Nintendo is hosting a group of sales for the Nintendo Switch, which it’s calling the “Big Ol’ Super Sale.” The grouping is now live, and all of the sales end on July 7 at 2:59 a.m. ET.
This “Super Sale” includes games from Nintendo and its partners. Ubisoft, 2K, Monster Hunter, SEGA, Activision Blizzard, Devolver, and Annapurna all have their own storefronts. While all these groups have great games for sale, we’re going to primarily recommend games from the Nintendo section, as Nintendo rarely discounts its first-party games, and many third-party titles underperform on the Switch.
Most of the sales here are about 30% off, which is actually quite good for Nintendo-developed titles like Super Mario Odyssey and Super Mario Maker 2. Here are 20 Nintendo Switch games worth picking up before the “Big Ol’ Super Sale” is over.
If the Nintendo Switch is your only gaming platform, and you don’t have other options to play third-party titles, it’s absolutely worth looking through the non-Nintendo offerings for more games like Borderlands, Assassin’s Creed 2, and more.
Former Nintendo of America boss Reggie shared his thoughts recently about how Nintendo could prepare for the Switch’s successor, and the same topic has come up once again during an interview with CNET about his new book Disrupting the Game.
He previously mentioned how important the “content pipeline” would be for Nintendo next generation, and now he’s added to this, reiterating how maintaining and capitalising on the success of the Switch will still be a “significant challenge”.
He’s simply going off the history of the video game industry, observing how certain companies (including Nintendo) have only ever gone from one “highly successful platform” to the next has only been done a handful of times.
Here’s exactly what he had to say:
“[Nintendo] also touched on recently, in their financial announcements, thinking deeply about how they transition from the Switch to whatever the next platform needs to be, and how that has to be a well-considered series of decisions. Going from a highly successful platform to the next highly successful platform… you can make the argument that it’s only been done a handful of times in the video game industry. Sony, from the original PlayStation to PlayStation 2, clearly went from strength to strength. Nintendo, from the Gameboy family of systems to the Nintendo DS. It hasn’t been done since, as I look at the industry. For Nintendo to go successfully from the Switch to whatever comes next is going to be a significant challenge that they’ve already said they’re thinking deeply about.”
Reggie, as already mentioned, has shared similar thoughts about all of this before, describing the move from one successful platform to another as “incredibly difficult and challenging to do”. You can read more in detail about this in our previous story.
What are your own thoughts about this? Do you think Nintendo will be able to make a successful transition from Switch to its next product, even if it is still five years or so away? Leave your own thoughts down below.
In 2010, Nintendo of America opened its brand-new headquarters in Redmond, Washington on a 10-acre plot owned by the company since the early 1980s. The late Satoru Iwata cut the ribbon on the state-of-the-art facility alongside then-Washington State governor Chris Gregoire on a “gleaming 300,000 square foot facility” with “cushioned benches shaped like d-pads” and a “Mario Kart-themed parking garage.” It was everything a Nintendo fan could imagine, right down to the main boardroom being known as “The Master Sword.”
Across the way, past a soccer pitch of the sort one often sees on West Coast tech campuses, is a much older building that isn’t nearly as well-known. A former warehouse that houses a hodge-podge of departments ranging from data science to Product Testing and Development (PDT), it in some ways hearkens back to the days when NOA was simply an arcade distributor operating out of New Jersey. The warehouse doors are still visible, and the freight elevator near the greeting desk will sometimes get stuck open and make loud grinding noises. While Nintendo has spruced up the decoration with some Mario-themed diagrams, it’s otherwise a nondescript work area with an atmosphere akin to a library.
In contrast to the ultra-modern facilities nearby, many of the workers are toiling away on outdated equipment and software, with software that looks like it’s running on Windows XP and a database that dates back to the 90s. Until just a few years ago, it was still possible to find bins of old VHS tapes filled with bug recordings in the PTD area. Secrecy, constant software crashes, and the ever-present need for translation of messages from the Japanese headquarters frequently slows work to a crawl.
A large percentage of the workers inhabiting this building are contractors, many of whom increasingly see themselves as second-class citizens with no hope of earning one of the coveted red badges that can grant them unfettered access to the building just across the way (or even just the soccer pitch, which is also off-limits). That building doesn’t just represent more comfort; it stands for job security, career progression, and even a basic professional respect that many contractors don’t feel in their day-to day life at the company.
The contrast between the two buildings reflects the difference in how Nintendo likes to present itself – a technological imaginarium that puts “smiles on people’s faces” – and the less glamorous reality. Outside of carefully controlled marketing moments, NOA has rarely afforded a glimpse of what it’s actually like to work for one of the most famous video game companies in the real world. But recent reports have former employees and especially contractors finally opening up, and their stories reveal a Nintendo that can be very different from its cheery marketing.
