Readers Feature

[Nag]

Yeah, ever since the 360/PS3 there's been no real difference... except for exclusives.🤣

 

Wonder if Nintendo would begin to lose their identity if they published on a Sony/ Microsoft machine. 

[Maryokutai]

For Nintendo I think it could be catastrophic. They are currently in a unique position where every first-party game they release sells numbers other companies can only dream of. And because this is almost a constant and a guarantee, they operate in what feels like a vacuum. The stories about Mario Wonder not having a deadline or Tears of the Kingdom having a 12-month long QA phase are the kind of fairy tales other developers dream of. And that model is most likely unsustainable if they get thrown into the downward spiral of the tech race and have to compete on more than just design quality with their output. Not to mention that hardware is a strong pillar for them as well, they made money off of every of those 130 million Switch systems sold.

 

As for Sony and Microsoft, I sometimes get the feeling that letting people believe a game is exclusive is just as effective as it being so. We've seen two generations in a row what exclusive marketing rights for Call of Duty can do to a platform despite the game coming out on competing systems, too.

[HandsomeDead]

Okay, this fucking topic got me thinking more.  Oh dear.

 

I got thinking about the legacy of exclusives and why they are.  In the early days it was because the architecture of these systems were very different.  Ports were unique, they'd even make totally different games with the same title (thinking of the two Aladdin games) or even what Konami did with Castlevania and Contra, making totally different games to those series because they wanted to really work to the hardware's strengths.

 

Later if you had a port like the N64 version of Resident Evil 2 it's a fascinating example of some wild engineering because a game like that should not work on the N64.  There were reasons why games were exclusive back then because the hardware was so different.  But in more recent times it was less about that and just rather cynically just brand building and it's just insincere.  Like it isn't because it would take some wild engineering feat why Final Fantasy Remake isn't on Xbox, it's just business.  That's why I think exclusives are just bullshit now.  They don't carry the same spirit as exclusives before so I just don't care about them as much, and it's because hardware is just so similar now.

[Maf]

One of the advantages for Nintendo must be making games for older hardware and having smaller teams. So they can spend less on a project over a greater amount of time. The other thing Nintendo has is their games constantly sell. There’s probably lots of reasons why they haven’t made Mario Kart 9, but one of the big reasons must be that Mario Kart 8 is still in the top 10 constantly (or something) - 10 years after release. 
 

The way they work is so weird compared to everyone else, but it works for them. Customers are happy (generally), business is healthy (no lay-offs at Nintendo yet), and if it weren’t for BG3 they probably would have got GotY again. I hope all these things transition into the Switch 2. They’re probably at the best they’ve ever been

 

I’m surprised people feel like PS and Xbox are interchangeable. I think that’s been true for last gen and the tail end of the 360 gen. But I think currently they’ve done a really good job at being different. I doubt PS did it intentionally. It feels like they’ve stayed the course. But Xbox has done great jobs with their hardware and services. It’s the only reason I think they can stay relevant right now while dropping some exclusivity. If they tried this last gen it would have been over.

[DANGERMAN]

@HandsomeDead3rd party exclusives, sure, I've never been a fan of that. 1st party though, I think something like The Last of Us 2 happens because Sony need to sell systems. 

 

There's other reasons for it obviously, but Sega lost their character when they lost their own platform 

[Maf]

Yeah, also I think there must be developing advantages to being exclusive to one system. Playstation has the best looking games by a mile on console. There must be a connection there (And not just money otherwise Halo wouldn’t look the way it does)

[DANGERMAN]

That's an interesting point. Halo started out as an Xbox One game, which probably explains why it looks like it does (although God of War and Horizon are both PS4), but outside of the Horizon games, which look amazing, it does feel like Microsoft haven't managed to really push their box yet, unless there's something I'm forgetting? 

