Nintendo: Petitions "Don't Affect What We Do"

[SaberXIII]

Well, now I can just laugh at N fanboys when they say that Nintendo actually cares about the fans. Nope, its all about the cold hard yen for them

Actually, that's still debatable. I've seen a lot of petitions go around, but what you're assuming is that fans know what they're talking about. We all think we know what'd be a good move for a company, be it in how it does things or what it releases where, but in reality we don't really have the faintest clue. If Nintendo took notice of a bunch of petitions it would probably be a really stupid move.

 

[Olas]

A lot of people signing a petition doesn't necessarily make it a good idea. If Nintendo simply gave fans whatever they asked for we wouldn't have gotten Windwaker. In fact the "endless flow of Mario and Zelda games" that Nintendo detractors love to go on about, is basically the result of giving fans just what they ask for. I'm not saying it's good practice to ignore petitions, but they should definitely be taken with a grain of salt, which is more or less what it sounds like he's saying here.

 

[Karadalis]

So in other words. 'We don't listen to what our consumers and potential consumers have to say. Suddenly every decision from the Wii onwards makes perfect sense....

Funny thing about that: the Wii made them a spectacular sum of money.

And in the end cost them the Wii U cause everyone who bought the Wii got seriously burned by the lack of "real" games, what with all the crap shovelware games that drowned the entire Wii lineup beneath it.

The days where zelda, metroid and mario alone sold a nintendo product are long gone. To bad nintendo doesnt realize it.

 

[The Apple BOOM]

Also agreeing with you on the Wii U's X game. It's the only reason I'm even entertaining the idea of a Wii U, and as such I'm really hoping that it finds some way to another console release.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolith_Soft

Nintendo owns them. Currently, seeing X on any other platform has as much of a chance of happening as Bayonetta 2.

 

[Foolery]

Nintendo needs to wise up. Their traditional core franchises don't have as much relevance as they used to. If they were smart, they would have waited. Imagine if the Wii U had launched with X and Super Mario 3D World. And while we're at it, let's call the system the Wii 2 to avoid consumer confusion. Instead, we've had a full year with next to no notable releases other than Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate and Wind Waker HD. Good games, but nothing really new or much of a system seller. There's also plenty of interesting IPs that Nintendo could bring back. Mach Rider, Custom Robo, Mother, Wario, Metroid, F-Zero, Golden Sun. Give people a reason to buy the Wii U, beyond Mario and Zelda. And for fuck's sake stop region locking games. If Capcom or whomever refuses to localize a title, on a Playstation system, at least I have the option of importing it.

So, should Nintendo seriously listen to every little thing consumers have to say? No.
But they should take note of trends, and pay attention to when certain things are voiced on a large scale.

 

[soulfire130]

I got to agree with Nintendo on this. You can't always give your audience everthing it wants. Nintendo isn't disregarding what it audience says, its taking it into consideration and weighing it against different factors. It makes sense to me.

 

[Roxas1359]

While I agree that listening to all fan-petition is not wise business wise at all, however completely disregarding them is a complete and utterly stupid move. Also, the fact that it really wouldn't be hard to localize games, especially since it was localized in Europe before the US so all that had to be changed was the games being reprinted for US discs, because Nintendo obviously isn't gonna be getting rid of region locking soon.

 

[ccggenius12]

Submitting to a petition with 100,000 signatures may not result in 100,000 sales, but ignoring a petition with 100,000 signatures definitely results in 0 sales.

AND 0 expenses.
"Hey guys, lets pile on the publicly traded company for having to consider profits when making decisions, instead of blindly doing what the internet says."
I'm not saying people's opinions are worthless, I'm just saying that they'd carry a lot more weight if they had a monetary promise attached to them. I too am a fan of the idea wherein the ventures that are a bit on the risky side feature a kickstarter-esque pre-buying phase. A company like Nintendo knows how much something needs to earn for it to be worth doing, and putting the onus on the consumers to prove there's a real demand would be a very progressive move.
It worked for Mighty No. 9. (This coming from No. 70703)

 

[BNguyen]

Nintendo seems to be getting worse with PR as of late. Not as bad as ubisoft and all that but people seem to hold them to a higher standard over those sort of things as they never tried to actively piss people off before but now they do seem to saying fuck off to fans like most game publishers have been doing.

Not cool nintendo, just realese your damn games.

Submitting to a petition with 100,000 signatures may not result in 100,000 sales, but ignoring a petition with 100,000 signatures definitely results in 0 sales.

and 100,000 sales do not make up for the millions that they would lose in developing a product, advertising it and finally paying back the developers, artists, graphic designers, etc. needed to make a profit.
a game sold only to what amounts to a meager handful of people in an economic sense would tank the company that worked to make it

I hate it when people can't seem to think things like this through.
Maybe if a petition had several million people sign it, then things would look better and Nintendo would work towards making those fans happy, but until then, I say, Nintendo, work in the way that will keep you going

 

[BNguyen]

Well, now I can just laugh at N fanboys when they say that Nintendo actually cares about the fans. Nope, its all about the cold hard yen for them

Actually, that's still debatable. I've seen a lot of petitions go around, but what you're assuming is that fans know what they're talking about. We all think we know what'd be a good move for a company, be it in how it does things or what it releases where, but in reality we don't really have the faintest clue. If Nintendo took notice of a bunch of petitions it would probably be a really stupid move.

