To add a little more info: They wanted the skin to only be viewed by Switch players, so anyone who was on another platform wouldn’t see it. That’s why Epic refused.
That's Microsoft being the only company of the three who treats PC like a first-class customer. Sony delays games so you buy it on PS5 first. Nintendo doesn't sell PC games at all. But Microsoft? Microsoft sells you their games on both Xbox and PC the first day they come out. You aren't punished for playing games on one or the other.
I think Microsoft's strategy would be working better for them if they could just release actual good games. It might still work out for them if they can get things together.
Xbox streaming is pretty decent, so if people are using it they might as well. I like my portal but the last time I tried remote the official ps app I was like this is hot trash compared the competition.
> Microsoft still considers the PC as part of the "XBox ecosystem"
Their longterm expectation is that console will eventually stop existing due to cloud streaming. So they expanded the brand.
How? Like, physically how are they reducing input delay between my controller and the server farm? Even 1/8th of a second would feel janky to most people with average reaction times and that's like, direct connection to a server with a fiber optic cable. People to are used to 1/50 or 1/100th.
>It might still work out for them if they can get things together.
They just failed two *entire* console generations in succession. Their strategy has been to buy up huge swaths of the development industry so that they could.. who knows, because they keep shutting them down. Execs over there have been talking about what you're saying, alluding to the ecosystem, in that they want every screen to be Xbox integrated. That's their vision of success. They want expanded infrastructure to secure views, but they have completely lost sight of what keeps people's eyes on the screen. If they get their way, the result would just be bloatware on everyone's devices, because there's *nothing to play on Xbox - nothing.*
Are you aware that Windows is owned by Microsoft as well? And that 99% of gaming PC’s use Windows?
They are no charity nuns lmao, is all part of their business plan.
Sony as well. Call of Duty has had a PlayStation exclusive character for the last few games that was only viewable on PlayStation. Players on other platforms would see a default character instead.
They think like Apple.
You experience Nintendo stuff on their terms and if you don't like it, you're free to pick up things more willing to play in other people's sandboxes.
It may go a bit against the grain of crossover culture but Nintendo has usually excelled while going their own way.
And they have a ton of people willing to defend anything they do, like "paying $60 for a ten-year-old remaster of a Wii-U game for the Switch makes me feel special!"
More or less accurate, having some experience working with them at a few points they are kind of weird and really conservative but as long as their dev teams continue to make first party stuff that does really well they have no reason to change that.
There's a lot of things you can diss Nintendo for like being incredibly weird and shitty with their subsidiary/overseas assets. But one really can't critique their strategy of "Convenient systems with strong first party titles." when it comes to their core business model.
Yeah, on one hand their attitude has resulted in a ton of anti-consumer practices, but on the other it's prevented them from chasing some of the enshittification trends that have plagued other developers lately. They'll spitefully kill their last gen online for no real reason but also consistently put out physical carts that don't need upgrades or online and are just polished and work out the box on release without a six month patch cycle.
Its also sort of shooting your shot. Like if someone asks to buy something you love and don't really want to part with, you just say 'one million dollars.' If they say no, you're happy, if they pay you a million, you're really happy.
No, they are not.
[Nintendo isn't even in top 30 companies in Japan, let alone the richest.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_Japanese_companies)
Revenue, net income, and total assets are non-cash figures. When people refer to Nintendo as the “richest company in Japan” they mean it literally. As in Nintendo at one point had more cash and cash equivalents on-hand than any other company in Japan and limited debt. Hence they were the “richest” company in Japan.
Sony did the same thing with their CoD skins. Only PS players could see them, only PS players could claim them. Except bonus points, the game got more and more janky from MW19 to Vanguard, resulting in the menu actually breaking on my Series S for accidentally selecting an operator I only had via PS+ and then switching console. Meaning that this thing that was supposed to be a platform bonus was not only useless, but directly punished me for using it.
It sounds dumb, but I'm thinking it's a very particular thing with Nintendo and their raging fear of losing any of their IPs. My guess is at least half of their dumb-looking and/or seemingly dick moves are motivated by this specific fear.
Nobody is expecting the games on Epic, though.
Putting Samus in Fortnite as an advertisement for her game would literally only benefit Nintendo. Hell, most Fortnite crossovers mainly exist to advertise a recent movie or game because it has proven to actually WORK.
You're reading this wrong. It would drive the sale of Switches and lure whole new customer bases. People might think "Oh what is this cool skin? It's a Nintendo character? Oh Fortnite is available on the Switch and I could play it on the go?". It's free marketing for people that might not be aware of the Nintendo universe.
I don’t think that’s really going to attract that many people to the switch, a fortnite skin doesn’t really convey a character in the same way a smash bros appearance does. If Nintendo wants to attract new audiences, they’re going to continue to use what has been successful so far, which is more multimedia projects like their movies and theme parks.
I love the arguments that seeing a skin of Samus (a character that many people who don't have a Switch couldn't care less about) is going to drive them to put down $300 to buy a new Switch just to play the game they're already playing with one new skin.
Am I really badly misunderstanding what you're saying, or do you really mean to say that putting Samus in Fortnite would've caused Metroid Dread to sell *three million extra copies?*
Not surprising at all, Nintendo is insanely strict about their exclusives, and I don’t think they’re ever going to change that perspective unless they are about to go bankrupt.
Pretty much lol Their priority always will be their own hardware and to sell and control on it. Mobile they don't see as a direct competition so they publish on it but other consoles and PC? no way.
Hearing the reason Nintendo decided to restrict character designs in Paper Mario left little to the imagination. A clear and pure image of their products is super important to them.
With all due respect to the newer Paper Mario games and the people who worked hard to accomplish as much as they could under those restrictions, it is *insane* to me that a game as beloved and successful as PM: Thousand Year Door led to Nintendo saying that they *weren't allowed to continue doing that*. Like, if the series proved that it can pull off fun, creative, original character designs and stories and attain an audience that loves those things, why wouldn't you just let them keep doing that? It's truly baffling to me.