[Maf]

I was looking for it but can’t find it. But there’s a tweet from Shaun Layden (ex Playstation boss man) who says the reason games are getting so expensive (and he called them out as unsustainable years ago) is because the size of teams are so big. Most of the budget for games is going on staff. So there’s this cruel reality where I think we want to see the stop of mass lay-offs, which means games profit needs to go up, which is easiest way to do that is reduce budget, which easiest way to do that is lay people off.
 

So with that in mind how do companies keep exclusives at such a level of ‘quality’? Either they make more money by going multi-format which puts a big dent in a console’s USP or you make smaller games and the employment shrinks and the games get smaller/look worse. I think if you love games like we do it’s hard to see how to win here 

[HandsomeDead]

9 minutes ago, DANGERMAN said:

@HandsomeDead3rd party exclusives, sure, I've never been a fan of that. 1st party though, I think something like The Last of Us 2 happens because Sony need to sell systems. 

 

There's other reasons for it obviously, but Sega lost their character when they lost their own platform 

 

In a vacuum they've produced some amazing games going down the route they have but in a way TLoU has set them further down that route that has put them in the bad position they're in now.

 

I think it's mostly the other reasons Sega are in the situation they're in, not just ceasing to be a hardware developer.  Look at the early 2000s and the edgy place they were in.  It was just the polar opposite to Sega at that time.  I hope Sega finds something beyond Sonic and Lika a Dragon really soon.

 

15 minutes ago, Maf said:

Yeah, also I think there must be developing advantages to being exclusive to one system. Playstation has the best looking games by a mile on console. There must be a connection there (And not just money otherwise Halo wouldn’t look the way it does)

 

Well yeah, I know Nintendo devs have say in the hardware department and I'm sure it happens with the others but any game made with specific hardware in mind looks good.  I dunno why that isn't happening on Xbox Series consoles, they just don't make those kind of games right now.  I'm sure Hellblade will push it in the Sony way.

2 minutes ago, Maf said:

So with that in mind how do companies keep exclusives at such a level of ‘quality’? Either they make more money by going multi-format which puts a big dent in a console’s USP or you make smaller games and the employment shrinks. I think if you love games like we do it’s hard to see how to win here 

 

No, I don't think layoffs are necessary.  You split the teams to make more games if they're already hired.  It's not a case of making the same amount of games but at a lower budget but have that budget they're willing to spend on more smaller games.  Then you have a chance of one of them breaking out and covering the less successful ones.

[Maf]

I’m with you but I don’t think making more smaller games solves it. Firstly more games means more marketing, if the games aren’t modern “AAA” they won’t sell as much even if they’re marketed, thirdly each game team will have their own budget and P&L, and if they lose they get laid off and turned in to a support studio not just covering for another team. It’s not like roulette where they spread the bets. Each thing is its own bet. 

 

The real answer is to have better risk management, green lights given by execs and real vision for the future state of games. and lay the people off at the top first. But they’re the ones in charge of the lay-offs so

 

EDIT: I’m trying to come back to the topic of exclusives and the current business of them, but not doing a good job of it. The ultimate point I’m trying to get to is I think AAA has to shrink right now (and potentially crash in the future) because of the unsustainable finances. I don’t think gaming as a whole is in danger but consoles specifically, the way they work/rely on exclusives and the traditional way the business has worked around these things is super under threat. So the platform holders give up their best reasons to own their console in the first place or the unemployment goes up. And even then I think multi-platform is a stop gap measure. 

[HandsomeDead]

I think I got off point a bit.  My point is hardware being so similar makes exclusives much less interesting.  It makes it so it is just all business and branding and I'm less interested in that.  When hardware was unique it was much easier to sincerely create an identity in the games produced but in an absence of that it's all whatever.

 

It probably is the reason I like Switch ports.  It's like the last place this kind of ingenuity this happens.  But even that isn't as interesting as things were.  

 

If hardware is so versatile now, and you don't need to focus in a certain way of making games I guess I just don't see the real need for exclusives anymore.  I'm sure there's business and branding reasons for it but whatever

 

This is why I'm like just make everything multiformat.  The hardware is already built for that.

