Atari Founder Warns Nintendo May be on The Way Out

[Dragonbums]

the wii sold a ton also last gen, but then nintendo, glutted the games with garbage, assuring that out of all the consoles, wii gathered the most dust out of all 3 in peoples homes.

Treating your customers like fools is what ruined atari finally, the whole taking us for granted and putting out upgrades and hardware that was expensive as hell and dropping support soon after, the 64 bit carts, sega cd, so on. The sega genesis was the best console until the playstation 2 came out, and sega managed to trash its reputation with its fans by crapping all over them.

Nintendo has been headed down that path, taking its fans for granted, if they continue to do that put out too much garbage and not enough quality titles, they could find themselves abandoned by those fans the same way sega did.

Nintendo themselves have put out a lot of quality titles on the Wii U and the average consumer were able to discern shovel ware garbage from Cold Stone from a solid Nintendo title.

However most Wii's were owned by old people and non gaming audiences.
If they only care about Wii Fit, then obviously they aren't going to buy any more games. Nor are they going to bother getting the heavily advertised Nintendo games the company offers.

 

[Headsprouter]

No offence, but I'm not gonna trust the word of a guy who's company's last big contribution to gaming was ET.

This man was not involved in that, and ET turned out the way it did because it was terribly rushed, there was a very good programmer behind it that had done a ton of other good Atari games, he was dedicated to the point of eccentricity. His name's Howard Scott Warshaw, by the way.

On topic, I'd be glad to see if Nintendo went handheld only, seeing as their handhelds are starting to get good enough to support their console games, to the extent that sometimes they make two different version, such as for Monster Hunter on the 3DS/WiiU. But they won't be going any time soon.

 

[McMarbles]

Ah, who better to warn about the road to irrelevance than a guy who's travelled the length of it, arrived at the end, and set up a nice cabin there?

 

[Get_A_Grip_]

Nintendo will be fine.

Sure the Wii U isn't a rip roaring success, but all companies have their bad moments. They still have the more successful hand held console and a huge fan base for a lot of their first party franchises.
All they really have to do to become more relevant to the 'hardcore' crowd is reboot some of their abandoned franchises and create a few new IPs.
All they really have to do to attract more 'casual' gamers is to not give their consoles confusing names; WiiU, 2DS etc.

Also Atarti's downfall came from successive failures such as the 5200, 7800, Lynx and Jaguar (everything that wasn't the 2600).
The only thing Nintendo have made that bombed anywhere near as hard as those consoles was the Virtual Boy.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Wii U Pokemon MMO. That is all.

Some people say that this would do well. I'm skeptical. I'm a decent MMO fan; I've played[footnote]At least tried them. I've only put 200+ hours into WoW, Rift, SW:ToR, GW2 and EvE[/footnote] moooost of the big ones. I also enjoy Pokemon; myself and my brother probably have ~10 pokemon games between us. I still wouldn't play a Pokemon MMO. So I dunno.

Edited the footnote

Making single player franchises into MMO's rarely works out well. I say rarely to cover my ass but I don't actually know of any that have worked out well. For example, Skyrim sold millions and millions of copies and Oblivion was no slouch either, I'll bet most of those Elder Scrolls fans couldn't care less about the MMO. How many people wanted a third KOTOR game instead of an MMO?

People love Pokemon for what it is.

the only thing is people play pokemon competitively all the damn timeeeee, especially online (meta-game to be exact)



so we know there is technically already a "market" or such that does the online multiplayer of it, just not in a integrated setting.

personally i've been dying for a 3D pokemon on console, or an action based pokemon game (a is roll/dodge depending on your speed of the pokemon, the triggers all are different moves the pokemon can do and x and y can be passive abilities/etc...i just think pokemon can work amazingly in an action setting like they do on the cartoons, that or i just am fucking dying for a 3D pokemon regardless of changes in gameplay, you can't tell me that shit wouldn't sell like hotcakes parents wallets couldn't orgasm with money coming out fast enough for kids.

Just because people play online doesn't mean they want an MMO. I do have an example.

