Some time ago, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella threw out the view that "the essence of the metaverse is a game", which spread the topic of metaversity to the field of console games, and Nintendo, which has always been safe and sound alone, was also involved.
On February 16, a topic that "Nintendo president said that he does not plan to join the meta-universe for the time being, because I don't understand it"" was simultaneously on Weibo and Zhihu hot search. As president, Shuntaro Furukawa said that at this stage, it is not possible to clearly define the form of the metacosm, nor can it be clear what kind of surprises and fun the metacosm will bring to users. At present, it does not seem to be in line with Nintendo's plans.
In fact, this answer comes from the Nintendo online earnings briefing released on February 4. After many days of sudden explosion, in addition to the promotion of Microsoft's CEO, there is also a background between peers.
In contrast, Microsoft and Sony, who have no works in the host Misan, have already embarked on the construction of the metaverse, and Nintendo, which has developed "Animal MoriKai", which is generally regarded as the prototype of the metaverse, actually "does not understand the metacosm"? Such a funny contrast allows netizens to quickly open the internet surfing mode.
Judging from the comments of zhihu netizens, there are many remarks that agree with Shuntaro Furukawa, while the opposition party says that Nintendo's remarks are too conservative. But interestingly, at the end of the discussion, netizens focused on "whether the president really doesn't understand, or doesn't understand it", and once again joked with Shuntaro Furukawa, who had a watermelon head.
Some people think that Toshitaro Furukawa's answer highlights his high emotional intelligence, behind which he is actually secretly satirizing some game companies for not thinking about fun games, but using the meta-universe concept to fool retail investors and cut leeks, but it is difficult to say clearly for the sake of face.
And some netizens who claim to be senior fans are more willing to believe that the president is "stupid white and sweet", and advise all officials not to speculate too much about the president, he said that he did not understand may really not understand.
Compared to the overly sharp speculation of the former, GameLook prefers the latter, that is, Nintendo may not really understand the metaverse. The reason is that in GameLook's view, there is both the influence of Nintendo's past experience and cultural concepts, and the lack of Internet genes in traditional Japanese companies.
Old Cannon Nintendo, once fell the metaverse
To say that Nintendo is a conservative game company is actually a bit untenable.
Although compared to the next-generation consoles that Microsoft and Sony have just launched, Nintendo's Switch is indeed not enough to see. But on the way to explore the metaverse, Microsoft and Sony may really want to call Nintendo an OG.
AR/VR devices are often seen as one of the foundational devices of the metacosm. In fact, Nintendo was the world's first gaming company to explore VR devices, dating back to 1995. At that time, under the pressure of Sony PS1, Nintendo quickly set up a project and released the industry's first VR device that can present stereoscopic images - Virtual Boy.
However, due to the technical conditions, functional limitations, and high cost at that time, vritual Boy did not have a good actual performance, and even the user shook his head and caused the problem of image error. In addition, the product design positioning was contrary to the tide of video games at that time. The superposition of many factors doomed the failure of this "precocious" VR device. In the end, the product was discontinued less than a year after its release, during which only 770,000 units were sold, and only 22 games were released.
It was the most failed product in Nintendo's history, and its failure led to the resignation of Junpei Yokoi, then director of Nintendo's development department, who was the leader of the product. In addition, this also spilled over to the "Galactic Warrior" series, which he spearheaded, which was later refrigerated for 8 years, during which no one took over.
This black history has put Nintendo's VR exploration to a standstill for years, although in April 2019, Nintendo began to dabble in VR equipment again, releasing the Nintendo Labo VR Kit. However, this kind of mobile VR headset device is indeed very different from the external and integrated direction explored by the industry today, such as Sony's external device PS VR, ByteDance's acquisition of Pico, and the rumored one-piece VR glasses that Apple will launch soon.
There's a reason the industry has rejected mobile VR devices. Google, which previously led the way in mobile VR headsets, released Cardboard, a paper mobile VR device similar to the Labo VR Kit, as early as 2014.
Although it achieved good market results at the time, the subsequent iteration of Daydream View was dismal, selling only 209,000 units in 2016. This also led to Google's announcement in 2020 that the follow-up Android system no longer supports the Daydream VR platform, and sentenced the mobile VR business to the "death penalty" at the software level.
The tragic experience in the VR field in those years made Nintendo's attitude towards it much more cautiously since then, so that when faced with related questions, it formed a set of classic "Ren-style answers" with tai chi as the core. Newly appointed chairman Tatsumi Junjima habitually diverted the topic in a recent interview, saying that as long as the conditions are ripe and the technology is feasible, Nintendo will not give up VR games and VR consoles.
Shigeru Miyamoto, director of the development department, which has been gradually reused because of the black history of VR, is more direct, expressing strong opposition to VR, saying that "Nintendo's concept is family fun, as well as game social networking, etc., VR will isolate individuals and differ from Nintendo's concept" and so on.
In GameLook's view, Tatsumi Junjima's answer may be more practical than Miyamoto's overly determined attitude, and Nintendo has not completely given up the possibility of finger-dyeing VR. However, considering that VR technology is not yet mature and the hardware cost is still high, it is somewhat unrealistic to expect Nintendo, which has fallen here and has not yet stood firm, to step into the metaverse field.
In the Mizo family, Nintendo may not really want to understand the metaverse
Since the metacosm is in the exploratory stage, its true form is unknown. Therefore, in the cognition of the metaverse, different companies have also given different views.
