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Fun Club Howard Lincoln was terrible (or, Why Nintendo's golden years weren't so golden)

No, it's worse than that, you can still find people who miss the Yamauchi era unironicaly, the era of powerful consoles and arrogant Nintendo. I could understand it in the Wii era, but even today you can find people nostalgic of those times.

I honestly don't get it, back then i would read the news in my monthly magazines and even being on my teens i could see how Nintendo took misstep after misstep and how the third party blood became thinner and thinner, and we're still suffering the consequences of those mistakes.


It was clear as a goddamn day.
Count me on that list. This is simply the era I feel they made their best games, plus they had Rare. It doesn't mean we were aware that Nintendo burned bridges with third parties.
 
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Honestly while I know Lincoln was quite the character in his day, the thing is, he was a force to be reckoned with and gave Nintendo that BITE that they needed and frankly, do again.

I'm definitely biased as I grew up in the golden age of the SNES and N64 eras, so I only saw the gold he brought to Nintendo, rather than the bad behind the scenes stuff as described in the OP (very well written and informative BTW!).

Iwata did a lot of good for Nintendo especially on the JP side, no question. But Iwata never had the vision for the west that Lincoln did. Honestly Next Level Games and the clean up of Retro are the only good he did in terms of western support. What was needed was a unity or compromise; Lincoln's vision for the west, but guided with care by the JP HQ.

I can't help but wonder in sadness what we missed out on had things gone on for another gen. Would Rare had stayed? I'd feel that Lincoln may have really pushed for them to have stayed longer, but yeah it was a critical mistake not having had Rare be bought when they the goldmine was first starting in the SNES era. Rare obviously weren't as big or expensive then, but also as said, they should've shared control with Nintendo in Japan. Basically let Lincoln run things, but needed the supervision and oversight by HQ to make sure things didn't go awry.

Trouble is, NST's fuck up happened during the Iwata era. Not only that, but the OP erroneously says NST didn't make any games during Lincoln's period? Didn't they make the first 1080 on the N64? They also did make Ridge Racer 64 (of all things), so they weren't just doing nothing on the N64. Oh and a number of GBC games like Crystalis with SNK.
I don't even disagree. It's why I focus in on Lincoln not helping to resolve what NCL lacked in forging Western development partnerships, instead of just having control of them; there was a middle ground there that was never explored.
What Iwata did was an over-correction due to how horrendous the situation had become and the long-lasting damage it caused, but there could have been a middle ground that formed there had things turned out different. That said, Iwata had a lot of messes to clean up beyond the West, he had to rebuild their position in Japan after Yamauchi had soured things in their own home territory, as well, so I have some sympathy there. His work started at home and radiated outward, and it seems that his successors continued the work he started.

As for 1080, the original was created by EAD with Giles Goddard and Colin Reed on programming duty, former Argonaut guys who stayed behind in Japan after Star Fox and Stunt Race FX.
And yeah, I totally spaced on the Ridge Racer port.

EDIT: Additionally, I think Iwata's focus on Japan first was a bit prudent, since all the other hardware makers were becoming hyper-focused on the American market and leaving Japan to languish around the time of the Wii/PS3/360 and it's (albeit slowly) positioning Nintendo as the company that still deeply cares about the health of the domestic Japanese games industry and its big players. Whatever the successor to the Switch turns out to be, I get the impression that every publisher in Japan will be completely behind it in a bigger way than they have been since the SNES.
 
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Interesting what ifs are abound especially the NES years, would they have been as successful without Lincoln or the very direct demand of Yamauchi of "we'll just market the Famicom in the USA after the Atari deal didn't happen"?
 
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ok, this was an awesome post.
thanks a lot, @Terrell I really like reading about this kind of stuff.

I already had this impression about Yamauchi, but in a way, I understand the kinds of him existing, I'm just glad that the current presidency is much more aligned to Iwata than to Yamauchi.

I'm glad Nintendo was able to reinvent itself from the rough early 2000s.
 
