Nintendo (2015-2017, 2020-present)

Nintendo Co., Ltd. (任天堂株式会社, Nintendō Kabushiki-gaisha) is a Japanese consumer electronics and video game company based in Minami-ku, Kyoto. Founded in 1889 as Nintendo Karuta which produced handmade hanafuda playing cards. In 1977, Nintendo manufactured the first game system, the Color TV-Game, which was succeeded by the mh:awesomegames:Family Computer in Japan and the mh:awesomegames:Nintendo Entertainment System available in the rest of world. The company gained international recognition with the release of the 1981 arcade game mh:awesomegames:Donkey Kong and later with mh:awesomegames:Super Mario Bros., a platform video game released in 1985.

Due to the success of the NES, Nintendo started producing other consoles, with the most successful being the mh:awesomegames:Game Boy, mh:awesomegames:Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the mh:awesomegames:Nintendo DS, the mh:awesomegames:Wii, and the mh:awesomegames:Nintendo Switch. The company is also notable for publishing video games of the Super Mario and Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, Kirby, Metroid, Fire Emblem, Animal Crossing, and Super Smash Bros. franchises.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Much like Universal Music and Viacom, they're way too overprotective of their IPs and have written lots of C&D orders to fan made games as well. While it’s justified since Nintendo owns the rights and they could lose their trademarks when the creators illegally profit off their IPs (for example, Pokémon Brick Bronze on Roblox, who was exposed by a member of the dev team to have used the music and assets without attribution), they take them down in a harsh way.
 * 2) *One of the most infamous examples of this is when their American division wrote a cease and desist order to The Big House, a Smash competition event for using a mod called Slippi, which would allow Melee to use rollback netcode. To make matters worse, when a lot of top competitors in a Splatoon 2 tournament showed their support for the Big House and the rest of the Smash community under the #FreeMelee movement Nintendo cancelled their live stream of the event. This shows that they cannot handle negative criticism.
 * 3) **The same division even sent a cease and desist to Riptide for producing a tournament that used Project +, an updated Project M mod that aimed to fix certain issues players have with Super Smash Bros Brawl.
 * 4) *They wrote a C&D order to a group selling Etika-themed Joy-Cons that were being sold for mental health charities and were made to honor the memory of the late Etika even though those Joy-Cons were infringing nothing. This was before it was revealed that Captain Alex, the person behind the Etikon sales, was exposed for being a total scammer since only 10$ of each sale is sent to charity while the remaining 55$ goes straight to the seller's pockets.
 * 5) Two of their consoles, the Wii U and the Virtual Boy, were commercial failures.
 * 6) They will shutdown their mobile games 1-2 years after they were made if they financially flopped real hard. If you spent money on one of the apps that had shutdown, you would lose that money spent on the game and that money would never come back. For Dr. Mario World at the very least, the game gave you unlimited lives for the rest of the games' lifespan if you bought anything with real money, but still. Hell, Dragalia Lost is also getting shut down as well although it lasted for a long 4 years.
 * 7) They've taken lots of measures against third parties that have tried to work with them to create eSport events for Super Smash Bros. all because they simply don't see the game that way.
 * 8) Plenty of their games from the Switch era have followed the "Release Now, Fix Later" mindset that sustains most games as service cases.
 * 9) *For example, Animal Crossing: New Horizons (although its predecessor New Leaf somehow followed such a concept with one major content update releasing in 2016 with never before seen content), Pokémon Sword and Shield, Mario Strikers: Battle League (even going as far as to remove key characters like Princess Daisy who is regarded as one of the best characters in the Mario Strikers series only to have patched her later via a future update), Nintendo Switch Sports, Mario Golf: Super Rush, Kirby: Star Allies and most infamously Mario Tennis: Aces (and infamously Ultra Smash despite coming from the Wii U era). Not to say that they rushed a good chunk of their games in the past, but this system proves that point even more. Sure some of those games we mentioned were not bad to begin with but it gets annoying quickly. Despite this however, it's usually free depending on the game despite its annoying nature.
 * 10) They use the awful artificial scarcity tactic for some products through Fire Emblem's Path of Radiance, Radiant Dawn and New Mystery of the Emblem (Japan only) and the infamous Super Mario 3D All-Stars, making them a huge target for scalpers.