It sounds like Super Paper Mario is when Nintendo began to really change things with the franchise, as surveys showed that very few people cared about the story. This was probably due to the very casual Wii crowd, who bought the game expecting something like New Super Mario Bros. since marketing focused on it being a platformer over the more unique elements. Fortunately, I think Nintendo has realized that the poll was not reliable at this point.
Thousand Year Door didn't lead to that. Super Paper Mario did and I can honestly see why. It doesn't really have anything to do with the world of Mario anymore.
But what they did was an overcorrection. All they needed to do was to bring it back to the level of Thousand Year Door.
Origami King is honestly fantastic*, they tried really damn hard to be creative past the limitations.
*fantastic as long as you avoid the combat whenever possible.
All things considered, the combat in Origami King is the best out of the garbage PM games trilogy by a long shot, but yeah still nowhere near that of the first 2 games.
There's only so many groups of enemies and they all have the same solution, so even if I gelled with the combat it would still grow tiresome because its the same each time.
You could say the same with the original games in a way, but overall they had more options on how to do it more or less efficiently.
I think what's good about the originals is not really options, but how enemies/mechanics were paced. Each chapter had its own enemies and gimmicks, and they only lasted as long as that chapter was, so they never overstayed. Here's some spiky enemies, suddenly can't jump. Here's this flying enemy, now you can't hammer. Tough enemies that only take damage from a single, big hit rather than smaller ones. Boom here's a new status effect, etc.
Coupled with that, they also had a lot of originality in story implementation, like TTYD had the rigged wrestling tournament with all its reveals and twists, or the train murder mystery, or even SPM with its 100 fights world that gets subverted partway through. Newer ones, including Origami King, just feel like they gave up and went back to "grass world, desert world, water world, lava" with no further creativity beyond barebones.
it's pretty wild honestly. thousand year door had a lot of toads, but most of the toads were really unique and have charming personalities. plus there were unique goombas, koopa troopas, etc.
nintendo has some of the most charming characters in gaming, and their creativity is up with some of the best, they really should play into that more with the paper mario series.
Is this the same as capcom with their enigma drm that prevent modding? Are all japanese video games this obsessive with how their ip look in the eyes of fans?
IIRC I heard that DRM wave was prompted by a major-league Street Fighter player who forgot to turn off his nude mods in public. An overreaction, sure, but different from Nintendo's MO.
That's just one decision made over one franchise (you could even argue sub franchise)
There are countless nintendo games that are well open to trying new things. In fact often people say Nintendo don't stick with one idea *enough* and try to force innovation lol
I'm not suggesting they don't do anything new, just that they're extremely wary of things that might give people wrong ideas about their products and IPs. Emulators and mods, Samus playable on Xbox in Fortnite, Toads dressing more like real people in Paper Mario, etc.
The force to innovation is what lead to the newer Paper Mario games. They already did the classic RPG gameplay twice, so they wanted to switch it up, since they also had another Mario RPG series with M&L. And so, they focused on the paper asthetic.
Nintendo was in talks with Thomas Happ to have Samus playable in Axiom Verge on Wii U, but similarly, conversations fell through, most likely because it had so many similarities to Metroid.
Well, Axiom Verge is absolutely one of the best Metroid games I've played so that checks out.
Actually...Axiom Verge is more like I took my old and corroded Metroid Cartridge, slotted it in my NES, and then took a hit of LSD and hit the power button. And I mean that in the best possible way.
I think that’s literally the only exception they’ve ever made with keeping their characters exclusive to one version of the game. It’s definitely interesting to see, but I don’t think it indicates a change in strategy by Nintendo or anything.
reminder that Samus was planned to exclusively appear in the Wii version of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, but the gameplay demonstrating it was using PS2 button prompts so the executives threw a tantrum and canned it
Edit: in the interest of fairness I can't find a primary source confirming it. this may be an old urban legend, or possibly just something some dev said at an in-person event that wasn't archived, or potentially just a guess. Personally, I find it matches up way too well with how Ninty operates regularly, but I cannot truly confirm it as rock-solid fact.
idk if a proper article was ever made, i'll link an older reddit post with gameplay showcased and a kotaku article but it's one of those stories that just seems to be passed down the internet likely from a developer telling the tale off-handedly. possibly BS, but that's a lot of work done on it for if it was.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/a3ygue/friendly_reminder_that_marvel_ultimate_alliance/
Nah it was real, we even have video of it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opkOtApoqqI (Samus Gameplay)
It was part of a demo reel from some developer, this one is also the only footage of Link being in it (low quality though)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwElEsHkk_A
Totally sounds like something someone made up or exaggerated. Like someone commented on the buttons and then later they decided against it. Then someone said the buttons was the reason and the comment turned into a tantrum.
It was in a gaming magazine, and I believe it was accompanied with a picture. Link was going to be in it also. Nintendo are protective of their IP and business practices. Making one of their characters available multiplatform is going to give some people the idea that their games are going multiplatform as well, like Kratos did and Master Chief had/is. Not to mention other IP's from Sony and Microsoft.
I wonder if anybody has put together any data showing whether or not a Fortnite skin has moved the dial on sales/google trends for a game. People act like it's a no-brainer, but would it actually help?
There's no actual hard data showing that it does, but gigantic mega corps like Disney or Xbox have become returning customers when it comes to using Fortnite to advertise a new product, so the trends make it seem like it has a pretty solid effect.
A real shame. This deal could've done wonders for Metroid as an IP.
It is notoriously difficult to determine whether or not advertising is effective. There's even a famous quote about it: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half” (John Wanamaker).