[Nag]

 

Quote

A reader suggest that Western games companies should run their business like Japanese publishers, who haven’t needed to lay off anyone.

 

When it first became clear that something serious was going on with the games industry, in terms of all the layoffs and the change of direction for Xbox and PlayStation, the quote from former Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata, about why he didn’t lay anyone off when things were looking bad for them, got a lot of mileage on the internet.

 

‘I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world,’ he said, before taking a 50% pay cut and encouraging the rest of the board of directors to cut their own salaries as well.

 

I don’t need to tell you that this is something that is impossible to imagine any Western company doing – or even PlayStation, who are based in the US. In his business update Phil Spencer spared a whole sentence to vaguely imply that laying off 1,900 developers was a bad thing, while Sony hasn’t said anything at all about the situation.

 

This week we had the news that Capcom has increased the base salary of all its employees by 25%. While Square Enix went out of its way to say the success of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth was due to its dedicated employees, who it had given a 10% rise to in order to stop them from leaving the company. Again, have you ever heard of a major Western company doing anything similar?

 

I’m not trying to paint Japanese companies as selfless charities, because clearly that’s not true. They have a reputation for demanding long work hours, total loyalty, and poor pay (which is why these raises are needed). Labour laws are also different and as I understand it’s actually very difficult to lay anyone off in Japan (which in itself seems a good thing).

 

But at the end of the day these developers have not only still got jobs, they’re being paid more for them too. Other than Sony, not one Japanese publisher has announced any layoffs or given any indication anything unusual is going on at the moment.

 

Even as Microsoft and Sony rip up their decades old playbooks, and pivot to god knows what, Nintendo is so unconcerned they’ve delayed the Switch 2 because they don’t think it’s quite ready yet.

 

There’s a been a lot of talk about another industry crash, following the one in 1983, but if you look that one up you’ll see that the way it ended was that Japan (and Europe) hadn’t had any problems and so Japanese companies, namely Nintendo and Sega, came in and restarted the whole concept of the games industry.

 

Obviously a million and one things have changed since then, in terms of the details, but it seems to me that history is still going to repeat itself to a large degree. Or at least it will if American companies learn to act a lot more like their Japanese equivalents.

 

Apart form not treating your staff like disposable assets the other thing that seems to have allowed Japan to avoid the problems is that their budgets were already generally much lower than Western equivalents. Sony may have spent $315 million on Spider-Man 2 but I’m sure no Japanese developer has ever worked with that sort of budget before, and that’s why they don’t have to lay anyone off at the moment.

 

If American companies start to go bust, because they’ve pushed the limits of the industry to breaking point, then Japanese companies would be right there to fill in the gaps, but somehow I don’t see it working out quite like that.

 

However, if American publishers just start relying on one or two massive AAAA games a generation, then there’s still a massive opportunity there for Japanese companies that are making more sensibly budgeted games that can afford to take a risk.

 

Who knows how things will be in the future but at the moment it seems as if American companies should be looking to Japan for an understanding of how to run their businesses. Or, you know, just act sensibly. It’s not like keeping budgets in check and not treating your staff like trash is some insane formula no one could’ve come up with on their own.

 

[HandsomeDead]

Yeah, it's hard to say because it's more a case of what kind of stuff gets reported.  I don't know if the Japanese games media reports a lot on labour stuff, and if there is, where? and is anyone translating it? There's just these barriers that makes these global comparisons unclear.  

 

I've heard of the strategy of sticking people in low responsibility roles to make people resign because of these labour laws they have.  It's the sort of thing that happened to Igarashi, I think.

 

But overall there does appear to be more health in their industry and they do maintain staff a lot more.  As we've seen a successful game doesn't lead to layoffs like it does in the west now.