 * 11) Like Sony, they copied Microsoft's idea of making online play a paid service and thus made online multiplayer on the main consoles not free anymore (apart from that on older consoles which are still free) though this is mitigated by the fact that Nintendo Online is cheaper than PlayStation Network and Xbox Live.
 * 12) *Despite this, they released another subscription plan that includes a rental of the Animal Crossing New Horizons and Mario Kart 8 DLCs (which are $25 separately), the ability to purchase Nintendo Switch compatible N64 and Genesis controllers, and Nintendo 64 and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis games for an additional $30 a year on top of the normal plan, or a whopping 150% more than the original plan. This particular plan only costs $10 less than a PS Plus subscription for the same amount of time. These prices are so outrageous you may as well go get a used Nintendo 64 or Genesis/Mega Drive from eBay or your nearest pawn shop as that may end up being cheaper than this subscription plan in the long run.
 * 13) **On that note, there is a Sega Genesis/Mega Drive collection with a larger variety of these games on the Nintendo eShop for a decent price plus getting to keep them forever unlike this subscription plan. In addition, some of the games found in the Nintendo Switch Online's Genesis library have been officially re-released on mobile, being fully playable for free.
 * 14) They don't allow refunds on the eShop unlike other companies' online storefronts.
 * 15) They release ports of already existing games at a full price and most of their games that have been out since. Even the Switch's launch hasn't gotten official price drops. The worst offender is Super Mario 3D All-Stars, a full priced and rushed game compilation that just emulates three Mario games that were barely upgraded and had emulation issues at launch. Also, the original Mario 64 is also going to release on Switch Online through a premium plan, making this release pointless.
 * 16) *On the subject of Super Mario 3D All-Stars, Super Mario Galaxy 2 was left out for unknown reasons and Nintendo refused to acknowledge why it was excluded from the compilation even after 3D All-Stars got delisted.
 * 17) They are against online distribution of ROMs of old games even if they aren't on the market anymore. They say this is because of "piracy" reasons, but again, these are out of print games we are talking about. So whether we get the old game through a legitimate copy or a free ROM Nintendo isn't making any money off of it anymore.
 * 18) *Finding a physical copy of an out of print game is also pretty difficult. Some copies out there on the internet are in poor condition and some of them are too expensive (especially if it's a rare game such as Metroid Prime Hunters, where it's kinda hard to find the full game because of the former only being available as a demo).
 * 19) **Some games like Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn had very limited releases and are very expensive to find nowadays, making the option of emulating them much more harder to many people.
 * 20) *There are some rumors that Nintendo took an unofficial ROM from the internet of Super Mario Bros. and sold it on the Virtual Console service, which would make them hypocrites. However, some sources have disproven these rumors saying that the reason why Nintendo's VC version is identical to the ROM they allegedly stole used a similar dumping method.
 * 21) *In addition, they took down the Super Mario Bros. Commodore 64 port in April 2019 by also claiming it is "piracy" despite the game being 35 years old that not many people play anymore on a platform that has been long discontinued and that it has been out of market for years.
 * 22) **Similarly, they also took down the native port of Super Mario 64 for the PC in 2020 also claiming that was piracy despite the fact that the port requires a ROM of the original Super Mario 64 anyway.
 * 23) *They are also against unofficial emulators as they took some of them down, and have also taken down video guides on emulation for the Steam Deck despite them not talking about ROMs.
 * 24) *And due to the closure of all Nintendo eShops except for Nintendo Switch, none of their games made aside from the Switch's library can be legally purchased other than finding used copies of said games for their original hardware or piracy if they were digital only releases. As for the NES, N64 and SNES games, they can only be streamed from that point onwards.
 * 25) They once (thankfully) did a strategy where they made some of their anniversary games limited release both physically and digitally in order to scare their fans into buying them before they're gone (Similar to the extremely infamous Disney Vault).
 * 26) *What's even worse about this is that they've been doing it during a pandemic where lots of people are having issues with their financial stability (The COVID-19 pandemic to be more specific).