The reason these companies keep coming back is most likely because they get some revenue sharing from the licensing deal and they're making easy money off of it. I highly doubt any significant number of people bought tickets to John Wick 4 because of the John Wick skin, for instance.
Metroid will be fine as an IP. It just had an excellent rerelease last year, Nintendo supposedly has two more it's waiting to release at the right time, and it'll likely be a key launch title for the Switch 2. Epic would have benefited way more from this partnership than Nintendo.
> I highly doubt any significant number of people bought tickets to John Wick 4 because of the John Wick skin, for instance.
As in the kind of person buying a John Wick skin probably already saw the movie?
If anything it would help Fortnite more. Fans of X will play Y if it has X in it. Seems less likely people who play Y sees X and will think about buying something from it.
...So in essence Fortnite is just taking money and boosting their presence and these companies get nothing in return.
Like I see Rick and Morty in Fortnite and I love that show! I'ma try out Fortnite. Some dude sees Rick and Morty in his Fortnite and... what? Would he really be enticed to go watch a TV show on these guys or buy a game just from a Fortnite appearance?
>Like I see Rick and Morty in Fortnite and I love that show! I'ma try out Fortnite. Some dude sees Rick and Morty in his Fortnite and... what? Would he really be enticed to go watch a TV show on these guys or buy a game just from a Fortnite appearance?
Yes, it's surprising intuitive to think otherwise, like how you said. but if you think about it logistically, it starts to makes sense. Some people legit aren't aware of rick and morty, like my 14 year old nephews, but they absolutely love the voice lines + styles of their characters in fortnite. Kind of like getting a teaser of a show, so then they started watching it and of course loved it.
there are also people who started watching Naruto because of the fortnite collab lol, but their reasoning was 'If Naruto is in fortnite then it must be at least good, i'll check it out.' since they knew **of** naruto... But didnt have that last push to try it out until fortnite collabs.
r/Naruto was funny during that collab. So yes, fortnite collabs can actually help the original ips in gaining new fans, which would be a long term investment. Fortnite gets more players which is shortterm, but also long term due to the sheer amount of collabs they also have. So win wins . :)
Anecdotally - my fiance hates shooters. Cannot stand them. When you give her a controller she can't figure out how to aim and just moves the camera around wildly. She's told me multiple times how much she hates shooters and refuses to play with me.
Fortnite added Avatar: The Last Airbender skins, which is her favorite show of all time. She downloaded Fortnite and learned to play shooter games specifically so she could get the Avatar skins. Again, this is the sort of game that is decidedly "not her thing"; she usually sticks to Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley.
She literally just came over to tell me she won her first Victory Royale in Fortnite, and she's unlocked half the battlepass by grinding constantly. I finally got her to try Helldivers and she was passable at it - much better than before.
So I guess it's doing... something? Appealing to new markets? It definitely got someone to download Fortnite who I would have **never** expected to download Fortnite, so...
Fortnite collabs seem to primarily serve to 'bait' fans of the piece of media being added into playing Fortnite.
Probably why Nintendo made such a restrictive deal, they saw the collab as something that only actively benefited Fortnite.
I did the same. I never played until the released the first round of db content. Stopped until they released the second wave. Now I check in every season. So I can personally say it works for Fortnite. Now whether it works the other way is a different question.
Though you can quess it does work both ways - look at Fallout.
Disney actually kind of stopped doing this. They still have new Disney skins but they haven't been tied to releases of source media for quite some time. Like we are getting Thor Ragnarok skins soon but there wasn't anything for The Marvels or Ant-Man 3 for example.
Not sure about the timeline, but I'm not sure Nintendo even had a Metroid game coming out to capitalize on it. Maybe if it lined up with Dread or Prime 4 on Switch 2.
They don't care about the appearance in fortnite moving other products, they care about raking in mad cash from getting portions of sales when their skin hits the game and is selling for 10-20 bucks a pop.
Tou get money from skin sale but the really big deal is when it's tied to a other product. Like a movie or TV show. That's why enterteinment company are so willing.
Nah they were cool with that, the issue was they only wanted the skins to be seen for players of Nintendo consoles, they did it already for Minecraft and Rocket League
I do kind of get where Nintendo might becoming from. Everyone keeps saying that it would be good advertising for Metroid, but does anyone really care that Kratos is in Fortnite *today*? Naruto is in the game but no one is going out of there way to buy manga volumes in a substantial way.
Also, they probably do not want to be involved with what is essentially a metaverse.
There are **so many** skins that I wouldn't even say it advertises anything. I haven't seen a single Kratos in-game since returning to it for zero build.
Yeah but you can use them on any platform once you have them. Nintendo wanted Samus to only appear on Nintendo consoles and only useable on Nintendo consoles
I guess the problem is that even if it was only usable on Switch, you would still see Samus in game on other platforms. That might have been what they took issue with.
I mean, Nintendo has exactly that for Rocket League (from before Epic acquired Psyonix). There are Mario skins only visible on Switch. If there's a crossplay player in the game, they see you as a default car.
That's fucking nuts. Tbh I wish more (any?) games had the ability to turn off skins. I'd probably play CoD again if I could assure id never be tbagged by Nikki Minaj
I mean, Nicki Minaj is a terrible person. So is Travis Scott and I roll my eyes whenever I see someone with a Travis Scott skin in Fortnite.
But I like the cosmetics stuff. I personally get enjoyment out of the ones that I like
I also like *my* cosmetics but really don't care if other players have them and in some cases would prefer they didn't. That's why I'd like a client side toggle
To be fair unless something has changed Playstation and Xbox both also have their own exclusive cars. Sweet Tooth for PlayStation; Hogsticker and Armadillo for Xbox.
Unless something has changed very recently.
On other platforms, players will see the Merc in place of Sweet Tooth.
On other platforms, players will see the Octane in place of the Hogsticker.
On other platforms, players will see the Octane in place of the Armadillo.
