Who mourns bad guys killed in video games? The idea makes you smile, as these deaths filled with hemoglobin usually cause exultation. They are, after all, just virtual characters. The whole point of the game is to remove them. But Shigeru Miyamoto is not like everyone else. The legendary Nintendo producer, father of Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong, sought all his life to provoke positive emotions in gamers.
War games where bullets fly are really not his cup of tea. In the 90s, while testing a James Bond game from Rare studio which was to be released on Nintendo 64, he even suggested, with disarming innocence, that the end credits sequence take the player to visit each of his virtual victims on his hospital bed. “I also fight against the idea that killing monsters would always be a good thing. They have motivation and reasons for being the way they are,” he confided to New Yorker. Even an industry as full of adrenaline and fights as video games has its Dalai Lama. A gentle madman whose ideas seem confusingly naive before revealing themselves to be crazy modern.
The competition has learned the hard way not to underestimate the “good guy” of video games that Nintendo has always been. At a time when many studios are now putting the story of their titles at the forefront, the Japanese have never lost sight of the key ingredient of a game: its playful dimension. “Its teams track down with obsessive care everything that can annoy or bore players and transform it into something simple and fun,” explains Frédéric Markus, director of Féérik Games who has worked at all the biggest studios, from Nintendo to Rockstar, Ubisoft or even Epic Games. A simple logic that has made the group the most inventive player in its field.
Nintendo’s strokes of genius
Do players have sore fingers from hammering their buttons to explore worlds that 3D has just expanded? Nintendo provided them, in 1996, with an analog joystick, which flexibly followed the slightest gesture of the thumb and which its competitors was quick to copy the following year. Is traveling from one Pokémon village to another boring? Nintendo spices them up by spreading its fantastic creatures across the meadows. The Japanese revolutionized the racing game with the same playful logic. In Mario Kartskidding does not make you slow down, but speed up. And, contrary to traditional titles, the latecomers always have a chance to catch up with the peloton, by throwing turtle shells or banana skins under the opposing wheels.
This doesn’t work every time. The Wii U console, for example, was a fiasco. But Nintendo knows that failures are part of the process. This failure will also lay the foundations which will lead to the success that was, five years later, the Switch portable console. The company, however, only releases a product if it thinks it has something innovative to offer. Nintendo will therefore wait a long time before venturing into 3D open worlds, this very popular genre where the player can wander around the game world with their guide.
It has already been around fifteen years that studios like Rockstar Games (Grand Theft Auto) and Blizzard Entertainment (World of Warcraft) have been developing these fantastically complex titles since it is necessary to maintain the player’s interest without knowing anything about the path that he will borrow during his game. However, when Nintendo takes the plunge with Zelda: Breath of the Wildthe originality of its title stunned the industry’s pundits.
“Japan has developed a subtle art of miniature worlds that can be found both in its Zen gardens and in its figurine markets. How to create something very poetic, harmonious, with a few simple elements. It’s this balance which we find and which captivates when we enter Zelda”, analyzes Frédéric Marcus. Nintendo’s title is also full of good ideas like this paraglider thanks to which Zelda can move around better and understand her environment. An ingenious way to solve the big flaw of open worlds: they are so vast that you can easily get lost.
Switch, Nintendo DS: popular consoles
The Japanese has always made fun of the race for power in which the big names in video games are involved. Sony and Microsoft have continued to increase the performance of their consoles and the realism of their titles. As a result, the latter are much more expensive to produce. “Studios that used to devote six to twelve months to their flagship games now sometimes spend five or seven years,” observes Laurent Colombani, partner at Bain & Company specializing in the telecoms, media and technology sector.
Nintendo was right not to get caught up in this crazy race. If progress towards photorealism has amazed the millennialsthey are of much less interest to younger generations who favor games like Roblox, Minecraft or fun Nintendo creations. “By focusing on simpler graphics, the Japanese group is also ensuring that it controls its costs,” points out Olivier Mauco, CEO of the consulting agency Game in Society and teacher at Sciences Po. This did not prevent Nintendo to give the sector a masterful lesson when it launches into 3D with Super Mario 64 and designed for the occasion a free camera system, since imitated by all its competitors.
