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[1945 sober barracks in Kyoto, Japan, disconcert anyone who has ever marveled at their vivid and sighted video games. It is hard to imagine that such an abundance of kaleidoscopic products comes from a place so devoid of color, a white and austere cubic building that exudes, at best, the aura of a kaleidoscopic product. ;a monastery.
On the top floor of the building, in April, Tatsumi Kimishima, president of Nintendo takes place in a conference room, next to a translator. While tea is served, Kimishima gives a terse summary of the company's situation. The past year and a half has been intense: at the edge of the precipice of insignificance, Nintendo regained its place at the top of the global video game industry . Kimishima condenses the triumphant drama with monastic self-control: "We are certainly happy."
In March 2017, the company launched the Nintendo Switch console in the midst of skepticism . People doubted that the equipment, which can be used as a portable device or connected to a television, was successful. It has been more than a decade since Nintendo's latest hardware success, Wii and the home entertainment world had revolutionized. Smartphones, according to some analysts, were the future of video games, not those meticulously crafted $ 300 with motion-sensitive controls.
But from the beginning, the players liked the originality, the versatility and the design of Switch. Last April, Nintendo announced that the previous fiscal year had sold more than 15 million units and more than 63 million games . An alignment of reinvented classics fueled the frenzy. The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of Nature is sold to more than eight million copies and was named Year Game by the. Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences . The new versions of Mario Kart, Super Mario and Splatoon had a similar performance. Nintendo's revenues more than doubled from the previous year to $ 9.5 billion and its share price climbed 81%.
sellers of children's products do not hesitate to fire their characters and to conclude commercial agreements. Nintendo works with Illumination Entertainment, the studio behind Minions and Despicable Me, to make a Mario film . And in partnership with Universal Studios to create character-based amusement parks for Nintendo, the first will open in Osaka in time for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
In September, the company will launch a service in online for Nintendo users. Change and already cook some expected games . Investors' fears about their success drove the stock down, but Nintendo expects this exercise to sell more than 20 million consoles and 100 million games. "We need to think about how to plan our launches to attract the interest of our audiences around the world," said Kimishima. In a few months he would chart the strategy of his departure, preparing the one who replaces him as president.
Nintendo turns 130 in 2019. Once again, the world wonders how a given society periodically for dead is still revitalized . But this swing is not new to Nintendo. For a long time, it alternated between boom and sunset periods. What remains constant, it is the sober and jealously guarded culture of the company, the system at the base of its unusual ability to adapt, with a certain regularity, to the changing notion of the game. of humanity.
Nintendo hardware and games operate in the white and minimalist research and development offices in Kyoto. The company protects these two craftsmen, keeping them out of sight of the visitors, that the knowledge of the cafeteria was impossible because the developers could be there eating . Nearly one o'clock in the afternoon, the underwater melody of Super Mario Bros sounds on the speakers: it indicates the end of the lunch hour. Shortly after, Shinya Takahashi and Yoshiaki Koizumi leave the protected area and join us for an interview. Takahashi, 54, a senior executive and board member, grew up in Kyoto, studied art and, in the 1990s, was already a renowned producer of games. Koizumi, 50, is Deputy General Manager of the Entertainment Planning and Development Division. Among other roles, they oversee game designers in charge of dazzling Switch users.
The creators of Nintendo games come from different academic fields . Historically, most were Japanese men, although in recent years the company has hired more women and more foreigners. Diversity helps to replenish Nintendo's source of creativity say executives, and produces a heterodox variety of games that captivate consumers who are not necessarily fervent gamers (that's to say not just young men)
The expectation of is that new ones learn the craft of veterans and spend their careers at Nintendo continually perfecting mastery of their craft. This is reminiscent of the learning system that underpins the craft culture that distinguishes Kyoto. In the city workshops, apprentices work with master craftsmen, producing ceramics, paper fans, engravings, cutlery, tea pots, embroidery, bamboo and lacquerware. Kyoto craftsmen pride themselves on never letting their work become obsolete ; It is expected that each generation of apprentices will absorb the methods of their predecessors while innovating conventional practices.
