Chief NES Designer Describes Nintendo as an Indie Studio

Maybe about the risks and changes an indie developer has to think about for getting an unique game, he could have a point.

But when talking about money... Well, Nintendo is not an indie by any means.

Well, obviously he's romanticising things a little bit. He's not speaking that seriously, just fondly.

Every company, AAA or indie, is money focused.
Nintendo's by far my favourite game maker, but don't delude yourself on this.

Well it's rather small compared to some other companies, it focuses on platformers, it creates countless sequels, it creates games no one would ever imagine existing.

Nintendo are preety niche compared to what everyone else makes. They are indie to me in that regard.

LOL Nintendo exploiting money-maker ideas and ignoring its own legacy and IPs is not that indie any more.

I think they are, if only because they tend to put out innovative games. They do love sequels, but it seems that new ideas come from Nintendo more frequently than they do other major game companies.

@VanillaLake
Unfortunately this is due to what is in the industry in general and how to survive in it.

High costs of production, distribution and the number of people involved, adding the low sales in many AAA titles, short deadlines times and bad games made by the "" growing demand for new games "" that discourage trying to create something new or touch IP's that have not been commercially successful.
And of those commercial successes based on most of us, consumers, who prefer "forever and ever" games, XD, that new interesting ones; that has more fame than one that just has some people (the famous niche); that iare very cheap (or is in discount) to that actually has a correct value (even that is somewhat expensive, Just do not too much) ones; or, wait and wait patiently.

Even Nintendo can keep a good pace without falling into these problems, but little by little we have seen that even with some effort, it is not enough (if we add the mistakes they have made, that no one denies), you really have to understand that lately we have seen that decline, and not just Nintendo, if not everything in general.

I hope everything go well and has good surprises in the future, although it is very difficult, there may be some very good early, but not only Nintendo and all companies should make an effort, we also show interest in support (not necessarily money, but, using feedback and constructive criticism) and can make everything better.

I don't know about functioning like an indie or not, but Nintendo is defiantly innovative. Look at the consoles even. The past two Nintendo consoles have made more changes to gameplay than any other consuls out there. With Xbox and Plaustation its all about graphics nothing's really changed gameplay-wise since their first gens

Nintendo's definitely not "indie". They're not pretentious enough to be "indie".

Maybe he felt that way in his position, but Nintendo has not functioned like an indie studio since they created Donkey Kong, and fought the legal war against Universal. At that moment when Nintendo won, they ceased to function like an indie company, especially after all the warehousing and sales of Donkey Kong arcade cabinets was said and done.

Indie companies do not monopolize and manipulate markets; they do not force their workers to go for 10-12 hour shifts with no holidays during crunch time; they do not own entire manufacturing plants which provide their products with the best deal for them, while providing everyone else with a raw deal; and they do not brutally attack former employees when they break off to create their own works which may resemble those during their time at the company. (All of which Nintendo has done.)

Nintendo is too large, and has too much of a history of ruthlessness to be indie. Even forgetting all those things, being a first party manufacturer and publisher alone is enough to end indie status.

I think by virtue of having platforms, and being a gatekeeper to what is allowed to be published on your platform, you can not possibly be considered "indie".

Their marketing always seems very indie, for sure

Truth finally comes out... (?)

I put them somewhere in between indie and commercial. I like to call them an "arthouse" company the way Studio Ghibli also would be considered, in the film industry. But, just terms.

I think some are misinterpreting what he said.

He's not saying "Ya, we're really just an indie".

What he's saying is, their creative approach is similar to that of an independent developer. In that one respect. And he's not wrong.

Well the upcoming Star Fox game for Wii U certainly looks like an indie title

Perhaps a better interpretation to this is 'Nintendo make games that are quirky, colourful, family friendly, humorous, and character driven. Instead of the stale, brown-grey, violent, deadpan, and faceless fare that EA, and Ubisoft churn out.'

Saying all this, the thing that really separates Ninty from AAA and indie is Nintendo tend to finish, polish, and bug check all their games before release.

I hope this doesn't mean Nintendo's going to be doing kickstarters on games now...

