Nintendo – openness to approving content, Humble Nindie Bundle’s great success and EU, indie importance, more
Polygon has posted a new interview with Damon Baker, the man leading Nintendo’s indie efforts. Baker discussed how Nintendo is more open to approving content these days, the Humble Nindie Bundle, the importance of indies, and more.
Read on below for some excerpts from the interview. You can find the full article on Polygon here.
On how the approval of The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth marked an important shift in terms of how Nintendo decides what to allow/disallow…
“There’s before Binding and there’s after Binding. With before [Binding], I want to say there was still a little confusion on how we handle some of that questionable or controversial content. And it was a bit before my time, when we were dealing with that. What I can talk to about now is that we have changed our guideline in that we are looking more at having ESRB or ratings systems determine what is appropriate or not, instead of Nintendo looking at, ‘Is this approved or not approved?’
“So we’ve taken that totally out of the mix at this point and we really do rely on ESRB to make the determination on whether something is appropriate for certain ages or not, and we trust them to do that. So if it passes ESRB then we’re fine to put it on our system.”
On how any rated game that doesn’t receive an Adults Only rating and isn’t an advergame is allowed…
“For the most part if it’s going to be M-rated, then we have an age gate and parental features and we rely on those to make sure that the content is appropriate for those who are playing the systems.”
On the Humble Nindie Bundle…
“We have had conversations with Humble for years, to be perfectly honest with you. Last year, we really started exploring whether this is something that could actually happen, if it was the right time to be launching something like that on the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS.”
– The two companies worked closely together and managed to find a middle ground where Humble Bundle could work within Nintendo’s process and Nintendo could work within Humble Bundle’s
On how the Humble Nindie Bundle was a massive success…
“It was a two-week promotion, and we are really encouraged by the results, and the flexibility from Humble, and the fact that we were able to do I think it was in excess of $120,000 for charity, and the developers did great as well,” he said. “But on top of that, we were able to look at sales within the eShop, because we actually promoted all that same content. It was like 13 titles. We promoted it in the eShop at full price and we actually increased the number of full-price sales for that same content.”
On how Nintendo is now “digesting all of the numbers” from the Humble Nindie Bundle…
“We’ve had a lot of conversations with Europe, because they’re certainly interested in participating. Nothing to announce at this point, but I think everybody has come away from the experience with a lot of learnings, and they’re really happy with the results. And I think there’s every opportunity to collaborate again. I think the positive thing is Humble is not set up as a retailer for Nintendo. And so it opens up another avenue where in the future maybe we can promote through the Humble Store, incorporate first-party content into the mix. There are tons of opportunities that we can expand on, now that we’ve helped build this relationship.”
On having first-party content in a Humble Nindie Bundle…
“If we start incorporating first-party content then it’s a grander conversation with NCL [Nintendo Co. Ltd.] and with our head office and other departments that really manage the marketing and support with all of that content. I can personally only control the content that we’re responsible for, and so we saw it as a great opportunity, and it also taps into the roots of Humble as an organization. They started off supporting indie content and you know it was a few years ago when they started supporting publishers, and now to move into the console space and handheld space, I think we wanted to make sure that this was something that was still a part of what is true to Humble and true to their roots as well, and it seemed like a really natural fit.”
On how the Humble Nindie Bundle wasn’t available in Europe…
“The fact is that some of that content hadn’t even been released in Europe yet. And so releasing it on a global scale would have been really difficult because either the content hadn’t been released or had been recently released and it would have been detrimental to those developers to already have such a drastic discount associated with it. So, we had to make that tough decision to make it region only, I mean to North America only. And Humble were really gracious to support us on that, and really supportive in the media and on the blog in supporting that decision because they saw that what the offer was, and that it was this great content and developers, that that was what was important to promote.”
On how people at Nintendo’s headquarters in Japan were very happy with the results of the Humble Nindie Bundle…
“There’s been a lot of great feedback internally. Especially over the fact that it hasn’t cannibalized any sales, and that it was all for good causes. I think it’s been a really good exercise and a really good proof point that we can lean on, that this indie content is driving sales and exposure. So I think there’s a lot of interest in what’s happening there.”
– Baker said Nindies@Home was a guerrilla tactic and said it blindsided everybody with something “really cool”
– Baker: Indie development is “extremely significant” to both Nintendo and the value of the Wii U
“And this isn’t just bias of my babies. It’s I mean it’s — Nintendo does great work with the first-party IP, and those key triple-A releases come out. But they’re also — there are also big gaps for those releases. And it’s really important for the momentum of our platforms that fans and consumers continue to have new experiences, new content that they can try out in between all of these other releases. And so, what my department does is we’re always looking at how we can leverage the popularity of those first-party releases in order to drive exposure or awareness for the third-party [games].”
On how Nintendo has surrounded Splatoon with indie games in the eShop to help promote those titles…
“Those fans are going to be getting exposure to things they didn’t even know existed. And so we really try and leverage that exposure and make sure that everything is getting as much merchandising as possible, and that we’ve got that conversation going so that we’ve got great experiences that maybe Nintendo doesn’t focus on.
“Nintendo doesn’t have anything that’s like Don’t Starve out there, and it’s a really unique experience so I think it’s awesome that we have the opportunities to promote that stuff.”
