Yahoo News Why Nintendo isn't interested in the digital arms race
How do you know if one piece of technology is "better" than its competitors? For the well-read consumer, it usually comes down to sheer power numbers.
Run down the list and it's all about resolution, frame rate, battery life, storage, pricing, etc. For gamers, it's also about what and how many titles you're getting. That's not to discount all the other factors that determine whether a home console is worth a purchase — like online features, how they function, what they cost.
But there's been a very specific graphical prowess war that has invaded all other purchasing thought processes. It's why there are dozens of game comparison videos on YouTube showing off what games look like on an Xbox One versus Playstation 4.
It's easy to get lost in the buzzwords and bullet points. Most product pages are emblazoned with mentions to let you know that their tech is bigger in all the ways it needs to be — resolution, game libraries, media streaming applications — and smaller in all the ways it needs to be, namely, the block of metal and plastic itself.
Image: Nintendo
Nintendo frequently chooses not to lead with power numbers. Some say that's because they've not had the goods to compete in the digital race in the first place. Reggie Fils-Aime, COO of Nintendo, feels differently.
Mashable spoke to Fils-Aime last Friday, following a hands-on Switch event in New York. I wondered why Nintendo didn't seem as interested in competing against Sony and Microsoft with sheer technological numbers.
"Foundationally, we believe in differentiation and we always have," he said. "We believe in running toward risk versus running away from it."
Nintendo's upcoming console, Switch, set to release on March 3, surely is a risk, banking on the idea that gamers will want a device that prioritizes playing on the go. Nintendo has had, after all, a successful history in the portable gaming industry.
A recent GDC study revealed that developers were mostly unsure of how the Switch's core idea as a hybrid console would go over. Fils-Aime was unfazed when I asked him how he felt about those results.
"When world-changing products are launched, oftentimes they’re not recognized as world-changing at that moment," he said.
He cited three examples: "When we launched the Nintendo DS, two screens, touch screen, people said, ‘Oh, that’s kind of interesting.’ We went on to sell over 150 million units. And, really, we were doing touch-screen before Apple. Second from our own legacy is obviously the Wii. And I can tell you having lived through it that as we talked about the Wii and people were incredulous that it wasn’t an HD device. ... The third, I would use as an example, was the original Apple iPod. People forget that when it first came out and they were competing against other mp3 [players] folks were like, ‘Boy, this is expensive. What is this?’ But the combination of that product plus the iTunes capabilities was truly world-changing."
And his opinion on the prestige of a numbers-based competitive field?
"Simply going down a path and increasing efficacy down a linear path typically does not lead to world-changing," he said. "That concept is not unique to Nintendo, or Reggie — that is the innovator’s dilemma. That’s the theory. And it’s true. Not only in video games, it’s true in steel manufacturing and everything else."
Image: nintendo
For Nintendo, it's less about the numbers and more about originality, and building on their previous experiences. You can see the inspiration in the Switch's Joy-Con controllers, seemingly adapted from the Wii remotes Nintendo unveiled in 2006. Or the Switch device itself, reminiscent of the Wii U's portable Gamepad.
Making the Switch
The focus for Switch, instead, is of course on the portable features, but specifically as a social experience. Allowing for portability, multiple multiplayer controller configurations and up to eight connected consoles all lend to a similar idea of socializing within gaming.
But what are the social repercussions of promoting this idea of always being connected, and always having access to games that normally occupy your attention on the couch? There's a clip in the reveal for Switch where a girl undocks her Switch to bring to a rooftop party.
Image: Nintendo
We're all already so distracted by our screens — tweeting, playing five-second rounds of mobile games, texting our friends who aren't in the room (or, worse, are in the room). And don't get me wrong, I'm more than excited to best all my friends at Mario Kart over rooftop red cup parties, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify where those lines should be drawn.
To Fils-Aime, fulfilling that desire for all-encompassing entertainment is how Nintendo will win over gamers:
"What I see is, fundamentally, as a consumer, we eat, we sleep, we either go to work or go to school. Everything else is entertainment time. ... From a Nintendo perspective, what we try to do is build experiences that can compete for your entertainment time literally minute-by-minute. And to the extent we do that, with devices like Nintendo Switch, with games like Splatoon 2 and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 or 1-2 Switch, then we win in the marketplace."
Of course, not all of Nintendo's creative risks have worked out well enough to stick around. The Wii U's inventive use of two-screen gaming — best showcased by gameplay or inventory features in games like Luigi's Mansion or ZombiU — won't be making a return in Switch.
"Wii U had processing technology in the console and it also had processing technology in the Gamepad itself. That creates an expensive proposition," Fils-Aime said. "As a business person and thinking about, ‘Where’s my long-term cost path, how do I cost down the system’ — it becomes very difficult to do that. That was a learning once we were in the middle of that lifespan, which made it difficult for us to proceed forward."
Ready to rumble
And then of course there are the creative applications of the Switch that we have yet to see, and likely won't fully understand until the March release. For Fils-Aime, one of the unsung heroes of the Switch's recent reveals is the rumble feature.
"We didn’t have an experience here that fully leveraged the rumble, but the rumble really is a fantastic experience that adds to the immersion, it adds to the differentiated gameplay. Certainly when you look at the tech that is in Switch, it really has been informed by the history of our various devices," he said.
I got to play a marble-detection game in 1-2 Switch —Nintendo's package of mini-games that seem mostly aimed at taking advantage of the various ways you can play with the Joy-Con controllers and their motion control features — and felt the Joy-Cons, flat in my palms, buzz to indicate the clink of marbles rolling side to side. I couldn't really distinguish one buzz from another (it was a guessing game), but Fils-Aime said there's a safe-cracking game that really makes the rumble feature shine.
"We’ve got some experiences that really get at this concept of precision with rumble, which create fun, social situations," he said.
After 30 minutes of chatting I asked him about the philosophy of the industry — one of boasting and weight-throwing — versus what its creatives believe on an individual basis. Fils-Aime instead left me with these thoughts, preferring to focus attention internally:
"I’m blessed to work for a company that constantly is asking itself, ‘What can we do better, what’s next, where do we go from here.’ We don’t stagnate, we don’t talk disparagingly about our competition. We are focused on what it is that we can do better to drive our growth into the future. From that standpoint we’re not concerned with all of the talk that, ‘XYZ isn’t good enough,’ or, ‘Boy, can you believe they did ... whatever.’ If we listened to that, we never would have done the DS. We never would have done the Wii. We never would have done the 3DS. For us, it really is, ‘How do we continue driving innovation, how do we offer differentiated experiences to the consumer,’ and we believe if we do that, we’ll win."