No doubt Nintendo often have an indie approch in the creative process, they are still risking in these days and age to be innovative, give chances to individual/small group ideas and even with their solid series they like to experiement and shake things up a bit.
Sure, some time they hold back the creativity too and don't risk beyond certain limits, but then again us gamers are weird beasts that want new innovative never seen before games that are exactly like the ones already out that we played and loved, you gotta balance for satisfy such a "reasonable" customer XD;;;

@jobunker Yeah, I often liken their position to Ghibli's. I wonder if Miyamoto and Miyazaki are friends? Kondo and Hisaishi too?

Just curious, who designed the SNES?

But I 100% agree with him, not often you see companies take huge risks to deliver surprises.

Okay, buddy. Reel it in.

I can see the similarity in a sense. Nintendo doesn't compete in terms of the biggest teams, the largest budgets, and the most realistic visuals. Instead, they focus on the mechanics of the game, sometimes leveraging new ideas by one person or a few people (Splatoon, Box Boy, A Link Between Worlds). If "indieness" is a scale, Nintendo would be somewhere in the middle.

I don't think they are. Their game projects are just as subject to commercial considerations as any other major publisher. Nintendo often make creative, excellently constructed games, but I no longer think they are the driving force for creativity in the industry. It is not as if other developers or publishers have failed to innovate in other genres or make creative games.

In recent times Nintendo has been of the view that innovation comes primarily from hardware, but I think that innovation should come from software first and foremost.

As much as I love Nintendo, they're not really an indie company in any way shape or form. Not now anyway. Innovation and risk isn't purely housed to any form or method of development. And whilst Nintendo have made some fantastic innovations throughout the years, they are not the only company to do so.

In terms of business structure, Nintendo definitely isn't like an independent studio. They are an unbelievably big company with branches in multiple continents. They have shareholders which they are accountable to, and this in turn, does affect their creative output. One thing that encompasses being "indie" is that there is no one to be accountable to in this sort of way.

In terms of popularity of a game, this is a bit more murky as to what constitutes the spirit of an independent game (games like Super Meat Boy or Minecraft are extremely popular), the fact is that Nintendo are much more set on appealing to as many people as possible.

Also the fact that Nintendo's online policy for YouTubers is extremely closed would suggest that they are not entirely an open conglomerate.
Nintendo are a great company, but not an indie company. The only company who are big enough who I could see it with would be Valve.

Nintendo is not an indie studio nor do they operate as a traditional "AAA" studio. I think @jobunker calling them "Arthouse" is getting closer to the matter, and i would almost say "Avant-Garde" is closer still. They tend to try to rethink how we interact with games and what kind of games will be fun constantly, forever seeming to push the boundaries. Game & Watch, Donkey Kong, NES, Online Gaming (look up the early attempts with NES and SNES), GameBoy, Analog Stick, Rumble Packs, Dual-Screens, Touch Screens, Motion Controls, Balance Board, and 3D are all examples. Most were not new technology, but technology applied in new and interesting ways to create new experiences.

@SakuraHaruka Nice comment. As you can see, many of my comments are constructive criticism. Anyway, new IPs can be successful and not expensive to develop: Splatoon. At the same time, it's silly of Nintendo to ignore most of their IPs and create clones and spin-offs of the most famous of their franchises, because they wear away eventually if the games are not good enough. We have seen this lately mostly in Nintendo's case, they didn't invest enough money nor time to develop their games and they have been offering those mediocre clones and spin-offs. The risks they have taken are minimum and a few of them were surprising successful (I'm not a fan of Splatoon, but it's a good example).

Nintendo doesn't need Metal Gear Solid V budget to create a game, but they shouldn't make the minimum investment with short deadlines either. They weren't like this before and they had better reputation and better sales in the past, even ignoring the Wii phenomena. Nintendo really should go back to what they were before the Wii era, because the Wii concept does not attract consumers any more, they need to invest time and money on creating better games from their most famous franchises (Mario), but also improve their hardware reputation by giving a chance to those abandoned franchises: Wave Race, F-Zero, etc., because neither New Super Mario Bros. U, Super Mario 3D World, Mario Kart 8 nor Super Smash Bros. 4 saved their newer hardware, as people were expecting much more from those games and from Nintendo's absolutely important legacy from the SNES, N64 and GameCube days. SNES was a smash hit, N64 was successful regardless of the cartridge system and GameCube was successful even though it had to deal with an easy to hack PS2. The cheap to make hardware and cheap to make game philosophy of Iwata is something I did not like from the beginning, and now everybody can see it has come to a dead end in the market.