 * 27) Sometimes they take down music videos on YouTube containing songs for Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda and many more yet they won’t officially release their soundtrack to an online service officially. This led to YouTuber GilvaSunner's channel receiving over 3,500 copyright claims in a single week. This is likely because YouTube videos can be converted to audio files resulting in music theft.
 * 28) Although it depends on your opinion, they've recently made some of their characters including Mario (who is the company's mascot) punching bags starting from the release of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in 2018 until 2022.
 * 29) *In fact and as if that wasn't enough, they would even result in controversies as well. Here’s one example: When Luigi was implied to be killed in the trailer for Simon Belmont, it resulted in a massive fan backlash whereas the death was even sparked on news outlets (including the BBC). In response, the official NintendoVSUK account apologized assuring that Luigi is okay.
 * 30) *Although again depending on your view, this can be funny.
 * 31) Another infamous practice is that they often ignore criticism whether it's important or not.
 * 32) *Nintendo hasn't tried to improve their peer-to-peer paid online service which was already panned for being laggy especially on games like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate since launch.
 * 33) *They've been ignoring the issue of the Joy-Con drift and are doing very little to fix it aside from offering repairs saying that the Joy-Con drift "is not a real issue" (though it’s possible that they thought it was something different) which only last a few weeks before drifting again rather than re-designing the controller to remove the issue entirely (and yes, the Switch Lite still has the issue). Many suspect that Nintendo is pretending that the Joy-Con drift is not an issue in order to artificially increase the sales of Joy-Cons with a few such as Max Gilardi insinuating that it was intentional. This means that they deliberately designed the Joy-Cons to drift on purpose! Until 2021 only after a lawsuit, they fixed the drift by adding 2 pieces of foam at the back of the Joy-Con's back plastic case.
 * 34) *Speaking of the Joy-Con drift, if you sign a warranty for the console that came with the Joy-Cons, your Joy-Cons would stop working.
 * 35) The rerelease of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light (which was essentially a repeat of the Super Mario 3D All-Stars controversy) proved that they learned nothing (although thankfully this was stopped).
 * 36) *Not to mention many people noted that Nintendo's translation lost all the charm that the original fan translations had. What’s not helping matters is that Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, which was released long prior to that translation, was marred by poor dialogue choices.
 * 37) They tend to close the eShops of all their discontinued systems just because they no longer find them profitable:
 * 38) *Firstly, they stopped allowing users to add DSi Shop Points in 2016 and closed the Nintendo DSi shop in 2017, however, from 2017 to 2023 most of the DSiWare can still be bought on the 3DS eShop.
 * 39) *Following this, they stopped allowing users to add Wii Shop Points in 2018 and closed the Nintendo Wii shop in 2019. Unlike the DSi, a lot of exclusive games made for the platform would be permanently lost to time if not for piracy.
 * 40) *The final straw to this issue is when Nintendo announced the closures of both the Nintendo Wii U and 3DS eShops on March 27, 2023 where credit card support has been removed worldwide. Users are no longer able to use prepaid eShop credit directly from these platforms as of August 28 2022 (in which they'll need to work around it instead by doing so off the Nintendo Switch or Nintendo.com) and they plan to close the eShop itself on March 27, 2023. This would mean that many of their games would be lost without piracy including DSiWare and certain games like Nintendo Badge Arcade will also shut down due to their over-reliance on microtransactions.
 * 41) *Unlike the DSi and Wii, Nintendo has forgotten to disable the option to add eShop credit on the Wii U and 3DS eShops, meaning that if someone were to unsuspectingly try to add a eShop fund code without reading the closure notice, they would be given an end-of support error for all valid codes, and the usual errors for all incorrect or used codes, leaving users no choice but to enter the code on the Switch or the company website to add the funds that way.
 * 42) *Speaking of the 3DS and Wii U, the eShops in Latin America (excluding Mexico and Brazil) were already completely closed in 2020 because they had limited functionality, only allowing users to input codes that were bought online, redownload previously downloaded games and download software updates.
 * 43) *Without warning on March of 2022, the DSi and Wii shops had completely lost support where users could no longer redownload games and get the transfer tools for these respective systems. However, as of 7th July 2022 both stores went back online in the same state they were in before with no explanation as to why it happened in the first place and why it took 4 months to get them back online.