People play Age of Empires and Age of Mythology online all the time so Microsoft used your logic and created an Age of Empires MMO, it failed.

oh i know, believe me i'm not an mmo person, complete opposite to be certain, i was just stating that pokemon is a bit different compared to skyrim or kotor, those were EXTREME single player based games in every sense of the word, while pokemon has always had the concept of trading and battling with friends via cable or online, and all you have to do is check out a few pokemon threads to see how insanely similar/crazy the meta-gamers are compared to some mmo'ers. (not to mention how many times nintendo has had to shut down pokemon mmo's that were made by fans, they'd gain insane popularity and nintendo would QQ about it hard)


also, age of empires mmo was awful, just an awful game that destroyed a great franchise..i still remember my playthroughs of II and III being glorious.

Age of Empires Online was awful because they took the franchise from being an RTS franchise to a quest based MMO. Those changes were made because it was an MMO and at first it didn't even contain Skirmish mode.

I imagine a Pokemon MMO would make the same mistakes. After all, if they kept the same gameplay with the optional online matches, then it would be no different than a standard Pokemon game.

yeah it was definitely a bad combination, and they did it in a horribly lacking way.

as i mentioned, this has been tried plenty of times before, and nintendo force chokes every dev that tries to do it, but it has been proven to work and plenty of people were interested in it/playing them when they were out for their brief time.

here is a youtube video to show one of the many off:


listen, i don't want to play a pokemon mmo, and it is quite clear that you don't want one either, but there is evidence of it working before gamefreak even touches the damn games, so quite clearly there is a market for it.

Based on the video you posted it seems that it would be a bit too clustered for my taste. Also, it was popular before they were shut down, yes. However, if an MMO is to be successful and not end up as a loss people need to stay interested in it for the product needs to continuously bring in money to pay for the servers. Since the Unofficial Pokemon MMO's always get shut down relatively quickly after they become popular there is no telling how long it would have remained popular. Also, I can say for certain that if they had to pay for access to that game that a fair amount of players would no longer play since it would no longer be free.

yes, it was clustered, and i am not trying to argue for mmo's, as mentioned in one of my original posts, i can't stand mmo's for the most part, i was just merely mentioning there has been pokemon mmo's up and running and that there were communities for it, that's all. I'm not trying to argue for them, and i'm not going to keep answering these goal post moving replies, i have no interest in a pokemon mmo so you guys are talking to a brick wall here.

Sorry, I only meant to have the sentence about the video directed at you, and the rest aimed at the general reader. I need to work on my writing to help make it more obvious.

that's fine, and i'm sorry if i came off snappy, i just didn't want to argue/discuss any more points (that i wasn't really trying to defend in the first place, was just showing some evidence that it did exist) aimed at anyone too, not specifically aimed at you.

 

[faefrost]

Nintendo will be fine.

Sure the Wii U isn't a rip roaring success, but all companies have their bad moments. They still have the more successful hand held console and a huge fan base for a lot of their first party franchises.
All they really have to do to become more relevant to the 'hardcore' crowd is reboot some of their abandoned franchises and create a few new IPs.
All they really have to do to attract more 'casual' gamers is to not give their consoles confusing names; WiiU, 2DS etc.

Also Atarti's downfall came from successive failures such as the 5200, 7800, Lynx and Jaguar (everything that wasn't the 2600).
The only thing Nintendo have made that bombed anywhere near as hard as those consoles was the Virtual Boy.

Nintendo will be fine, provided they play their cards right and evolve. Their hardware division not so much unless they have something truly magical and game changing stuffed in a closet somewhere. Their handheld console market cannot long withstand the steady evolution and improvement of personal consumer electronics. Their set top console market is already feeling the squeeze of advancing tech and strident competition for a narrowing consumer base.

