Nintendo: The good, the bad, and the Ugly

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By Theresa Raine De Guzman

Nintendo has always been a company near and dear to my heart ever since my uncle first gifted me a Gameboy Advance SP when I was six.

For nearly a year I was hypefixated on learning nearly everything about it, from its games, to its consoles and including its controversies.

Now that the Nintendo Switch 2 has launched, I am wondering if the developer has learned from their previous mistakes or just making new ones to piss off a whole new generation of gamers who are still interested in buying their products.

How Nintendo fools American Retailers

Nintendo’s first big success in the home console market was the Family Computer otherwise known as Famicom released in Japan in 1983.

Later, Nintendo introduced the Famicom to the United States under a new name: The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).

Immediately we saw Nintendo’s immense creativity and experimentation paying off with the introduction of the Robotic Operating Buddy (R.O.B.).

You see, the American home console market crashed in 1983 so a lot of retailers didn’t want to risk carrying any new home video game console, with a lot of Americans seeing it as a fad.

Nintendo used R.O.B. to convince said retailers by marketing it as a toy, a toy robot, and the rest we say is history. The NES sold nearly 62 million copies worldwide and helped revitalize the gaming industry in the USA.

How Nintendo unintentionally made their worst rival

However this leads to the first of Nintendo’s many controversial business practices. In order to prevent a new video game crash Nintendo had a strict licensing agreement to every company who published games on the NES.

First, all games must be submitted to Nintendo for review to see if the game met Nintendo’s standard of quality and Nintendo was allowed to make any changes they deemed fit to the submitted game.
Other limitations include companies only being able to publish five games a year and a two year exclusivity deal for every game on the system.

Many publishers were not fond of these harsh limitations, but they were trapped in between a rock and a hard place as the NES basically had a monopoly on the home console market at that time. It’s no wonder many third party publishers jumped ship when the Sony Playstation hit the market.

Speaking of the Playstation, probably one of Nintendo’s biggest regrets is when their shady deals unwittingly made their biggest rival.

For those not in the know, Sony had originally partnered up with Nintendo to create the Playstation as a CD-ROM add-on to the SNES.

However, Nintendo would go on to betray Sony by partnering up with Philips instead. Sony would go on to work on the idea on their own and so the Playstation was created and Sony had carved a space for itself in the Home Console market, a space Nintendo has never quite been able to recapture.

Nintendo shuts down ROMs and Fan Content

More recent Nintendo controversies include them shutting down websites that host ROMs of their old games and even non-profit fan games such as LoveRetro.co in 2018 and Pokemon Uranium in 2016.

Fans have viewed these actions negatively due to the majority of the rom sites Nintendo shut down often host roms for games that are no longer in production or for sale like most of the Gameboy and DS era Pokemon games.

So not only is it not stealing money from developers, but it also hindered attempts to preserve these games for future generations.

This is also in stark contrast to their former rival Service Games (SEGA) as they often make sure to support fan creators like Christian Whitehead who SEGA hired to officially create the massively successful Sonic Mania after he had developed several popular 2D Sonic fan games such as Retro Sonic.

Problems of Nintendo Switch 2

Now, their latest controversy is the Nintendo Switch 2.

Fans haven’t been thrilled with announcements such as Switch 2 games will be P4,468 for digital copies and P5,027 for physical copies, much higher compared to the average big Switch 1 release that usually only costs P3,351.

More backlash was directed at rumors of a day one patch that was needed for the console to operate.

Now, it’s been revealed that you can still play Nintendo Switch 2 games without the day one patch, however without said patch the console’s functionality is limited. Without the day one patch, you cannot access features like the eShop, Nintendo Switch one game support, virtual game cards and more.

Another point of contention is that Game-Keys differ from regular cartridges—they don’t actually contain the game itself, but instead act as a key that lets you download the game onto your Switch 2 online.

This understandably got a lot of backlash online as a lot of people felt like it defeated the point of buying a physical copy and preservation of the games as a whole.

Nintendo President Doug Bowser has defended the move, saying that the Game-Keys are there to help support third party developers and there may be some truth in what he’s saying.

Game-keys allow for more data than the standard 64 GB limit of a cartridge. In fact Kaoko Kino, the president of Japanese video game consultancy firm Kyos Inc noted that the move will help offset rising cost of game development.

However even with all the kickback the Nintendo Switch 2 is still selling out of retailers like crazy as reported by the BBC, Reuters, CNBC and several other news outlets.

Shortages are already to be expected. Only time will tell if this hype lasts and the Switch 2 can be as big a success as its predecessor.

My take on Nintendo Switch 2

Regardless of the Nintendo’s Switch 2’s success, Nintendo will have enough money to stay afloat for another twenty years or so.

But our money is one of the few ways as we (consumers) can make our voices heard to giant companies like Nintendo.

I’m personally hesitant on buying the Switch 2, the 80 USD price tag seems egregious especially in this economy and the implementation of Game-Keys does make me worried about the future of physical gaming despite Bowser’s assurance of the contrary.

Especially since we seem to be moving closer and closer to a world that tells us we will own nothing and be happy. And I don’t know about you, but that is not a future I want to live in.

(Theresa Raine De Guzman is a Bachelor of Science in Interactive Entertainment and Multimedia Computing (IEMC) student at De La Salle–College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB), specializing in Game Design and Development.)