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Yeah Howard Lincoln sucked, Iwata era was a huge improvement

Iwata was a brilliant man, but sometimes he could not see the forest from the trees.
  • Iwata always gets credited for Nintendo DS. But Iwata wasn't originally supportive of a dual-screen handheld. He was initially against the idea. It was Hiroshi Yamauchi who strongly requested that Nintendo DS should have dual screens.
  • Satoru Iwata didn't want Wii Sports bundled with the Wii in North America. NOA had to convince him.
  • Satoru Iwata never took online gaming very seriously. During the Wii U era, he admitted Nintendo will likely never catch up to PlayStation and Xbox with online gaming.
Again, brilliant man. But the Iwata era had its own share of problems.
 
Sometimes things happen and people happen for a reason (especially the DS dual screen being not Iwata's idea to put it in).
 
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  • Satoru Iwata didn't want Wii Sports bundled with the Wii in North America. NOA had to convince him.
I have to wonder if the Wii will be the last console to ever be bundled with a killer app. I guess the PS5 has Astro's Playroom, but even that isn't nearly as comprehensive a package as Wii Sports. It really was a crazy move to bundle it but it certainly paid off.
 
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As a result, Nintendo users are still second or third rate users, and we're having shitshows like the Switch being the juggernaut it is and still having issues getting third parties to jump aboard.

I believe, and that's just my perception, that current Switch problems with third-party support are due to the lack of power and the price of its cartridge.
 
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This thread keeps blowing my mind. Thanks, and great job to everyone dropping some serious knowledge in here. I've already learned a lot.
 
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I will say that Howard Lincoln was probably a success at the Mariners in terms of business. The team always made money, so he did his job. Of course I hate this as a lifelong Mariners fan. Guy went on record basically saying that the team cared more about the bottom line than winning a World Series. Also, Yamauchi famously never went to a Mariners game. The only reason they bought the team was as a good will gesture to the Seattle area for treating NOA so well.

These leadership problems from a winning perspective have infected the new ownership who was basically on board the entire time. We finally have a chance to spend money this year, so let’s see if the bottom line is still prioritized.

Sorry for derailing this thread as bitter Mariners fan.
 
Iwata was a brilliant man, but sometimes he could not see the forest from the trees.
  • Iwata always gets credited for Nintendo DS. But Iwata wasn't originally supportive of a dual-screen handheld. He was initially against the idea. It was Hiroshi Yamauchi who strongly requested that Nintendo DS should have dual screens.
  • Satoru Iwata didn't want Wii Sports bundled with the Wii in North America. NOA had to convince him.
  • Satoru Iwata never took online gaming very seriously. During the Wii U era, he admitted Nintendo will likely never catch up to PlayStation and Xbox with online gaming.
Again, brilliant man. But the Iwata era had its own share of problems.
Of course, I more meant his running of the company and treatment of developers being much improved. All people are fallible and I’m sure he had his fair share of bad ideas. Also he was the president of a massive corporation, plenty of flaws there as well. He’s right about Nintendo and online tho, they probably will never catch up. Still haven’t after he’s been gone so long.
 
As a result, Nintendo users are still second or third rate users, and we're having shitshows like the Switch being the juggernaut it is and still having issues getting third parties to jump aboard.

I'd argue those issues are purely hardware-related and online-related. And have absolutely nothing to do with Lincoln's policies in the 1980s.

Iwata was a great man, but he refused to invest money to develop an online infrastructure on par with Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. I hear online was one of the main things that prevented Grand Theft Auto 5 from coming to Switch. (Does anyone truly believe Rockstar didn't want GTAV on a popular portable system like Switch? Especially when LA Noire and GTA Trilogy are on the system.)

From what I understand, Square wanted Nier Automata on Switch. But again, technological limitations made that difficult. So now you have publishers doing cloud versions for Switch games because it's a cheaper alternative to porting them.
 
From what I understand, Square wanted Nier Automata on Switch. But again, technological limitations made that difficult. So now you have publishers doing cloud versions for Switch games because it's a cheaper alternative to porting them.
This made me sad.
 
It’s so weird since during Switch development, Nintendo updated their backend infrastructures to be modern. They have cloud servers running Node js and their goal for the Eshop was to be scalable and Agile. But they never really went anywhere with these newer infra after switch release. Eshop features are largely unchanged and the servers still lack features.