 * 44) *Unlike them, Sony has actually changed their mind after seeing the intense backlash that making the same decision have caused (except the PSP where said games are only purchasable from PS3 to send to the PSP), further proving that Nintendo have learned nothing. In fact, the Xbox 360 Marketplace remains open to this day with no signs of decline because some backwards compatible games like the Left 4 Dead series, Skate 2, any Xbox 360 DLC and others are not available on the Microsoft Store for the Xbox One and Xbox Series X.
 * 45) They often tend to cancel quite a few of their projects for rather poor reasons and sometimes for no reason at all such as Yoshi Racing (which was meant to be a 3D platformer developed by Argonaut Games but was rejected for absolutely no reason at all possibly other than having to compete with their already-popular Mario Kart franchise) and screwed over the development studio as a whole after the unfortunate cancellation of Star Fox 2 (until 2017 where it was released exclusively with the SNES Mini, then Switch Online at a later date) which was also cancelled due to nearly being released when the fifth generation of consoles was still thriving and successful at that time with both the Sony PlayStation and the Sega Saturn.
 * 46) *Speaking of the Sony PlayStation, it was supposed to be an add-on for the SNES but Nintendo also rejected it because they preferred to work with Phillips, which angered Sony to the point where they made it an original console and became more successful than the N64.
 * 47) The Russian division is especially awful where the employees are treated terribly. The general manager of Nintendo Russia, Yasha Haddaji, insulted his staff on a live stream. He is also accused of sexual harassment, black mailing, abuse etc. Even after the allegation, Nintendo still didn't fire him.
 * 48) Unlike either of their console competitors especially Sony which started making PC ports of their first-party exclusive games like God of War (2018), Nintendo is still a stranger to PC gaming as they have yet to port any of their first-party exclusive games to PC, making their games somewhat inaccessible to those who don't want a Nintendo console although this is somewhat understandable since their games are meant to be specifically played on their consoles.
 * 49) In 2015, they launched the infamous creator's program which would allow Nintendo to take a quarter of ad-revenue from videos that use their content. This copyright system has received extreme controversy and backlash since it basically took down plenty of gameplay videos even if they fell under fair use, causing the Nintendo Creator's Program to be shut down for good 3 years later.
 * 50) *And even though they shut it down, they keep continuing on filling false copyright claims on YouTube starting from 2020.
 * 51) Despite what BQ#7 says, Nintendo were initially against the concept of online gaming with the late president Satoru Iwata explaining that "customers do not want online games".
 * 52) Their mobile game Mario Kart Tour has microtransactions and loot boxes which is very out-of-character for them. The app even has a Gold Pass that's even more expensive than the Nintendo Switch Online. Not long after, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp added not one, but two subscription-based services within the game that is just as, if not, more expensive than Mario Kart Tour's gold pass. In fact, the latter added a third subscription pass a few years later, further emphasizing how greedy the company has become these past couple of years.
 * 53) They stopped supporting Netflix on the Wii U and 3DS in June 2021 with still no Switch app planned. It is likely Netflix will never be on the Switch as they wanted it to be a gaming first platform. However, this wasn't a thing in other countries to begin with.
 * 54) Whenever they announce a Switch port of a Wii U game, they often delist it from the Wii U eShop preventing people from buying it for a cheaper cost. However, when Pikmin 3 got this treatment there were enough complaints that shortly got the game back on the eShop. In fact, they even decided to get rid of the original Super Mario Maker on Wii U and removed the ability to share any more levels on March 31st 2021 due to the success of the sequel. However, its 3DS port is still available at Nintendo Selects prices until the 3DS eShop closure in 2023.
 * 55) It was leaked by someone in December of 2020 that Nintendo of America  stalked  people who modded their products.
 * 56) *Speaking of that leak, it was mentioned that 3DS hacker Neimod was fawned and indoctrinated into joining Nintendo by being provided with prototypes and hardware samples for recreational use interrogated for information and altering their response to the issue based on what he says, so they had to discourage him from hacking Nintendo products. At the same time, coder Hector Martin also mentioned former Nintendo of America lawyer Jodi Daugherty "tracked down" the work phone of Wii homebrew hacker Bushing and called him as “an intimidatory tactic”. Streamer Kaitlyn Molinas also pointed out a PR plan containing potential outcomes including Nintendo receiving negative reputation and backlash from hackers and cyber attacks (which were all unaverted at the time of the leaks and in early 2020) if "the public finds out that they hired a hacker from the homebrew scene".
