Sandboxes. Minecraft was one. Now it’s getting called a platform, at least in the submitted article. That’s good for engagement and monetization I guess, but sounds way less fun.

Nah, expedition has enough of a game in it. Parry mechanic is pretty addictive, and gameplay is kinda fun. Exploration, too, is strictly gaming aspect, not cinematic.

God of war is plainly movie on rails compared to E33

> acrimoniously splitting from the traditional studio system.

Yeah, he split from the traditional studio system to create... his own traditional studio system.

Kojima is precisely what happens when you stop thinking of games as actual an interactive entertainment format and start thinking of it as a "cinematic experience" instead.

Death Stranding is only a game by the narrowest of margins. What it is is a movie with Kojima's Spotify 'favourites' list as the soundtrack that so happens to have one interactive element or two thrown in there for good measure.

It's pretty telling that all he's done after splitting away from Konami and surrounding himself with his own sycophantic group of developers is Death Stranding. Kojima is the direct result and pretty much the face of a lot that is wrong with the games industry right now.

A walking simulator that has you fighting between multiple dimensions and is one of the best looking games of its generation.

> Nintendo also shipped Metroid Prime 4, with massive delays and unsatisfied customers, following the same "interactive Hollywood" philosophy which disappointed Metroid fans.

I'm not convinced that Metroid at least really is a great data point for "Nintendo is ruining things in-house". From Wikipedia[1]:

> Nintendo announced Metroid Prime 4 with a teaser trailer during the Nintendo Direct presentation at E3 2017, and announced that Retro Studios, who developed the previous main Prime games, would not be involved.[15][16] In February 2018, Eurogamer reported that Prime 4 was being developed by Bandai Namco Studios in Japan and Singapore.

> In January 2019, the Nintendo EPD manager Shinya Takahashi announced that development had restarted under Retro with Tanabe remaining as producer. Takahashi said the previous studio had not met Nintendo's standards and that the decision to restart was not taken lightly.[21] Shortly after, Nintendo reevaluated Prime 4 after noticing changing attitudes towards open-world games, but maintained the direction as the development was already taking longer than planned. The team ignored new developments in action and shooting games to prioritize the adventure elements.

There's a perspective where this is almost the exact opposite of the problem being discussed about Microsoft. They chose to let it get developed externally, suffered delays, and by the time they moved it back in-house, the ecosystem had moved from under them. They probably could have chosen to rethink everything and delay it further, but they also arguably could have avoided having to make that call by keeping it in-house and letting the studio who made the previous entries work on it from the start and landing it in time that the original vision still fit what people wanted.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metroid_Prime_4:_Beyond#Develo...

I’ll concede that Metroid Prime 4 has been sitting on my shelf.

But Star Fox? Phenomenal. Such a fun game. Luckily I have the pro controller so I could map A to the back paddle or else my poor old tendons couldn’t handle the rapid fire shooting required at the high levels, but I’ve had an absolute BLAST playing the remake.

I'm curious about the Star Fox comment. Tell me if I got this wrong:

A remake (1) of a remake (2) of a remake (3)

(1) A remake (Switch 2 Starfox, a remake of StarFox 64)

(2) StarFox 64 (A remake of Super Nintendo's StarFox)

(3) ??? I don't know what the 3rd level of remake you mention is, but I'm curious!

I can understand complaints about Metroid but Star Fox fans were probably expecting jack squat from the start of the year. Putting it in the last movie is a pretty strong indicator for more content.

A lot of Nintendo's remakes end up being training exercises for the real deal, such as Metroid 2 remake to Dread. Meanwhile, some of the laid off devs here might have never seen a properly produced title with zero crunch and anomalies. Not every title should be an auteur title, but we have too many auteurs and we want more auteurs.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with remaking a 30 year old game if it’s done correctly, and Nintendo usually does it right.

What I mean by "interactive Hollywood" is a game with a $200M+ budget that relies entirely on high-fidelity graphics and cinematic stories to differentiate itself, while offering almost zero new gameplay innovation.

