Nintendo is a great company. If it weren’t for them, there wouldn’t be a home gaming market as we know it today. The company has been around for over a century and are highly respected in the gaming community. Still, it feels that in recent years the company has been on a bit of a decline. Gone is the company that trounced Sega in the console wars, now a horse relegated to last place in the Kentucky Derby. It’s sad, but it seems that Nintendo gets a free pass every time they make a move that goes against the norms of the industry they helped build.
With that in mind, I decided now was the time to list a few areas where Nintendo could stand to learn a thing or two from Sony and Microsoft, the two companies who have a firm grasp on how gaming should work in 2017.
Voice Chat Isn’t Rocket Science
From the moment that the Nintendo Switch was announced, there was a lot of talk regarding how the system would handle things like multiplayer. When rumors started to swirl that Nintendo would be charging for online play on the system, like Sony and Microsoft, there was some concern from gamers. When the details of Nintendo’s online plan were released, it wasn’t nearly as bad as many had feared, clocking in at a third of the expected cost. What did spark a bit of online chatter, however, was the reveal of how the Nintendo Switch would handle voice chatting.
The truth is, it’s not pretty.
With the Nintendo Switch, voice chat isn’t actually handled on the console. Instead, it’s handled by a smartphone app that you run on your iOS or Android device. This creates logistics nightmare. On my Xbox, if I want to fire up a game of Halo: The Master Chief Collection and play with some friends, I can do so easily. I can also start a party chat with them and get both the game audio and the party chat pumped to my ears via my headset. It’s a nice little setup and it works flawlessly so there’s no reason to mess with it.
So how does all this work on the Nintendo Switch? For the game audio, depending on how you’re playing, it will be pumped through the TV if you’re docked or through headphones if you have them connected. Likewise, the chat app on your phone or tablet will pump through either your phone’s speakers or a pair of connected headphones. If you want to have the traditional chat and game audio experience, things get a little… interesting.
Partnered with Hori, Nintendo released a Splatoon 2 Splat and Chat Headset. In addition to a headset, the product comes with an audio splitter that plugs into both your phone and your Switch before feeding both audio feeds to the headphones. To make things worse, none of the cables are particularly long, with the longest coming in at 3.9 feet. Finally, if you have an iPhone or Android device that lacks a 3.5mm jack, you can go ahead and add one more adapter into the mix.
Your Retro Properties Are Valuable
With the way gaming moved from generation to generation when I was growing up, I didn’t think retro games would have as strong foothold in the market in 2017 as they do. In Nintendo’s defense, they have done retro gaming half right on their previous home console, the ill-fated Wii U, as well as on their most recent pure handheld device, the 3DS. Virtual Console was a great feature to have on both of those systems, though Nintendo never properly figured out how to monetize them.
When you bought a game on Virtual Console, it was tied to that system. Nintendo never ventured into tying purchases to an account, so spending $5 for Super Mario Bros. on the Wii U required another $5 purchase to play the game on the Nintendo 3DS. Some could argue that this pricing was fair, given that some of Sony’s upper tier PS One Classics were priced at $10; but it’s hard to equate a game like Super C to Final Fantasy VII in terms of price. Nintendo’s strategy should have been to charge $5.99 for the bulk of their retro titles and make the purchases cross-platform. Little is known about how Virtual Console will work on the Switch at this point, but I don’t have high hopes.
One other thing that has taken off in the last few years has been HD remakes and remasters of games from previous generations. In some cases, the games in question would receive an HD retexturing, while other times the games would be rebuilt from the ground up. Nintendo has only released a small handful of remakes and HD releases of games in the last few years, but not with the same intensity as Sony and Microsoft. While games like Gears of War, Final Fantasy VII, and Shadows of the Colossus have all seen, or will see, remakes in the coming years, games like Super Mario Sunshine and Donkey Kong 64 are getting no love, despite fan’s insistence that they would like to see full home console remakes of these classic titles. While it’s true that Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, and Star Fox 64 all got remade for the 3DS, fans want to play these games in glorious HD, not on a small screen with a resolution that barely beats the systems they were originally released on.