Yes Nintendo has tons of reserves and can be considered the best game makers out there. They can compete and withstand challenges from Microsoft and Sony (no easy feat), but their real competition on the hardware side is named Apple, Google and Samsung. And their business model as it stands does not leave them on good footing to go head to head in that environment. They will need to evolve. The most logical approach would be to simply move away from in house hardware. Probably the best option for them would be to come to some sort of partnership with Apple. Apple's rigid control of their hardware would fit in well with Nintendo's typical design goals and requirements. License some of their tech and allow iOS devices to come equipped to run Nintendo software natively. Most other options heavily risk following the path of Atari and Sega.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Say what you want about Nintendo but I don't see Microsoft making a huge effort to market products to an audience younger than high school age. Sony's PSP and/or Vita can be considered good for the kids but both home consoles (Sony and Microsoft's) seem to be focused on and, marketed towards an older audience. Nintendo knows that if that you have to get em' young; most Wii U owners were at one point an SNES or NES owner when they were younger.

 

[Epicspoon]

You can say that the WiiU is failing all you want but they've still sold more WiiU's then the PS4 and Xbox One combined!!! MY LOGIC IS FLAWLESS!!!!

 

[Bleidd Whitefalcon]

I say Nintendo should make a successor to the N64 without any gimmicks. Just a nice powerful console like they used to make with the launch titles being a pokemon MMO and a next gen Metroid as an answer to Microsofts Halo and Sony's Killzone.

Wasn't that the Gamecube? And look what happened with that

The marketing was terrible for the gamecube and it was competing with the new xbox and PS2 at the time. Like I said, but you have seemed to ignore, launch it with a pokemon mmo and a next gen Metroid and throw in a Zelda game for good measure and fans will come flocking. Not to mention a console like this would be much easier to get stuff like call of duty or assassins creed plus other third party games on it. They could price it much lower than the xbox one or PS4, as most Nintendo consoles are usually cheaper.

Sounds like a good comeback for Nintendo if you ask me.

There WAS Metroid and Zelda on the Gamecube. I'd need to check sales but I don't think it really helped them that much. As for a Pokemon MMO, I don't think Nintendo has the online infrastructure to sustain one. And it would cannibalize the main series over on the handhelds - why would someone buy the next version when they can boot up a game with every region and Pokemon?

The third party stuff... you have a valid point there. But I'm not entirely sure they could get to the point where they have really good ports of Assassin's Creed or CoD while being able to keep the price low. I wouldn't be surprised if the WiiU ports of Black Flag and CoD: Ghosts are based on the PS360 versions instead of the PS4 and Xbox One - we won't really be able to find that out until a few years down the line based on whether it continues to get the series after the PS360 stop being officially supported

 

[maddawg IAJI]

That's all? Let them just stop development on everything else and make an MMO from a single player franchise. Tell me, how often does it work out when publishers turn a single player franchise into an MMO?

Because obviously 'stop development on everything else' was what I was implying.

And you're absolutely right. How could they ever possibly hope to convert the complex and nuanced gameplay of collecting cute critters and battling with them onto a larger scale. Don't know what I was thinking. People would definitely not want anything to do with such a game least it destroy the continuation of such original and inspired single player hand-held releases.

How about you drop the sarcasm and tell me how many single player franchises turned MMO turned out well? That is what I originally asked.

Warcraft turned into World of Warcraft, Neverwinter got their own MMO, The Elder Scroll Series will be getting an MMo and its set to be a big one and then you got the Kotor series which spawned the fastest growing MMO in history.
The Final Fantasy series will be getting its second one, and at least big time franchises (DDO, Star Trek and Lord of the Rings) also have their own MMO.

Pokemon is one of the most popular franchises on the planet and also one of the mediums most profitable. An mmo in the franchise would make a killing.

 

[newwiseman]

Am I the only person not interested in the Occulus Rift's head motion tracking? The ability to look around with my head doesn't appeal to me since I still have to use my thumbs to move. Until I get a "full-dive" option like SOA or the bleedin' matrix it just seems like an interesting way to do 3D gaming; I don't see that happening any time soon unless someone make a major breakthrough with EKG or some other technology for thought control.

More on topic: Nintendo can survive on it's first party content alone. They won't be as profitable as they've been in the past but they'll survive. Their hardware would die in a heartbeat if they developed for iOS and other consoles but their profits would probably shoot through the roof for the short term. In the long term, competition on other platforms would probably drive their non original, rehashed to death, ideas on games into making them a joke before fading away for real.

