Industrial Sabotage?

One thing you notice when you follow any industry for a significant amount of time is that not every corporate demise is entirely necessary. This seems especially true within the computer games industry where companies have an impressive number of ways in which they can blow themselves apart. Just from recent memory I can think of bankruptcy due to lack of financial control on one project, a team being dismantled because one of their programmers burnt their building down with a faulty coffee machine, a company which fell apart when two of their “we’re like best friends” founders decided that they actually really, really hated each other and many other vaguely amusing examples of this type. One company which cannot seem to be even in the slightest bit troubled as of now is Nintendo, but they are doing a damn good job to make it seem like they are over their heads in it.

With the huge albeit expected success of Gameboy Advance in Japan the company is on a surer financial footing that it was say six months ago and has even started a share buyback campaign with their PR department claims has “reassured investors”. While I have always said that the GBA would be successful enough to keep the company afloat, the product that would propel Nintendo back towards the No. 1 slot (just like my beloved Red Wings, by the way, who will be back at the top next year. Sniff.) has to be the Gamecube, their weapon in the battle of the next generation consoles. All the companies involved have a lot riding on their products but Nintendo more than anyone else given the perceived failure of their last effort, the N64. Theoretically they should be in a hugely strong position given the legendary nature of their characters and devices (off the top of my head I can reel off Mario, Mario Kart, Super Tennis, Donkey Kong, Metroid, Starwing the Rare Software games inc. Banjo-Kazooie and Perfect Dark, F-Zero, Zelda, Kirby and of course Pokemon and the list goes on), the strength of their internal development teams and the apparent ease of programming the new machine (indeed some of the early screenshots look lovely – scoot over to www.nintendo.com for more). Given all this, you’d think that their CEO would be feeling pretty upbeat and might be trying to build up confidence among investors but much more importantly among game developers, whose attention is torn between so many good-looking platforms. Wouldn’t you?

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