Despite its early reputation as an innovator in video games, Nintendo has become something of a stick in the mud to those who are familiar with modern gaming. Many people see their policies on DLC and mobile games as relics from an era when those things were impossible to provide due to lack of infrastructure. Now with mobile devices in nearly every person’s pocket and internet connections in every household, most mainstream gamers think of Nintendo as a gaming dinosaur that refuses to adapt to changes brought on by new technology.
In a recent interview with Dromble, former Nintendo excecutive Dan Adelman discusses why Nintendo is seen as slow to change its stance on modern gaming by the rest of the world. Namely, the reason Nintendo finds it hard to adjust to new ways of interacting with customers and conducting business seems to be at the executive level. Adelman stated that in that corporate climate, even Mr. Iwata is hesitant to make decisions that will radically change the way Nintendo has done business in the past.
“They’re very traditional, and very focused on hierarchy and group decision making,” Adelman said of the company’s structure.
Unfortunately, that creates a culture where everyone is an advisor and no one is a decision maker – but almost everyone has veto power. Even Mr. Iwata is often loathe to make a decision that will alienate one of the executives in Japan.
This adherence to corporate structure where every executive has the power to say no to any presentation leads to several hoops that need to be jumped through for any project to get the green light. As you can imagine, for Westerners who want to interact with Nintendo products at a meaningful level, this can mean multiple presentations at different levels that all have a chance to fail.
“All of this is not necessarily a bad thing, though it can be very inefficient and time consuming,” Adelman said.
The biggest risk is that at any step in that process, if someone flat out says no, the proposal is as good as dead. So in general, bolder ideas don’t get through the process unless they originate at the top.
Adelman further elaborates on the executives currently occupying Nintendo’s board of directors and says their successes in the past have likely blinded them to the way that the gaming industry operates today. According to him, risk-taking is not rewarded among the leadership of Nintendo, and ideas are quickly veto’d simply on the basis of the executives not understanding how they work.
The most senior executives at the company cut their teeth during NES and Super NES days and do not really understand modern gaming, so adopting things like online gaming, account systems, friends lists, as well as understanding the rise of PC gaming has been very slow,” Adelman explained.
Ideas often get shut down prematurely just because some people with the power to veto an idea simply don’t understand it. There is very little reason to try and push these ideas. Risk taking is generally not really rewarded. Long-term loyalty is ultimately what gets rewarded, so the easiest path is simply to stay the course.
It’s interesting to hear someone speak so frankly about the top brass of Nintendo and confirm things that the community has felt true since the dawn of the original Wii. What do you think of this reveal? Are you happy with the way Nintendo has developed their console business, or would you like to see more flexibility for modern ideas from them?