Comment by talldayo
1 year ago
The top comment there pretty much sums it up nicely. Attacking Nintendo is like attacking Disney or Apple - they're a lifestyle brand. There are some people who spend thousands of dollars annually on their products and might feel irrationally invested in the business. Others might have insecurities or extreme dysfunctions they perceive to be "solved" by the brand. People are deeply entrenched in the concept of these brands more than they care about the utility of them.
Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft and even Valve all suffer from this to a degree. They're fighting for shrinking margins in an industry that is consolidating and seeking faster turnaround with lower headcount. Sony wants exclusives, Microsoft wants studios, Valve wants clients, and Nintendo wants to keep their preexisting studios from collapsing. Game Freak is on death's doorstep, HAL hasn't developed a real video game since Mother 3, Intelligent Systems is begging for someone to shoot them and Nintendo EPD has been sliding in quality since the Switch's release. Nintendo has every incentive to stay in their lane and try to salvage what they can.
I personally quite like Nintendo, but I'm also willing to see them for their flaws. I don't think their legal stance against YouTubers or C&Ds against Pokemon fangames will be their undoing, though. Nintendo is most likely to collapse for the same reasons Sony and Microsoft are threatened; games need to be made cheaper and faster, which is hard to equate with quality. If tariffs take away your hardware margins and indies destroy your software margins, the entire concept of a "game console" may not persist much longer.
I dislike Nintendo but I have to defend them a little.
Nintendo makes toys. They started as a toy company and they still are a toy company; they make video game "toys", it's why their consoles are underpowered, it's why they have a huge first party dominance, and it's why they never "port" their games to other consoles. You buy their "toys and toy accessories". You aren't buying "games that I wish I could play on PC/with mods/etc".
A lot of their shitty practices/"decline" is because gamers expect them to be a video game company, but they're not; they're a toy company. And to be fair, they still consistently make great "toys" (games that are great for kids or more casual players, even though they are flawed and lacking for game enthusiasts).
Comparing them to Disney is particularly apt, wrt lifestyle brand. They're both targeted toward kids and families, although there are a minority of adults that seem to have latched on particularly hard (Freud would have a field day).
Are they gonna go against Dragon Quest VIII? After playing for a while you met a crazy guy that runs a ring of monsters and he then encumbers you with capturing monsters all around the world and put them to compete against each other on the arena. Are the gonna go against Hogwarts? They also have a mechanic of capturing monsters around the world. There's probably other examples out there but those are the ones I could remember.
I'm awful at discussions because I cannot keep track of the facts. I tried to google it before writing this message but my brain is in another place. Nintendo fought and still fights pretty hard against emulators, roms and developers who creates them or even youtubers who post content about it, yet, they were caught selling emulators and roms to the public. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I saw a video from MVG about this. By the way, MVG was threaten by Nintendo himself.
It's certainly terrible. But I don't think lawsuits like this threaten Nintendo at all. They own the Pokemon IP and want a court to rule whether or not their gameplay patent is violated. Worst case scenario is that they lose, and Nintendo could appeal the ruling or sue Palworld for something else like character likeness. Since Nintendo has prior art, their advantage in court is pretty sizable. Since they hire lawyers on retainer, they can effectively force the Palworld devs to settle out-of-court.
While I don't necessarily consider Palworld in the wrong, they clearly knew they were flying close to the sun. Nintendo is going to burn them for that, whether it's right or wrong or even legally correct. It's just what they do.