[013a]

While some people would blame it on Nintendo producing products people want, I think its a little more cultural than that: Nintendo, as a company, deeply fails to understand Western culture. Because of this decades-long misunderstanding, they've developed a weird culture of isolation with the west; far more-so than other Japanese game developers like PlayStation, who have a REALLY strong western corporate presence.

Though, I'd argue Nintendo's interactions with the west are really similar to another Japanese developer, From Software. They both have a massive, rabid western fanbase who orgasm at every bit of news these eastern companies hand out. Well, in the end, they give out very little, and a lot of their game releases follow a pattern of "we're making new game, here's a teaser trailer" (three years pass with literally nothing) "ok, game is out today, have fun". Contrast that to Cyberpunk and other western developers, which more follow a pattern of constant community engagement, developer diaries, release dates promised a year in advance, then missed, playable demos, marketing deal with Doritos, sponsored twitch streams, etc.

Its a rather interesting case study in how game companies should communicate with their base. You'd initially think that more communication is always better, but there's so much evidence to the contrary (Nintendo, From, Valve, and Team Cherry immediately come to mind). By rarely communicating these companies exempt themselves from a lot of criticism; obviously this exemption applies to the games they're developing, but it really does extend to everything they do.

[kiaulen]

If you watch the Engoodening of No Man's Sky on YouTube, it argues exactly this. Every thing that Hello Games' Sean Murray said ended up haunting him, and them stopping the communication and just getting to work is how NMS got to being one of the better space sims today.