 

[Dragonbums]

Am I the only person not interested in the Occulus Rift's head motion tracking? The ability to look around with my head doesn't appeal to me since I still have to use my thumbs to move. Until I get a "full-dive" option like SOA or the bleedin' matrix it just seems like an interesting way to do 3D gaming; I don't see that happening any time soon unless someone make a major breakthrough with EKG or some other technology for thought control.

The idea is nice...but I don't think I could even use it for very long. Plus it makes me feel uncomfortable. As much as I like getting immersed in a videogames, I only take it so far. I don't want to literally "lose" myself in the game. I still want to be able to track what's happening around me. Is there an object int he way? Is someone coming up to me? Is there something going on outside that may or may not need my attention? Those things people have to factor in.

Another issue are those who may get motion sickness, and/or headaches.

People already complain about the 3D feature of the 3DS giving them eyesores and headaches and it's not nearly as immersive as the Oculus Rift. How bad will it be for the device?
It's very possible that this alone is enough to deter many people from the device.

All I'm saying is that they better take some serious pointers for where the Virtual Boy failed. Otherwise that Nintendo console is going to have it's modern day 2.0

 

[Dragonbums]

That's all? Let them just stop development on everything else and make an MMO from a single player franchise. Tell me, how often does it work out when publishers turn a single player franchise into an MMO?

Because obviously 'stop development on everything else' was what I was implying.

And you're absolutely right. How could they ever possibly hope to convert the complex and nuanced gameplay of collecting cute critters and battling with them onto a larger scale. Don't know what I was thinking. People would definitely not want anything to do with such a game least it destroy the continuation of such original and inspired single player hand-held releases.

How about you drop the sarcasm and tell me how many single player franchises turned MMO turned out well? That is what I originally asked.

Warcraft turned into World of Warcraft, Neverwinter got their own MMO, The Elder Scroll Series will be getting an MMo and its set to be a big one and then you got the Kotor series which spawned the fastest growing MMO in history.
The Final Fantasy series will be getting its second one, and at least big time franchises (DDO, Star Trek and Lord of the Rings) also have their own MMO.

Pokemon is one of the most popular franchises on the planet and also one of the mediums most profitable. An mmo in the franchise would make a killing.

And sans the WoW MMO and TESO (because it hasn't come out yet.)

How many of them are colossal failures? Sure they are still running, but that doesn't mean they are making anywhere near the amount of profit they thought they could make.

Just because a franchise is popular doesn't mean it should instantly become an MMO.
Pokemon is more like turn based strategy chess then something that can work in an MMO.
It was never about the exploration and adventure more so then it is about gathering a variety of Pokemon, making a team specifically to suit the users needs, and putting that team to the test against other players online. For many people, that is more than enough for the franchise that gets accused of being a milked cow on a daily basis at the levels of CoD.

 

[Dragonbums]

As for a Pokemon MMO, I don't think Nintendo has the online infrastructure to sustain one. And it would cannibalize the main series over on the handhelds - why would someone buy the next version when they can boot up a game with every region and Pokemon?

Because when a new generation of Pokemon comes out it won't be available on the MMO game.

 

[WeepingAngels]

That's all? Let them just stop development on everything else and make an MMO from a single player franchise. Tell me, how often does it work out when publishers turn a single player franchise into an MMO?

Because obviously 'stop development on everything else' was what I was implying.

And you're absolutely right. How could they ever possibly hope to convert the complex and nuanced gameplay of collecting cute critters and battling with them onto a larger scale. Don't know what I was thinking. People would definitely not want anything to do with such a game least it destroy the continuation of such original and inspired single player hand-held releases.

How about you drop the sarcasm and tell me how many single player franchises turned MMO turned out well? That is what I originally asked.

Warcraft turned into World of Warcraft, Neverwinter got their own MMO, The Elder Scroll Series will be getting an MMo and its set to be a big one and then you got the Kotor series which spawned the fastest growing MMO in history.
The Final Fantasy series will be getting its second one, and at least big time franchises (DDO, Star Trek and Lord of the Rings) also have their own MMO.

Pokemon is one of the most popular franchises on the planet and also one of the mediums most profitable. An mmo in the franchise would make a killing.

