Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

Well, it’s become too clear to ignore anymore. For about a week now I’ve been kicking around the idea of writing an article about how Nintendo is being really, really stupid right now and then an article at CNN Money pops up that just makes it way too easy. As much a fan I am of Nintendo’s software and hardware, I have a lot of trouble wrapping my head around how backward they are in terms of media relations. This is something that has become far more pronounced for me now that I write about this stuff as some semblance of a professional.

First, we have the fact that Nintendo will not respond to requests for access to their executive washroom of a press site, meaning all we get here is the trickle of light news that pops up on their public press site, and for everything else I have to run laps around over a dozen bookmarks to other sites, as I had to do with this particular item. This is not the case with most of the other publishers and developers I’ve dealt with, who are happy to have us talk about them.

Then, there’s the fact that Nintendo has gone from a respectful, somewhat sedate stance of, “we’re going to do something different now” to this latest cake of idiocy where Reggie Fils-Aime is credited with the following nugget:

“The challenge that our competitors have is significant. They’ve gone down the path with building expensive machines that they lose money on. They’ve gone down the path with games that are hard to develop,” Fils-Aime said in response to a question from an audience member.

“They’ve put themselves in a box. I don’t know how they’re going to get out of it.”

This immediately makes me think Fils-Aime’s got Yamauchi disease. It seems that when you’re running Nintendo (or making noise with your influence at Nintendo’s reportedly largely air-filled US division) and you’re part of a meteoric rise, you somehow get a god complex and start saying very arrogant things. Things like the following quote of Yamauchi’s, whose arrogance and bluster was perhaps representative of Nintendo’s failure to anticipate Microsoft’s impact on the industry.

“There are many people in the industry that know nothing about games. In particular, a large American company is trying to do engulf software houses with money, but I don’t believe that will go well. It looks like they’ll sell their game system next year, but we’ll see the answer to that the following year.” (quoted from IGN.com article)

Let’s hope for Nintendo’s sake that Fils-Aime is blowing hot air and the rest of the company is hard at work, knowing that the gaming industry can, and will, turn on a dime, and if Nintendo stops working hard enough for five minutes, Microsoft and Sony will overtake them once again.

Source: CNN Money via MCV via Game|Life.