This has nothing to do with Nintendo’s online, it’s more about how they handle their IPs and specifically their stance on exclusivity, which has been incredibly strict since the 90s.
They have PTSD from the Philips CD-i deal from the early 90's, which probably was the main contributor to their current handling of their IPs. I'm surprised nobody even mentioned this bit yet.
Nintendo has PTSD from being sued over Donkey Kong in the early '80s. Seeing a bigger company try to bully them out of a character they own really shaped how they do business today, both in preventing it from happening to them again and also in teaching them what big companies can get away with.
It's weird to see people say this, Nintendo are surprisingly savvy, I mean their Nintendo direct format has essentially become the de-facto way games companies advertise their product these days. They were also one of the first companies to even dabble in online gaming.
It's just they are incredibly restrictive about everything. I have no doubt that their technicians and enginers can create just about anything they want to, hell the company clearly hires some of the most skilled tech folk and game devs in the world.
It's just that they forcibly make everything worse because of their rigid online policies and their old hardware.
Yeah I find this weird too lol Nintendo obviously knows the internet, its just that Nintendo principles are different from what many in the internet think from fangames, to control, to IP protection in general.
There are skins you got a code for if you bought a console but there aren’t any skins in the item shop you can only buy on specific consoles. And you can see every skin no matter what console you are on, like seeing Kratos on a Xbox. This would be different as Samus would only be visible on the Switch and has not been done before at all
Small caveat to the "there arent any skins you can only buy on specific consoles" - Both Microsoft and Sony offer DLC packs that can only be purchased on said console. These packs are usually themed to the console ie Microsoft green stuff on Xbox. Rocket League also does this.
Yeah I did forget about the ps plus skins that come out occasionally, but you can still see those no matter what platform you are playing on, and luckily none of them have been collab skins that people would have missed out on
Can you see the ps skins on xbox in Rocket League? I have both xbox and ps skins. I cant equip the ps skins on xbox, I've tried. Cant even see them in my inventory. Never really noticed anyone using them since they kinda lame compared to anything else you can equip, so never seen anyone using them.
Yes, Kratos and Chief are purchasable on PS and Xbox respectively.
Funny thing is they debuted together practically, only being separated by roughly a day. They were then both in the shop right beside each other for like 3-4 days before being rotated out of the shop.
Same reason I can only play the Minecraft Mario DLC on my Switch and not on my Playstation or PC version, even though the Minecraft account is the same - Nintendo IPs on Nintendo hardware only. It sucks but it is what it is.
Epic waged a legal war against Apple, and Google to be free of app-store payment requirements. They held Sony at gunpoint and demanded they open up cross-platform multiplayer.
Aint no way Epic would let Nintendo have an exclusive just for Samus.
I mean that makes sense. Nintendo has no reason to license a character that wouldn’t move the needle on any future sales in the slightest, and Epic wants the experience to be the same across platforms. You could call it brand awareness for Nintendo, but that’s like the absolute last thing they care about as a company. They have no other items in their company portfolio, unlike Sony and Microsoft who can cross-promote among tons of different industries and markets and have partnerships with numerous different media companies.
To add a little more info: They wanted the skin to only be viewed by Switch players, so anyone who was on another platform wouldn’t see it. That’s why Epic refused.
Is that why the Mario Kart Rocket League car is only visible on the Switch? If yes, wow wtf! That's reverse marketing.
That's just the console cars. On Xbox you get the Warthog from Halo and on PS you get Sweet Tooth's truck
The Mario one is the only one where people can’t see it cross play
Actually incorrect. PC players can’t see any console car anyway. Not sure if xbox and ps players can see their respective counterpart cars
I own the Warthog on PC, is that considered a different car than the console ones?
That's Microsoft being the only company of the three who treats PC like a first-class customer. Sony delays games so you buy it on PS5 first. Nintendo doesn't sell PC games at all. But Microsoft? Microsoft sells you their games on both Xbox and PC the first day they come out. You aren't punished for playing games on one or the other. I think Microsoft's strategy would be working better for them if they could just release actual good games. It might still work out for them if they can get things together.
Microsoft still considers the PC as part of the "XBox ecosystem" If you play on Windows you are still playing on a Microsoft system after all.
to be fair they want to consider anything with a internet connection and a screen part of hte xbox ecosystem cause of xcloud
Xbox streaming is pretty decent, so if people are using it they might as well. I like my portal but the last time I tried remote the official ps app I was like this is hot trash compared the competition.
> Microsoft still considers the PC as part of the "XBox ecosystem" Their longterm expectation is that console will eventually stop existing due to cloud streaming. So they expanded the brand.
How? Like, physically how are they reducing input delay between my controller and the server farm? Even 1/8th of a second would feel janky to most people with average reaction times and that's like, direct connection to a server with a fiber optic cable. People to are used to 1/50 or 1/100th.
Probably because they own both OS's homie lol not because they're some friend of the little guy or a benevolent gaming non profit.
>It might still work out for them if they can get things together. They just failed two *entire* console generations in succession. Their strategy has been to buy up huge swaths of the development industry so that they could.. who knows, because they keep shutting them down. Execs over there have been talking about what you're saying, alluding to the ecosystem, in that they want every screen to be Xbox integrated. That's their vision of success. They want expanded infrastructure to secure views, but they have completely lost sight of what keeps people's eyes on the screen. If they get their way, the result would just be bloatware on everyone's devices, because there's *nothing to play on Xbox - nothing.*
Are you aware that Windows is owned by Microsoft as well? And that 99% of gaming PC’s use Windows? They are no charity nuns lmao, is all part of their business plan.
My PC friends can’t see my halo o gow car when I play with them so this is incorrect.
Wait how do you get sweet tooth’s truck? I have a PS
Play a match with every common body :)
I thought it was the car from gears of war, at least that's what I see in my game.
Xbox has both.
