Soapbox: Nintendo is more collaborative and open than ever, which benefits everyone

© Nintendo

Nintendo is a company that has never been particularly good at communication. But it is a company that knows how to learn from its mistakes. You remember the infamous Skyward Sword demo at E3 2010, right? The one where Miyamoto walked out on stage, waved her controller, and failed to get it to work (it sounded dirtier than I thought)? It’s no surprise that the following year, Nintendo started using pre-recorded Nintendo Directs, meaning it wouldn’t have to endure live demo humiliation again.

In recent years, Nintendo has taken an unprecedented new approach, where partnerships with various companies have been forged, as their approach to communicating with fans has changed dramatically. Nintendo Directs, originally developed under the direction of Satoru Iwata, allowed direct communication with fans; While the company’s approach to fan events and community building based on Nintendo franchises is lagging behind where we’d like it to be, its focus on game development software like Super Mario Maker and the recent Game Builder Garage shows a level of willingness for “others” to make Nintendo-type games.

Let’s not pretend that Nintendo is as free from their IP as companies like Sega, like Nintendo is. again notorious for being one of the top-secret companies in the gaming industry. But recently the company has branched out, working with a range of partners on a variety of multimedia projects and opportunities that it would have without any doubt avoided in the past. These partnerships already seem to be paying off, as Nintendo’s initial deal with Illumination to make a Mario movie saw Illumination CEO Chris Meledandri join Nintendo’s board in a non-executive role.

More unusual for Nintendo is that it also seeks to provide additional context and understanding of its history. There have been a number of unofficial books and documentaries that have provided insight into the history of this privately held company, but for the first time, Nintendo will take control of how its history is represented by the development of the company. ‘an official Nintendo Gallery museum, opening in Japan in 2024.

It’s quite significant that a game developer and publisher has their own dedicated space for displaying and explaining their heritage to the general public. No other platform owner has their own museum, which makes a pretty bold statement about Nintendo’s important place in the games industry. It’s also a much more expensive step to take compared to previous initiatives like the classic Iwata Asks series, although the new “Ask The Developer” series also seeks to capture the spirit of Satoru Iwata’s revealing interviews. It is not known whether the preservation interest generated by the “gigaleak” hack impacted the company’s approach to making its archived material more accessible to the public, but, at the very least, this unfortunate episode demonstrated Nintendo fans’ insatiable thirst for behind-the-scenes development material.

But it’s not just Nintendo that comes into the picture. Former Nintendo employee Toru Hashimoto recently opened his secret Tokyo Nintendo cafe, 84, to the general public for the first time. At first, the cafe was only accessible to Nintendo employees and major Japanese game developers, featuring an incredible selection of Nintendo memorabilia, as well as exclusive artwork and doodles from Japanese developers such as designer Yuji Horii. very influential Dragon Quest series.

While Hashimoto cites the need for change due to the impact on the hospitality industry due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it means Nintendo fans will one day be able to sit in the same seats as some of the older ones. great Japanese game developers of all time, an opportunity that many will jump at the chance to have.

So, let’s ask the question you’re all here for: what does this mean for Nintendo content going forward?

For starters, the company will increase its investments in its partners, not only in game developers, but also in other media formats such as movies and television. We’ve already started to see the fruits of its more aggressive approach to licensing with a steady increase in merchandising, its Super Nintendo World theme park, and the Mario movie in production, but that means we may someday see this rumored to be true. the Legend of Zelda Netflix show, or something in that vein. It’s likely we’ll see more Nintendo franchises receive the same treatment in the future, with Mario movies sitting alongside Zelda or Metroid content (Smash Bros. style MCU, anyone ???).

Nintendo feeling more comfortable distributing its licenses to other companies, we might also see a greater variety of games being developed outside of Nintendo’s hands.

But with Nintendo feeling more comfortable handing out its licenses to other companies, we might also see a greater variety of games being developed outside of Nintendo’s hands. It’s something the company has tested waters with in the past, giving independent developers the ability to license their gaming IPs, like using the Zelda franchise in Cadence of Hyrule. Returning full control of the franchise’s main entrances did not always has worked well in the past (looking at you, Metroid: Other M!), but things look promising for their partnership with MercurySteam for the highly anticipated Metroid Dread.

Sometimes it felt like Nintendo had too many hubs as it handled development on multiple systems, resulting in noticeably lower output during the Wii U / 3DS era. Focusing primarily on Switch has helped smooth the development pipelines to some extent, but there are still regular gaps in Switch’s release schedule, especially when it comes to larger versions. That’s why Nintendo is partnering up with companies like Bandai Namco on various projects, but if more “big” Nintendo games were developed externally or in collaboration with other developers, we might see a more consistent release schedule of the games. Nintendo games from their third -partnership, which increases the opportunities for internal Nintendo teams to develop their own new franchises.

For me, some of the more interesting Nintendo releases of the last few years have been new IPs like Splatoon and ARMS and it looks like this is also a priority for Nintendo, with President Shuntaro Furukawa having previously confirmed that in the future, Nintendo would increase their “work on new games and series”.

Obviously, none of these actions are entirely new. At various points in Nintendo’s history, the company has made an effort to bring its franchises to people outside of the video game world and has partnered with various organizations to achieve this. We all remember the classic Super Mario. Film Bros, right? Ugh. The fallout from this error in judgment has arguably made the company overly cautious about licensing intellectual property. Or how about the Zelda CD-i games? Double ugh.

But this time, we really have the impression that there is more strategy. By working to bring Nintendo content to theme parks, the big screen, and even museum audiences, Nintendo as an organization becomes much more open. And that’s a good thing for everyone.