You mean the fans might know what they want to spend their money on? A shocking concept there...

It is true that we might not know what the best move for a company is, but for things like operation rainfall, where they already had the english language version in the european market, and only had to change the region code and print disks, it is pretty damn stupid not to do so when even a smaller portion of the petition would cover the costs and make a profit it is stupid to ignore the fans.

Another thing that entertains me, whenever there is a petition companies are quick to point out that not everyone of those would be a customer, but when piracy or used games pop up those are obviously 1:1 lost sales.

even if a game was made for the region that requests it, what makes you think that piracy will stop? People pirate goods because it costs them next to nothing when compared to the idea of buying the actual product. I'm not saying that releasing the game or whatever would be a bad idea, but seriously, a company needs to look out for its best interests instead of a handful of fans on an internet petition where only a few thousand have signed it.

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

This isn't a revelation, its standard practice. A company never makes any decision without money in mind.

 

[itsmeyouidiot]

Why are people upset by this? Online petitions have never affected anything. Ever.

 

[Caiphus]

While I agree that listening to all fan-petition is not wise business wise at all, however completely disregarding them is a complete and utterly stupid move. Also, the fact that it really wouldn't be hard to localize games, especially since it was localized in Europe before the US so all that had to be changed was the games being reprinted for US discs, because Nintendo obviously isn't gonna be getting rid of region locking soon.

Yeah, this is pretty much it. I mean, you can't really expect a company to be like "Oop, guess there's a 100,000 strong petition for us to do something, guess we have to do it". But Nintendo's track record of listening to customers hasn't been great, in all honesty. And it needs to be better if they're set on region locking their stuff.

Edit: Grammr

 

[Racecarlock]

Anybody remember when petitions were for various forms of government and not for whenever a game doesn't get released on PC or whenever zelda doesn't have enough ben drowned references or whenever there's a minor glitch in any game ever?

Of course they're not basing their decisions on petitions. They're not a state government. They're not forced to. I can't believe I'm using this word, but it's making people seem really unnecessarily entitled.

It's one thing that a game gets a broken release. It's another thing entirely to pretend to be an activist when you just want english versions of rare JRPGS.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

Also agreeing with you on the Wii U's X game. It's the only reason I'm even entertaining the idea of a Wii U, and as such I'm really hoping that it finds some way to another console release.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolith_Soft

Nintendo owns them. Currently, seeing X on any other platform has as much of a chance of happening as Bayonetta 2.

Yeah, honestly I can't say I had much hope for that considering how tightly Nintendo holds their exclusives. I guess I'll have to settle for option two: hoping that a Wii U suddenly appears in my home sometime after its release

 

[Lunar Templar]

Yeah, honestly I can't say I had much hope for that considering how tightly Nintendo holds their exclusives. I guess I'll have to settle for option two: hoping that a Wii U suddenly appears in my home sometime after its release

you say that like Sony or Microsoft are any different with their exclusives

anyway, sounds like normal business to me, given how many times gamers have said 'oh yeah, I'll totally buy that' and then didn't, it's not surprising they give a low priority to petitions.

though the N-haters grasping at any extra reason to hate on Nintendo is amusing though

 

[captainballsack]

And this is why Nintendo continues to lose more and more its core fanbase on a daily basis.

It's also why they still continue to make well designed games.

 

[Strazdas]

It's not hard to see what people like petitions on the internet.

Um, shouldn't "what" be "why"?

There's (minimal) cost in converting the game from PAL back to NTFS (or in applying the UK translation to the Japanese NTFS version), there's a minimum number of units they can manufacture in a single run, and they need to be sure that it will sell enough to pay for pressing the discs, as well as packing and shipping all of them. Even instruction booklets can get costy.

I think you mean Pal to NTSC (NTFS is file system format, which is kinda unrivaled now as FAT is dead). And if they bothered to program their games correctly (as in not do first grade programmer mistakes by locking game to refresh rate) there would be no costs. In this decade there is absolutely no reason to have region locks other than incompetence.

 

[Icehearted]

Do as you please, ***** ***** *****. Cave to demands, you either didn't cave enough or you caved too much.

I say stick to your guns. Not everyone will like you for it but it's far more respectable than folding and failing for it.

 

[Dragonbums]

Nintendo needs to wise up. Their traditional core franchises don't have as much relevance as they used to. If they were smart, they would have waited. Imagine if the Wii U had launched with X and Super Mario 3D World.

I have a pretty good idea.


SM3DW: It's a great game and all, but I'm not going to buy an entire system for a single game.


X: Exhibit a: Lol, what the fuck is that?

Exhibit b: I'm not going to buy an entire system for two games

Exhibit c: Eh, I don't care about JRPG's.