The master craftsman of Nintendo, his most revered producer, is Shigeru Miyamoto, 65, who joined the company in 1977 and designed his first world-famous game Donkey Kong . Miyamoto is still with the company, and all senior creators, including Koizumi and Takahashi, have worked alongside him. "I'm not young either, but as a developer working in franchises that have existed for three decades, one thing I recognize is that the fact that they've been around for thirty years does not necessarily mean a strength in itself interesting contributions, "said Koizumi.
The creative methods of society and, more precisely, why his best games border the sublime, have always been a kind of mystery . But Miyamoto gave some clues. He often tells how, when he was young, he discovered a cave in a bamboo grove on the outskirts of his village of Sonobe, northwest of Kyoto. At first fearful, he entered the underworld, marveling at the feelings of mystery and life that permeated him. This sense of wonderment and animism persisted, helping to inspire successful games such as Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda . The history of the Miyamoto Cave is for Nintendo's acolytes the allegory of Plato's cave for students of Greek philosophy: a way of formulating the inherent challenge of perceiving reality.
Then you have to translate it too. The company has created teams in Europe and the United States formed by dozens of translators and nipponophiles . Your job is to review the video game scripts and redo anything that could be confusing. Few people who play Nintendo detect their footprint, although there are passionate people who carefully evaluate their work, detecting the signs of impurity as Tolstoy's devotees study a new translation of "War and Peace".
Nintendo doing everything right, the successful introduction and sale of games in multiple cultures requires additional choreography . Before the arrival of Switch, there was a lot of doubt about the operation of the traditional sales model, so the company could put its consoles on the market without exasperating the users and especially if, at the same time. era of endless digital distractions, "nintendomania" "It was still contagious.
In the fall of 2012, the company was part of its periodic sunsets. He had just released the Wii U following the popular Wii. The console had HD graphics and a touch controller, but from the start it felt unbalanced . The name, to begin with, looked so much like Wii that, according to critics, it seemed like a minor improvement rather than a breakthrough. The most popular games were slow to arrive and sales were slow.
When all is well, a new console triggers a manna. The launch of exclusive and tempting titles attracts players to buy the console which in turn increases sales. Then, the console reaches a critical mass among the most ardent fans, and other companies strive to adapt their most popular titles to the Nintendo system. These third party games attract new console buyers. Merchants looking for licenses (for clothes, cereals, toothpastes for children, to name a few) rush, desperate to take advantage of the frenzy. The resulting revenue growth increases Nintendo's profits and replenishes its research and development funds to revive the process .
But things are not always good.
With the Wii U, the cycle stopped immediately, and Nintendo sank into a pit of several years . For the spring of 2014, he reported his third consecutive year of losses, and people compared him with relics like Sega, Nokia and BlackBerry. Some have suggested that he stops designing consoles and is dedicated to licensing his games for competing systems.
The faith of investors was desperate and Nintendo changed course. In the spring of 2015, it acquired a 10% stake in DeNA a Japanese company specializing in games and services for smartphones. Several months later, he invests an undisclosed amount in Niantic a San Francisco-based application developer from Google.
In September 2015, Kimishima assumed the reins after the death of President Satoru Iwata . Within Nintendo, Kimishima was known as a knowledgeable logistics planner and a generous mentor with younger executives.
The following year, Niantic released Pokemon Go a mobile device game that released Nintendo from the rut. In the 1990s, the company paired Miyamoto with Pokémon creator Satoshi Tajiri to help design the original Pokémon games. She is now co-owner of Pokémon Co., which is responsible for the licensing and marketing of all these tentacles formed by TV shows, trading cards, comics and toys based on apparently permutations. infinite fictitious creatures. Hours of his debut, Pokémon Go was a sensation. Hordes of players wandered through neighborhoods, malls and parks to capture the Pokémon that had been digitally integrated around the world, appearing on the screens of users as they approached. Technically, Nintendo had played a secondary role in the advent of Pokémon Go, but the phenomenon has led some investors to diagnose the initial stage of another "nintendomania" .