Red Badgers and Blue Badgers
On the face of it, Nintendo of America isn’t so different from other Seattle area tech concerns like Microsoft, which surrounds it on all sides. For full-time employees, at least, NOA offers plenty of amenities, participating in various community events while touting its headquarters as being environmentally friendly. Founded in 1980 by Minoru Arakawa, son-in-law of Hiroshi Yamauchi, NOA is at heart a very large marketing department. Probably its greatest achievement is the Nintendo Power magazine, which convinced hundreds of thousands of kids to buy what amounted to advertisements for Nintendo games.
Nintendo of America started as something of a shoestring operation. It was exemplified by employees like Howard Phillips, who joined NOA at 24 and was soon responsible for “the largest shipping volume in the Port of Seattle.” He went on to serve as a tester, market research analyst, and magazine editor, in the process developing into something like a mascot for Nintendo thanks to his familiar bowtie.
At least some of that DNA still remains in NOA’s culture. When full-time employees praise Nintendo, they usually talk about how much they like their coworkers, and how it offers enviable job security compared with the typically volatile games industry. But Nintendo is also a very old and traditional company, and that can make it seem restrictive, old-fashioned, and demanding. Adding to that is Nintendo Co. Ltd’s (NCL) influence over the company, which has been described in conversations over the years with sources familiar with Nintendo’s inner workings as frequently distant and heavy-handed.
Talking about what it was like to work at NOA, one former contractor describes the culture in their department as “stilted” and oddly formal, with employees apologizing profusely if they left even 15 minutes early.
“At first I attributed it to being a Japanese company and the expectations that came with it, but it was very much reinforced by the full-time staffers… It seemed like you had to be connected all the time,” they tell IGN.
Contractors increasingly see themselves as second-class citizens.
“
They talk about the bureaucracy involved with being a contractor at NOA, describing how they would have to account for virtually every minute of their day on a timesheet, breeding paranoia about leaving their desk for even a minute lest Microsoft Teams mark them as idle. At one point, tired and ill amid a strict schedule, they attempted a tried-and-true trick from The Simpsons — using a household item to depress the insert key to keep the idle message from appearing.
“It was like Homer with the bird, except I didn’t cause any problems at the Nuclear Plant… You couldn’t even really go to the bathroom without someone noticing you were away from your desk,” they remember.
At Nintendo of America, many employees are paranoid about posting on social media lest they be reprimanded or even fired. Translators are a constant feature of life as messages are translated and re-translated. Taking time off can be frowned upon and viewed as putting more of a burden on your teammates. Sick days include fervent apologies and promises to be in touch.
It contrasts with the sometimes overbearing positivity of employees constantly talking about how lucky they are to be at Nintendo, especially in areas like the marketing and localization department.
“It was to the point that I was very surprised to see [threads criticizing Nintendo] because I didn’t think there were that many people who would be willing to talk about it,” IGN’s source remembers.
The threads they’re referring to stemmed from an April 15 National Labor Relations Board complaint, first reported by Axios, which quickly drew notice both inside and outside Nintendo. It alleged that Nintendo of America and recruiting firm Aston Carter violated an employee’s legally protected right to organize, sparking multiple threads from aggrieved former contractors and employees who shared their own stories.
Working for nintendo (contract for 3+ years) was one of the most stressful and awful experiences of my life. Coworkers were great, but I was constantly under pressure of being let go for little things like going to the bathroom or being stuck in traffic an extra 2 min b4 work. https://t.co/gbxqNfynmf
— Boyks (@the_boyks) April 19, 2022
A few days later, Kotaku published a story shining a light on Nintendo of America’s treatment of contractors. In the lengthy report, former NOA contractors talked about being discouraged from using facilities like Cafe Mario, strict attendance schedules that could lead to them being fired if they missed three days of work, and other restrictions. The report made waves throughout Nintendo of America as employees reflected on the treatment of contractors and the company’s seeming refusal to offer a path to full-time.
“Right now the mood is really tense,” says a longtime contractor within Nintendo who declined to be named. “Worst case scenario, because Nintendo of America is a marketing company, any article like Kotaku’s is marketing. And you really worry that Japan is going to see this and say, ‘Okay, what are we going to do about it?’”
IGN’s own reporting corroborates these stories, the harshest of them mostly coming from contractors in areas like customer support and testing. Speaking with a dozen current and former full-time employees and contractors at Nintendo of America across several departments, the picture that emerges is of a company that has steadily become more heavy-handed and restrictive despite the ongoing success of the Switch, particularly in matters like the recent closure of the Redwood City office. Nintendo was contacted for comment on these reports but did not respond by press time.
It has made the perceived reluctance to hire new full-time employees a flashpoint within NOA. Despite the careers site currently listing more than 100 jobs, the perception is that there’s no path for contractors to become a full-time employee. Instead, NOA is seen to be relying more and more on an army of perma-temps who are treated as second-class citizens despite being full-time employees in all but name.
“Nintendo is a very big and complicated and secretive company. And that’s what kind of causes the problem,” the current contractor says. “Each contractor starts with the hope they will become a regular employee, and very, very, very few people do.”
Changing Times for Nintendo
Most employees IGN spoke with agree that NOA culture started to shift around 2015. It was a particularly tumultuous period in Nintendo’s history, noted for the struggles of the Wii U and the sudden death of CEO Satoru Iwata. It was a sharp contrast to the opening of the new NOA headquarters just five years before, when the company was still enjoying the double success of the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii — two of the biggest bets in Nintendo history.
