industry with an iron first and his controversial statements towards the RPG genre drove away many of Nintendo's third party developers, who by that point, were already fed up with the company's restrictive nature.

Yamauchi was by no means a bad CEO, but he single handedly caused Nintendo's third party problems, of which the company is STILL trying to recover from.

A big reason why Nintendo felt so disjointed management wise was due to their corporate culture as a Kyoto based firm. Dan Adelman (former head of indie relations at Nintendo) explained this in possibly the best way he could.

Nintendo is not only a Japanese company, it is a Kyoto-based company. For people who aren’t familiar, Kyoto-based are to Japanese companies as Japanese companies are to US companies. They’re very traditional, and very focused on hierarchy and group decision making. Unfortunately, that creates a culture where everyone is an advisor and no one is a decision maker – but almost everyone has veto power.

Even Mr. Iwata is often loathe to make a decision that will alienate one of the executives in Japan, so to get anything done, it requires laying a lot of groundwork: talking to the different groups, securing their buy-in, and using that buy-in to get others on board. At the subsidiary level, this is even more pronounced, since people have to go through this process first at NOA or NOE (or sometimes both) and then all over again with headquarters. All of this is not necessarily a bad thing, though it can be very inefficient and time consuming. The biggest risk is that at any step in that process, if someone flat out says no, the proposal is as good as dead. So in general, bolder ideas don’t get through the process unless they originate at the top.

There are two other problems that come to mind. First, at the risk of sounding ageist, because of the hierarchical nature of Japanese companies, it winds up being that the most senior executives at the company cut their teeth during NES and Super NES days and do not really understand modern gaming, so adopting things like online gaming, account systems, friends lists, as well as understanding the rise of PC gaming has been very slow. Ideas often get shut down prematurely just because some people with the power to veto an idea simply don’t understand it.

The last problem is that there is very little reason to try and push these ideas. Risk taking is generally not really rewarded. Long-term loyalty is ultimately what gets rewarded, so the easiest path is simply to stay the course. I’d love to see Nintendo make a more concerted effort to encourage people at all levels of the company to feel empowered to push through ambitious proposals, and then get rewarded for doing so.

Dan Adelman

Long story short, there was a power struggle within the company where everyone has the ability to shoot down an idea at any point in the process. To get anything done at Nintendo, each division and board member involved has to be on board with the plan. If one person says no, then that's the end of that. It create a situation where instead of everyone working together and having a unified plan, each division was essentially, out for each other's blood, fighting for dominance over the company's inner-workings. Iwata has said and done some things I disagreed with, but not every bad business decision made by the company was his doing. A lot of it had to do with the inflated ego and stubbornness of the aging board members who insisted on doing things the old fashion way, instead of actually trying to grow as a company. Hell, I read somewhere that Iwata and the hardware team had to pretty much fight the board members just to get the Wii and DS made.

In a way, Nintendo's success with the Wii and DS was their own undoing, and it caused management at the company to spiral out of control. It also seemed that Iwata was all to aware of this, and handled the problem like a programmer, his quote "if the System doesn't work, it's definitely your fault" held especially true for Nintendo's situation at the time. Much of Nintendo's recent restructuring and re-branding efforts were put into place by Iwata himself during the last few days of his tenure.

It was essentially, the same problems Sega had during the mid-late 90s. Management all over the place, each branch at the company trying to sabotage each other, culture clash between Western and Japanese ideals. And unable to pick a direction and stick to it.

Like I said, Iwata has done a lot of good in the early Wii and DS era for Nintendo, but his lack of a long term plan caused management at the company to get out of control. While the limitations of Nintendo as a Kyoto based company will never truly go away, they can definitely be reduced, and that's something Iwata was trying to accomplish during his last days at Nintendo.

Iwata was a visionary, and a commendable CEO, but he wasn't perfect. I think the biggest problem with Nintendo under his leadership, was that he never seemed to have much of a long term plan for the company. Granted, much of Nintendo's current plans for the future, were put into motion by him, but I feel it could've been avoided had the company planed further ahead from the start. They struck gold with the Wii and DS, and then went "okay so... now what?". At times, it felt like Nintendo was just making shit up as they went along, never planing far enough ahead, instead focusing on short term goals, then scrambling at the last minnute to fix things when their ship is under fire. We've seen this happen time and time again from them. From quickly announcing core-focused Wii titles shortly after the E3 08 disaster, cutting the 3DS price 6 months after launch, and rushing to complete the holiday titles just to prevent it from failing, and the failure of the Wii U and not preparing for HD development prompting the company to quickly scramble to restructure and get everything on the right path just to keep the thing afloat for as long as they could. Iwata did a lot of great things for the company, and for gaming in general, but I feel a lack of a long term plan was his biggest flaw as a CEO.