 

[Maryokutai]

I'm hardly an expert but from what I read through the last couple of months is that there's a lot more legal recourse if a company would simply decide to lay off people for 'economic reasons' in Japan without being able to prove that they tried a bunch of other cost-cutting alternatives beforehand (like reducing leadership payouts etc.). But Iwata's words also ring true, of course. Wasn't there a report from last year or the year before that Nintendo had a 98% or 99% retention rate? Morale in that building has to be through the roof.

 

The point about budgets is interesting, too. Square Enix is probably operating at the same levels as any western AAA publisher, but looking at Capcom's output for example, I wonder if their games are even remotely as expensive as most AAA stuff here in the west. If someone told me you could make both Dragon's Dogma II and RE4 Remake for the price of Spider-Man 2, I'd probably believe it.

[DANGERMAN]

yeah, the budgets seem to be a big factor, as it's not like Japanese companies don't fuck up and have flops. Capcom put out Exoprimal, they had to drag Street Fighter 5 to a decent level, Square had to restart Final Fantast 14, and are apparently disappointed in 16's sales (that's after the Chaos one that people made fun of. Namco and Sega were both kings of the arcades, with Namco being Playstation's best developer, while Sega changed the face of the industry repeatedly, both have had to merge to carry on existing

 

the difference seems to be a 'hit' can carry the rest of their catalogue. Like, Sega for example, nothing they make sells over 10 million units. Like a Dragon, Persona, Sonic etc doing a million or so is a hit for them. They seem to be smarter with their budgets, Yakuza being a prime example, those games don't look cheap, but they reuse a ton of assets. 

 

Capcom I suppose are a little different, but then they've managed to leverage a small selection of franchises to ensure predictable sale numbers. It's a shame, we don't see crazy cool shit from Capcom any more, but then they do at least tend to produce good games. Dragon's Dogma 2 is probably the biggest risk I can remember them taking in a very long time

[one-armed dwarf]

This debate reminds me a bit of when people were comparing The Marvels to Godzilla, the latter of which just won an oscar for visual effects but the budget difference between these two films is enormous (in the opposite direction). It seems like cost of living in the US must be partly a factor though.

[Maryokutai]

In this case specifically I think the differentiating factor is having to pay Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson vs. the salary of internationally lesser known Japanese actors. From what I understand CGI in the US is often getting outsourced to the lowest bidder, sometimes different companies for different scenes. Maybe Japan does this differently. Doing it inhouse would allow multiple departments to better collaborate and plan accordingly, which is big factor regarding its end-result quality and can allow low-budget stuff to have phenomenal looking CGI (I will always be impressed by ex_machina).

 

9 hours ago, DANGERMAN said:

Capcom I suppose are a little different, but then they've managed to leverage a small selection of franchises to ensure predictable sale numbers. It's a shame, we don't see crazy cool shit from Capcom any more, but then they do at least tend to produce good games. Dragon's Dogma 2 is probably the biggest risk I can remember them taking in a very long time

 

I don't think they're quite as risk-averse as you paint them here, they're just very clever in how they do it. I'd consider Resident Evil 7 being first-person a rather risky move, but it was attached to one of their strongest IPs. They also seem to put quite a bit of effort into Kunitsu-Gami, which I'd consider being part of the 'crazy cool shit' gang. But I suppose the Game Pass deal likely offsets certain financial risks here.

[DANGERMAN]

That does look more interesting tbf, but I was thinking back to when they had Clover and were doing all sorts of fighting games, that PS2 game where you played as a Roman etc. It's a long time ago, but I do think Japanese companies are risk adverse too 

[Nag]

 

Quote

A reader makes suggestions on how to revive five of Nintendo’s less prominent franchises, including Star Fox and Chibi-Robo!

 

I read the Reader’s Feature the other week about the games Nintendo should have ready for early on in the Switch 2’s first year and I pretty much agreed with all of it, even if I’m not sure all of them will make it.

 

Inspired by that, I began to think about how Nintendo would tackle other franchises on their new console and how the Switch has seen them rejuvenate so many of their biggest games, with everything from Zelda to Kirby getting their best entries ever.