@SakuraHaruka
I agree.

Though if Nintendo returns to making affordable consoles and handhelds like they did in the prior to 3DS and Wii U with a clear message, unique, features, and unique software that is different from the competition, they can easily carve out a nice niche for those who are tired of or uninterested in AAA blockbuster and/or M rated games.

They could easily wind up with 30M-100M hardware sales of both combined.

Nintendo needs to realize the mass market is extremely price sensitive as is their main market. NX console needs to be $250 max with pack in. NX handheld needs to be $150 max. Both need to be able to quickly reduce in price.

But right now LITERALLY EVERYTHING IS DOWN:

-Tablet sales are in their 4th year of decline, with iPad sales declining too
-Smart Phone sales saw literally flat growth for last year, with 2015 being the first year of marketing contraction.
-iPhone 6S and 6S+ are seeing flat growth and will match 6/6+ in sales, this means iPhone first ever 0 growth year.
-PC sales as a whole will be down over 7%+ for the global market, Windows 10 has not stabilized the market, this is expected to continue well into 2017 if not longer.
-Mac sales are modestly up, but not enough to offset the decline of Windows Machines
-iOS App store growth is rapidly slowing year after year, this year it should only see 20% growth or less, which last year was over 35% growth etc...
-Google Android store sales are flat, with ad revenue being modestly up
-TV sales are down again
-Blu-ray sales are sluggish
-Netflix users growth is sluggish
-iTune sales are sluggish
-Streaming user growth is sluggish
-Steam user growth is sluggish

etc....

@VanillaLake
You are actually wrong on Nintendo hardware.
NES was really cheap to make and it was weaker than the competition
SNES was cheap to make and was weaker than most of the competition
N64 was the most advance console they ever made competition and it cost them dearly for the CPU and GPU, though it was still priced cheaper than the competition.

IBM hardware contract signed in 1999 for multi generational systems

Gamecube was very affordable hardware, though it was seen as extremely weak specs compared to Xbox and PS2. Gamecube never shook the false weak hardware stigma it received. Though Gamecube is the first system to use IBM chips under the deal

Wii actually was expensive to make due to the hardware due to the new tech in the controllers and some of the tech in the console. They broke even with the Wii at launch and quickly made profit a year later on each system sold.
Xbox 360 and PS3 bled billions on state of the art hardware, nearly bankrupting Sony.

Wii U was forced to use IBM processors again due to their contract still being in play with IBM. Wii U hardware was not cheap and weak by any means. Many parts of the Wii U hardware are still relatively advanced even for today.
The advancements that Wii U have that no company has matched yet are:
-Streaming capabilities to controller screen (this is really advanced and has less lag than HDTV gaming)
-Miiverse integration
-eShop (it's still better than PS4's shop)
-Mic and speakers in the controller
-headphone jack in the controller
-light weight of the controller despite the size and components

They just didn't focus on raw graphics.

Sony obviously was going to have the most powerful console, since they use all the parts in other division, letting them get a much cheaper rate on components.

Microsoft had the money to pay for matching specs.

As for handhelds:

GB was weaker than the competition, but was cheaper at $100
GBA was weaker than the competition, but was cheaper at $100
DS was weaker than the competition, but was cheaper at $150
3DS was weaker than the competition, but was cheaper after first price drop by $70 (memory cards on Vita are really expensive and drive up the cost)

I don't think the NoA localisers prides themselves quite as much as valuing the ideas of the individual, what with all the pointless censorship and certain translation choices.

@Xenocity I would spend half of the day if I had to correct every misleading post of yours, I did a few times but it really requires a long time as your posts are very long and full of wrong parts, and I don't have so much time, so I give up.