Jenn, a former contractor who was at Nintendo for 10 years, remembers both of these eras. Speaking with IGN over Zoom, she talks about how there were many more opportunities to become a full-time employee at NOA when she first started, even for support specialists working in areas like the call center.
“When I was there, contractors actually had a path to employment. [In 2009] you could be a phone rep and an NOA red-badger. And I started aiming for that. And I aimed pretty high trying to get as many cases as possible,” Jenn says.
Business was booming for Nintendo in 2009. In December alone, Nintendo sold some 3 million Wii consoles, fueled by a price cut earlier that year. Nintendo’s big bet on motion controls and the “blue ocean” had paid off spectacularly. But the good times would soon be coming to an end for Nintendo.
“Right now the mood is really tense. You really worry that Japan is going to see this and say, ‘Okay, what are we going to do about it?’”
“
The Nintendo 3DS was released in 2011 and immediately stalled, burdened by the lack of a compelling launch line-up, the rise of smartphones, and a $249.99 price point. Nintendo was forced to move aggressively, slashing the system’s price and rolling out special benefits for existing owners. A year later, Nintendo released the Wii U, which fared even worse.
Despite the downturn, no one at NOA worried too much about layoffs. Nintendo was not that kind of company. In fact, Iwata famously took a 50 percent pay-cut following the 3DS’ sluggish launch, with other board members also taking smaller pay decreases.
“I know that some employers publicize their restructuring plan to improve their financial performance by letting a number of their employees go, but at Nintendo, employees make valuable contributions in their respective fields, so I believe that laying off a group of employees will not help to strengthen Nintendo’s business in the long run,” Iwata told investors in 2013.
Iwata’s words were lauded within the gaming community, but NOA was seemingly compensating in other ways.
“When I first got there, they were trying to get rid of people. You could tell because they wanted people to retire, they were getting lots of benefits, so they could get new people in. They kind of gave up on that. Now they’re just terrified to hire people,” says the current contractor.
Jenn, who also rejoined the company after an extended break in 2015, echoes these sentiments.
“Just before I came back, I actually got a call from a manager who said, ‘Listen, we want you back’… But she was like, ‘Things have changed here. Things have changed a lot. And you need to know we’re evolving into a new kind of call center.’ And I was kind of worried about that, because when I worked there it was a very family atmosphere, it was a lot of fun. Some of the managers from then are my personal friends today,” she says.
What she discovered was that the opportunities to gain full-time employment had largely dried up, and that she herself was taking on more and more responsibility. Meanwhile, she says, NOA continued to dangle the possibility of finally earning an elusive red badge.
“Toward the end I was managing a team of 13 people during a product launch, acting as a chat lead, publishing knowledge base articles on WiFi for not just Wii but Wii U and Switch,” she says. “I was doing forum moderation and was a forum lead at that point and had written documentation for it. On top of that I was still expected to take chats and take calls. And I was looking around wondering, ‘Why am I not a red badge?’”
Nintendo’s public nadir was in 2016 — a year that saw its earnings plunge a dizzying 60 percent. Nintendo scrambled to release the Nintendo Switch, which would in effect combine its home console and handheld businesses into one device. As has happened so many times throughout Nintendo’s history, the gamble paid off. But NOA did not expand in kind, even as demand increased across the board.
One source estimates that demand for localization writers and editors has nearly doubled – but there have reportedly been no full-time hires.
“
One source estimates that demand for localization writers and editors has nearly doubled over the past three years – particularly as Nintendo has forged its way into areas like the mobile space – but that there have reportedly been no full-time hires within Nintendo’s localization team in that period. Instead, NOA has relied more and more on contractors, known internally as “associates,” who make up nearly half the English localization staff.
It has put a strain on not just contractors, but on full-time employees as well. With associates required to take a two month break between 11 month contracts, project managers have to scramble to organize and reorganize workloads in order to account for the varying resources and bandwidth.
Another hidden cost of relying on contractors is a higher rate of turnover. At just 4.7 percent, Nintendo of America has notably lower turnover than other tech companies, which average closer to 13 percent. NOA employees are known for staying for years or even decades at a time – many of the people that IGN spoke with know at least one person who had been around since the NES era. By comparison, contractors are far more likely to leave after less than a year with the company, leaving full-time employees to start from scratch in terms of experience and training.
It contrasts sharply with The Pokémon Company, a company with financial ties to Nintendo, but which operates separately as far as hiring and labor practices go. While Nintendo of America continues to defer converting many contractors to full-time, or hiring new employees, The Pokémon Company has worked to bring its own localization team onboard full-time, with all the benefits that come with it.
“It’s just like throwing bodies at things,” our source says. “It just seemed like the full-time staff was almost drowning all the time. They didn’t hire enough full-time people, so full-time people just ended up managing more and more contractors, getting more and more bogged down, and there was this bottleneck… That’s how contractors end up training each other, because the full-time staff is just buried.”