If you ever wonder why Nintendo is seemingly oblivious to market demands and fans, well I think I might have an answer.

https://gamesandopinions.wordpress.com/2017/01/21/does-nintendo-have-too-many-artists-in-power/

We can all agree that the Nintendo Switch live conference was a less than stellar presentation. Awkward translations, sluggish pacing, weak third party presence and hefty price tags bogged it down quite a bit. That being said, I think people are complaining for the wrong reasons.

When the Switch was first unveiled, many people were hoping it would return Nintendo to being a hardcore gamer company that focused on hardcore, mature games with no gimmick or filthy casual garbage. Just a controller, handheld, and classic Nintendo franchises and AAA 3rd party games. Then Nintendo comes out in January and basically says "LOL, I don't think so!" and proceeds to double down on their Wii/DS era mindset. Unsurprisingly, gamers were salty. After all, this was supposed to be Nintendo's return to the glory days of the **GameCube** where they were hardcore and for "gamerz!".

What people fail to realize, is that this is how Nintendo ALWAYS was. Anyone with any amount of common sense and knowledge of how Nintendo approaches video games really should've seen this coming. Yes, with Nintendo Switch, Nintendo is going back to it's roots. However, it's not the Hardcore, mature gaming, nostalgia filed, adult male Nintendo that people seem to fantasize about. It's the pick-up-and-play, fun for everyone, local multiplayer, mobile first Nintendo that defined their success with the Famicom and GameBoy, and strengthened it with the Wii and DS. And that's what the Switch is, Nintendo is doubling down on their strengths, not conforming to their weaknesses.

That isn't to say the company hasn't learned a thing or two. The launch line up may be barren, but if you look at the Switch's first year as a whole, it looks a lot rosier. Nintendo seems to be avoiding front loading the Switch launch with too many titles to avoid Wii U esque software droughts, and instead prepping a major first-party release for nearly each month, with more potentially on the way at E3. As much as I hate pay-walled online play with a passion, the fact that Nintendo's service is subscription based might mean it's a lot more feature packed and modern that it probably won't matter in the long run. That NES rental nonsense is complete BS though.

The Switch as a whole, also looks to have a lot more thought put into it's design and gimmicks than the Wii U ever did. The IR motion capture thingy on the Right Joy-Con may look silly, but it at least has a functional gameplay purpose, unlike the camera and TV remote nonsense on the Wii U Gamepad. And the fact that each Joy-Con can be used as a separate controller is the kind of smart ingenuity that hasn't been seen from the company since the Wii and DS era.

Going back to the reveal trailer for Nintendo Switch in October, it's easy to see this was never going to be the Hardcore gamer box that fans were clamoring for. No amount of hip 20-somethings, Skyrim, or Red branding, was ever going to change that. Nintendo might be done with the Wii and DS brands, but the philosophy and technology they introduced will always remain within the company, and if you think they're going away anytime soon just to gain some street cred, think again.

They have the in-house talent. But Nintendo needs to actually use it more. The younger designers need to make more of their own games, and have their own distinctive style. It'd be nice to see Nintendo as a house of a diverse range of artists, rather than seeing Miyamoto all the time.

There's a lot riding on the Nintendo Switch, with many hoping the new platform can boost Nintendo back to general consumer relevance. However, a sort of overlooked aspect that people don't really consider, is Nintendo's own first party software. While not as much as say Konami or Sega, I feel Nintendo has fallen very behind in game development ideology compared to some other developers, whether it be the mobile devs, indie devs, or some of the AAA developers. That's not to say their recent games are bad per-se, there's no denying the fun to be had in games like Mario Kart 8 or Smash Bros. 3DS/Wii U. But throughout this generation, Nintendo just mostly played by the numbers, never really stepping out of it's comfort zone outside of a few moments of flash-in-the-pan brilliance like Splatoon or Rusty's Real Deal Baseball. Even then, the company still clings to some of the same tropes and archaic limitations they held on to for years. I'm not necessarily asking Nintendo to give up who they are, but I wish they would be more ballsier and take more risks with what they produce (that isn't a 3rd party co-production).

Now, the answer most Nintendo fans would say is buy more studios, specifically, Western studios. That way, Nintendo can still play it safe, while the Western houses will do the risk taking for them. Let me just say that there is nothing wrong with the occasional studio acquisition. Having external houses under your control can be a plus. And an army of acquired studios may be fine for a company like SIE Worldwide Studios, who is a smaller division of a larger media conglomerate. But for a company that prides itself on home-grown talent like Nintendo, it's best to keep acquisitions to a minimum. Personally I want Nintendo to foster new talent in-house talent, and groom designers that can stay true to Nintendo's core philosophy, but still venture outside their comfort zone and take more risks with the games they create.

Thus brings me to the question at hand, would you rather see Nintendo groom and improve it's in-house talent at EPD, or just buy more studios and have them do the work for them?

@Pedro: I don't mean your sterotypical western game, I mean taking influence from Western media in general. Western Comics, Western Cartoons, Western Films, etc. Incorporating a little more of that in some of their games would be beneficial.