By staying away from violent universes, Nintendo has also managed to reach a wider audience than its rivals. “The Wii surprised the entire sector with this new way of playing based on gesture. A much more accessible, transgenerational approach, which allowed families to come together around a game,” underlines psychologist Célia Hodent, former director of user experience at Epic Games (Fortnite) and author of the book “In the brain of the gamer” (Dunod editions, 2020). The Switch is also a console that young children or people who know nothing about gaming can easily use. “This mentality is seen in their advertisements. Other studios often highlight their game, its universe. Nintendo features players in the middle of the game,” observes the expert.
Of course, if all the studios had taken the same path as the Japanese, the world of video games would look a little too much like an episode of Teletubbies. The needle having clearly tilted towards strong emotions, its positioning as a “nice UFO” nevertheless brings today a welcome touch of cheerfulness. And met with incredible success. Among the three best-selling consoles in the world, two were born within its walls: the Nintendo DS (154 million copies) and the Switch (143 million). This continues to sell surprisingly well even though it is three years older than the latest consoles from Sony and Xbox.
Mario and Zelda on the big screen
Nintendo has also built up some renowned franchises. Mario is one of the rare characters to appeal to children of the generation who discovered him. A new Zelda sets the hearts of millions of people racing. “The latest Pokémon game, TCG Pocketonce again created the event. And with $6.4 million in revenue per day, it promises to be extremely profitable,” specifies Antoine Fraysse-Soulier, head of market analysis at eToro. These weighty marks allow Nintendo to tackle a new market, that of amusement parks.
Fairyland kingdoms filled with castles, dinosaurs and cute mushrooms have already sprung up in Osaka and Los Angeles. A third is scheduled to open this year in Orlando, Florida. Nintendo is also infiltrating cinemas. After the success of the film Super Mario Bros. (which exceeded The Snow Queen in terms of revenue), the group is working on a Zelda film. However, three challenges await the group.
First of all, its good situation on the stock market needs to be qualified. “All Japanese stocks were boosted in 2024 by the low level of the yen and the very accommodating policy of the authorities and the central bank,” analyzes Andrea Tueni, head of market activities at Saxo Bank. Without this, Nintendo would undoubtedly have fared less well because its economic results disappointed in the first half of its 2024-2025 financial year. Last November, the group also indicated that it expected a 32% drop in its annual operating profit and a 23% drop in sales. “It’s logical. Players are postponing their purchases because they know that the Switch 2 will arrive shortly. But expectations around this new console are high, Nintendo must not disappoint,” explains Andrea Tueni.
Nintendo must also prepare for the rise of new competitors: Chinese studios. The latter, who were already doing a lot of subcontracting development, have increased their skills. “Their games are working more and more. The international success of Wukong Black Myth in 2024 (editor’s note: 10 million copies sold in three days) proves it,” observes Olivier Mauco. Chinese tech giants would also have the know-how and supply chains necessary to begin manufacturing high-performance consoles at low prices, like those from Nintendo.
A reassuring world for worried parents
Last and main challenge for the Japanese: the rise of cloud platforms dedicated to video games (cloud gaming in English). The idea is to no longer force players to use a console or a PC. But to use powerful remote servers capable of managing the simplest games as well as the most demanding in computing power. Users could, therefore, run any title, on any device, as long as they have a satisfactory internet connection.
A horizon that makes many Internet users dream. Backed by Microsoft’s strong cloud capabilities, Xbox is aggressively moving down this path. Nintendo is rather late. However, dematerialization poses major technical challenges. “The two approaches, cloud and physical equipment, will certainly coexist,” predicts Laurent Colombani of Bain. And even if dematerialized gaming reduces the market share of consoles, Nintendo is ideally placed to maintain its position. “For parents, their console has interesting arguments: it allows children to play a catalog of family games, in a closed environment, where they do not risk being contacted by strangers,” observes the psychologist specializing in games video Célia Hodent. Sometimes good feelings pay off big.
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