‘The Depression Mode’
One of Nintendo of America’s chief modern architects is former NOA president Reggie Fils-Aimé. Known to fans as the affable pitch man who appeared in videos like “The Regginator,” he was an influential figure from his arrival at NOA in 2004 to his eventual retirement in 2019.
In an interview with IGN intended to promote his new memoir, Disrupting the Game, Fils-Aimé talks about his first encounter with NOA’s work culture and his subsequent role in defining what it would look like going forward.
“When I was being recruited, I’m at lunch with the head of human resources for Nintendo of America. No job offer in hand, first visit to NOA headquarters, meeting with the head of HR, and I’m asking about people-oriented initiatives. What do you do from a learning and development perspective? What do you do from the perspective of enabling people to get exposure to new and different thinking and other ways of upskilling the organization? And his answer to me was, ‘Reggie, we don’t do that here.’ I’m taken aback and he continues, ‘Japanese parent, our parent doesn’t believe in this, therefore we don’t implement it.” And I literally said, ‘This is not consistent with my beliefs. It is not consistent with what I believe a leader needs to do to develop an organization and to enable it long-term to be successful,” Fils-Aimé remembered.
According to Fils-Aimé, former NOA president Howard Lincoln subsequently approached him and promised that he would have the chance to implement his own cultural initiatives within the company, which Fils-Aimé says he did as both head of sales and marketing and later as president. Over the next 15 years, Fils-Aimé says he worked to create a culture focused on developing “the next group of leaders” while “generating new and different ideas.”
“In the end, I judge my legacy by that when I retired, as well as the head of HR who I had that initial lunch with… he and I retired the same day. And as we retired, we promoted people internally into a variety of different roles versus bringing people in from the outside. To me that was a testament that we had done a great job of improving and growing the culture at Nintendo of America,” Fils-Aimé says, referring to the promotion of now-president Doug Bowser.
Asked for his reaction to the controversy surrounding NOA’s handling of contractors, Fils-Aimé says they had a path to full-time employment during his time at the company.
“At this point I’m three years retired from Nintendo of America, and I can’t comment on what’s going on today within the company. What I can say is that while I was there, we routinely hired [contract employees] in as permanent employees. We did it repeatedly,” Fils-Aimé said. “And interestingly, if you look at a number of well-known personalities within Nintendo of America, a lot of them started as contract employees 10, 15, or 20 years ago. So it’s always been a positive part of the culture to recruit in the very best of the contract employees into the company. So I’ve read the same stories, this division between contract and full-time employee. All I can say is that is not at all the culture that I left as I retired from Nintendo.”
One way or another, though, contractors seem increasingly convinced that they have no future at NOA.
“You can see the stages of depression and loss in each different person in different ways,” says the source within Nintendo. “I always told myself that I was a baby, and that was my rationalization for why it was okay to be in this situation. I enjoyed my time. I was new and it wasn’t a big deal, and I still considered myself young… but I wasn’t that young.
“As I was there longer, and I got more responsibilities, I realized how much the difference between what a contractor does and what an employee does is meaningless. One of the things I was really disappointed by was seeing them hire no more project managers. A project manager is the direct liaison between NCL and PTD for a single project usually… only now because we’re jamming more and more work onto single individuals, I think you tend to have two projects now.”
These feelings are exacerbated by a mix of restrictions that employment experts tell IGN are often commonplace among contractors, but are described as demoralizing by those who experience them. Contractors are excluded from everything from the company holiday party (though they can be invited by a full-time employee) to the company’s various diversity groups. The words “second-class citizens” are regularly used to describe employees who carry a blue badge instead of a red or gold badge, and they frequently feel unwelcome even setting foot in Nintendo’s glittering headquarters to travel in groups through the main lobby, or staying too long in Cafe Mario.
Nintendo of America’s Cafe Mario. (Image credit: ZGF Architects)
“[I] really started to feel a lot of resentment because of the huge disparity between us associates and the actual NOA employees. We were excluded from pretty much every activity or event. There was a news section of the internal webpage we were encouraged to look at that showed all of these events and activities and benefits (like a sizable Christmas bonus) that we simply weren’t allowed to participate in. It was extremely demoralizing to me,” says Melissa, a former chat consumer services rep who ultimately decided not to continue at NOA after becoming discouraged about her future there.
Jenn remembers the battle to allow contractors to march with Nintendo of America in the annual Pride parade.
“Here I am — transgender, bi, and on top of that, Mexican…I’m sitting there with a straight white woman and a straight white man discussing the Pride parade, and yet I was the only one there who was qualified to be in it,” she says. “My manager at the time actually asked about it and took it to a fight with upper management, and that is the only time I’ve ever seen where the associates were allowed to mingle with the NOAs [a colloquial term for full-time employees] was the Pride parade. Because he had fought for it, and he had fought for that hard apparently. And even then as far as I know it was only the one time…and several of my gay, and bi, and lesbian friends were amazed that happened at all… and so was I, honestly.”