In November, these signals were confirmed. the company launched the NES Classic Edition a miniature and revamped version of Nintendo Entertainment System, the console that unveiled the company in Europe and America in the eighties. The updated version has been carefully calibrated to awaken the sleeping passion of sleepy fanatics, incorporating thirty of the most popular NES games (unlike the original, it does not need any cartridges). From the beginning, the supply was rare. The device has run out in stores and customers have been queuing for hours while waiting for a few units . But what for some seemed like a disaster in the supply chain, was read by others as a calculated strategy. At $ 60 per console without additional games, the NES Classic was a low-margin item; Much more important for the company was to open the global appetite for games that Nintendo has prepared for Switch . To this end, Nintendo and DeNA have also launched Super Mario Run for iOS and Android, freeing Mario from phones and tablets from hundreds of millions of people
. By the time Switch appeared in Spring 2017, legions of people wanted to reconnect with their favorite childhood characters in an appropriate Nintendo device . Over the next fiscal year, the Switch console generated revenue of $ 6.8 billion. The 3DS platform contributed $ 1.7 billion and smartphone sales rose 62%, generating nearly $ 355 million.
Inside Kyoto's white headquarters, Nintendo executives were already planning to avoid the following failure. At a press conference in April, Kimishima announced that he would resign on June 28 and that Shuntaro Furukawa would succeed him. It was time, Kimishima said, that the next generation is taking the reins. Furukawa, 46, grew up in Tokyo playing Nintendo and to relax, instead of going to golf like Kimishima, he plays Golf Story on the Switch. He joined the company in 1994 after graduating in political science and spent eleven years at Nintendo Europe before returning to Kyoto to take charge of business planning, working closely with Iwata, then with Kimishima.
Furukawa reported that Nintendo manufactures "toys, not needs" and that if consumers stop finding their products attractive, the business could be quickly forgotten . "It is a high risk business, so there will be times when the business is good and the business is bad, but I want to run the business in a way that prevents us to go from joy to desolation. "
Nintendo has ongoing projects, such as a partnership with Cygames a Japanese developer specializing in mobile gaming, and the September launch of an online subscription service for Switch that will allow players to compete with each other and play several retro titles. The latter will help executives to take the most difficult evolutionary stage of the console lifecycle: win the wider market of people who do not normally play video games.
To this end, Nintendo started selling Avril, a toy line called Labo consisting of weapon kits that players can use to turn Switch detachable controllers into sensitive rudimentary objects to movement, such as fishing rods or pianos. The cardboard gadgets can be used to play on the TV screen, catch sharks with the cane, for example.
The game code is to some extent customizable, so that the first children can program new uses for each of the accessories. The concept seems a cross between origami, Lego and the video game Minecraft . The goal, in part, is to win parents who would otherwise refuse to buy their children a Switch console. Well, writing code could be a more acceptable activity for the time spent in front of the screen.
In early June, Nintendo released a demo of the upcoming Mario Tennis Aces a video game that should be one of the first major attractions of its online service. But users complained in social networks that connection problems prevented them from playing and Nintendo's stock dropped 10% in two days. "When we do a test, we learn more about the technical infrastructure," said Reggie Fils-Aimé, the US president of Nintendo, at Bloomberg Television at the time. " When we launch the game, it will work ." But stocks continued to fall amid concerns over the distribution of games for Switch. By mid-June, they were at their lowest level in nine months.
While Nintendo, as a society, has long benefited from its artistic temperament, it also suffers from the insecurity of the artist . No matter how many times we are amazed by his work, his designers have to wake up every day, go to the R & D building, face the white screen and create something for the world. Like Mario, who is perpetually fighting to reach Princess Peach, the prospect of fortune or failure is reborn every time a console is turned on again.
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