Like Nintendo used libraries that came out as late as in 2016 to build the Eshop and that would not have happened before. So there was an initiative to try to catch up but I guess it fizzled out
 
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Never say never!

Maybe they can do Nier Automata (cloud) for Switch. Square has been doing lots of Cloud stuff lately.
Or they can port Nier Automata to a more powerful Switch system (successor).
Unfortunately we (Mexico) don't get Cloud versions of Switch games so yeah hopefully they can port it to Switch 2 :D
 
Unfortunately we (Mexico) don't get Cloud versions of Switch games so yeah hopefully they can port it to Switch 2 :D

One glimmer of hope.

There was a recent datamine leak regarding Nier Replicant.


NieR: Automata is a much praised and loved title, and often pops up on various "Switch port pls" lists. Now the same applies to the snappily titled NieR Replicant Ver. 1.22474487139, which was a recent re-release / remaster - our chums at Push Square describe it as "halfway between" the two descriptions. Though it won't be to everyone's taste, this shiny and improved iteration of the original cult classic has been quite well received.

So, will we see them on Switch, or even on a hardware revision that has a bit more power under the hood? It's possible, and some datamine results shared on Reddit highlight that there are 'NX' presets buried in the game's code, which of course refers to the original codename and development reference for Switch. This is a follow-up in the rumour mill on an Amazon listing for a Switch version that briefly appeared last year.

However, the same dataminer highlights in an update that they reckon Switch work had been dropped or at least sidelined by the time the title got into the final stages of development. Referencing the PC executable from launch that names the other platforms, no reference to 'NX' is made there.
 
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I'd argue those problems are all purely hardware-related and online-related. And have absolutely nothing to do with Yamauchi/Lincoln's policies in the 1980s.

Iwata refused to invest money to develop an online infrastructure on par with Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. I hear online was one of the main things that prevented Grand Theft Auto 5 from coming to Switch. (Does anyone truly believe Rockstar didn't want GTAV on a popular portable system like Switch? Especially when LA Noire and GTA Trilogy are on the system.)

From what I understand, Square wanted Nier Automata on Switch. But again, technological limitations made that difficult. So now you have publishers doing cloud versions for Switch games because it's a cheaper alternative to porting them.
It's hard to argue that Lincoln and Yamauchi's policies don't have a major part to play in the current landscape when the #1 reason still brought up by publishers for titles not appearing on Nintendo hardware right up to the Switch era is almost always "demographics". There are games that had minimal hardware-related restrictions that still haven't made the jump and this is always the cited reason in some variation or another. The meme of "beg for a port and we'll release it" can be reworded as "we don't think there's an audience there because of demographics, prove us wrong".
That's not to downplay technical challenges in certain titles keeping them away, but let's be real about what's happened here.

Here's a good example: Fighting EX Layer got an iOS/Android port 2 years before it ever came to Switch. Raises a lot of eyebrows, especially when Arika is definitely no stranger to Nintendo (Tetris 99 anyone?)
 
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@Terrell

My final thoughts on this topic.

We both agree that the game industry was the wild, wild west in the 1980s and 1990s.
We both agree that Howard Lincoln could sometimes be a slimy lawyer who used dirty tricks to score wins.
We both agree that many of NOA's policies were bad. (Lincoln backed away from most of those policies by the mid-1990s).

But there are still three reasons why I hold Arakawa and Lincoln with respect. (even if their policies were flawed).

1. Nintendo (the game company) doesn't exist if Howard Lincoln and John Kirby lose the Donkey Kong lawsuit in 1981. The consequences would have been enormous and extremely damaging. I'm not sure if Nintendo could have rebounded from that, and it's why Yamauchi was forever grateful to him. DK was Nintendo's first big commercial hit ever...and it could have also been their last.

2. Both Arakawa and Lincoln are credited with rebuilding the North American game industry. Both men entered the North American game industry when it was burning on fire, and they were given responsibility to put the fire out. Does the game industry exist (in its current form) if Arakawa and Lincoln fail on their mission to sell the NES to the public? How does the game industry change if the NES fails?