In areas like customer support, the attendance policy is so strict that it’s possible to be fired for missing three days of work. Jenn describes an incident in late 2019 in which a sick employee came to work so they wouldn’t be fired, sending their illness sweeping through the call center.
It’s not just contractors, either. It also goes for anyone working on an initiative that has lost its luster, like Nintendo’s mobile games, which have been steadily shuttered as the company has moved in other directions. Even successful mobile games like Fire Emblem Heroes suffer from this, with writers being expected to research characters via fan wikis due to the lack of internal documentation. The apparent lack of regard for stylistic consistency makes the feeling of being relegated to the B-team that much more acute.
“[I] really started to feel a lot of resentment because of the huge disparity between us associates and the actual NOA employees.”
“
“I really do like the people there,” says the source within Nintendo in a comment corroborated by conversations with other employees. “There are very few who are difficult to work with. Most of them are in the depression mode. Learned helplessness. Even the NOAs. They see what happens to the contractors, and they can’t help but be guilty.”
Nintendo of America’s situation is common in the tech industry. A 2018 CNBC article refers to contractor labor as “Silicon Valley’s dirty secret”, and a New York Times report describes Google’s “shadow work force” of temps and contractors, which reportedly outnumbers the company’s full-time employees.
But reflecting back on her time at Nintendo, Melissa pushes back against the idea that contractors working in areas like call centers must inevitably be treated as disposable.
“Since I left I’ve had very mixed feelings about my time there, wondering if maybe I was just expecting too much. I’ve seen a number of people commenting on these stories saying that this is just how contracting is and you can’t expect more from it,” she says. “But the bottom line is that employees, contract or not, want to be treated like actual human beings and not easily replaced machines. And I think that applies to nearly every labor conversation that has been happening lately. Is it really too much to ask for?”
Quitting Time
In October 2021, Nintendo of America suddenly closed its satellite offices in California and Toronto. Employees in California were told that they needed to rally around one office and relocate to Washington.
Nintendo’s office in Redwood City had housed much of NOA’s marketing and sales core, including Nintendo Minute hosts Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang, who were some of the office’s first employees. The closure was widely seen as arbitrary and not particularly empathetic, and many employees struggled with suddenly uncertain futures.
“The sense that I got was that a lot of people were working from home successfully, then Nintendo closed the Redwood City office and said none of you can stay in California, you have to move here or leave,” a source says. “And that was just another nail in the coffin of the backward, antiquated way of thinking about a company.”
Perhaps aware of the discontent within NOA, employees found cards and balloons at their desks earlier today with cards featuring the following message signed by the “Executive Leadership Team:”
“Over the past two years we have been through experiences none of us could have imagined — both personally and professionally. But it all we, as a team, never lost focus on what is important to us — creating smiles. For those who have been on-site, you continued to deliver with excellence, and we so appreciate your commitment. For those working offsite, you found ways to come together virtually to support one another, and to drive results. And together we were able to continue to surprise and delight our fans across the Americas at a time when smiles were needed most. As we now transition to our new work environments, please take a moment to reflect, with pride, on everything you have accomplished as individuals, as teams, and a Nintendo of America family. Also know, the best is yet to come. We missed you and welcome you back.”
For Ellis and Yang’s part, they would depart together a few months after the office’s closure. They would later praise NOA for giving them the freedom to build out projects like Nintendo Minute, but also spoke frankly about not wanting to relocate. (Ellis and Yang declined to be interviewed for this article).
After over 14 years, I’ve decided to leave Nintendo. To be able to work at my dream job for so long and be part of some of the most memorable moments in gaming has truly been incredible. But the best part was all the people that I’ve had the privilege to work with. pic.twitter.com/E4SPjjLLJ0
— Krysta Yang (@breath0air) January 14, 2022
In a bittersweet farewell to the company they had each worked at for more than a decade, they posted photos from past E3s, trips to Japan, and other memories. Viewed as lifers by some within NOA, their departure was almost as much of a shock as the closure of the Redwood City office.
Jenn, meanwhile, left for very different reasons, though it was no less bittersweet. After years of pursuing a full-time position at NOA, she finally gave up after being declined a position. Jenn had been earlier forced to return home in the midst of the interview process due to the death of her sister, leading the interviewer to tell her that she had “attendance issues.”
Jenn had been forced to return home due to the death of her sister, leading the interviewer to tell her that she had “attendance issues.”
“
Demoralizing as that moment was – Jenn says she more or less checked out after that point – it was only after departing Nintendo and finding a job that offered her what she describes as “three times as much money for much less work” that she was able to properly reflect on her time at Nintendo.
“You don’t know that you live on the death planet until you leave the death planet,” she says. “[After] my 10 years there, I was very disappointed at the end. I was very disappointed that I didn’t get the dream job…I would have worked for Nintendo forever if I could. I loved it there. I loved the job. I was a Nintendo fan, I’ve finished every single Legend of Zelda game.”
She relays the story of awarding an employee “Burst of Brilliance” points that could be used to buy items like a Wii U at the company store for going out of their way to find a Zelda map for a struggling customer, and how it was worth it because the customer “walked away happy.”
