Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata recently railed against the quality of social, mobile and particularly free-to-play games in a GDC 2011 keynote. Tenshi Ventures partner and former co-founder of Kuju Entertainment Ian Baverstock has renounced that point of view during a speech at the Develop conference.
“I just don’t agree,” he said. “This lack of craftsmanship is really a reflection of Nintendo’s point of view they are completely obsessed with retail, and have been very successful in that. Ultimately for Mr. Iwata to be able to sit there and say that we’re losing craftsmanship, we’re losing skills… at the same time that Minecraft comes out, sells millions and makes one man lots of money and creates a huge public buzz, is a shocking indictment of his view of the world that we all see.”
To Baverstock, what the speech really was about was maintaining the current power structure between publishers and developers. “In the end, once you get past that preachy title of why developers need to change, the reason why I’m so riled by Mr. Iwata’s point of view is that fundamentally it’s smack talk: ‘You, Mr. Developer, stay in your box, you stay down there, we’ll do with this other stuff, you just carry on making games.’ he said. “I think that, fundamentally, Mr. Iwata’s view of this market from a value creation and number of title point of view was skewed entirely to his interests as a successful platform holder, and is in no way a reflection of what ordinary consumers want.”
Source: GamesIndustry.biz