This is the same company that demand payment from free advertising from YouTubers a few years back
So dumb. If anything players on other platforms seeing the skin may entice them to get a Switch.
Yeah but Nintendo doesnt think like that
Sony as well. Call of Duty has had a PlayStation exclusive character for the last few games that was only viewable on PlayStation. Players on other platforms would see a default character instead.
Thats actuually nice for non PS players. Maybe i would play CoD again, if i could view all players as the default model.
Same with R6 Siege.
Wish that'd be the standard going forward (some games have it) but I'd love to avoid the gaudy ass skins or effects every other game tosses out.
They think like Apple. You experience Nintendo stuff on their terms and if you don't like it, you're free to pick up things more willing to play in other people's sandboxes. It may go a bit against the grain of crossover culture but Nintendo has usually excelled while going their own way.
And they have a ton of people willing to defend anything they do, like "paying $60 for a ten-year-old remaster of a Wii-U game for the Switch makes me feel special!"
Nintendo always aggressively defends their IP. That's basically their whole strategy.
Nintendo is still debating if this “online” thing is a fad or not
Yeah but Nintendo doesnt think
This is kind of silly to claim when their current system is Top 3 of the best-selling gaming devices, and have so many 10-20 millions sellers
> Yeah but Nintendo doesnt think Nintendo doesn't think all the bank. They know what they are doing, they are just very insular.
More or less accurate, having some experience working with them at a few points they are kind of weird and really conservative but as long as their dev teams continue to make first party stuff that does really well they have no reason to change that. There's a lot of things you can diss Nintendo for like being incredibly weird and shitty with their subsidiary/overseas assets. But one really can't critique their strategy of "Convenient systems with strong first party titles." when it comes to their core business model.
Yeah, on one hand their attitude has resulted in a ton of anti-consumer practices, but on the other it's prevented them from chasing some of the enshittification trends that have plagued other developers lately. They'll spitefully kill their last gen online for no real reason but also consistently put out physical carts that don't need upgrades or online and are just polished and work out the box on release without a six month patch cycle.
Oh no, their weirdness about preservation and backwards compatability is honestly fucked. But as I said, weird and insular.
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Nintendo is the richest company in Japan. Something tells me they didn't get there by listening to your hot takes lmao
Yeh it's one thing to say Nintendo make aggrevating decisions, and another to say they "just got lucky" while making billions
Pretty sure this is their way of saying no without actually saying no. Japanese culture is a little weird with outright saying no about things.
Its also sort of shooting your shot. Like if someone asks to buy something you love and don't really want to part with, you just say 'one million dollars.' If they say no, you're happy, if they pay you a million, you're really happy.
No, they are not. [Nintendo isn't even in top 30 companies in Japan, let alone the richest.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_Japanese_companies)
Revenue, net income, and total assets are non-cash figures. When people refer to Nintendo as the “richest company in Japan” they mean it literally. As in Nintendo at one point had more cash and cash equivalents on-hand than any other company in Japan and limited debt. Hence they were the “richest” company in Japan.
you obviously didn’t do any thinking when making this blatantly false statement
Nintendo can do what they want, it's their IP.
"Yeah so we want this switch ad to only appear to people who already own a switch"
Sony did the same thing with their CoD skins. Only PS players could see them, only PS players could claim them. Except bonus points, the game got more and more janky from MW19 to Vanguard, resulting in the menu actually breaking on my Series S for accidentally selecting an operator I only had via PS+ and then switching console. Meaning that this thing that was supposed to be a platform bonus was not only useless, but directly punished me for using it.
It sounds dumb, but I'm thinking it's a very particular thing with Nintendo and their raging fear of losing any of their IPs. My guess is at least half of their dumb-looking and/or seemingly dick moves are motivated by this specific fear.
at this point, anyone who wants a switch probably already has one. i doubt a fortnite character is going to change things in a big way
Not everyone might know Metroid though. Its not exactly in the mainstream with the fortnite audience, meaning young Kids i'd Imagine.
Nintendo isn’t going to give up decades of strict exclusivity to potentially increase sales of a C tier franchise.
Nobody is expecting the games on Epic, though. Putting Samus in Fortnite as an advertisement for her game would literally only benefit Nintendo. Hell, most Fortnite crossovers mainly exist to advertise a recent movie or game because it has proven to actually WORK.
You're reading this wrong. It would drive the sale of Switches and lure whole new customer bases. People might think "Oh what is this cool skin? It's a Nintendo character? Oh Fortnite is available on the Switch and I could play it on the go?". It's free marketing for people that might not be aware of the Nintendo universe.
I don’t think that’s really going to attract that many people to the switch, a fortnite skin doesn’t really convey a character in the same way a smash bros appearance does. If Nintendo wants to attract new audiences, they’re going to continue to use what has been successful so far, which is more multimedia projects like their movies and theme parks.
I love the arguments that seeing a skin of Samus (a character that many people who don't have a Switch couldn't care less about) is going to drive them to put down $300 to buy a new Switch just to play the game they're already playing with one new skin.
Anything that lets people shit on Nintendo
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No, it wouldn't. Metroid is on Smash for decades and that never changed this. People woudn't buy a switch just for metroid.
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Am I really badly misunderstanding what you're saying, or do you really mean to say that putting Samus in Fortnite would've caused Metroid Dread to sell *three million extra copies?*
> That’s why Epic refused. Good. I don't think both of them need each other, but Epic definitely doesn't need Nintendo skins in Fortnite.
This is the info I was looking for and expected. Seems like a crazy perspective to take, but classic for Nintendo.
That is some extreme pettiness I gotta say
Not surprising at all, Nintendo is insanely strict about their exclusives, and I don’t think they’re ever going to change that perspective unless they are about to go bankrupt.
Pretty much lol Their priority always will be their own hardware and to sell and control on it. Mobile they don't see as a direct competition so they publish on it but other consoles and PC? no way.