“We loved working there, we were just being so exploited. We didn’t really realize it until we left…At Nintendo I did it out of passion and a love of the product, and they know that there’s a line out the door of people who will do exactly that for dog food. And that’s the sad part. They know that if you complain and you don’t want to be there, they can let you go and hire the next Jenn.
“And that’s what frustrated me in the end,” she says. “I didn’t know I was on death planet until I left death planet.”
Correction: Jenn was forced to return home due to the death of her sister, not her mother. IGN regrets the error.
Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
Polygon’s Patch Notes is a weekly newsletter that tells you about the best stuff to watch, play, and read. Let our band of editorial experts simplify your plans — subscribe here!
In the mid-2000s, Wii Sports was the biggest game on the planet. If Activision, EA, or Ubisoft had published the minigame collection, we would have a dozen sequels and a reboot by this point — maybe an animated show on Nickelodeon, too. For better or worse, Wii Sports is a Nintendo franchise, so instead, we got one sequel, a remake, and a decade of radio silence.
As a fan of the title, I was disappointed every time Nintendo completed a press conference or Nintendo Direct without mention of motion-controlled bowling. But as an editor who has covered this beat since the days of the Wii, I understood the business logic of it all. Nintendo has so many beloved studios that they could cannibalize each other if every series got the sequels fans felt they deserved.
So, I waited. And I waited. And I waited.
When the publisher announced Nintendo Switch Sports last year, I had all but lost hope. I’d assumed that if Nintendo wanted to leverage the Wii Sports formula, it would have produced another pack-in for the Switch. I was wrong in every way.
As the sales numbers (and empty shelves at my local Target) show, Nintendo didn’t need a pack-in game to sell the Switch. And where Wii Sports helped sell Nintendo Wiis, the Switch’s success has the potential to make Nintendo Switch Sports a colossal hit. Just this year, the Switch passed the Wii in total sales, zipping past 100 million units sold. Which is to say, the potential audience for Nintendo Switch Sports is gargantuan. And should Nintendo Switch Sports do the classic Nintendo game thing, amassing huge sales numbers over multiple years, then the game will keep the Switch relevant as it wades into the golden years of its hardware life cycle.
Once again, Nintendo has proven that patience is a virtue. We saw a similar situation last year with Metroid Dread, a project that had bounced in and out of development since 2005. Whether the publisher waits for the right moment to revive a series, or keeps a project in development hell, the end results are the same: a sustained quality that its peers haven’t matched (and likely never will).
Until recently, the quote “a delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad” was misattributed to Nintendo icon and Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto. It’s much more likely, however, that the quote was just a common phrase across the games industry, the sort of aphorism that helps creatives push back the accounting team an extra month or two. I prefer the thought that Miyamoto didn’t coin the phrase, because that would mean that every major publisher in the games industry knows this mantra to be true. Only Nintendo has consistently lived by it.
This week on YouTube | Why have the recent crop of science fiction video games all sounded so… rustic? Do they have more in common than just a country-fried soundtrack? Clayton Ashley investigates in this Polygon classic!
Five stories to read
Image: TT Games/WB Games/Disney/Lucasfilm Games
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is at its best when it veers from the films | “Do I need another Death Star trench run? Is this really pod racing? I know the Gungans’ side of the battle against the droid army is important, but is it a fun level to play? The answer to all of these questions is no, and Lego Star Wars is at its best when it meaningfully departs from the cinematic source material.”
The MCU isn’t built for a show like Moon Knight | Marvel’s house style restricts the emotion and the drama, holding back what should be a daring story for Oscar Isaac.
Unionization continues to gain traction at game studios | This week, BioWare QA workers made moves to unionize, potentially organizing contractors on the Dragon Age and Mass Effect teams. And Activision QA workers at Raven Software won an NLRB ruling, clearing the way for a union vote in April.
Rogue Legacy 2’s Easter egg is a generous nod to an overlooked gem| “FMF Fan” gives players free gold. But what does it mean?
Netflix’s controversial Eurotrash sex franchise goes soft in 365 Days: This Day | Is this the first movie to feature “sex golf”?
Five things to watch
Image: Netflix
Bubble on Netflix | One day you wake up and there’s a post-apocalyptic sci-fi parkour riff on The Little Mermaid from a director of Attack on Titan waiting to be watched.
10 recent Nicolas Cage movies you should watch | The star of The Unbearable Weight of MassiveTalent has been been putting together one of the strangest and enjoyable filmographies of the past decade.
Undone on Amazon Prime | Season 2 of this amazing animated show asks: Is time travel the best therapy of all?
Barry on HBO Max | The HBO comedy is back to make you laugh — but not too hard.
The 13 Batman movies, ranked| We apologize in advance for the placement of Batman & Robin, an underappreciated disasterpiece of gaudy commercialism. Signed, the management.
Plus, everything new to streaming:The Godfather trilogy returns! And 12 great movies leaving streaming at the end of April.
Three games to play
Image: Analgesic Productions
Sephonie | This 3D platformer was inspired by Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Spyro the Dragon… and Tetris! Available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows PC, Linux, and Mac OS.