 * 57) *In some regions, this could actually be illegal and would result in huge fines or other penalties. If Nintendo of Europe attempted the same thing, the European Union would take serious legal action against them.
 * 58) In early 2021, they removed some DSiWare games on the American 3DS eShop for no reason and without prior warning (which doesn't make any sense at all ) where even the co-creator of Shantae was also upset at Nintendo for their action . Thankfully, most of them were brought back a week later. However, none of this would matter as there are plans to close the 3DS and Wii U eShops in March 27, 2023 anyway.
 * 59) In May 2016, there was a protest in Hong Kong because Nintendo enforced the Mandarin (the most dominant variety of Chinese) translation of Pokémon there. Hong Kong's de facto official language is Cantonese, a variety of Chinese that is different from Mandarin.
 * 60) *As a compromise, the Cantonese dub of the anime and movies all use Pikachu's English name, as English is also an official language in Hong Kong.
 * 61) Hypocrisy (kind of): They said that . While this is a welcoming change, they still self censor their own games such as the worldwide release of and the Western release of.
 * 62) They force a minor majority of their first party and third party developers to release their games in an unfinished state, which results in them having zero content, many random bugs and an overall lack of polish, with the main example being Game Freak, as they keep constantly demanding them to release new Pokémon every year at the Holiday season which is a problem since each game in the series takes 3 years to make and RPGs usually take a very long time to make due to how complex the genre's gameplay is and having an insanely heavy emphasis on the story, and since they never delay the titles at all in time to fix and playtest the titles before release, it leads to the series lacking behind many other RPG franchises such as The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy and Persona. This is likely due to them wanting to boost console and game sales in an attempt to gain more money of the success of the series in a scummy way.
 * 63) Pokémon Scarlet and Violet had very little advertisement in the few months before both games were released in November 2022. As of August 3, 2022, three trailers had been released. The trailers showed off the three starter Pokémon, legendaries, rivals, a few Wild Pokémon, the regional professors, other NPC's, the new 4-player feature, an open-world environment, a new region, and three different stories in a similar matter to Fire Emblem: Three Houses.
 * 64) *Fans have even gone as so far to speculate that Scarlet and Violet might not sell very well because of the lack of advertising.
 * 65) *However, some people suggest the reason for this is due to the controversy surrounding Sword and Shield about the National Dex, and also how Sun and Moon got so much advertising from Nintendo that Consumers started to complain towards them about this and wanted them to stop.
 * 66) *In fact, most of the information given about the new titles have been actually revealed through data leaks of an earlier build by an unknown user who goes by the name of Kaka, who told many legit sources about the new titles and informed Centro Leaks about what the new titles will offer and how much progress has been done on the games in general, and Nintendo has yet to take the leaks and the man himself down since they wouldn't want a hacker to reveal a large chunk of information about the yet to released games, but since they barely even told the press more info at the games themselves, it's likely that the leaks seem to be the only reason why people are getting hyped for the game and Nintendo has yet to do anything about it at all.
 * 67) **However, this is not their first time they barely advertise this since other games like Sword and Shield started this case, though they had a second trailer on June 5, 2019 and a third and overview trailer on November 16, 2019, which is two days before the game was launched. Scarlet and Violet, on the other hand, had an overview trailer on August 3, 2022 instead, and finally have new gimmicks like Tera forms and Paldean forms, as well as having three different stories.
 * 68) Because of Nintendo's business decisions since 2015, the company's reputation has been damaged, turning away many longtime supporters.
 * 69) *In 2020, Nintendo had some of its data leaked onto 4chan, dubbed the Gigaleak. In which is full of source code, unreleased prototypes and games, documents and early concepts..

Good Qualities
Despite the bad business decisions, they are still regarded as a neutral company, as their games are still great, and thus, they are still good enough to continue to be on the Awesome Games Wiki.

Videos
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