3. Game Boy wouldn't have been nearly as successful without Tetris, the best selling Game Boy game of all time. Lincoln and Arakawa had very good intuition to jump at Tetris. Tetris is also a big reason for why more women became interested in video games. Game Boy's success sparked interest in portable games and helped pave the way for future gaming handhelds: Nintendo DS, PS Vita, Switch, Steam Deck, and mobile games.
 
@Terrell

My final thoughts on this topic.

We both agree that the game industry was the wild, wild west in the 1980s and 1990s.
We both agree that Howard Lincoln could sometimes be a slimy lawyer who used dirty tricks to score wins.
We both agree that many of NOA's policies were bad. (Lincoln backed away from most of those policies by the mid-1990s).

But there are still three reasons why I hold Arakawa and Lincoln with respect. (even if their policies were flawed).

1. Nintendo (the game company) doesn't exist if Howard Lincoln and John Kirby lose the Donkey Kong lawsuit in 1981. The consequences would have been extremely damaging. I'm not sure if Nintendo could have rebounded from that, and it's why Yamauchi was forever grateful to him. DK was Nintendo's first big commercial hit ever...and it could have also been their last.

2. Both Arakawa and Lincoln are credited with rebuilding the North American game industry. Both men entered the North American game industry when it was burning on fire, and they were given responsibility to put the fire out. Does the game industry exist (in its current form) if Arakawa and Lincoln fail on their mission to sell the NES to the public? How does the game industry change if the NES fails?

3. Game Boy wouldn't have been nearly as successful without Tetris, the best selling Game Boy game of all time. Lincoln and Arakawa had very good intuition to jump at Tetris. Tetris is also a big reason for why more women became interested in video games. Game Boy's success sparked interest in portable games and helped pave the way for future gaming handhelds: Nintendo DS, PS Vita, Switch, Steam Deck, and mobile games.
Speaking of Tetris, I was asking myself why didn't Nintendo just BUY the IP when they basically had exclusive rights to it in the beginning? Not to mention that Arakawa literally moved to form/run Tetris Online after leaving NoA. Literal trojan horse move that wasn't taken advantage of. Yeah, I'm sure the IP is mega expensive (but Minecraft expensive? Hmm...,), but Nintendo could've had a monster of an IP had they just bought it when it was likely still only at a modest price. Unless the Russian government was in the way (wasn't it considered their property at first since Alexy Pajitnov created it while working there?).
 
Speaking of Tetris, I was asking myself why didn't Nintendo just BUY the IP when they basically had exclusive rights to it in the beginning? Not to mention that Arakawa literally moved to form/run Tetris Online after leaving NoA. Literal trojan horse move that wasn't taken advantage of. Yeah, I'm sure the IP is mega expensive (but Minecraft expensive? Hmm...,), but Nintendo could've had a monster of an IP had they just bought it when it was likely still only at a modest price. Unless the Russian government was in the way (wasn't it considered their property at first since Alexy Pajitnov created it while working there?).
Elorg probably didn't want to sell the IP at the time. And yes it was considered their property.

In the end it works out pretty great though, as Alexey Pajitnov and Henk Rogers were eventually own the Tetris IP. A much better outcome in my opinion.
 
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I mean, it's obvious that Licoln wasn't an incompetent, otherwise Nintendo would be either a niche japanese brand for importers or a ghost from the past wich only collectors and extreme nostagics care about, like the old Atari. He pretty much kept the brand alive and well.

But particularle past the second half of the SNES life his politics damaged the brand more than anything (And it even splashed us here in europe) He misplaced his agressiveness and created a brand image for Nintendo that became incredibly toxic from there on. Even today, the notion of kiddy Nintendo still exists for the general audience (not just developers, the audience itself) and you can still find people speaking about Nintendo censoring games or having draconian policies.
 
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Honestly, I don't get why Nintendo didn't just invest in a tier-system back in the day, much like Sega started to do (Sega also did something similar in Japan and self-regulated compared), to alert consumers the type of content and what might be suitable for specific audiences. But provided everything above is accurate, it does seem Howard Lincoln wanted Nintendo to be just a "Kids and Family" machine, which... I feel held back the system in hindsight.