The Iron Oath | Polygon Recommends | A mix of Darkest Dungeon, XCOM, and Divinity: Original Sin, this might be the next great turn-based tactics game. Available on Windows PC.
Warframe | Many years into the shooter’s life, its new updates remain consistently bizarre, fun, and compelling. Available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Windows PC.
Free game of the week
Image: Bethesda Softworks
The Elder Scrolls 1 & 2 | Bethesda is shutting down the Bethesda.net Launcher and moving its catalog to Steam. To mark the occasion, the publisher has made the first two entries in the Elder Scrolls series free. Now you can play the classic games that cleared a trail for Morrowind and Skyrim without having to wonder if that’s a good use of your cash when you could just buy Skyrim for the umpteenth time. Available on Steam for Windows PC.
The best of the rest
Image: Daniel Warren Johnson, Juan Gedon/DC Comics
Workers at Nintendo’s third-party repair facility reportedly faced a “very stressful” work environment caused by a deluge of Switches sent in for issues related to Joy-Con drift, according to a report from Kotaku. A former supervisor at the New York-based United Radio, the company that partners with Nintendo to repair broken devices, told Kotaku that the large volume of Joy-Con repairs resulted in a high turnover rate and “lots of” mistakes.
United Radio is its own company — Nintendo merely acts as the middleman, handling customer communications and leaving the repairing to United Radio, which serves Nintendo customers located in the eastern half of the US. The ubiquity of Joy-Con drift led to “easily thousands” of Joy-Cons that passed through United Radio in a single week, and prompted the company to set up a workstation dedicated to Joy-Con repair, the former supervisor told Kotaku.
Joy-Con drift is a widespread issue that causes the controllers to input movement when there is none, which often manifests itself as your character moving around on-screen when you’re not touching your thumbsticks. Although many Switch owners hoped the newer OLED model would fix Joy-Con drift, the issue still persists and Nintendo itself suggested it may never be fixed. In 2019, Nintendo started repairing Joy-Con drift for free, even with an expired warranty.
According to Kotaku, United Radio hires many temporary workers through the staffing firm Aerotek. Workers reportedly become eligible to be hired as full-time United Radio employees after three months of work. However, the former supervisor told Kotaku that most temporary employees stopped working after two-and-a-half months, whether they just didn’t show up for work or were fired. This reportedly made it hard to establish an experienced team of workers, inevitably leading to errors. In one example of such errors, a customer on Reddit said their Switch was returned with another person’s save data on it. There are numerous other complaints online, citing faulty repairs, missing components, or damage to their system.
A high turnover rate wasn’t the only issue contributing to repair mistakes — a language barrier also posed challenges, the former supervisor told Kotaku. The supervisor claims they were the only native English speaker on the job, making it difficult to train employees. Bi-lingual workers would reportedly often have to “act as a liaison” to relay information between the trainer and trainee.
Tight turnaround times didn’t help with these issues, either. The former supervisor told Kotaku that United Radio would simply replace any broken Joy-Cons from 2017 to 2018. After that period, workers were reportedly required to repair 90 percent of Joy-Cons within four days of receiving them. It’s unclear if these policies were mandated by Nintendo. The Verge reached out to Nintendo with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.
As Kotaku notes, Nintendo doesn’t just rely on contracted employees to do repairs. Former and current employees at Nintendo’s Redmond, Washington headquarters told Kotaku that Nintendo employs temporary workers for 11-month cycles with a two-month (or longer) break in between, with employees losing access to healthcare during this window. Earlier this week, a former Nintendo employee filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, claiming that they were fired by Nintendo and staffing agency Aston Carter for attempting to organize a union.
Last year there were whispers that Nintendo was planning to bring Game Boy games to its Nintendo Switch Online subscription service to join the existing libraries of NES and SNES titles, plus the Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis catalogues available as part of the Expansion pack subscription tier.
Now, a leak seems to provide evidence that Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games may be hitting the service soon.
According to @trashbandatcoot on Twitter, files have been leaked onto 4chan which include a Nintendo-developed GBA emulator codenamed “Sloop” and a Game Boy emulator called “Hiyoko”, both developed by Nintendo of Europe’s NERD (Nintendo European Research & Development) team, the Paris-based subsidiary responsible for much of the company’s emulation efforts in recent years — including the emulators in the Classic Mini consoles and the N64/GameCube/Wii emulation in Super Mario 3D All-Stars.
There was even video of the said Game Boy (Advance) emulator supposedly running on the console, although the account that posted it was quickly deleted.
Is this surefire proof indicating that we’ll be playing Game Boy and GBA games on Switch in the nearish future? Let us know your thoughts in the usual place.
The Kirby series is known for its all-ages appeal, with bright colours, accessible gameplay, and the simple fact that Kirby is just so round and squishy.
With Kirby and the Forgotten Land launching this week, we’re seeing a lot of advertisements for the new entry, including a recent trailer that highlighted the wonderful ‘Karby’. But Nintendo’s advertisements for the long-running series haven’t always been all sunshine and rainbows.