If Nintendo wanted to even go a step further and take a play out of Microsoft’s book, they could release a bona fide collection of classic games wrapped in an emulator designed to run on the Switch and watch the money roll in. Rare Replay was a fantastic release that actually pushed me from getting a PlayStation 4 to getting an Xbox One. If Nintendo started putting out collections like that, the money would be endless for them.
Save Data Is Important
Given Nintendo’s penchant for tying digital content to individual systems, I really shouldn’t be surprised that it’s impossible for a user to back up their save data but in 2017 there’s really no excuse. Sony and Microsoft both know that the hours that gamers sink into their games is valuable to them and allows gamers to back this data up to the cloud. Nintendo offers no such option and that needs to change.
Breath of the Wild is easily one of the meatiest Nintendo games I’ve ever played and the time I’ve put into it so far rivals what I put into Skyrim. It’s disheartening to know that if someone were to steal my Nintendo Switch or if it wound up destroyed that my save data would be gone. To that end, it wouldn’t matter if I bought a new console or not, as I would be starting back at square one with any game I’d play. Out of all the issues I’ve had with Nintendo in recent years, this is the one I think they need to resolve the fastest.
There have been rumors that Nintendo is working on a system to allow gamers to back up their save data, but those leaked documents are old and their authenticity has never been verified. Nintendo of America President, Reggie Fils-Amié has maintained that Nintendo won’t comment on the topic of backing up save data until everything has fallen into place. If you ask me, this is something they should have been resolved prior to the launch of the Nintendo Switch.
Not All Your Customers are Pirates
What so many of Nintendo’s less-than-consumer-friendly decisions ultimately boil down to is the desire to curb piracy. The problem is, there aren’t as many pirates out there as Nintendo thinks there are.
I don’t want to downplay the issue of piracy and say that it isn’t a real issue because I know it is. I also won’t say that Nintendo content isn’t pirated because it most certainly is. Prior to the release of Pokémon Sun and Moon, the game was released online and a number of players not only downloaded it, but connected to the online services the game offered. Naturally, Nintendo caught on and issued bans to players who stole the game.
In an article posted to Forbes in 2013, several Canadian researchers revealed that they did a study over the course of several months which revealed game piracy statistics to be severely inflated. The Entertainment Software Association of Canada stated that, in December of 2009, there were nearly ten million illegal game downloads. However, the researchers found that over their three-month study there were only 12.6 million unique IP addresses that were involved in game piracy at that time. Taking that statistic and pairing it against the 67.08 million 3DS units that Nintendo sold gives you around 18-19 percent. Nintendo is creating consumer aggressive features that lock digital purchases, save data, etc., to their systems for illicit activity that’s being done by less than a fifth of their customers.
The fallout of this stretches everywhere from Nintendo’s poor handling of Switch save data to the inability to play a digital game on two different 3DS systems at once. It may not seem like a big deal but if, like me, you held on to your original 3DS when you picked up a New Nintendo 3DS XL, you may want to jump between the two systems. I love my 3DS XL when I am at home laying around and I want to play a game but if I’m traveling to work I’d like to have the smaller system with me for easier transportation.
We Want to Give You Our Money
I’ve never seen a company that struggles harder to “shut up and take my money” than Nintendo. This isn’t a new issue either. For the last few years, Nintendo’s business strategy has been to play it safe. Sadly, this strategy involves announcing awesome things and then under-producing. Apparently, Nintendo would rather sell what they can make and call it a day, rather than risk overproducing and winding up with a few unsold units.
From a business standpoint, I can see why Nintendo wouldn’t want to throw money away by making products that eventually wind up on clearance for a fraction of the price after taking up valuable shelf space in brick and mortar stores. However, lately it doesn’t seem like that’s an actual issue.
The biggest example of this is the NES Classic Edition, which holds its place in my heart as one of the most mangled and non-thought out product launches that Nintendo has ever had. When the product was first announced, the fan reaction was through the roof! Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and the comments section of almost every article about the announcement were filled with cries of joy from gamers who couldn’t wait to get their hands on one and relive the games of their childhood. The only problem was you couldn’t pre-order them anywhere. When they finally were released, the stock was so limited that more units than not made it into the hands of eBay re-sellers. It was disgusting.
RE!
