The Thursday letters page has no sympathy for Xbox boss Phil Spencer, as one reader celebrates Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes’ reviews. To join in with the discussions yourself email [email protected].
uk Greed with limits If there’s one good thing that’s come out of all this Microsoft madness , it’s that I have a newfound respect for Nintendo and the Japanese games industry. They’re all still run by greedy, callous businessmen but at least they seem to have some concept of restraint and long-term planning. Watching Microsoft, and most other Western publishers, try and speedrun their way to an industry crash would be funny if it wasn’t so destructive.
What’s the secret of Nintendo’s success? Make great games, consistently. Try and innovate, of course, (within the safety of well-known franchises) and in terms of hardware. But basically just make great games, which Xbox has failed to do for two generations straight.
Although the secret sauce for Nintendo is that they still do so within what are obviously quite small budgets. Half their stuff is still AA and I doubt even something like Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom cost anywhere near as much as other publishers’ triple-A blockbusters. Japanese publishers haven’t not laid people off because they’re kind and charitable but because their games have sensible budgets and they haven’t got to the point where it’s near impossible to make a profit from them.
And the only one that does act like that sometimes .