Neither of your examples fit that description. Metroid Prime 4 wasn't chasing Hollywood cinematic design; it was a highly targeted attempt by producer Kensuke Tanabe to make a tight, isolated first-person exploration formula resonate (especially in Japan where it has consistently failed). Its goals are mechanical, not cinematic. Meanwhile, Star Fox is a classic arcade rail-shooter remake with modernized cutscenes, not a prestige movie-game. Early sales data shows it's actually working well, too, having just debuted at #1 on the physical charts in Japan and nearly doubling Star Fox Zero's launch week in the UK.

Ultimately, Nintendo operates like a Consumer Packaged Goods company. They treat their library of IPs like a diversified product portfolio rather than betting the farm on individual interactive movies. They use massive, high-margin, mechanics-first games like Tomodachi Life and Pokopia to generate enormous cash reserves. They then use those profits to subsidize legacy IPs like Metroid or Star Fox to keep core fans happy and feed their broader brand ecosystem. Because Nintendo spreads its risk across a wide spectrum of lower-budget games, they can easily absorb a minor product flop. Sony's interactive Hollywood model sinks $300M into a single basket, meaning one bad miss can completely wreck a studio.

They have. Which makes this hard skew towards live service all the more baffling. Having your premier studio basically miss the generation trying to make a multiplayer version of one of these games then cancelling it really shows how much they overextended.

And it's not like it had to be Naughty Dog: They had some dozen titles published or in house being prepared (including one that sunk what could have been an amazing remaster/remake studio). And in the end they really had one come out as the dark horse, with one megaflop, and 2-3 stragglers that don't seem long for this world (one of which seems to be taken down the existing, safe life service Sony spent billions on).

Gen 9 will be a huge blemish carried by their very smart acquisitions of Insomniac and Housemarque, with some decent support coming from Santa Monica and Guerilla. But at what cost?

Sony's had to bet the house on those types of blockbuster, crowd-pleasing experiences. The PS5 has yet to crest the cinematic peaks of the PS4 (PT, Bloodborne, Uncharted, etc), so people are rightfully getting a little worried that this gamble won't pan out. The bestselling PS5 exclusive is currently Ghost of Yōtei, behind eight better-selling crossplatform titles.

Nintendo's exclusives outsell Sony's by a significant margin, and they're usually simpler games that are broadly accessible. They leaned the right lessons from the indie gaming boom, and didn't try to resist it by pumping billions into making the next Overwatch killer or whatever.

I played TLoU and while the story was interesting, the feeling of being steered, forcefully and constantly, was very frustrating.

"Press this button exactly when the game tells you" and "as soon as you cross this exact point, this exact enemy will appear" - that's year-2000-ish (or worse) gaming tech.

The final confrontation was essentially ruined because the designers apparently never thought you'd use a sniper rifle, so you can set off a deafening shot that kills an enemy and the other enemies don't even notice the shot because it apparently happened outside their detection range.

I'm glad Nintendo does a bit of everything. Taking the time to try out new IPs, give older ones a chance to rise, and go truly off in the weeds with series no one else can really do (the Fit series and Labo being some of the biggest examples). It really feels like there's something for you there, no matter what kind of games you like (unless you only play the GTAs/CODs/Maddens of the industry). Even if you're not actually someone who games. My mom loves the Fit games.

Basing an art form on your stock portfolio is a good half of everything wrong with the industry.

And it's not surprising Nintendo isn't doing well in this clown market. They are taking a hit because they resisted pressures from shareholders who wanted them to raise prices on its new system. Nintendo eventually gave in, but with a much smaller price increase and a delayed effect from announcement to implementation (~4 months forewarning). And on top of all that they are not hyping AI to the moon.

And I haven't even gotten to the overall economic climate of Japan yet. Nintendo's stock falls would happen regardless of if they followed the above.

These are good, pro-consumer moves. It shows that more companies need to think past next quarter and resist the whims of people who don't have your company's long term interests in mind. You're the expert here, not them.

Nintendo is also a Japanese company and japanese stocks aren't doing great due to their economy and the weak yen. Also, stock price does not correlate with good games or a healthy business.

I don't know how you can say that when some of their most recent well received games include Tomodachi life and Rhythm Heaven. Those aren't the kinds of games made from those maximizing bean counters.

I find it really sad that the GameCube and N64 were where they were the most innovative and also happens to be where they floundered the most in sales.

Huh? They are trying a lot of things and when they want to establish a new franchise they are often successful, see e.g. Splatoon. Innovation also does not correlate with new IPs.