One thing I remember being particularly baffled at and it still seems to be a semi-policy to this day is Nintendo of America's handling of religious topics. I'm not sure if this is a left-over from Howard Lincoln's tenure, but Xenoblade II's localization still danced around a bit when it came to discussions of religion and biblical topics from what I saw and that's fairly recent when you consider all matters. There's obviously other serious issue with Xenoblade II as a whole in terms of content that I was, in-hindsight, pretty surprised Nintendo left alone (a lot of the weird and awkward sexualization going on), but that one sticks out like a sore thumb to me in terms of what was altered.

Bringing that up, there is something that also stands out to me is what happened to the English text and dialogue on Resident Evil 4, which was published under an (temporary) exclusivity deal with Nintendo. This happened fairly late in the games localization process to the point the Japanese text seems to be (largely) in-tact from memory regarding cult and religious related matters. All that was scrubbed away from the English version. References to god were almost completely taken out. In fact, the game went as far as muting Ashley's one line, where she says "Oh my god?! What's going on?!", with "Oh my god!" being muted, resulting in lipsyncing that was never really ever fixed.

This example is extremely curious to me, since the game was planned to get an M rating here in America from the get go, so why would Nintendo still mandate religious stuff here to be toned? I get they had some money put into the deal and involvement with marketing, but the whole thing seemed really odd to me as a whole.
For Xenoblade 2 specifically, there's a decent argument to be made that changing the names helped to preserve some of the more exotic flavor.

Also, even if there's a solid line of in-universe logic for it, using "Holy Grail" instead of "Aegis" would have sounded kind of dumb.
 
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Regardless of a single person, in general I'd say it's a fair assessment to say that Nintendo went through many successes and failures and in each cases those have somewhat enriched the Company.
The younger fans of Nintendo probably have a skew perspective due have met the Company when it was already an established multinational entertainment giant.
In reality in the '70s and '80s Nintendo was just a small japanese company, with limited or no presence in overseas markets, specialized in playing cards which was trying to diversify into new businesses because playing cards couldn't provide enough growth to make the company big (in actuality Nintendo was indebted in the '70s).
One of the venture Nintendo pursued was the amusement and toy industry but since they couldn't compete with incumbent toy companies they focused on a new and unexploited niche: electronic toys.
From there, through guts, luck, imitation of what was successful in U.S., ingenuity and ruthless business, they had their breakout moment in the '80s within the nascent videogame business and the rest is history as they say.
Nintendo's squeezing out as much profits and control as possible over their own platforms was overall beneficial for them, because those gains went toward build a stronger Nintendo.

The other misconception is that Nintendo, since it's by far the oldest console manufacturer still in business, was destined by fate to be perpetually successful.
On the contrary the most likely scenario was that every first-party driven console makers (Nintendo, Sega, Atari etc.) to be muscled out of business by big corporations adopting a third-party driven model (Sony, Microsoft).
Nintendo, not only survinging, but thriving should be treated as a special exception.

The most impressive fact about Nintendo isn't that they "lucked out" on a breakout moment in a new arising industry, it's that starting from there they had the vision to build up a company resilient to adverse changes in the market conditions to achieve long term success.
The same kind of understanding of the business wasn't shown by other companies that expanded mainly through the videogame business like Atari and Sega around the same time.
 
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(FYI: Most of Nintendo's global marketshare came from the west, not Japan).
Aside from the obvious flaw to compare one single Country vs the rest of World, back then the weight of the japanese market on the global scale was much higher than today.
It's especially easy to spot when looking at the software shipments when compared to the hardware sold.

Total software shipment as December 1992:

Japan
Famicom / NES: 221.93M (HW: 18.00M)
Game Boy: 53.51M (HW: 8.43M)
Super Famicom / SNES: 49.65M (HW: 7.39M)

Abroad:
Famicom / NES: 265.12M (HW: 41.75M)
Game Boy: 89.06M (HW: 20.52M)
Super Famicom / SNES: 43.49M (HW: 11.64M)

Japanese consumers were buying much more games, on average.
 
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