Don't Build It, and They Will Come Anyway

Some things in life just weren't meant to be understood. Take for instance feel good stories of how a sick child is miraculously healed, or how a family in dire need is somehow blessed with a smile from lady luck at the last possible moment. We've come to write these sort of things off as blessed occurrences from a higher power, and that is enough for the majority of us. Call me a softy, but I've always felt that it's enough for me as well, and I leave it at that.

However, this article isn't one of those things. The blessed underdog going into this generation, Nintendo, seems to be struggling a bit too much under the weight of it's own sales, for my taste. Now the problem is, I don't know who to rip into first, about this. You see, we have one side an analyst (yes, I love to poke at these guys), who makes the outlandish prediction that Nintendo may have trouble meeting consumer demand for the Wii up until 2009. On the other side, we have the equally ridiculous concept that a hardware maker with many years of experience under it's belt can't figure out how to crank out a hot product while it's still hot. Like I've stated before, If we were talking about cutting edge technology here, I might be a bit more forgiving. Since we are talking about what amounts to an incremental step from the original Xbox a fair six years after it was released, the thought of it all just confounds me.

For Pete's sake, Nintendo, you have amassed a legion of fans bested only by the yearly totals of American Idol viewers, in terms of sheer numbers. Okay, so maybe I'm embellishing this one a bit, but you can't deny how large the loyal followers of the Nintendo World Order have become. The point is, you could probably talk these guys into building a couple factories for you, and piecing together Wiis from spare parts lying around in any electronics store. If that weren't enough, I'm more than certain that there are enough Gamecubes left in the wild for you to simply gut and refit them with nice shiny white cases. Then all you'd have to worry about is making a few million remotes. You can do that before 2009, can't you?

And as for the aforementioned analyst; your not off the hook either. Are you out of your freaking mind? You have somehow managed to convince yourself that while millions of manufacturers can crank out enough products every day to meet customer demand, that Nintendo will need the better part of two plus years to finally put a Wii in every household that wants one. I'm not sure what the drug of choice is for those in your industry, but I'm glad it's not found over the counter. God help our great nation when it becomes readily available on the street.

So that brings us back to this whole enigma that has yet to be understood by anyone. There's a hot product out there with a niche market. The product seems to be fairly cheap to make, and it doesn't use any form of technology in it's parts that have yet to be reverse engineered from future UFO crash sites. Like the great mystery of just how many licks it really takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop, the world may never know the why this hasn't been remedied as of yet. Until there, I fear that there's no shortage of analysts who will continue to make outlandish predictions about the equally outlandish positions Nintendo has put itself in, yet again.

Outsource Code

If you caught this article back in 2006, then you were as surprised as the rest of us to learn that many of the games you've come to believe were from big name development houses were in fact products of a shadowy group of foreign outsourcing genius. Their name is Tose, and they found a nice market for doing a lot of the grunt work behind the scenes while remaining mum about the whole thing. Now whether or not you think this is a great idea depends more or less on how you feel about the whole outsourcing of work debate. Although it has made us American's quiver in our boots at the mere mention of the word, it's quite apparent that the rest of the world (at least the Japanese) don't seem to share out limited view on it's practice.

Now looking at this from a personal view as someone who's actually worked in a factory where such deals conjure up a great deal of anxiety and anger, as well as spent a little time in business school, I'd like to think that I can appreciate both sides of the argument. This one is a little more complicated though. We're dealing with varying cultures, who have strikingly different views on the subject matter. I'm by no means a historian (so correct me if I'm wrong), but I recall the Japanese being a little more about the individual being less important than the big picture. How this applies the topic at hand is quite simple. I'm guessing that if you were to approach a group of developers somewhere in the States, and request them to work on a high profile project and to not receive any credit anywhere on the game for doing so, it might not go over too well. Would this be the case for everyone? Probably not, but I have the nagging feeling that more often than not, things would fall this way. The climate in Japan is just more suitable for this type of thing to occur.

This, of course, is taking into consideration that we're talking about some sort of software that doesn't involve national security, multiple aliases, and black sport utility vehicles with charcoal colored windows somewhere in the mix. Now don't get me wrong, as I don't want to paint the wrong picture about our great country, or artificially inflate the worth of another. I'm just using this example of a perceived social difference in order to make a point about the whole matter. So, back to the topic of contention.

It appears that Gamasutra was able to do a recent follow up interview with some people from Tose again, and it's interesting to note that while things are very much the same, their name is starting to appear on a few games for a change; most recently Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime. Of course they have stayed true to their name, and are still very much the "Ninja Developers" behind the scenes for the majority of their work, but now that word has gotten out about them, they have found the spotlight to be more friend than foe. Now that their name is in circulation, the Western market that they once sought to tap into now seems within grasp. Some publishers have begun using their outsourcing service (who, I'm not sure of), and it appears that many more discussions of future endeavors are very much on the table. So once again, you have to wonder…..What does this mean, and is it a good or bad thing ?

It's common knowledge these days, that the costs for creating new games are pretty much off the charts. We're talking about Hollywood Blockbuster tally's here. What's becoming even more apparent, is that the profits at the end of day aren't what they used to be for those involved in all aspects of the game. This is why you hear talk of ads being placed in games (a practice that I still despise), and titles once thought to be bound to one console finding themselves spread across several platforms.

As much as we all might hate to admit it, the whole outsourcing thing with games is more or less an extension of this, and another way for developers to their costs in order to remain competitive…and survive. With the way things are, and are heading towards, those costs are only going to get a lot worse. Having said that, it seems that there are only a couple things you can do about it. You can raise the prices of your product, you can make cutbacks, or you can use the outsourcing method. Oh yeah, you can opt out of the business too. I'm thinking the first couple options are a bit more feasible (and attractive) than the latter.

I'm still not sure how to feel about the whole thing myself, and even though I'm sure it frees up some capital and time for things on the developers end (the one's paying for the outsourcing), who's to say that it will translate into more value and better games for the fans. As much as we would all like to think that the savings will be passed on to us, or the extra time will be spent on polishing a future gem, we just don't know at this point. As is the case with most other things in life, time will tell.