For example, The Nadella mentioned at the beginning said that the essence of the metaverse is a game, through which the next generation of Internet platforms can be created - the physical Internet. Perhaps to show its understanding of the concept of metaverse, Microsoft did not hesitate to spend $68.7 billion to acquire Activision Blizzard, while also demonstrating its determination to lay out the metacosm.
As its biggest competitor, Sony was obviously forced by Microsoft's huge acquisition, and on January 31, without too much warning, it officially announced its first luxury purchase of the year - $3.6 billion to buy Bungie. Jim Ryan, head of PlayStation's game business, made it clear that the company will make more acquisitions and incorporate more high-quality teams and IP into the PS game business, which is a deliberate or unintentional Q next door Microsoft.
Sony's move is obviously more to fight back, but it is not difficult to see that two of the big three have chosen to integrate content through mergers and acquisitions to stock up ammunition for competition in the next Internet era.
Although Sony chose to "follow", in terms of cognition of the metaverse, do you say that Sony understands it? In fact, it is not, at least not as firm and clear as Microsoft. Ken Kumaku, the father of Sony PS, refuted the metaverse in a recent interview, saying that "not seeing the meaning of the metacosm is essentially no different from an anonymous message board website."
In terms of the scope of the game business, Sony and Microsoft are roughly the same, which means that the competition between the two is far more complex and fierce than on the surface, Microsoft has taken the first step of "exploring the metaverse with games", and Sony has no reason not to follow up. After all, the metacosm belongs to the internet field that has not yet been explored, and once it is taken first, it is likely to be kicked out. So even if Sony "can't see the meaning of the metaverse", it has to make the same merger and acquisition action as Microsoft.
In addition, Sony has sufficient foundation in the infrastructure of some metaverses, such as game engines, and Epic, the parent company of Unreal Engine, has established a long-term good cooperative relationship, Sony's first-party and third-party games are mostly developed by Unreal Engine, and Epic is the first batch of game companies to lay out the metaverse. The collaboration with Epic may accelerate Sony's metaverse path a lot.
In the Mizo family, Nintendo became the one who was safe alone. From the perspective of market competition, although Nintendo and Microsoft, Sony's game business are all console markets, but the business scope does not overlap, the former in the handheld market has completed an absolute monopoly, especially in Japan - according to the latest report of Famitong, Japan's console game sales TOP 10, Nintendo's products have once again completed the overall list, and the sales of switch consoles are far more than the next-generation console PS5, XSX/XSS.
In addition, at present, in view of the performance of Switch, most high-quality games on other consoles and PC platforms are also difficult to port to Switch. This is also why at the latest investor briefing, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa will confidently say that Rendo will not take similar acquisitions with Microsoft and Sony for the time being.
In short, Nintendo does not lack good game content, can easily make money lying down, and the performance of the host device is naturally inferior to that of the opponent, there is not too much reason to explore the metaverse, just focus on the gameplay of the product, which is also in line with Nintendo's philosophy.
Objectively speaking, from the perspective of corporate financial resources, Nintendo cannot be as rich as Microsoft and Sony. Public information shows that Nintendo's market capitalization is currently $60.2 billion, which is far from Sony's $134.437 billion and Microsoft's $2,252.6 billion.
However, exploring the metacosm is about money, as evidenced by by last year's much-bred "ByteDance's proposed acquisition of VR company PICO for more than $9 billion," not to mention Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion — more than a Nintendo market capitalization. The lack of financial resources also restricts Nintendo's move towards the meta-universe to a certain extent.
Do we expect Japanese companies that are lagging behind the times to engage in the metacosm?
To compete for the metaverse and base itself on the next Internet era, there will inevitably be conditional restrictions, at least in the exploration of the Internet, there must be enough precipitation. But a deep dive into Japanese corporate culture has always lacked internet genes.
According to Japan's "Asahi Shimbun" reported on February 3, at least 12,700 cases of new coronavirus infection data in Japan in the past week have not been entered into the statistical system, and one of the important reasons is that Japan is still using fax machines to report epidemic information, which makes staff need to manually enter information into the system.
Despite the development of the Internet for many years, Japan has not produced many Internet giants. In the social field, the most used mobile social app for Japanese people is line launched by South Korean company NHN. Nintendo, and even Sony, have also continued the tradition of Japanese companies and have a mustard for networked game products, which can be seen from its products.
Most of Nintendo's products tend to be single-player, and games like traditional online games that require multiplayer network battles are rare, and so far the most impressive, there are not many that can have the shadow of online games, such as the "Jet Warrior" series. Sony's situation is roughly the same as Nintendo's, but the latter wins in a few more "side businesses", such as host hardware and so on.
Nintendo's philosophy has always been to rely on gameplay to win, not hardware. For the technology industry, the iteration of technology has always been the main theme, and once it is backward, it may fall behind. Nintendo has dropped the chain in some aspects, such as the above VR devices, Microsoft has HoloLens, Sony has PS VR, and only Nintendo of the big three focuses on paper mobile VR; for example, in cooperation investment, Tencent has invested in countless software and hardware companies related to meta-universe.
Therefore, it is indeed difficult for traditional Japanese companies that have not received admission tickets since the Internet entered the PC and mobile phone era to understand the metaverse that may become the next generation of the Internet. After all, as far as the reality is concerned, many Japanese companies have not even understood the Internet in this generation.
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