I didn't asl you to list MMO's that existed, I asked how many turned out well?

WoW and FF are about the only ones that turned out well. TESO isn't out yet and I haven't seen much excitement for it. TOR is doing well at all anymore.

 

[xPixelatedx]

...Didn't he say all consoles would be? Didn't he say mobile games would destroy the console market? Because I just want to be sure we're clear here; the guy has shit oozing out his ears.

 

[maddawg IAJI]

And sans the WoW MMO and TESO (because it hasn't come out yet.)

How many of them are colossal failures? Sure they are still running, but that doesn't mean they are making anywhere near the amount of profit they thought they could make.

None of them are. They're making profit through whatever business model they prefer. We don't have access to the amount of money they make so we can't really call any of them colossal failures, but with the high cost of upkeep for an MMO (Server maintence, patches, and constant development of end-game material) we can say that its continuing existence alone with no sign of stopping is of itself a success.

That's all? Let them just stop development on everything else and make an MMO from a single player franchise. Tell me, how often does it work out when publishers turn a single player franchise into an MMO?

Because obviously 'stop development on everything else' was what I was implying.

And you're absolutely right. How could they ever possibly hope to convert the complex and nuanced gameplay of collecting cute critters and battling with them onto a larger scale. Don't know what I was thinking. People would definitely not want anything to do with such a game least it destroy the continuation of such original and inspired single player hand-held releases.

How about you drop the sarcasm and tell me how many single player franchises turned MMO turned out well? That is what I originally asked.

Warcraft turned into World of Warcraft, Neverwinter got their own MMO, The Elder Scroll Series will be getting an MMo and its set to be a big one and then you got the Kotor series which spawned the fastest growing MMO in history.
The Final Fantasy series will be getting its second one, and at least big time franchises (DDO, Star Trek and Lord of the Rings) also have their own MMO.

Pokemon is one of the most popular franchises on the planet and also one of the mediums most profitable. An mmo in the franchise would make a killing.

I didn't asl you to list MMO's that existed, I asked how many turned out well?

WoW and FF are about the only ones that turned out well. TESO isn't out yet and I haven't seen much excitement for it. TOR is doing well at all anymore.

Okay, then barring the ones that haven't come out yet, the answer to that question is

Warcraft, Neverwinter, Swtor, DDO, Star Trek and Lotro.

You can't judge success of an MMO by its status mate. Their continuing existence alone is evidence enough of that. Do you have access to their financial papers? Are you aware that, free to play or not, some people have estimated it to be over 1 million dollars a year. So yeah, I'd say they've all been successes in their own right.

 

[Dragonbums]

-snip-

That's dancing around the issue dude. If they spent hundreds of millions of dollars into making an MMO and they are only making a revenue of 1 million a year back, then it stands to reason that the MMO was a colossal failure because at that point they aren't even getting back a third of the percentage it took to make that game on a yearly basis. That is a failure.
SWOTOR's preferred business model was subscription based and they had to scrap that for F2P because nowhere near the amount of people were paying the model to upkeep the game servers. Just because a game is there doesn't mean it's a success. At worst most of those MMO's are surviving, at best, they are mediocre and are making mediocre sales.

 

[maddawg IAJI]

That's dancing around the issue dude. If they spent hundreds of millions of dollars into making an MMO

Stop. They're not spending hundreds of millions. Swtor was a rare exception, but the idea is that they spend around 60 million dollars. And no, they're not making only 1 million dollars. Even with its bloated budget, Swtor has recouped their costs and then some and still remains profitable. Guild Wars 2, which only requires you to buy the game in retail for 60, has caused NCsoft's net income to rise 120 million in Q1 this year. The developers of Star Treak Online, DDO and Lotro are all stating similar profits. In short, just because they can't dethrone WoW doesn't mean they're not profitable. In fact, DDO saw a 500% increase in revenue as a result of going F2P. Lotro saw similar numbers and saw its revenue triple upon making the switch and Star Trek is reportably worth 50 million dollars to its developers.

You asked which MMOs were successful at recouping costs and remain profitable, I told you. Now you're trying to say that those don't count.