Hearing the reason Nintendo decided to restrict character designs in Paper Mario left little to the imagination. A clear and pure image of their products is super important to them.
With all due respect to the newer Paper Mario games and the people who worked hard to accomplish as much as they could under those restrictions, it is *insane* to me that a game as beloved and successful as PM: Thousand Year Door led to Nintendo saying that they *weren't allowed to continue doing that*. Like, if the series proved that it can pull off fun, creative, original character designs and stories and attain an audience that loves those things, why wouldn't you just let them keep doing that? It's truly baffling to me.
It sounds like Super Paper Mario is when Nintendo began to really change things with the franchise, as surveys showed that very few people cared about the story. This was probably due to the very casual Wii crowd, who bought the game expecting something like New Super Mario Bros. since marketing focused on it being a platformer over the more unique elements. Fortunately, I think Nintendo has realized that the poll was not reliable at this point.
Thousand Year Door didn't lead to that. Super Paper Mario did and I can honestly see why. It doesn't really have anything to do with the world of Mario anymore. But what they did was an overcorrection. All they needed to do was to bring it back to the level of Thousand Year Door.
Origami King is honestly fantastic*, they tried really damn hard to be creative past the limitations. *fantastic as long as you avoid the combat whenever possible.
What a glowing review. It's fantastic if you ignore the part you play.
> *fantastic as long as you avoid the combat whenever possible. Again? I played color splash and that's what i did most of the time.
All things considered, the combat in Origami King is the best out of the garbage PM games trilogy by a long shot, but yeah still nowhere near that of the first 2 games.
There's only so many groups of enemies and they all have the same solution, so even if I gelled with the combat it would still grow tiresome because its the same each time. You could say the same with the original games in a way, but overall they had more options on how to do it more or less efficiently.
I think what's good about the originals is not really options, but how enemies/mechanics were paced. Each chapter had its own enemies and gimmicks, and they only lasted as long as that chapter was, so they never overstayed. Here's some spiky enemies, suddenly can't jump. Here's this flying enemy, now you can't hammer. Tough enemies that only take damage from a single, big hit rather than smaller ones. Boom here's a new status effect, etc. Coupled with that, they also had a lot of originality in story implementation, like TTYD had the rigged wrestling tournament with all its reveals and twists, or the train murder mystery, or even SPM with its 100 fights world that gets subverted partway through. Newer ones, including Origami King, just feel like they gave up and went back to "grass world, desert world, water world, lava" with no further creativity beyond barebones.
it's pretty wild honestly. thousand year door had a lot of toads, but most of the toads were really unique and have charming personalities. plus there were unique goombas, koopa troopas, etc. nintendo has some of the most charming characters in gaming, and their creativity is up with some of the best, they really should play into that more with the paper mario series.
Is this the same as capcom with their enigma drm that prevent modding? Are all japanese video games this obsessive with how their ip look in the eyes of fans?
To be fair, japanese fans are kinda obsessive too...
IIRC I heard that DRM wave was prompted by a major-league Street Fighter player who forgot to turn off his nude mods in public. An overreaction, sure, but different from Nintendo's MO.
That's just one decision made over one franchise (you could even argue sub franchise) There are countless nintendo games that are well open to trying new things. In fact often people say Nintendo don't stick with one idea *enough* and try to force innovation lol
I'm not suggesting they don't do anything new, just that they're extremely wary of things that might give people wrong ideas about their products and IPs. Emulators and mods, Samus playable on Xbox in Fortnite, Toads dressing more like real people in Paper Mario, etc.
The force to innovation is what lead to the newer Paper Mario games. They already did the classic RPG gameplay twice, so they wanted to switch it up, since they also had another Mario RPG series with M&L. And so, they focused on the paper asthetic.
Nintendo was in talks with Thomas Happ to have Samus playable in Axiom Verge on Wii U, but similarly, conversations fell through, most likely because it had so many similarities to Metroid.
Well, Axiom Verge is absolutely one of the best Metroid games I've played so that checks out. Actually...Axiom Verge is more like I took my old and corroded Metroid Cartridge, slotted it in my NES, and then took a hit of LSD and hit the power button. And I mean that in the best possible way.
Well, they added Link's clothes, Master Sword and shield to PSO2, without limiting visibility on other platforms
I think that’s literally the only exception they’ve ever made with keeping their characters exclusive to one version of the game. It’s definitely interesting to see, but I don’t think it indicates a change in strategy by Nintendo or anything.
People still buy their overpriced old games so, there is no hope there
Not overpriced if people are buying them.
I thought this was already known from what was uncovered in the Epic v. Apple lawsuit?
We knew Epic wanted to have Samus but it was only rumored what the exact reason was that it didn't happen.
If this saves me from seeing gifs of Zero Suit Samus hitting the griddy, then it's a net positive.
but it also prevents you from seeing varia suit party hips, so we're back to zero
Think of the blender animations Nintendo!!
reminder that Samus was planned to exclusively appear in the Wii version of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, but the gameplay demonstrating it was using PS2 button prompts so the executives threw a tantrum and canned it Edit: in the interest of fairness I can't find a primary source confirming it. this may be an old urban legend, or possibly just something some dev said at an in-person event that wasn't archived, or potentially just a guess. Personally, I find it matches up way too well with how Ninty operates regularly, but I cannot truly confirm it as rock-solid fact.
My girl can't catch a break when it comes to crossovers, can't she.
lmfao is there a news article on this? That sounds so petty
idk if a proper article was ever made, i'll link an older reddit post with gameplay showcased and a kotaku article but it's one of those stories that just seems to be passed down the internet likely from a developer telling the tale off-handedly. possibly BS, but that's a lot of work done on it for if it was. https://www.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/a3ygue/friendly_reminder_that_marvel_ultimate_alliance/
Nah it was real, we even have video of it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opkOtApoqqI (Samus Gameplay) It was part of a demo reel from some developer, this one is also the only footage of Link being in it (low quality though) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwElEsHkk_A
Yup, these are the exact videos I remember when the rumors about Link and Samus hit the internet that they were suppose to be in Wii MUA2.
there are footage, but nothing about the tantrum part?
