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Comment by halikular | Hacker News Reader

It's bold of the Nintendo family to make such statements about Japanese society when they can't even get their own company under control themselves. Nintendo is probably the most universally hated gaming company and it's true of other Japanese companies as well. They seem to be scared of the internet and goes out of their way to claim copyright infringement on anything fan made having to do with their intellectual property. They will try take down everything they possibly can, it's so bad you have to fear covering any of their games, even their music on platforms such as YouTube. Any efforts to preserve old Nintendo games via e.g. emulation is quickly met with a lawsuit. Whether or not you comply with their requests they will try to sue you for millions, even children. Just check out all the recent cases on Google. https://www.google.com/search?q=nintendo+sues

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Nintendo is probably the most universally hated gaming company

What? I think you need to step out of your echo chamber, I would argue Nintendo is probably the most universally beloved game/toy/entertainment company out there, maybe tied with Lego.

People like their games, but as a company they're horrible to their fans and gamers. Here just some of it from Charlie: https://youtu.be/5cSCLceDAjM https://youtu.be/dOKF9t-hfEw

I'd agree that they're horrible and artificially make their products worse in order to sell you their pointless subscription service, but that doesn't mean it's not the most beloved gaming company at the moment.

Charlie's definitely on the right track here, but I think it's worth mentioning that the vast, vast majority of Nintendo consumers don't know/care/understand about Nintendo's scummier practices.

I think it's possible that it can both be true that Nintendo doesn't always treat its fans very well, but Nintendo also makes far better games than any other publisher.

I think I understand why Nintendo heavily protects their IP. Their strategy dates back to when Nintendo first expanded into the US in the 1980s after the video game crash of 1983 (which partially happened because of the overwhelming amount of low quality games being produced then)[1]. They deeply care about quality and being associated with it. When they launched the NES, they heavily filtered 3rd party studios and created the "Golden Seal of Approval" for all of their licensed games. Their strategy works. People trust Nintendo to give them high quality entertainment. They even went as far as designing the NES box to look like a VCR appliance, not a video game console, all because of the negative association people had after the VG crash!

So expanding from that, they (rightfully, from a business culture perspective) don't want their IP being tampered with, nor associated with a product they themselves did not create. Nintendo probably spends a much higher percentage on R&D than the average video game company. They don't want all their efforts to be watered down from mimicry. They don't want someone to see Mario in a meme post on YouTube and associate Mario with that video. They want Mario to equate to the production quality they work really hard to produce again and again.

You're wrong about Nintendo being hated. People love them, because they trust Nintendo. And Nintendo in turn works extremely hard at building and maintaining that trust.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983

> Nintendo is probably the most universally hated gaming company

That's a _fascinating_ claim. Just off the top of my head, I can think of Blizzard/Activision and EA who I think of as more-hated (for labour practices and working conditions; and for microtransactions and sequel-itis). I've never heard any opinion below ambivalence for Nintendo, and its fans are rabid.

> Nintendo is probably the most universally hated gaming company

You are just not anywhere near objective reality [1]. Nintendo is one of the most beloved brands in the western world and I can't even comprehend what echo chamber you are in to think that Nintendo is hated.

There are certainly fair criticism of the company, I believe they are incredibly over zealous about their IP enforcement, but I doubt many people ever think about that when they are getting 100's of hours of entertainment value out of their hardware and 1st party software.

[1]https://www.marketingdive.com/news/nintendo-switch-american-...

I think you're being downvoted for exaggerating an opinion that's really only shared among some content creators. But you make a good point about their overzealous copyright enforcement. It seems hypocritical to bemoan fear and lack of innovation when your company is perhaps the most prolific user of the courts (in the industry) to squash any creators who might possibly be infringing on your IP. It creates a chilling effect around games.

Let's remember the time when leaked docs shown that Nintendo stalked the hacker of 3DS, literally spying on his daily activities: https://twitter.com/forestillusion/status/134122299161979289...

No one hates Nintendo. Imagine being so impotent that you rage against likely the most popular gaming company in the US as a hobby. That's really fucking sad.

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