@VanillaLake The "withered technology" philosophy dates back to Gumpei Yokoi, the NES, and the Game Boy. The problem is that now the sweet spot of price/performance ratio for updated hardware has risen, thanks to the emergence of cheaper and more powerful PC hardware. Even the PS4 and XB1 are essentially nothing more than modified PC's with x86 architecture at this point. There's not much separating the Sony and Microsoft home consoles from PC anymore, besides social features.

For Nintendo to keep hitting the ~$250-350 target of the lowest common denominator, their specs must necessarily suffer, since it's below the current sweet spot of updated hardware. The only way to differentiate themselves from PC at this point is to keep doing what they're doing. (Hopefully with significantly better execution for the NX.)

@Xenocity That hardware history is mostly accurate, except for the SNES, which had higher specs than the closest competition, and was only ousted in specs by very expensive systems like the PC-9800. Most people knew that the GameCube had higher specs than the PS2, with the lower media size preventing larger games from being made. It didn't have a stigma of being weak, but rather of being too childish in both offerings and appearance. The eShop is nowhere near as advanced as PSN or XBL, no matter how one looks at it.

Other than that, good stuff. I still remember the discussions people had about Sony crushing Nintendo because of the PSP having higher specs and far more media features... And yet, look what happened. The DS ended up matching the PS2 in sales. I don't know if Nintendo can ever replicate that success, but their strategy hasn't made them bleed money yet. Hopefully, they'll execute better next time with the NX.

@VanillaLake
There is nothing wrong with my post, everything is true based on actual specs, market performances, and reports.

Only Nintendo 64 was the most powerful system of it's generation and held the crown for exactly 1 year until PC's pasted in graphical capabilities, and Dreamcast launched in Japan in 1998.

Every other Nintendo console has been weaker than the competition.
Sega Master System had a more powerful CPU and other specs than NES.
Atari kept pace with NES in the arms race.

16/early 32 bit generation in terms of the most powerful to the least powerful:
Atari Jaguar (93)>3DO(93)>NeoGeo>Turbo Graphx 16 and CD>Sega CDX>Genesis/Mega Drive> SNES>everyone else.

64bit/32bit generation in terms of the most powerful to the least powerful:
Hyper Neo Geo 64(1997)>N64>Saturn (hard to program)>PS1/others

128bit generation in terms of the most powerful to the least powerful:
Xbox>GC>PS2~=>DC>others
GC was widely thought off as weaker due to kiddy and "casual" graphics and having smaller numbers on system specs. Sony and Microsoft actively talked about this at E3 and in other venues.

@PlywoodStick

Gamecube literally had the stigma of being kiddy/casual and being weak

Sony openly stated and reported the PS2 could output ~80 Million polygons on the screen
Microsoft claimed Xbox could do ~110 Million polygons
Nintendo was honest and stated Gamecube could do ~12 million polygons.

Both purposely inflated their specs to make the other seem weaker, while Nintendo released a true spec sheet.

The gaming media openly published articles talking about whether Gamecube's smaller numbered specs could match PS2 and Xbox in graphics.

If Nintendo would have lied about the specs, or Microsoft and Sony being honest, Gamecube would have never gained the stigma of being weak hardware.

As for the Gamecube's media, it was 1.5GBs which was more than enough room. Most games that gen were under 2GBs. Except for a handful of games.
The Gamecube discs weren't the issue, because Nintendo refused get into a bidding war with Sony over third party games.

PS1 and Saturn had plenty of multi disc games.
PS2 even had few multi disc games.

Xbox 360 had quite a few multi disc games and Microsoft charges a free for each extra disc being pressed.

I mean PS3 had 50GBs as standard, Xbox 360 was first maxed at 9.8GBs (later bumped to 10.5GBs), and Wii was also at 9.8GBs Max.

If disc based storage was real issue for 3rd parties, they wouldn't have brought multi disc games to Xbox 360 while paying Microsoft huge fees on multi disc games.

I mean Square willing ported FFXIII to Xbox 360, which took 3 discs to fit the game.

@PlywoodStick The NES was so long ago, Nintendo's first modern console and the GB was one of the first modern handhelds, if not the first. As you explained, decent hardware is better to achieve now, so there is no reason for Nintendo to sell dated hardware at novelty price. I agree about all that you have said in both comments, and you explained it well.

Lol, indies that are milking some of their franchises to death...