As highlighted by VideoGameArt&Tidbits on Twitter, back in 1995 Nintendo ran a two-page ad for Kirby’s Avalanche and Kirby’s Dream Course for the SNES. But this advert didn’t focus on the fun, cute side of Kirby — instead, it showcased a more grizzled Kirby about to be booked at the Metro Police Department.
Despite NOA’s preoccupation with giving Kirby angry eyes, this print ad showed a side of the character we rarely, if ever, see elsewhere, with the advert even referring to the character as a “mutant marshmallow” and “his flabbiness”. Charming!
It’s certainly a striking advert, and we’re pretty confident the Nintendo of today wouldn’t go down such a route for the Kirby franchise again. Nevertheless, it’s a neat little insight into how the company worked back in the ’90s! This TV spot that we covered in our Best and Worst Nintendo Commercials feature shows a gruffer side to the character, although it doesn’t quite have the ‘grim crim’ vibes of the print ad:
Kirby and the Forgotten Land will launch this week on March 25th – will you be picking it up? What other quirky Nintendo ads have you come across? Let us know!
If you’ve tried accessing the Wii Shop Channel over the past few days, you might not have had much luck. According to Nintendo Everything, the digital store has been “experiencing major issues”.
It’s supposedly impossible to access the storefront at all – and you’ll instead be presented with a “blank screen” on startup which eventually follows with an error code. Nintendo’s online maintenance page does not mention any issues, either (thanks, GoNintendo).
GameXplain has also taken a look – noting how team members located outside of the US, in regions such as Europe, have encountered the same problem.
Although Nintendo stopped game sales on the Wii Shop Channel in 2019, the current error means anyone who wants to access existing downloads and purchases is unable to right now. Nintendo previously said it would stop downloads on the Wii “at some point”, but never specified exactly when users would no longer be able to re-download games.
More recently, Nintendo announced it would be closing down the 3DS eShop and Wii U eShop by March 2023. While users will no longer be able to buy games, they’ll still be able to download previous purchases.
Have you had any luck accessing the Wii Shop Channel lately? Leave a comment below.
Nintendo this week announced the closure of the 3DS and Wii U eShop, and well…it’s caused quite an uproar online.
So, what now that roughly 2,000 games will no longer be purchasable on the 3DS and Wii U digital storefronts? There’s seemingly not much that can be done from a consumer perspective. You either buy the digital games you want on these libraries now or run the risk of not having a “Nintendo approved” way of accessing them in the future.
It’s got to the point where the Video Game History Foundation – a nonprofit organisation dedicated to preserving, celebrating and teaching the history of games – has now published its own statement about the closure of Nintendo’s legacy digital shops.
Its statement acknowledges how it understands the “business reality” of the situation on Nintendo’s end, but notes how it leaves fans with few options moving forward if they want to access certain titles. And while not providing commercial access is considered to be “understandable”, preventing institutional work to preserve titles is “actively destructive to video game history”.
It also takes aim at Nintendo for actively funding lobbying that prevents places like libraries from being able to provide legal access to these games. Here’s the statement in full:
“While it is unfortunate that people won’t be able to purchase digital 3DS or Wii U games anymore, we understand the business reality that went into this decision. What we don’t understand is what path Nintendo expects its fans to take, should they wish to play these games in the future. As a paying member of the Entertainment Software Association, Nintendo actively funds lobbying that prevents even libraries from being able to provide legal access to these games. Not providing commercial access is understandable, but preventing institutional work to preserve these titles on top of that is actively destructive to video game history. We encourage ESA members like Nintendo to rethink their position on this issue and work with existing institutions to find a solution.”
As you can see above, towards the end Nintendo is encouraged to “rethink” its position on these issues and work with existing institutions to find a solution. This statement has already generated plenty of ‘Likes’ at the time of writing.
How are you feeling about the news Nintendo will be closing the 3DS and Wii U eShop? Leave a comment down below.
During the Q&A portion of its financial results briefing last week, Nintendo was asked about the metaverse and NFTs. While we had a very brief summary at the time, the full and official comments are now available.
Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa addressed the news directly. In his response, he mentioned how the metaverse “has great potential”, but also admitted that there’s currently “no easy way to define specifically what kinds of surprises and enjoyment the metaverse can deliver to our consumers.” Fans will likely be happy to hear that it sounds like Nintendo has no immediate plans to pursue this space.
Furukawa’s full comments regarding Nintendo, NFTs, and the metaverse can be found below.
“The metaverse has captured the attention of many companies around the world, and it has great potential. When the concept of the metaverse is introduced in the media, games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons are sometimes brought up as examples. In that sense, the metaverse is of interest to us.
But at this point in time, there is no easy way to define specifically what kinds of surprises and enjoyment the metaverse can deliver to our consumers. As a company that provides entertainment, our main emphasis is on ways to deliver fresh surprises and fun to our consumers. We might consider something if we can find a way to convey a ‘Nintendo approach’ to the metaverse that many people can readily understand, but we do not think that is the situation at the present time.”