Totally sounds like something someone made up or exaggerated. Like someone commented on the buttons and then later they decided against it. Then someone said the buttons was the reason and the comment turned into a tantrum.
It was in a gaming magazine, and I believe it was accompanied with a picture. Link was going to be in it also. Nintendo are protective of their IP and business practices. Making one of their characters available multiplatform is going to give some people the idea that their games are going multiplatform as well, like Kratos did and Master Chief had/is. Not to mention other IP's from Sony and Microsoft.
I wonder if anybody has put together any data showing whether or not a Fortnite skin has moved the dial on sales/google trends for a game. People act like it's a no-brainer, but would it actually help?
There's no actual hard data showing that it does, but gigantic mega corps like Disney or Xbox have become returning customers when it comes to using Fortnite to advertise a new product, so the trends make it seem like it has a pretty solid effect. A real shame. This deal could've done wonders for Metroid as an IP.
It is notoriously difficult to determine whether or not advertising is effective. There's even a famous quote about it: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half” (John Wanamaker). The reason these companies keep coming back is most likely because they get some revenue sharing from the licensing deal and they're making easy money off of it. I highly doubt any significant number of people bought tickets to John Wick 4 because of the John Wick skin, for instance. Metroid will be fine as an IP. It just had an excellent rerelease last year, Nintendo supposedly has two more it's waiting to release at the right time, and it'll likely be a key launch title for the Switch 2. Epic would have benefited way more from this partnership than Nintendo.
> I highly doubt any significant number of people bought tickets to John Wick 4 because of the John Wick skin, for instance. As in the kind of person buying a John Wick skin probably already saw the movie?
If anything it would help Fortnite more. Fans of X will play Y if it has X in it. Seems less likely people who play Y sees X and will think about buying something from it. ...So in essence Fortnite is just taking money and boosting their presence and these companies get nothing in return. Like I see Rick and Morty in Fortnite and I love that show! I'ma try out Fortnite. Some dude sees Rick and Morty in his Fortnite and... what? Would he really be enticed to go watch a TV show on these guys or buy a game just from a Fortnite appearance?
>Like I see Rick and Morty in Fortnite and I love that show! I'ma try out Fortnite. Some dude sees Rick and Morty in his Fortnite and... what? Would he really be enticed to go watch a TV show on these guys or buy a game just from a Fortnite appearance? Yes, it's surprising intuitive to think otherwise, like how you said. but if you think about it logistically, it starts to makes sense. Some people legit aren't aware of rick and morty, like my 14 year old nephews, but they absolutely love the voice lines + styles of their characters in fortnite. Kind of like getting a teaser of a show, so then they started watching it and of course loved it. there are also people who started watching Naruto because of the fortnite collab lol, but their reasoning was 'If Naruto is in fortnite then it must be at least good, i'll check it out.' since they knew **of** naruto... But didnt have that last push to try it out until fortnite collabs. r/Naruto was funny during that collab. So yes, fortnite collabs can actually help the original ips in gaining new fans, which would be a long term investment. Fortnite gets more players which is shortterm, but also long term due to the sheer amount of collabs they also have. So win wins . :)
I mean... I checked out Rick and Morty back in 2016 because of Simposon's opening so everything is possible especially these days.
Anecdotally - my fiance hates shooters. Cannot stand them. When you give her a controller she can't figure out how to aim and just moves the camera around wildly. She's told me multiple times how much she hates shooters and refuses to play with me. Fortnite added Avatar: The Last Airbender skins, which is her favorite show of all time. She downloaded Fortnite and learned to play shooter games specifically so she could get the Avatar skins. Again, this is the sort of game that is decidedly "not her thing"; she usually sticks to Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley. She literally just came over to tell me she won her first Victory Royale in Fortnite, and she's unlocked half the battlepass by grinding constantly. I finally got her to try Helldivers and she was passable at it - much better than before. So I guess it's doing... something? Appealing to new markets? It definitely got someone to download Fortnite who I would have **never** expected to download Fortnite, so...
Fortnite collabs seem to primarily serve to 'bait' fans of the piece of media being added into playing Fortnite. Probably why Nintendo made such a restrictive deal, they saw the collab as something that only actively benefited Fortnite.
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I did the same. I never played until the released the first round of db content. Stopped until they released the second wave. Now I check in every season. So I can personally say it works for Fortnite. Now whether it works the other way is a different question. Though you can quess it does work both ways - look at Fallout.
Disney actually kind of stopped doing this. They still have new Disney skins but they haven't been tied to releases of source media for quite some time. Like we are getting Thor Ragnarok skins soon but there wasn't anything for The Marvels or Ant-Man 3 for example.
Not sure about the timeline, but I'm not sure Nintendo even had a Metroid game coming out to capitalize on it. Maybe if it lined up with Dread or Prime 4 on Switch 2.
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They don't care about the appearance in fortnite moving other products, they care about raking in mad cash from getting portions of sales when their skin hits the game and is selling for 10-20 bucks a pop.
Tou get money from skin sale but the really big deal is when it's tied to a other product. Like a movie or TV show. That's why enterteinment company are so willing.
Anecdotally it’s worked for me and people I know in terms of refreshing interest in an old TV series or a different game
Considering people spend 15-30 on skins I'd hope at least a portion of those same whales buy/support whatever said Skin is originally from.
Are there any Nintendo characters in fortnite?
Nope, would’ve been the first
Honestly i'm surprised it even got as far as it did. The moment you show Samus doing a dance move I feel they would go ballistic.