 

But what about those other franchises that are either dead or dying, and which Nintendo doesn’t seem to know what to do with? Well, I’m sure they know better than me, but I tried to come up with some ideas anyway.

There are some easy ones I chose not to include, like Pokémon (upgrade the tech to something from the 21st century), Wario Land (get the Pizza Tower people to do it), and Paper Mario (make it a role-playing again) but these others are going to be a bit more complicated to get right…

 

Chibi-Robo!
Nintendo have a lot of mostly forgotten franchises that often only get one or two entries, and yet somehow Chibi-Robo! has had five, despite none of them being very good (judging by reviews, I haven’t played them all) or seeming to be very popular. I think the central problem is it never had a very clear premise. Chibi is a little robot that is obsessed with cleaning up? That’s not much to get your teeth into.

My suggestion is to turn it into a full-on Metroidvania, make it much faster paced, and have it like Ōkami where instead of adding colour to the world you’re cleaning it up. Add in some gameplay similar to PowerWash Simulator and you’ve suddenly got a proper premise.

 

Donkey Kong
There seems a good chance that this will be one of the first games for the Switch 2, the equivalent of a new Super Mario game at launch. If this is true, I’m very excited to see what Nintendo will do but I wonder if it has something to do with the remake of Mario Vs. Donkey Kong.

A game where you were playing as both Mario and Donkey Kong would be great, especially if it took in stuff from DK’s previous games (the non-Rare ones, ideally). Maybe you could make your own skyscrapers and scaffolding and defend it from each other? Or be competing to get to the top of the level? There’s so much that could be done in a more competitive Super Mario game.

 

Star Fox
This franchise has been limping along since the N64 days and all because Nintendo keeps trying to overcomplicate things. Just make it Rogue Squadron but with the Star Fox crew. Those games were popular and reasonably involved, with a story and everything. You could still have linear levels too, modelled after old 2D shooters, which would be quite the novelty nowadays.

I’d also suggest adding a roguelike element to it. I thought of this while looking at the maps for the first two games and I think it’d work very well. The problem with the early games is that you could complete them very quickly and while there was replayability a randomised element would add even more.

 

F-Zero
I think there’s two approaches here, the first being to make it a serious racing sim. I don’t mean grimdark but a tone and complexity of racing to distinguish it from Mario Kart. Sony clearly isn’t going to make any more WipEout game so the field is open for F-Zero.

The alternative is something I’ve heard a few people suggest, which is to lean on the idea of Captain Falcon being a bounty hunter. Have an open world with lots of racing but have him chase down perps instead of just the number one spot. Also, explain what exactly he’s captain of.

 

Advance Wars
I love these games but the remake didn’t do very well, so I’m worried that might been the last we’ve seen of it. Nintendo has already tried the real-time strategy angle with it, so there’s no point suggesting that, but I am playing Unicorn Overlord at the moment (great game!) and I think something like that would work very well.

It could be kind of a cross between that and Total War, where you have an overworld map where you’re doing grand strategy and then battles are carried out in the usual manner. Add in a more complex story and 3D graphics and I think you could make something that’s more appealing to non-fans.

 

[HandsomeDead]

As much as I'd love a proper Chibi-Robo game the rights to it are spread around because the Skip just had a relationship with Nintendo, and also the developer is kinda AWOL.  Maybe technically alive with a few staff.  We'd be lucky with a remaster but they've not made anything for nearly 10 years.

 

That clique of developers have kinda gone apart from the Onion Games guy, it's sad really.

 

My idea for Star Fox is mostly keep it traditional (or not, I dunno make it like Chorvs) but really lean into the original vision of them being puppets.  Make the game look like a Gerry Anderson show.

 

For F-Zero I just want a remaster of GX.  I new one would be cool but I'm not sure it's happening.  I don't want some open world thing, but I would be well up for a Captain Falcon action game, have him Falcon Punching all over the place, maybe some Blue Falcon driving between missions.  Get Platinum on it.

 

 

I don't really consider the other two dead.  Lad's reaching.