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> Ultimately the sales will tell.

If you believe games are at all art, then they cannot ultimately be judged either by commercial or critical success, or even by whether they please their creator. There is something utterly subjective and nondeterminant in the evaluation of art.

Obviously, as humans we tend to evaluate the “success” of art on its long term impact. Commercial and critical failures in the short term can and have become treasured as masterpieces in the long term, and bestselling beloved work can turn out to be forgotten quickly.

> We have seen the same thing happen to Star Wars where the legitimate criticism was painted as toxicity of the fandom.

Hold on a minute here. Yes, the racist assholes got more attention than they deserved. But Rise of the Skywalker was thrown together by a bunch of marketing executives looking through all that “legitimate criticism”, making a big checklist, and feeding it into their lifeless movie factory to create a giant wish fulfillment fantasy for all those “real fans” who were upset someone would dare to shake up their stale, predictable franchise. It was a terrible movie. Lessons: Disney is a cancer, but also people on the internet, as plentiful as they are, have no idea what they want.

This is one area where I think Nintendo and Apple really excel at.

They hardly, if ever, cave to user "wants", because they understand that often, the user has no fucking clue what they actually want.

It's why they manage to succeed despite initial opinions being so against them. It's because often the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Looking at a thing can only tell you so much, it's only when you are able to actually experience the thing will you be able to judge whether it is good or not.

It's not true in the case of Nintendo. They always actively get JAPANESE feedback for games like Zelda and Pokemon. As western and eastern tastes diverge, you'll see bigger issues.

It's one of the reasons Square Enix just sold all their western studios.

Users often don't know what they want, but they frequently know better than rando companies.

Apple's strategy worked during the era of Steve Jobs because Steve Jobs was miraculously good at intuiting what users want. Since his death, Apple has lost that ability. See: The Butterfly Keyboard, the Touchbar, the 2013 Mac Pro. Apple's recent successes have been things consumers very much said they wanted: iPhones with larger screens, Macs with better performance and incredible battery life.

Nintendo does seem to have some leaders with Steve Jobs's talent, but I'd argue they're more hit or miss than he was. The Wii U didn't go so well, and the Wii—while an initial success—was ultimately kind of mixed.

The reason I explicitly noted Nintendo and Apple is because they are not "rando companies". They are companies with explicit track records of not focus grouping every product to death.

You say the Wii was "mixed", but that's just wrong. It outsold the PS3 and XBox 360.

The Wii U was a misstep, but the Switch is essentially a Wii U/Game Boy hybrid. Because Nintendo saw what was off with the Switch and made the changes.

As for Apple, they were lambasted for removing the Home button, removing the audio jack, making their own chips. But those have all been not the major missteps people thought they were.

> You say the Wii was "mixed", but that's just wrong. It outsold the PS3 and XBox 360.

It did, but many of the people who bought it purchased few (if any) games. It's not clear to me that the Wii was more profitable than the PS360 when you take the full ecosystem into account. And even if it was, remember that those competing consoles made major technical missteps—the PS3's high initial cost and weird Cell processor, and the 360's red ring of death.

> As for Apple, they were lambasted for removing the Home button, removing the audio jack, making their own chips. But those have all been not the major missteps people thought they were.

I don't remember as much outcry about the home button's removal. But I bet if you asked a focus group what they wanted in an iPhone, "the biggest possible screen in the smallest possible body" would have been high on the list, and that ultimately necessitates removing the home button. Android phones had already been moving in this direction.

Similar situation with Apple Silicon. Normal consumers don't know what a cpu architecture is, but I'm sure a focus group would have asked for a Mac which was faster and lasted longer on battery.

The headphone jack's removal was a money grab, pure and simple. It allows Apple to exert more control over the ecosystem and receive more money in licensing fees. Consumers didn't like it, they were merely willing to put up with it.

  > The question here is: "Is this a really innovative graphical design that 
  > will get praised by future generations but is misunderstood now" or "Is this 
  > just a bad decision that the creator is unwilling to own". I tend to think 
  > it's the latter. Ultimately the sales will tell.

The question here is not "should people like a thing," it's "why are people such assholes?" To quote Ron Gilbert's linked post:

  > Play it or don't play it but don't ruin it for everyone else.

It sure seems like this is a fantastic example of the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory [0]: nobody would speak so awfully to Ron Gilbert if they were leaning over his shoulder watching the trailer.

[0]: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboa...

> “Ultimately, the reason some people get upset when a series changes isn’t because the new game is new, but because the old games get their future cut off. Getting a sequel you don’t want closes the door more definitively than creating a new IP. Nobody wants to see the corpse of something they love puppeted around when it could just be laid to rest.”

Except in this case, my understanding is that this isn't even true. This game is an alternate sequel to MI2 (which is widely beloved), throwing out the story from MI3 (and maybe Tales? Many fans did not like the story direction of MI3. Perhaps because Ron didn't work on it.. I didn't mind it). So I guess in that case, for the really opinionated MI1&2 fans, this is another bite at the apple.

I'm sorry, but getting upset about a sequel you didn't want is an immature and entitled attitude. This is a sequel from the original creator, not some corporate cash-in, what else do you want? Ron Gilbert is not a mind reader, he can't deliver on 1000 contradictory fan expectations. This is the game they wanted to make, that's their right, if you don't like it just move along.