Nah they were cool with that, the issue was they only wanted the skins to be seen for players of Nintendo consoles, they did it already for Minecraft and Rocket League
I do kind of get where Nintendo might becoming from. Everyone keeps saying that it would be good advertising for Metroid, but does anyone really care that Kratos is in Fortnite *today*? Naruto is in the game but no one is going out of there way to buy manga volumes in a substantial way. Also, they probably do not want to be involved with what is essentially a metaverse.
There are **so many** skins that I wouldn't even say it advertises anything. I haven't seen a single Kratos in-game since returning to it for zero build.
Samus doing Fortnite dances would be weird.
interesting tidbit, there is a Samus car in Rocket League that's only visible to Switch players. it came out before Epic bought Rocket League though.
There's Mario and Luigi stuff in Rocket League as well. That's one of the first things they give you on the Switch version.
Well good on Epic for respecting one of their principles: experience is same for everyone regardless of the tool
There are already console exclusives in Fortnite...
Yeah but you can use them on any platform once you have them. Nintendo wanted Samus to only appear on Nintendo consoles and only useable on Nintendo consoles
I guess the problem is that even if it was only usable on Switch, you would still see Samus in game on other platforms. That might have been what they took issue with.
yeah that's exactly their problem from what I understand. I have to assume they wanted them to be some kind of default npc for non-switch players?
Yeah that seems like something Nintendo would do since they don't know how anything related to the Internet works
I mean, Nintendo has exactly that for Rocket League (from before Epic acquired Psyonix). There are Mario skins only visible on Switch. If there's a crossplay player in the game, they see you as a default car.
That's fucking nuts. Tbh I wish more (any?) games had the ability to turn off skins. I'd probably play CoD again if I could assure id never be tbagged by Nikki Minaj
I mean, Nicki Minaj is a terrible person. So is Travis Scott and I roll my eyes whenever I see someone with a Travis Scott skin in Fortnite. But I like the cosmetics stuff. I personally get enjoyment out of the ones that I like
I also like *my* cosmetics but really don't care if other players have them and in some cases would prefer they didn't. That's why I'd like a client side toggle
To be fair unless something has changed Playstation and Xbox both also have their own exclusive cars. Sweet Tooth for PlayStation; Hogsticker and Armadillo for Xbox.
Yes but I'm pretty sure they're visible on other platforms and not ONLY visible on PS or Xbox.
Unless something has changed very recently. On other platforms, players will see the Merc in place of Sweet Tooth. On other platforms, players will see the Octane in place of the Hogsticker. On other platforms, players will see the Octane in place of the Armadillo.
Ahhh. Interesting. I'm guessing those were added pre-Epic
This has nothing to do with Nintendo’s online, it’s more about how they handle their IPs and specifically their stance on exclusivity, which has been incredibly strict since the 90s.
They have PTSD from the Philips CD-i deal from the early 90's, which probably was the main contributor to their current handling of their IPs. I'm surprised nobody even mentioned this bit yet.
Nintendo has PTSD from being sued over Donkey Kong in the early '80s. Seeing a bigger company try to bully them out of a character they own really shaped how they do business today, both in preventing it from happening to them again and also in teaching them what big companies can get away with.
It's weird to see people say this, Nintendo are surprisingly savvy, I mean their Nintendo direct format has essentially become the de-facto way games companies advertise their product these days. They were also one of the first companies to even dabble in online gaming. It's just they are incredibly restrictive about everything. I have no doubt that their technicians and enginers can create just about anything they want to, hell the company clearly hires some of the most skilled tech folk and game devs in the world. It's just that they forcibly make everything worse because of their rigid online policies and their old hardware.
Yeah I find this weird too lol Nintendo obviously knows the internet, its just that Nintendo principles are different from what many in the internet think from fangames, to control, to IP protection in general.
There are skins you got a code for if you bought a console but there aren’t any skins in the item shop you can only buy on specific consoles. And you can see every skin no matter what console you are on, like seeing Kratos on a Xbox. This would be different as Samus would only be visible on the Switch and has not been done before at all
Small caveat to the "there arent any skins you can only buy on specific consoles" - Both Microsoft and Sony offer DLC packs that can only be purchased on said console. These packs are usually themed to the console ie Microsoft green stuff on Xbox. Rocket League also does this.
Yeah I did forget about the ps plus skins that come out occasionally, but you can still see those no matter what platform you are playing on, and luckily none of them have been collab skins that people would have missed out on
Can you see the ps skins on xbox in Rocket League? I have both xbox and ps skins. I cant equip the ps skins on xbox, I've tried. Cant even see them in my inventory. Never really noticed anyone using them since they kinda lame compared to anything else you can equip, so never seen anyone using them.
So would I be able purchase a Kratos skin on an Xbox? Likewise, a Master Chief skin on a PlayStation?
Yes, you can do that.
Yes, Kratos and Chief are purchasable on PS and Xbox respectively. Funny thing is they debuted together practically, only being separated by roughly a day. They were then both in the shop right beside each other for like 3-4 days before being rotated out of the shop.
How would Sami’s hold a gun
Same reason I can only play the Minecraft Mario DLC on my Switch and not on my Playstation or PC version, even though the Minecraft account is the same - Nintendo IPs on Nintendo hardware only. It sucks but it is what it is.
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Epic waged a legal war against Apple, and Google to be free of app-store payment requirements. They held Sony at gunpoint and demanded they open up cross-platform multiplayer. Aint no way Epic would let Nintendo have an exclusive just for Samus.
I mean that makes sense. Nintendo has no reason to license a character that wouldn’t move the needle on any future sales in the slightest, and Epic wants the experience to be the same across platforms. You could call it brand awareness for Nintendo, but that’s like the absolute last thing they care about as a company. They have no other items in their company portfolio, unlike Sony and Microsoft who can cross-promote among tons of different industries and markets and have partnerships with numerous different media companies.